What an epic weekend of gigs, dancing and general mayhem! Two gigs this weekend: a local gig featuring my housemates' and friends' band Gravedale High, a horror punk band run by Dave, at the Marquee pub. They were pretty good. Much better than they were last Halloween, mostly because they've been practicing once a week. I must say I like Adrian's vocals for the whole thing too, because they are so gruff and manly. While the sound wasn't very good, the gig was still fun. The other band I paid some attention to was a ska group called Stick Man Army. Mostly dancing at that one, which was fun. Ska is good, but not always my thing, you know. These guys were good live, though.

The other gig was much bigger. It was at UEA: Cannibal Corpse and Children of Bodom. It was epic. It was loud. It was... death metal. I have to say that CoB is more my thing, but both were good. The opening act was pretty good too, but I can't recall their name. I'll have to ask Chris later. I think the best part of Cannibal Corpse was the fact that their singer, who guest stars on Metalocalypse sometimes, was in fact wearing a Dethklok shirt. If I had the money, I totally would have bought one of their shirts. Even though I liked Bodom more, you can't beat a Cannibal Corpse shirt. They are more cult and awesome. Whats better, I got to talk to their bassist Alex Webster, got his signature and photo, and told him that he should write a song called Cock Cancer. So watch out on their next album. I may have contributed.

Morning writing

So, a few times now, I've gone to the library in the morning, before doing anything else, and sat down with a few of the poetry journals they have there, and read poems and written some of my own. I can't say how relaxing and productive it makes me feel. As you may have guessed, I did that again today. While I can't say it would be an everyday thing, I want to make it happen more often. As in maybe once a week. On Tuesday or Wednesday morning. Probably Wednesday, so I could go in early, and then stay for two hours or so and go straight to my lecture in the same building. But now I'm just rambling.

Also, I am very keen to have more people comment on here. I know that a few people actually read this aside from Nicole (well, I hope they do. I like to think they do.) And with me posting links to here on Facebook whenever I update, I assume some people actually read what I have to say, despite how irrelevant to daily life it really is. If you don't have anything to say, then don't worry about it. But just comment as a guest if you want (or if you have Gmail, you should be able to use your Google login).

So, today I found two poems that were extremely nice. There were lots of good ones, obviously, but these two were just stellar.

Theology
Jack Underwood

He tried to think about the zoo,
the bird he'd seen with an anvil head,
slinking lizards in the reptile house.
It had been a good day.

But he remembered the panther enclosure
where he had waited for thirty minutes
staring up at a dark hut hidden in trees.
Suppose there was no panther.


Poppy Day
John Burnside

The butcher arrives with a love song
he learned from his father.

Out on the kill floor, veiled in a butterslick
circumflex of marrow fat and bone,
he rinses off the knife and goes to work,
his voice so sweet, the children come to hear

the beauty of it, slipped between a vein
and what the veal calf thought would last
forever.
     Barely a shudder rises through the hand
that holds the blade
                             and yet he guides it down
so gently, it falls open, like a flower.

And still the children come, to hear him sing,
his voice so soft, it's no more than a whisper.

So, seriously. I love those two poems, and those poets. I'm definitely going to look into buying something of theirs, if available. I want to read more of them. I will read more of them. After reading such inspiring work, I, of course, wrote some of my own. I wrote two poems, but I'm only going to post the second one now. The first one is way too rough, and is pretty personal as well. But the second one I can share. It definitely needs work. I hate the way I started it out (which is weird, because my writing tutor told me last week that I'm really good at starts. This one's rubbish.) There are lots of parts that I'm not happy with. Mostly the start and the end. Rather short, but I haven't really written anything very long in a while, so nothing different there. No title yet, but here it is (also, to Talitha [if you're reading], the poem I showed you today at lunch about the three words [two posts down from this one], it is about a specific three. And also about stagnation and all the other stuff I told you.) :

The round pod, chariot
with massive wheels and two
horses; a dough-faced Achilles man
clad in ornate tableware and
a sword raised
to swing and decapitate
or carve up an arm like a Sunday roast.

And now the leap:
no choreographed front flip
no five-foot-high feat of
human inaccuracy, but a tumble,
a stack of porcelain falling from a cupboard,
but still intact, on his belly
dreaming of his curly locked love
as a spear splits through
his exposed lower spine.

Oh, the throes

So. What have I been up to? The obvious answer is not posting anything on my blog for a while. Too long, actually. I posted that poem earlier this week, but thats it really. I have been up to things, I promise! Its just been rather... turbulent, emotionally, I guess. But I'm hoping to put all of that aside this week and get out lots of stuff. I don't have any poetry for you tonight, but expect something later in the week. Also, on the subject of poetry, I'm going to be looking into submitting to some journals soon, see if anyone wants to publish my any of my work! This also involves going through all of my old stuff again, but I've got so many shiny new poems from the past year or so, I have a lot to work with!

