SHERINGHAM DIARY No 76 - Not Over Til Its Over

The joys of reading auto -translations on You Tube, are the linguist leaps and previously unheard of word conjunctions. Here is a dictionary explanation for one I encountered the other day.

Shop Force Trauma
Is when a man, who can recall everything he needs to know about cars, football and beer, finds himself ambushed into choosing the style and colour of the new front room curtains.

So, after one night of hacking and heaving completely sans sleep, I did that daringly reckless thing that men occasionally do, and go to a doctor. Making an appointment with the practice nurse. She thought I'd probably had, not one, but a series of overlapping cold infections, which have gradually clogged up my chest and become infected. She's put me on a weeks course of antibiotics and requested a chest X ray. Just in case there maybe more to it than at first seems. Still having the sleep deprived nights, as I write, but the amount of phelgm, colour and coughing are gradually easing becoming less frequent.

As you can imagine after sleep disrupted nights I can be a little tense and on edge. Trying to encourage sleep with any 'you just need to relax' mantra is doomed to failure. I find I have to box clever with myself, distract my mind from obsessing about heaving, breathing or chest pains. Sit upright on the sofa, swathed in blankets, put on an hour long true crime investigation and somewhere in the middle of it I'll drop off to sleep for a while. Awakening to Alan Carr and Amanda Holden squealing with delight as they tart up a flat on the sunny Sicilian coastline. Bizzare.

Its Sunday, early morning. I'm watching the Astaire and Rodgers movie Carefree. The gender relationships / sexual politics innocently exploit very clumsily handled cliched mores. Very much of their era. A man gets frustrated because his girlfriend keeps accepting then backing out of marrying him. He just cannot understand what's going on. So asks his psychologist friend to treat her, to find out what the problem is. You can see where this storyline will end up within the first minutes. Girfriend falls in love with psychiatrist, who after some major misunderstanding or impediment, she marries at the end. But its all delightfully interspersed with the most fabulously neat, fleet footed dance routines along the way. If only life could be that sympatico.

I'm sleeping better, but its not quite enough of a full bodied relaxation to slumber longer  Though I'm not heaving the night away in an entirely separate bedroom anymore. My body appears not to be quite over protecting itself from the consequences of 'the cough perpetual'. My stomach clenches at the most minor clearing of the throat. On this particular morning my torso feels internally bruised, as though its been given a right royal kicking on my left hand side.

Energy levels, with 'the cough perpetual' and lack of sleep are pretty depleted. Three nights last week were completely without sleep, and the remaining were not much better. I cleaned our bathroom yesterday and it did me in for the rest of the day. So, getting over the energy draining consequences may prove more persistent than I'd wish.

Last week we did our once a year fabric hunt. This currently takes in Lincoln and Stamford. We met up with my sister and brother in law for lunch in Lincoln. It was good to see them both, for it has been a while. After which Hubby and I, trawled shops, and went to The Fabric Quarter, perhaps the most consistently useful fabric shop we know. We came away with three potential fabrics for the new season. A metre of each as we are just trying them out. Doubt we'll find much to match the seagull fabric which dominated last years sales. But you never know. The Stamford fabric shop this year was, yet again, a bit of a disappointment. So we're going to drop them from the fabric hunt next time.

Gearing up for fully reopening next week for half term. Stocked up our candle range, bought in a new card and earring range. Just a top up order for soap and finding a new wrapping paper supplier, and that will be it on orders for now, till nearer Easter. Hard to say how Half Term trade will be. I am prepared for it to be underwhelming. Also its back to five day working weeks for us, and making schedules etc. With 'the cough perpetual' hanging on so long, I've not really had much opportunity to recharge my batteries. If anything I return even more tired than I was before Christmas. Jnanasalin has had the same cold as I have, though not for quite as long or so severe. But it has also knocked his energy for six. This looks like being a make or break year for us, so let's hope we can restore ourselves to something like more resilient health soon.

