stretch

... to another summer. 2 years back. as i am packing again i'll be sending off my eigg/berlin sketchbook to a fellow student to use the sketchbook for some music composition.

while making tea. sun am. pastel, w/c, pencil in moleskine

it only occurred to me that she could get this sketchbook as alternative to the chile one. so. i am back with summer preparations. again with going to being in berlin for a good part of it. going to be sketching for a good part of it. and glad again to be leaving glasgow for a bit. and yet: so much is vastly different.

i am also back with the malleability of time: how it stretches forwards and backwards. radiates outwards in all direction from any presence. how past and future seem constantly folded into and onto the presence.

a curious one. this relationship to time. and how it is social and the experience seems mostly my own. how far can i stretch forward. and backward. while all is now.

flicking through the eigg sketchbook it was also all about time. lykke li and island time. all in rain and low clouds. all the time.

so,

stretch. while making tea on holidays
a look out of the window
how close is the world today
depends on the mist and the low clouds
is it as far as the dry stone wall?
or can you see the cairn?
or even the high moors?

stretch. the abstracted lines come easy
capture the horizon. a tree or two
but not more
close is far more stretching
what about the stones?
or the bracken? or the sheep.

lucky i was: no sheep in sight today.

i also begun rebuilding my 0kb music library today. some borrowed, some stashed, some carefully saved. so. back to that summer there goes this.

oh. she will get the ghost of time, too. no point in doing things by half.

deletion

... they don't come alone. and today's obliteration has been on a slightly different scale.
it concerns the size of my music folder. can you see it? it's 4 kb in size.

how on earth?!?!
so i go hunting for it... in various backups. it's nowhere to be found. 60gb of MY PAST have vanished. i feel disturbed. wrong-footed. out of sync. rather literally. somehow in all my updates my time machine decided to omit my music files.

after a confused phone call i sit back and grin a bit. just ever so slightly. all those soundtracks to events, people and locations. i can just make some of them up. forget about the unhappy, cheesy, cliched soundtracks that have been dragging along.

it's a bit more comprehensive than reinstalling apps on my phone - yes: the day of obliteration in form of a long-dodged diy firmware update that saw my apps disappear, along with some recent sound files and a few photos.

here's to new music. the one i was looking for? this one here:

not quite random

...for the weekend. and after.

for today? honey!

Either in cartoon form,

or as music...

or: both?

soon: some art.

and the year ends

... with a movie that k and i designated for each other independently. only she had already found a screening for tonight. in halberstadt. the place where my granny moved to, aged 14, to start her apprenticeship, in 1934. never been there. so, it'll be soul kitchen in halberstadt tonight.

before: a bit of bruecke - erich heckler at the feininger gallery in quedlinburg.

and, for the road... this one, (and some bastardfairies, i predict).

have a very good year end and all good things for the new one. see you there.

... and some sound to the sound

... too quick again. Or rather delayed memory from last night... this was going to go along the previous post:

One of the results from living lives elsewhere is not only that you may sound funny but also that you are particularly ignorant to all the trivia everyone while here accumulates.

I had this as an speedy update last night. Very delicious...

... and she was

... just missing enough to feel alright.*

Hm, yes... Talking Heads also belong to here.

*Jala and Jeanette, as you can see, I'm taking your comments very serious and am continuing along the lines of expectations. Thank you! :)

"This is a gift..."

White Room remix in moving pictures... well, just a little movement.

My Quicktime Playtime also has a soundtrack. But with DRM and thus resistant to publication.

So, you need to manually (a) click on the youtube vid (well, it's really only audio), , and, 3 secs later (b) click on flickr video... and you'll even get a much better live recording than my DRM itunes restrict.

... Rabbit heart... Hasenherz,...
- if I ever was a singer I wish I'd be like Florence...

oh... did you see the suncatcher?