So, art. My coursemate Lara is basing some of her project work around her trip to Korea, and the way that flats and houses are built there. As such, she has been handing out matchboxes and asking people to modify them. Here is mine:


I am very happy with it. I got some thread, bunched it up in paint, and it looked awesome. I cut holes in the box and then burned the edges around each hole. It was really fun.

As for my project, I've been doing some work with slabs and plaster. Rolling out slabs of clay, impressing gears and other techno-junk into them, and then casting them in plaster. I'm going to be doing much more of it over the next few days. Tomorrow I'm going to make slabs, Tuesday I'll cast the slabs from Monday, and make more. Not all techno-themed either. I might go for some more natural-themed slabs, and other stuff. Any ideas are more than welcome! Here are some photos!

this is definitely not a sonnet

I am a poem without a mouth;
no rhyme, no name and unable
to say anything beyond what
I have already said. I am
a poem with out metaphor, for
I have told you what I've
held so dear, whispered in your
ear the same three words.
I am a poem whose sounds
have lost their feet,
as words stumble and fall
into unchanging ears and I repeat those
same three. And all you can say is
"I'm sorry."

Playing with texture (images)

So, I've decided that this sculpture is all about the textures on the form. I'm putting human bits, such as the ribs, and I hope to put more stuff in there that resembles familiar human forms. I'm also throwing in a lot of other stuff, such as the bumps and the indents on the legs. I've been asked if I plan on doing anything with the feet and hands, but I don't really think I will. I kinda like having it be a headless, handless, footless... thing. It is obviously a human figure, but it just has so much more added to it. Well, sorry for such a short post. I promise to do a longer one this week, especially after writing group on Thursday. Here are some pictures!

Robo-baby

So, while I have been having some stress headaches, I'm still doing lots of cool stuff. So aside from housing difficulties and the possibility of having to quit my course after one year here, I'm just trying to keep myself busy. Have been and will be recording more stuff with the dictaphone, and have started playing with clay, and soon plaster! Here are some photos of my clay experiments with my baby mannequin today:

you who have made bright things from shadows

Today in creative writing seminar we talked about dreams, mainly trying to figure out what they are, how they work. It was pretty interesting. I didn't manage to directly get a poem out of it, but I have something that I can easily turn into a poem. I couldn't manage to get anything down for the actual main exercise, but I can work on that.

Our first topic of discussion was about trying to describe dreams. We each wrote down a description of what dreaming is, addressed to some being from a place without sleep, and therefore without dreams. Most people listed some stuff, but I was feeling more prosaic and wrote this:

You close your eyes and the body stops, you lose control of your senses and lie as still as a breathing corpse. And then the visions, dreams: fantastic adventures or terrifying chases full of discontinuity and preconceptions, alternate realities completely unfamiliar, or created from hopes for the future and regrets from the past, but always glossy and displaced; a thread that may be similar to those woven into your waking life, but destined to fade into ash as soon as you regain your sight.

Other people said things along the lines of altered conciousness, surreal visions, fleeting senses, unfamiliar territory, like being in a film. Our next task was to try and make rules for dreams, I guess trying to define what they are. I didn't manage to write down what we decided on our five were (due to lack of sleep, actually. I was rather zoned out this morning), but here are the three I managed to write down:

Rules of Dreaming:
1. Dreaming is an altered state of consciousness.
2. While the events in dreams may mirror those of reality, they are all constructed fantasy.
3. Dream time has no correlation to real time.

Someone mentioned lucid dreaming, and the film Waking Life, a film about dreams which talks extensively about lucid dreams. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend watching. I might track down a copy and watch it this week just for a refresher. Been a few years.

Alongside all of this, we looked at some poems about dreams which are really interesting:

Beale Street
Langston Hughes

The dream is vague
And all confused
With dice and women
And jazz and booze.

The dream if vague,
Without a name,
Yet warm and wavering
And sharp as flame.

The loss
Of the dream
Leaves nothing
The same.


Birds Appearing In A Dream
Michael Collier

One had feathers like a blood-streaked koi,
another a tail of color-coded wires.
One was a blackbird stretching orchid wings,
another a flicker with a wounded head.

All flew like leaves fluttering to escape,
bright, circulating in burning air,
and all returned when the air is cleared.
One was a kingfisher trapped in its bower,

deep in the ground, miles from water.
Everything is real and everything isn't.
Some had names and some didn't.
Named and nameless shapes of birds,

at night my hand can touch your feathers
and then I wipe the vernix from your wings,
you who have made bright things from shadows,
you who have crossed the distances to roost in me.


The Song in the Dream
Saskia Hamilton

The song itself had hinges. The clasp of the eighteenth-century Bible
had hinges, which creaked; when you released the catch,
the book would sigh and expand.

The song was of two wholes joined by hinges,
and I was worried about the joining, the spaces between
the joints, the weight of each side straining them.


Now I'm off to have some dreams of my own. I have more stuff to do tomorrow.

Some poems from the library

Here are a few poems I found in the library yesterday that I really love. Enjoy.

How Do Species Recognise Their Mate?
Ruth Padel from Darwin- A Life In Poems

Take frogs. Many different species lie about in the wet flourescence,
torn scraps of silk in the silt of a single pond.
To pick mates of their own species they make themselves distinct
tin tiny ways, like trembling at a particular frequency
or pulse rate. In birds, variation's greater. Say, a courtship dance.
They meet, spread wings, display those peacock eyes,
that special patch of feathers, a flash or bar of black,
gold or iridescent blue, so neurons, synaptic terminals
and brain may recognize the I belong with you.

The Weasel
Jacob Polley

Up and down the London Road
Blinder by the hour
I spent as much again as we owed
White winter flowers

Crowds and crowds like fallen leaves
Blown between the towers
You cam in with the cold up your sleeves
White winter flowers

Screams and shouts and broken things
Now you're fired and cower
Under the sheets when the postman brings
White winter flowers

Who's have dreamt a little twist
Could turn your sweet breath sour
I tasted this when we first kissed
White winter flowers

For your whole heart is half my heart
My heart is half of yours
So we're neither complete and lie drunk in the street
White winter flowers

A quick redraft

Here's a quick redraft of the poem from earlier. No solid title as of yet, but for now I'm calling it Ghost, or Ghost Story:

I’ve heard of a ghost,
a billowing curtain or a fluttering
bed sheet, whispering across the floor
to grab people’s hearts, stop
their rhythmic breath, arrested
in a state of explosive apathy; a collapse
into the feathered mattress,
ice-lids closing with a painful crack
and salt resealing the eyes into darkness.

Is he a courier of dreams, or simply our legend?
A malevolent gas-form emerging
from the infinitely hungry black hole, leaving the body
to roam, the mind to
scatter and melt into disuse, ceaseless habit
creating a layer of grime embedded into flesh.

A fleece blanket to bring you back to life,
candlelight displaced by the polished moon,
when he returns with a secret,
thrusting into your chest to start the warm trickle
of blood into your throat, eyeballs open
again to the dark walls
and the sun starting the daily round.

Who Watches the Watchmen?

I just read Watchmen, one of the best books I have read. I'm really a growing fan of graphic novels, and this one is quite astounding. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. This book won the Hugo Award for science fiction in 1988, and was noted in Time magazine's list of 100 best novels. The plot layers various have been heroes over the very real cold war, and the future of the world. Quite moving as a piece of fiction, and very poignant as a piece of satire. The characters have extraordinary depth for being part of a 12-part comic series. The characters represent different parts of the human condition, and all together create a dynamic story. There is the all powerful, yet apathetic Dr. Manhattan, a product of nuclear testing; there is Rorschach, the isolated madman, and his counterpart the Comedian, both crazy and fighting for their own agenda in ways equally reckless yet different. The conclusion gives new meaning to the word doubt.

So, what else have I been up to? Aside from working on my on my research project (due in Friday... can't wait to be done with the bloody thing!), I've been developing more ideas for my project. I didn't manage to stretch any canvas today, but I might just paint on board or something. Cheaper.

I'll be working more on writing this week too, in preparation for writing group starting up again on Thursday. I wrote this today. It doesn't have a title yet, and is only a first draft:

I’ve heard of a ghost,
a billowing curtain or a fluttering
bed sheet, whispering across the floor
to grab people’s hearts, stop
the rhythmic fluid-breath, arrested
in a state of explosive apathy; a collapse
into the feathered mattress
the ice-lids closing with a painful crack,
salt resealing the fleshy envelopes into darkness.

Is he a courier, or simply our legend,
a malevolent gas-form, fragmentations of mourning tumbling
into a chasm deeper than the infinitely hungry
black whole, leaving the body to seize, the mind to
scatter and melt into disuse, ceaseless habit
creating a layer of grime embedded into flesh?

A fleece blanket to bring you back to life,
candle light displaced by the polished moon
and then he returns with a secret,
thrusting into your chest to start the warm trickle
of blood into your throat, eyeballs open
again to the dark walls
and the sun making the daily round.