Well, February Half Term is turning out to be the non-event of all non-events. February 2023 looking set to being substantially down on February 2022, which itself only managed to scrape the same total as 2020. The days are so quiet we are experimenting with each of us only doing half the day, swapping over at lunchtime. This is just to make it bearable, otherwise we come home after a full day emotionally drained. 

On the good side I returned to swimming this week. Taking it easy on the number of lengths for now until I get some of my stamina back. It was satisfying to return to swimming after what has been two months break. My joints feel so much better, and residual muscular chest discomfort from coughing so much for so long is beginning to ease as a result.  The swimming itself I find easy, but once I get home I sleep for hours. I had my chest X-rayed on Monday, and the results and follow up appointment are a week on Monday. So we'll see if it shows anything else that may have hindered me getting over 'the cough perpetual'. I feel much better in myself this week, less drained, still a bit of occasional chestyness. Still reticent to sing a song of triumph, lest I spook it - Its really not over til its over. That's probably when I've forgotten about it altogether

FEATURE - Printing William Morris Wallpaper

If you have ever balked at the price of hand printed wallpapers, and to be honest who hasn't? This short V &A film about printing William Morris wallpaper demonstrates why. With fifteen different blocks and colours on just one design, this is a phenomenal amount of work to go into the making of one roll. Is it worth it? I guess it is, if you have the dosh. For the rest of us, it will be the mechanised reproduction knocked off cheaply, in the far east probably.  

His designs at the time were beyond all but the wealthy middle class. Though he always had an aspiration to make his designs available for everyone. Nonetheless, it never ceases to amaze me that the continuing influence of Morris goes well beyond the actual market reach of the stuff he made at the time. The idea of handmade arts and crafts endures beyond most peoples ability to participate financially. We all hanker on some level to return to a pre-industrial age, that Morris allows us to play let's pretend with. One has also to acknowledge that Morris was a brilliant at pattern designer, and you could say he was a pioneer of good design.

WINDOW VIEWS - The Old Fields

They'd decided to buy the house all those years ago, chiefly because it had a gorgeous view over the old field, with it's still visible creases of medieval ridge and furrow. Dorothy hated seeing what was happening to it now. She felt physically hurt by the rapid change. At her age, she never wanted to let go of anything. Having to let go of her husband had been hard enough. The grief lingering still. But that landscape seen from her house, had always been there. It gave her two things, it brought memories of Harry closer, and a feeling of intimacy with the countryside  Their cottage was idyllic, part of a pretty dormitory village. In reality it had long since become subsumed by the ever expanding suburbs of the town. This was now overwhelming her cottage and the old fields like a beastly juggernaut, taking this precious scenic view with it.

Harry? Well thank god he'd not lived to see this enormous building site erected, and the levelling out of the entire ancient field. Of course she'd protested. In her seventies, for the first time out with placards, organising marches, collecting signatures, submitting petitions. The remains of the village centre were Grade 2 listed, unfortunately her house and the old field fell just outside the conservation area. The force of her campaign being to get that area extended to include it, but to no avail. The really ironic kick in the shins was that what was now being built were luxury retirement flats.

Having lost that fight, she readjusted her priorities. Much as she didn't want to leave her lovely little cottage, and the downsizing would indeed be painful and prolonged, it had to be done. The cottage was put up for sale, had sold quicker than everyone, including her daughter had warned her because it was such a depressed market. She'd plucked up courage and viewed the show flat the first day it opened. All the new apartments were to have either a village vista, or one of the remaining fields beyond. She insisted on buying a flat on the ground floor, positioned in the same orientation as her cottage, facing away from it. When the apartments were finished, she was there ready to move in. 'Perhaps this will see me out' she said to herself quietly. Sitting in her armchair, describing aloud the changed view, the weather and the rolling landscape, to the vase of cremated ashes resting in her lap.

FINISHED READING - The Case for God by Karen Armstrong

A few months back I read Richard Holloway's A Little History of Religion, which was disappointing in how thin and general it was. No such problem here with Karen Armstrong, as with characteristic relish, she fearlessly enters into explaining subtle changes in Christian theology, why they happened and what was their outcome. For a small book of 316 pages, it is ferociously detailed, which lost my comprehension on ocassions. That feeling of re-reading sentences, that still mean nothing to you. So, this time, if I struggled with anything, it was the density with which its written. Armstrong is nothing if not thorough.

She begins with early pre Christian belief systems and how they relate to conceptions of God when Christianity does arise. Any supreme God, in amongst a polytheistic pantheon, of most early religions cannot be spoken of and are unknowable. The spiritual life itself inhabiting this 'cloud of unknowing'.  Like in many other religions, if you can define the absolute, you do not know the absolute. The unknowable nature of God is what you have faith in. All the stories told concerning God are not always meant to be taken literally. They are frequently symbolic and mythic, meant to be instructive of something or encapsulate it. A self-conscious aurora of vagueness envelopes the form of the divine. This lack of definition, left room for doubt, left room for each disciple to discover their own connection to divinity. God's indefinable invisibility was a useful one.

But over time through the Christian medieval period into the Reformation and 18th century Enlightenment attitudes toward those unknowable elements changes. Science and religion were not always at loggerheads. But once the scientific method began to become more prevalent, believing anything you cannot know or proves exist, was no longer considered rational or reasonable. The distinctions between what faith and belief meant began to be blurred. You could no longer just have faith, you had to have clearly defined sets of beliefs, alternative facts you could hold yourself to. The presence of the scientific method, amplifying and redefining how the religious method was presented. God was no longer allowed to be unknowable. And so we have the present cultural image of God as a bearded figure resting on a cloud, dispensing benevolence and punishment in confusingly inconsistent ways. Faith, rather than being a place for what we feel, but don't know, becomes incorporated into a set of proscribed beliefs.

The dominance of this approach prepared the ground for the emergence of fundamentalism in all the major theistic faiths. Where dogmatism now rules. The Bible becomes a life guide and manual, the literal rather than the symbolic truth, eg. that God did actually make the whole world in seven days  She repeats the point several times that attacking fundamentalism only makes it more extreme. Particularly if they are opposed by an equally fundamentalist, intransigent and intellectually bullying scientific atheism. This viewpoint examines the Bible and Christian teachings as if they always describe the literal truth. Unsurprisingly Christians get caught up in this too, as people from any other faith also do, with the need to express their religious selves only in terms of certainty, belief and conviction.

She points out that religions should understand the need to hold provisional theoretical viewpoints in order to test them, as this is part of the scientific method too. As science expands its theoretical areas and tries to describe things that go beyond being tangible and touchable, it begins to venture into less knowable indescribable territories. Armstrong appears to believe that this could be where a different visualisation or conception of what God could possibly be, might reenter. 

Though I found it heavy going at times, it has nonetheless both clarified and provoked further thought about what I believe. What I find unpalatable in Christianity as it currently is, Armstrong describes in her signature calm prose how these came about, how they slowly deviated from the style of Christianity as it was first manifested. 

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

FEATURE - The School of Flock - William Morris

If I give it its full title - Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen's School of Flock that sort of tells you all you need to know right from the outset. This is fast becoming my favourite breakfast nibble in the early hours of the morning. This one is on William Morris. Lawrence is as ever informative, engaging and features himself bedecked in a three piece suit made from a Morris fabric. Understated it is not, we expect nothing less from him. Its quite simple to camera stuff with photos intercut, but this is the most fun you can have learning about fabric design on You Tube. Go on try it on for size.

SHERINGHAM DIARY No 75 - Movements in the Cough Perpetual

There is a window cleaner somewhere near Kings Lynn, who calls their business Mr Bit.