Berlin.... is getting multi-dimensional

Yesterday, in Nearby Bakery no 5, I got it: wow... 'a little piece' - a Teilchen - full of sweet doughy pastry flavours that you remember, remember and remember. The best little piece for a long time, and their rolls work similar wonders. 'Welcome back, stranger', it shouted.

On a different sensory plane I am listening to the radio. Much of what I listen to in the UK, and then, inbetween, electronica. So much electronica. Wonderful dance music, like proper dance music - neither techno nor club but, again a memory brought to the present of nights danced 12, 15 years ago. Chiquitita mia - I know that you don't like electronica, but please, please, please: vaya bailar conmigo!

Hahaha, and talking about which: I signed up for a Spanish class, the tutor called me today, confused: you know so much and so little. What are all these basic mistakes about? Pick a class, any class... so I did (y Chiquitita.... I'm relieved that you didn't do the same test ;))

And lastly, I discovered some wonderful handmade canvasses, cheap and nearby, just need to get the easel that was offered to me from A to here. And then there's a project emerging: a video project at the Baltic Sea. How exciting - I'll be Best Girl, how's that for a new job description.

More as they unfold...
The little piece is already eaten, but music should do for tonight, not? Take these two... UK to Berlin, past to presence....

There's a lot in here about strangeness, distance, memory and familiarity...

Berlin.... in panorama

A bit of Sunday afternoon playtime and a reminder why.

Music: well... really... a bit of lounge chillout dj sound, but my ipod suggested this to me:

... oops... the original disappeared, but how about a bit of diy:

... and the sound of the summer

... too quick I did forget the soundtrack I had in mind. I really wanted to play with streaming for this... but the clock's ticking... (1:35hrs now), so a youtube clip has to suffice...



... 1:25hrs...

Away with the swans

While I'm at it, I can just throw in a few more random thoughts on The Swan.

There's this song, for example:

... I think my clear favourite on the album.

M. told me about the imagery of the swan. Since then it hasn't left me. I think we must have talked about it after my discovery of Mallarme's swan. Or was it before?

The swan as it glides all gracefully over the still water. Neck held high, all silent, all calm.

And, yet, underneath the water the feet are moving fast and faster and faster still. Helplessly, in panic so as to keep moving still and gracefully above the water, the neck held high.

Along with the snake fights, I've seen so many swans of late. It's clearly gendered. Some men fight snakes and some women glide swan-like across the lake.

Well... that's what you get when ponds are still and deep and surfaces so still. Never knowing what's underneath, heh?!

Let's dance...

Thank you, Guy, for this one.

Interluding

.... with last night's entertainment...

Sería Feliz...

... for some things I would be so lucky, for many things I am...






Tonight I will be for some sleep in my own bed, tomorrow it'll be Glasgow in spring mood with days that are already so long and light...

Happy hour - not just in Falkirk

Have this for a travel interlude along with some appropriate music.

Winter sun at Falkirk
Pastel on board, 35x25cm

Reminder to self: creativity and recession

A few days back when I was walking home I listened to this here:



And I came up with a fabulous research project. Not quite sure with whom, how funded and how to be specified.

But it is about popular culture, the arts and recession. It is about the flip side to some of the comments I've been hearing: how great a recession is for good art. Just look at all the great music that came out of the late 70s, early 80s.

Hm... True: great music. But at the same time: crisis can go terribly wrong all the same. So, those who see it as opportunity need to have good plans, networks, and ways of doing in place to see some of that through.

I've been meeting a few new people recently who are working on fascinating projects around labour, employment, social relations and stuff. Some of them are historians. So, maybe there's something be done along the lines of oral history here. One of the ideas I had been kicking about with colleagues for some time is a project on how understandings and practices of works have been changing across generations in places like Glasgow. Both of these songs, Billy Bragg* and The Clash pick up on the stuff that is so prevalent now: to try and turn (un)employment into individual achievement, aspiration and employability - and the lack of it into incompetency, laziness etc. But, perhaps just as what is going to happen here over the near future, the late 1970s of course where a time where unemployment could not be reduced to immoral fecklessness.