Return from the frozen north

Just got back from a two day trip to Chesterfield and Sheffield. It was cold, I must say. There was a small museum in Chesterfield that had some interesting information about the city and various other things. I bought some cool postcards and patches from there, took a few photos of the city and the museum (cucumber straighteners! I was flabbergasted that there is such a thing!). On Friday we journeyed into Sheffield, went around the shops, another museum, etc. I got some cool images that I want to do paintings from, so tomorrow or Tuesday I plan on going into the woodworking workshop and getting taught how to make canvases. Should be fun, and then I can just buy some paints and start up on it again. In all, its been a good weekend. I still need to try a bit more of the animated .gifs, but that will come in time. I've been sketching and reading and stuff, so I will get it done.

One for the money

I want to make more, but I need more ideas.

Dildo, dentures.

So we watched the masterpiece of cinematography Teeth tonight, and I have become semi-obsessed with Vagina Dentata. I can only imagine the conference room where this was discussed: (Mitchell Lichenstein enters with a dildo and dentures): "Ok... imagine that this set of teeth was a vagina."

It has become my new screename on MSN, and on discusstion with Nicole, I created this:

Yes. A Vagina Dentata MSN emoticon. It took me about 15 minutes in total, most of which was picking the right colours. I almost outlined the teeth in black, but the teeth stand out on themselves just fine. In conclusion, I plan on making more emoticons. A lot more! Also, expect them to be animated. A chompy version of the Vagina Dentata will be in the works tomorrow. Also plans for sculpture and plush.

A poem for today

So, just started writing this one. Been working on it for about 20 mins now, and I need to go to sleep. It is 5:11 am and I actually have work to do tomorrow! Its not done, and tomorrow or Wednesday are the goals to have a finished draft. It rhymes, and I have a idea of where I want to take it, but I'm just too tired:

Out in the waves t'was a whale, you see
a bumpy old whale who was singing to me.
I spoke to the whale, the snail of a thing,
"Oh, Mr. Whale, I love how you sing!"
He rose to the surface and broke through the waves,
blew salt out his nose, and whipped up a haze.
I touched on his bumps as he whistled his song,
but deep in his eyes I saw something was wrong.
"Oh, Mr. Whale, have you something to say?"
But still those sad lenses gazed out in dismay.
He slipped slowly down to the water, into the foam
but I could still partake of his glorious psalm.

Happy New Year

Almost forgot, sorry.

Also, despite how often I keep telling myself to take StumbleUpon off of my Firefox... I just can't. It gives me things like this.

Museum of free

So while I was out and about in the city today, I decided I would go to the Norwich Castle museum, as I get in for free with my student card. I've been there before, but that doesn't mean I won't be going again when I have free time and nothing to do. There were a few pieces that I particularly enjoyed, however.

The first was The Tower of Babel by Tobias Verhaecht. Absolutely stunning. And enormous painting, at 198.2cm x 232.2cm. My impressions: 'The spiraling mountain dwarfs what is left of the city below, which has been destroyed to make room for the God-vessel. Tons of stone are hauled up this tireless nautilus-road by workers, who house themselves in the grand archways. Down below in the corner of the painting, King Nimrod oversees the creation of each stone and has become no more than a madman of Satanic proportions, striving to reach a God that is utterly infallible.'

The second piece was by a man named Karsten Bott (I didn't see the installation, only one piece), and the piece was called 'Chewing Gums'. It was a small case mounted on the wall with numerous shelves, each with around 20 pieces of chewed gum and various other items that he apparently found around Norwich, and placed on display here. Really cool, as I also like finding things and could probably find some way to do something similar. Also a very interesting thing to think about for the next project that involves visiting somewhere new and documenting it.

The final piece was by the late Ian Skoyles. This guy is awesome! He takes various bits of numerous jigsaw puzzles and puts them together as a landscape. Various bit, such as a church from one puzzle, a boat from another, trees from somewhere else, all fit together. Finding the pieces that fit perfectly into the other puzzles would be difficult, I'm sure. The placard next to the piece (called 'Connoisseur Deluxe', btw) said that his work reminds us that landscape art is always part reality, part fiction.

There was also a larger exhibition by Susan Gunn. While I like the ideas behind her work of representing barren landscapes and other things... most of it was pretty boring to me. The idea is cool, and the pieces that obviously had a bit more thought put into them were better. Its all abstract stuff, anyway. Kinda cool, but has a lot more potential, in my opinion.

So tomorrow, I actually need to start getting work done on my research portfolio that is due on 16 January! I at least need to get most of the work done before I go north for a few days on the 8th... I've also started watching Samurai Champloo, and will hopefully have the first two seasons of Code Monkeys soon... May the gods have mercy on my soul!