Movement 146 in the Cough Perpetual' is a very very very slowly easing. I am being reticent about calling a victory rally just yet. I still have the cough, a raw throat and nasal passage in the morning. All of which suggest caution, as I've been here before, and the bastard re-formulated itself and came back worse than ever.

Jnanasalin finished our self assessment tax return yesterday for 2021/22 and submitted it to HMRC. So that's it all over for now. We're planning to carry on inputting the current tax year 2022/23 and be ready to submit early.  We need to break our cycle of leaving it to the last minute in January. Which only adds to the stress of it all. Also, I suspect in the coming financial year 2023/24 we'll need to be a wee bit more on top of our expenditure.

The shop is open two days Fri/Sat at the moment. Time and space are luxurious for a few more weeks yet. Its our sole opportunity to take a break from the constant demands of the business. There is always a balance to be struck between relaxation and preparation, Somethings we do need to do regarding the shop during this time.  Next week, however, we have six days penciled in to be completely off. What we are going to make of that time has yet to be decided. I expect a mixture of visiting favourite places, a bit of culture, depending on what we feel like, and whatever the weather presents an invitation to us to do.

Movement 154 in the Cough Perpetual. After forming a stiff diaphragm of phlegm in my upper throat that nearly asphyxiated me during the night. The 'cold' has now begun bunging up my nose and throat and running like a rather gloopy tap. As ever I am optimistically seeing this as its final flourish in a rather wish fulfilled whim. After six weeks of this surely it must come to an end soon? Whether this has ever been 'a cold' in a traditional sense has been called into question. If it is a 'viral infection' apparently, the mucus will be transparent -off white, anything else will produce varying shades of sludgy green. So I have coloured coded it as onyx green.  Whatever it is, I have reached the point where being tired through coughing all the time, has become a state of existence.

After completing our tax return and paying what we owe before the Jan 31st deadline for submissions, we are feeling like the veritable saints we are. Particularly with all the threats and shenanigans going on with our former Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi's. Whose 'carelessness' over a few undeclared millions is a lesson in the HMRC's finely drawn use of language. We have learnt the albeit miniscule difference between Tax Avoidance and Tax Evasion. The former is legal but occupies a grey area, and the latter is for the really bad boys in the naughty corner. And though the former is legal. it is morally corrupt. I have one, no doubt, overly simplistic solution to this gap between legal and moral rectitude. Turn everything we currently call Tax Avoidance into Tax Evasion, make using any method of hiding, obfuscation or misrepresentation of your wealth and income wrong. Demand complete transparency. There, that's that all cleared up then.

Movement 160 in the Cough Perpetual. On the first day of the seventh week, we ran out of Lem Sip. So unable to sooth the throat and cough before bedtime proved to be a bit of a wah wah wah. My nose orifices so bunged up unable to breath through them. Forced to mouth breath using an extraordinarily over sensitive phlegm lined throat. After half an hour without a glimmer of its unproductive ruttling and heaving easing off, I got up, for who knows how long. By which time things had seized up sufficiently for sleep to be at least feasible. The Husband says my snores sound like the sort of thing you'd discover residing in on old cupboard in a horror movie.

Five hours later, awoke congested everywhere in my face. The morning routine has not been an unalloyed joy. Throat phlegm thick and intractable, tried a bit of hot steam inhalation. Helped - ish. Have blown my nasal orifices as raw as a fog siren on heat. Three hours later comes the first signs that last nights accumulation of phlegm might now have largely been blown out, leaving a soggy bin full of crumpled paper tissue squares. Am I being a bit of a drama martyr? Oh, we are well beyond all that.

Movement 166 in the Cough Perpetual. In scary movies you generally know something is not right when a child or adult open their mouths wide and a thin creepy muttering tone emerges from within their throat. Softly wailing incoherent syllables without any effort from the zombie host. Well my phlegm lined throat has developed that quality. I form an oval shape with my mouth and out comes this wheezy fluctuating whine. As if some demon is now whispering from within me. I have been possessed by a mucal incubus that will never ever let me go.