But - as the half-cooked note to self that this currently is - have another song I've been trying to get into some of my academic work for a while. And this would be the place.



* Well, this is off topic but still firmly my Billy Bragg favourite, and with Kirsty MacColl even better:

Who's fed up yet?

Na, enough Trees on Water? Or can you deal with another one?

This is the one I will submit as part of the assignment:

Trees of water,
Lino print on Japanese paper
15x15cm

Do you recognise the colours? It's straight from Wolf Kahn's palette. I figured if I don't get round to the pastels all that much, I can do a bit of palette exploration in print. So, this is lime green and ultramarine blue. There is some intentional misalignment and some wiping back on the blue block.

Good. That's that pretty much done. On to the next. It'll be a reductive lino cut. Should I chose a trees on water reflection or something new for a change?

And a PS in form of a personalised message.
I., I may not have mentioned this before,
but I have a personal preference for your choice of three?
A subtle hint? How's this?
Thank you!!!

I am wrapping my arms...

M. had stayed at mine to catch an early flight and left an hour ago for a weekend in NYC... As I'm writing I so wish I could go too, and hope that no Schneegestoeber will stand in her way of getting there.

Well, and as we were drinking coffee, this was on the radio.



I heard it a few times before, was kept updated by my other friend M. on the words on the street of this latest offering by Morrissey. While generally being a bit hesitant about it, I listened to the lines more carefully, and grinned no end.

Yes - while he may be wrapping his arms around Paris, I envy M. for doing that with New York over the next days and am enjoying doing this a bit more with Glasgow for a little while longer.

But, of course not without changing Moz's line from absence to presence. Which then completely and utterly takes apart one of the key fundamentals of any of his songs. Sorry, cannae help it.

And, yes, ... this here is generally about painting... have a good day!

Colour towards the evening

Melancholie des Abends

- Der Wald, der sich verstorben breitet -
Und Schatten sind um ihn, wie Hecken.
Das Wild kommt zitternd aus Verstecken,
Indes ein Bach ganz leise gleitet

Und Farnen folgt und alten Steinen
Und silbern glänzt aus Laubgewinden.
Man hört ihn bald in schwarzen Schlünden -
Vielleicht, daß auch schon Sterne scheinen.

Der dunkle Plan scheint ohne Maßen,
Verstreute Dörfer, Sumpf und Weiher,
Und etwas täuscht dir vor ein Feuer.
Ein kalter Glanz huscht über Straßen.

Am Himmel ahnet man Bewegung,
Ein Heer von wilden Vögeln wandern
Nach jenen Ländern, schönen, andern.
Es steigt und sinkt des Rohres Regung.

Georg Trakl




Melancholy of the Evening

- The forest, which widens deceased -
And shadows are around it, like hedges.
The deer comes trembling out of hidden places,
While a brook glides very quiet

And follows ferns and ancient stones
And gleams silverly from tangled foliage.
Soon one hears it in black gorges -
Perhaps, also that stars already shine.

The dark plain seems endless,
Scattered villages, marsh and pond,
And something feigns a fire to you.
A cold gleam shoos over roads.

In the sky one anticipates movement,
An army of wild birds migrates
Towards those lands, beautiful, distant.
The stirring of reeds rises and sinks.
(Translation by Jim Doss and Werner Schmitt)


No poet I have found who is more colourful in darkness. I have had his poems for more than ten years - they were one of my leaving presents when I moved to Glasgow. But it was only last autumn that I begun reading them in their colourful, mournful strangeness.

And rather fitting for some digital exploration of different colourways for the print. Do you have a preference? Other suggestions?





And, for the migrating birds, something in song. It's melancholic too, albeit a bit softer it seems. It was on my music player when I switched it on on my way into town a few days ago on a rainy gloomy afternoon.

And then I'm spinning and I'm diving like a cloud of starlings.

... Hm, how very delicious that line is. And for a bit live starling action, how's this: