Yo! Last night was a pretty good one for northern lights. I saw them earlier on in the year, but owing to misplaced trust in Nokia's night photo setting, nearly all of my photos turned out as grainy and dark as the bottom of an abandoned asylum sick bucket. Not so last night. I just used my usual portrait setting on the phone and the photos turned out as reassuringly amateurish as I could hope for. I did try using my Canon on timer but owing to my lack of technological aptitude (scrub that, technological interest) the results on my mobile camera were better. The aurora was mostly pink, scarlet and red but with tinges of green and on occasion quite extensive streaks arcing across the sky. It grew over the period of an hour or so and moved about much more than the one earlier in the year, eventually dissipating. Very impressive. Thank you God.
Friday 11 October 2024
Sunday 1 September 2024
John Burroughs: The Simple Life
I am bound to praise the simple life, because I have lived it and found it good... I love a small house, plain clothes, simple living. Many persons know the luxury of a skin bath- a plunge in the pool or the wave unhampered by clothing. That is the simple life - direct and immediate contact with things, life with the false wrappings torn away - the fine house, the fine equipage, the expensive habits, all cut off. How free one feels, how good the elements taste, how close one gets to them, how they fit one's body and one's soul! To see the fire that warms you, or better yet, to cut the wood that feeds the fire that warms you; to see the spring where the water bubbles up that slakes your thirst, and to dip your pail into it; to see the beams that are the stay of your four walls, and the timbers that uphold the roof that shelters you; to be in direct and personal contact with the sources of your material life; to want no extras, no shields; to find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter; to find a quest of wild berries more satisfying than a gift of tropic fruit; to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird's nest, or over a wild flower in spring - these are some of the rewards of the simple life.
From: "An Outlook Upon Life" quoted in Our Friend John Burroughs (Clara Barrus, 1914).
Thursday 1 August 2024
Appendix Apocalypse: Album Artwork
This time last year I had a ruptured appendix which required surgery. Despite being wheeled into the hospital at 6am stating I had sudden cessation of agonising abdominal pain over McBurney’s point (a clear sign of ruptured appendix, which I pointed out) it took the NHS eight hours to give me a basic clinical examination, 15 hours to give me antibiotics, and 28 hours wait in A&E before I could get surgery. The extent of my condition only became clear after 2 hours of surgery: my appendix had ruptured by 50% at the base by the cecum, and wrapped tightly in the surrounding omentum which created a challenging clean up job. The surgeon said I would have died without the appendectomy, and had understandable concerns for my recovery. When a surgeon worries about your “recovery” that means your “survival”.
Weeks ensued of peritonitis, followed by a grumbling postoperative abscess. Given the standard of ‘care’ I had previously received, I decided to treat myself using herbal medicine. During my interminable A&E delay, I had started hallucinating as though I was looking out on the bleak ignorance of the world from inside a stagnating lime green fishbowl, with my internal organs churning in a dishwasher of their own faecal gravy. All around me was the madness and brutality of a medieval hell, which reminded me of the Hieronymus Bosch painting The Garden of Earthly Delights (1510). Completely unable to get through to the NHS staff the importance of getting immediate surgery, and in a private fishbowl of mortal torture, all I could do was elevate my consciousness above my broken body, and shine down compassion and unconditional love upon myself.
During my convalescence I compiled this album. I felt something creative was in order to say I am here, I am alive, I will be whole again. Fuck you NHS, I survived in spite of your murderous negligence. I won’t ever be inanely banging pots and pans on my front doorstep like a clapping seal to say thanks for all your bullshit hard work.
Wednesday 1 May 2024
Metaphysical Artwork
Last year, I completed a qualification with the University of Metaphysical Sciences in many diverse aspects of metaphysics and divinity. Their teaching methodology is experiential, and quite unlike anything I had previously undergone in academia. The aims of one of the Masters electives was to paint some therapeutic art depicting a variety of emotions, for inner contemplation. As you can no doubt see, I am completely out of my depth as an artist, but instead of choosing a different elective I decided to embrace the challenge this module offered and ordered myself some acrylic paints and A5 paper. The great value of this exercise to me was to explore emotions in a different medium to usual, with a focus on the expressive process rather than the outcome. I learned a lot from this experience. I like painting! In future I might get a full size easel and learn a few techniques which allow me to generate some more expansive, expressive, abstract canvases, maybe with some Jungian themes. Underneath each painting below I have included the description so you can identify how I arrived at my technique, although it was tempting to leave you guessing as to what each painting subjectively suggests to you.
Monday 1 April 2024
Tish Murtha (1956-2013)
It was a pleasant surprise to see the BFI release a new documentary of Tish Murtha (dir. Paul Sng, 2023), the northeast photographer who catalogued the devastating effect of deindustrialisation during the 1970's-80's under Thatcherism. Murtha is probably most famous for her posthumously published books Youth Unemployment (2017), Juvenile Jazz Bands (2020), and Elswick Kids (2021).
I have done a fair bit to highlight the photographic work of working class photographers on this blog, notably John Bulmer, Shirley Baker, Dave Sinclair and of course my own photography of Minsterley Parade in the early 1990's. I admit Tish Murtha slipped me by. At this point I should apologise profusely for my misogynistic oversight, but if you haven't heard of a photographer, you just haven't heard. It's ironic because she did quite a few exhibitions at the Bluecoat in Liverpool, and of course I lived there for a number of my most radical years in the 1990's. I should now rush to make amends and drag my sorry ass to the next film preview, examples of which are being screened in Liverpool, Edinburgh, Dundee, Hull and Newcastle. However, being more of an armchair anarchist nowadays, I think I will wait for a more accessible screening.
Update 9th April 2024: Tish is now available on BBC iPlayer, so available to all.
For those that get to see it, the timing of this documentary could not be more apt. It was only a few weeks ago that Kier 'Stammer' was singing the virtues of Thatcher and how she 'did a lot of good things for the country.' Is this guy for real? Is he completely unaware there is an ingrained generation of northerners with long memories, who viscerally and antithetically reject the idolatry of Thatcherism as a cornerstone of their Labour support? The man is an idiot, and for that alone (well, actually many things besides) he can go and holler if he wants me to put my X next to his red version of the Tory party at the ballot box. Look at the photos below: of course not. Of course not Starmer, you f*cking culturally tone deaf cretin.