This was the oddest experience I've had whilst using a Public Toilet. The loo in the town centre of Dereham are down a side alley. Faced in bright ultramarine blue tiles with equally intense orange coloured toilet urinal furniture, hidden behind a cloaking wall. The only sit down toilets are separate lockable cubicles. After you've entered you press a Lock The Door button and a red light goes on above the door. Whilst you are remaining seated doing your thing, it plays a short sixty second orchestral snippet of Greensleeves over and over again. Interrupted only by a woman's voice saying 'The Door Is Locked' between each sixty second cycle. To say this felt a bit unnerving is an understatement. I left swiftly before the Toilet changed its mind.

BROTHER DAVID ON - Meaning, Purpose & Play

 

"Meaning is that within which our heart finds rest"

"Purpose is a very different thing. 
We work towards achieving a particular purpose,
and when that purpose is achieved, 
the work ends "

"Play has no purpose. 
Play has all the meaning within itself.
You do not play in order to get somewhere.
You dance in order to dance.
That is a meaningful activity
because it has all its purpose within itself."

"The goal is not to play off
purpose against meaning.
The goal is to combine purpose and meaning,
and that means to work meaningfully
and to play constructively and creatively.
That puts the two together."

"Work and play together is leisure.
To work leisurely and to play leisurely
that is the combination of the two (meaning & purpose)."

"Once in a while we are struck by an experience
where meaning suddenly takes hold of us.
Because purpose you have to take hold of,
you have to keep things under control
in order to achieve your purpose.
But meaning takes hold of you.'

David Steindl-Rast

WINDOW VIEWS - The Self In Isolation

She had decided to stay at home a while back, of her own free will. It was just a standard preventative measure, in times of infection, to reduce contact. Little had then been known about the Mir-Th virus, other than the more obvious symptoms - sudden amusement, a slight chuckle fast accelerating into uproarious fits of giggling, similar to canned laughter. In the worst instances to the point of prostrate hysteria, where blood vessels could burst. If the latter went unchecked it could be life threatening. For Rita, an occasional inappropriate guffaw had been the earliest indication of the decay in her social inhibitors.

Where the Mir-Th virus had come from, no one yet understood. Essex had been mischievously suggested. Outbreaks had come out of the blue, but quite uniformly across the Home Counties. Not everyone saw the unbridled hilarity as being the problem it was. As the laughter was often directed towards the government, it appeared entirely justifiable. The silent curfew they subsequently imposed had seemed rather self serving, and face saving.  The BBC, as was then expected of them, self censored and took Michael MacIntyre off air as a precautionary measure. The media saw this as either too little, too late, or an easy but empty gesture. Because MacIntyre had ceased being actually funny a long long time ago.

Rita had taken to staring out the second floor bay window of her flat, with little sense of purpose. Since she'd put her self in isolation, it automatically became a regular habit to sit there contemplating, observing all the many eccentricities, contrived and otherwise, parading themselves outside in the street beneath. A world these days seemingly full to bursting with a lot of vain preening and self preoccupation. A rather willowy middle aged man swinging by in a hurry, caught her attention. Something in the character of his bearing, came across as po-faced, so consumed was he by superior derision for everyone surrounding him. This caused a slight featherish tickle of hilarity within her. It was beginning again.

Once self amusement was present, uproarious laughter was never far behind. Then there'd be melodramatic pointing and the crude gesticulations from her window, urging the other folk walking by to just look at the state of this man. Such out of control hilarity making everyone who saw it cringe with embarrassment. Since the appearance of the virus they'd be seen stepping slowly away from anything like this. Removing themselves to a considered safe distance. Rita's saving grace was that she was one floor up, and behind glass. Otherwise she'd probably have been arrested and incarcerated in a secure hospital ward by now.

