Bothered

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Spent yesterday afternoon taking pictures at my folks' house cos they're moving on after 28years. I suppose it's a bit sentimental but it felt like a necessary ritual. I've been realising my usual stock memories of 'childhood' and 'home' leave a lot to be desired, straight out of darker teenage misery and doom. well fuck that; when i had a scan through some old family albums a couple of weeks back, the house looked happy and lovely in that late 70s/early 80s little square pictures/old photo-film way. mum looked well glam, pa looked fit and smiley, me and my bro looked cool as fuck playing out in our little outfits, and it was the same summery good vibes yesterday, despite the empty rooms and winter grey day.

But it was in the coal shed, by the rock garden, under the laburnum tree, in the alley that i blubbed away the most, as layers of years that i never knew i still had the memories of unravelled and played out like short movies. i guess it's because these wee spaces and border territories were ours, interesting only to us, were never updated and modernised after we'd gone like the inner fixtures and fittings.

Years later at school i painted corners of sheds and other extraneous crannies and inbetween bits. Just to practice shading and texture i told myself then, though now i'm not sure whether it was as simple as that. Anyway my dad's asked me to do some paintings for the new place which is cool, especially since I 'haven't had the time' to paint for years, and also quite funny, cos i think i'm going to fill their new place with loads of tiny details from our old. c x



Thursday, February 23, 2006

RIP your nana :(

Well I missed death by half a metre in the low viz grey spray on the M62 earlier. Driving back from Kirkby too fast in the rain and some trucker had lost a roll of carpet or cladding or something on the outside lane. i swerved and swore and then shivered, since I'd been imagining something like that happening all morning.

I'd been attempting a conversation with a group of 'at risk' 15 year old boys about health for work, asking them about their town, its violence and the aspects of masculinity that prevent them asking for help. These are the kinds of barriers that need to be overcome says the accepted wisdom, which to me kind of negates acknowledging the need to overcome the conditions necessitating their creation... but still... I didn't get so far with them today; but then why the hell should I... though they did tell me a rasta had been in 'with a big minge' to teach them about sexual health and had stuck his finger in it. I'm assuming it was a model.

Kirkby's an ugly new town built for people displaced by sixties slum clearances. It sits almost in the countryside, cut off from the city by the motorway, like all the pure places. There's an industrial estate, a large plastic-looking grey-green sports centre, a little shopping mall, limited jobs, lots of roads, the youth centre.

Across from poundland, the library has an art gallery; this month's exhibition is by Paul Elliker: innocent-looking technicolour countrysides in flat acrylics. They're based on the utopian landscape designs in kids' text books and mass media, kind of paint-by-numbers looking, or maybe like japanese prints netto-style. Pretty wicked actually, and i've always felt a bit bored by Warhol's tins and marilyns: Elliker says he's responding to the simplification and continual re-packaging of nature, in contrast to the religious symbolism of the traditional romantic landscape. It's all about the surface, the removal of texture in mass culture... nature reduced to a template for people disassociated from it. But the layered geologies looked like tasty animated cocktails to me after the grey gloom of kirkby town centre. And something elemental in the pretty neat reductions... for an instant the pink rivers, blue moons, dark pools and molten eruptions made me think of eternity. Just for a second or two, like in all 'the best disposable pop'... but then maybe i'm still recovering from my near miss. When i looked eternity in the face for an instant a half hour or so later, it looked like a river of sweet pink release :)







oh yeah... i've got new boots too, was well buzzing off clopping round in them x

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

While last year was most definitely the year of catastrophe and disaster, it seems this is the year of death. So my fears, they come to me in threes. My grandmother passed away this afternoon, eight years after a stroke which left her unable to communicate or look after herself. After taking the call from my mother I felt sad but mostly numb and went ahead to the Bridgewater to watch Ryan Adams. All he could do was complain about how he'd rather be with his girlfriend - Lindsey fuckin Lohan - and whine on about how he mighta done too much coke back in Nashville. When he sang he was very good, but fuck you Ryan- people are dying. He made me so angry I almost threw one of the brand new boots I bought earlier right at his head. I was so disappointed that all the songs I've been singing in my head for the last few years were coming out of that potty mouth - but maybe there's some comment on true stardom in the fact that I still think he's a genius and I'm pleased I got to see him play.

First thing I wanted to do when I got home was look at a picture of Nanny to remind myself of who she was before the ravages of old age took away her smile and probably her dignity. The second thing was to take the topaz pendant that she wears in the picture I found, where she and Grandad are stading in front of a blooming cherry tree, from my jewellrey box and put in on my necklace. The third thing was to write this.