Even when the Mir-Th restrictions were lifted, Rita chose to remain voluntarily confined to her flat, waiting for her virus symptoms to fully clear up. Only going out, to get her doctors note and hand it in at work. She continued to find everything, including the Mir-Th itself, just too unbearably hilarious. Her boss and work colleagues were concerned she might never get over it. There'd been broader questions about what to do with individuals who suffered from Prolonged Mir-Th. The muscles in her chest and throat were now so permanently damaged, rubbed raw and torn from the near constant laughter. Catching the virus had turned her lifestyle upside down. For Rita her flat, though a refuge, had now become a prison, a sealed shrine to it. She also frequently laughed at herself, but that was also part of the problem.

MY OWN WALKING - Journal January 2023

One way of getting to know yourself better can be learning to recognise the qualitative difference between the things you appreciate because you were brought up on them and the things you are naturally drawn towards that satisfy you on a deeper, more personal to you level.  These are, in my experience rarely the same thing. To say this is nature versus nurture, would be a bit too abstracted and cold, and doesn't quite strike the correct emotional tone. I would say its the difference between how one feels a sentiment and how one feels when you love. Its about ones proximity to something that is authentic to you.

A sentimental response is usually attempting to regain or resurrect something you once had possession of in the past. It might be comforting, reassuring and imbued with a feeling for a particular place, person or period. Something you encounter in the present briefly catches your eye and reflects the past through it. Though you may find yourself feeling drawn towards it, and to love it, its an indirect two dimensional love, in the present but from the past.

Love in the purer sense is more of an all encompassing present moment emotion. There is a sense of being spoken to directly to ones heart without anything acting as an intermediary between. You instantly unquestionably love it, and this is different to sentimental love in that it tends to be more wholehearted and satisfying because it arises instantaneously from your soul. Though the whole idea of having a soul becomes problematic, if one couches it as being something eternal.  I believe this term can have a role in describing something fundamental to, or exemplary of, you in your present existence. Ultimately its impermanent, but its an essential facet of how you are manifesting in the circumstances of this life, in this moment in time.

Now, I'll admit there can be a lot of confusing overlap here between the past and the present you. I try to view this as similar to hearing a much loved record from ones teenage years and loving a new record by an artist you've never encountered before. One of these has a lot more baggage travelling with it, not all of it is a concern in your present experience of yourself.

What prompted this particular reflection was a realisation about my own responses to spiritual practice and my upbringing. I was born in Yorkshire in the town of Halifax. Originally a fairly affluent medieval market town, based on wool and weaving. Which, because of its proximity to fast flowing streams and an easy access to coal in the 18th century, became one of the premier manufacturing Pennine towns. The honey coloured nature of its millstone grit building material, the heavy wheels of industry turned into something altogether more bleak and soot blackened. Unsurprisingly the Northern industrial towns also became a test bed for the burgeoning Non Conformist faiths - the Congregational, Quakers, Baptists, Methodists, all set up their evangelising missions there.

The protestant proselytising lingered on into the 20th century, finding renewed purpose as the Northern industrial powerhouse itself fell into a steady decline. My parents were both brought up in Methodist families, as were we.  Non conformist chapels are spartan, pared back buildings, nothing is extravagently decorative. Excessive self indulgence is looked down upon, as is severe aesceticism. Everything is to be done in moderation. Methodism is understated about most things, nothing like as hardline, nor as dogmatically puritanical as some protestant faiths. Their beliefs are as kind, simple and essentialist as their chapel interiors are.

That religious culture tutored my own expectations and self discipline, which I later took into my approach to a non-christian spiritual life. My early enthusiasm for Taoism and later in Zen Buddhism was fed by a desire to keep things simple, unfussy and fundamental. As was my fleating interest in monasticism and distrustful unease with imagery.  Its not even that this is not helpful, it maybe so. Its just that it is inherited meaning rather than one you have found and resonated with for yourself.

But, when I look back at what I've actually found most inspired me aesthetically and devotionally, its been quite wildly unrestrained extravagance, over the top, highly decorative and beautifully elaborate things. Full blooded, expressive, archetypal and poetic individuals. The exhilarating enjoyment of playing with colour that Bridget Riley paintings exude. The love of Catholic imagery, Alchemical imagery, passionate, luridly coloured and physically expressive rituals. The fondness for the latin temperament. The exuberant abandon of the Indian sense of devotion and colour.  A feeling of excitement whenever I go to the Our Lady of Walsingham shrine. Even the bright colourfulness and enjoyment of patterning in my own artwork, reveals a totally different less monochrome soul when its left to express itself openly and freely. And lets not get me started on my tastes in music. They all speak of who I feel I am on a deeper and more direct level, when not filtered through the drier more austere views of protestant restraint.

I have spent a good deal of my life, believing that to be serious and hence be more effective in spiritual practice, it has to be the simplest, purest and aesthetically minimal. That somehow just letting go and completely surrendering oneself emotionally to a lucious aesthetic, is just too primeaval, a self deceiving indulgent intoxication. Its almost a form of spiritual delusion, or at the very least devious cheating. But here at the point of becoming pensionable, is where I realise that such devotional exuberance is what I often want the most. So whilst there was once a yearning sentimental nostalgia for a simpler life, today I seek out exuberance as if this was a light spilling out from under a doorway, hinting at something even more wonderful beyond it.

I have spent a lot of my life backing off from my own exuberance and constraining myself, finding my passion for such things uncool or problematic. Maybe this is the time to cease doing that.

WINDOW VIEWS - The Unlocked Back Door

Roy sat by the heavy oak table heavily panting, his face glistened with sweat from all the frantic running. Maybe he'd bunker down here until the fracas outside died down. Lucky the backdoor of this house had been left unlocked. So he didn't have to add breaking and entering to his already extensive criminal record. He got up to peer from behind the closed curtains of the front room window. In the streets, he could see the smoke of a distant explosion, his car being torched probably. Whilst other, more likely stolen, cars were veering around the area erratically. Flashlights scanning down the hedgerows and ginnals. Young men his age ran along the middle of roads yelling and whelping like pack animals. It didn't look like they'd be giving up and going home anytime soon. If anything this was escalating into an uncontrollable rampage.

The backdoor suddenly slammed shut, as though a through draft had caught and angrily wanged it against the frame. Roy jumped. A bang, far too close, strung him out. He'd better go check that wasn't the owner of the house returning. No, no one around. Though the door appeared to now be locked. He went to check the front door, also firmly shut. Behind him a voice spoke - 'You don't want to leave do you, you've only just arrived, and I do so love male intruders'  Roy freaked,' What the fuck!, who, where are you?' Something brushed passed him. it felt vaguely feminine, he could smell a heavy musky rose perfume ' You seem to be in some sort of trouble, young, sweaty man' a cool breeze blew over him,  'maybe that will... dry you off.'

Roy had only one impulse, to get out. 'It's not that bad here, once you get to know me. The name's Rochelle. I think I'm going to really love having you around for company. Has anyone told you how cute you are?' Roy half felt a hand on his posterior, and then a passing brush of air briefly lifting his hair. 'Mmmm so soft, so gentle'. 'Get the fuck away from me' Roy flailed his arms. He had to find a way to extricate himself from here.  This must be just some elaborate hoax, surely. 'Oh no, this is no hoax... Roy, tell you what...Roy, maybe you should bang on my windows... Roy. Try to attract attention. Go on, do it for me.. Roy.' 'No, I won't, those guys are gonna kill me' 'Whose to say I won't, I think you should at least try a scream or two'. The curtains tore apart and bodily lifted he was flung hard against the window glass, making a creaking splintering sound. Though he banged and screamed as hard as he could. 'Please, please, guys, save me, for gods sake save me, I'll tell you where I hid the stuff I stole, I promise' From the distance the sound of police sirens were growing louder. Everyone was scarpering. No one noticed or heard a word.

FEATURE - Magdalena Abankanowitcz

 

Monumental woven sculptures created by Polish sculptor Magdalena Abankanowitcz have become so synonymous with her they are sometimes referred to as 'abakans'. These are of such an immensely large scale they appear even in this video to be quite overwhelming. They conjure up all sorts of associations. They remind me of 'dolmens' or of pagan shamanic figures. You can feel the weight of them, heavy both in their physical nature but also in spiritual potency. They are hanging there as if it should speak to you directly from another dimension altogether. Abankanowitcz was a true pioneer in the use of textile fibres as a form in sculpture. This Tate video shows you the details of their structural forms in all their bulk, stitch and woven slugs, the forms and strands of fibre. She vastly expanded the range of possibilities for contemporary sculpture.

QUOTATION MARKS - David Bowie

'We live within this manifested idea
of what should be form
and what we try to keep out of our existence is chaos,
which is a very real part of our lives,
and our refusal to accept chaos
has been integral to our existence
and has been one of the greatest mistakes
of civilisation that we made.'

David Bowie

SCREEN SHOT - Moonage Daydream

Time takes a cigarette.

Moonage Daydream is not a traditional film documentary or biography. More akin to a tapestry or collage in a beautiful montage of visuals, sound and form, music, period clips and contemporary words. Its an audio visual feast. You hear Bowie describing times in his career, both at that time and many years later. You hear the as yet unformed naivety and the more fully fleshed out maturity of Bowie's reflections side by side. Did he really know what he was in search of all along, or was that only reclaimed, mythologised and reframed over time? I guess it is all of the above, its something we all do. We retrospectively tidy up our histories.

Puts it in your mouth.

After all the years struggling to locate his modus operandi, and the misfire that was Space Oddity, he hits upon the idea for a character, an alien androgynous rock star - his career goes stratospheric. Becoming this hugely idolised and much copied star. But the taste for Ziggy quickly sours as the character he plays turns into a monster, and begins to take creative control. Bowie, dramatically pulls the plug. Perhaps an upbringing with his loveless parents, created an existential need to remove himself from further stifling situations. Emotional loneliness and insecurity certainly lingered for years, hiding behind make up and outrageous cloths helped, playing a character helped, constantly changing focus and style helped. Behind these facades he gradually discovers who he is really - he's a storyteller.

You pull on your finger

Whenever he finds himself bored with his writing style he shakes things up. Often by moving to live somewhere he disliked or felt challenged by. So he transposes himself for a while to the US - Berlin - Japan. The magpie nature of his intuitions, influences, picks up scraps of knowledge and collects experiences that all fall into the creative melting pot. He described himself vaguely as a 'generalist'. Lacking the patience or ability to apply himself to detailed prolonged study. There was always something emotionally neutered and carefully edited about his public persona - the lonely and alienated man who fell to earth. In retrospect, his work always appeared to be about isolation, so Bowie himself observed. 

Then another finger

There has been a tendency to over claim the musical significance of what he did in the early years. He was a great borrower of styles, from The Rolling Stones to Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, that he somehow managed to make his own. Only when he moves to Berlin, to work with Eno, does what he says he's doing and what he actually achieves match up. Low and Heroes are his most musically creative career peak. Until even this particular vein runs out or steam, as did fresh ideas and personas. He drops the lot and heads straight for full on pop stadium level stardom. Wanting to present the happier more emotionally rounded Bowie he felt himself now to be. Until just how stultifying and boring that career path can be, how creatively barren the musical landscape is there, becomes clear to him. He looses the thread of exactly what he is trying to do. The film, thankfully, skips over the back to basics floundering, the naff nadir of the Tin Machine era.

Then the cigarette

Bowie was a well read man, with a curious and enquiring mind, with wide ranging creative interests. Music may have lost its vibrant charm for a while, the albums having only the occasional great track, whilst the rest was either straight borrowings from contemporary trends or his own back catalogue. Coasting, revisiting or reworking old themes. Major Tom becoming a recurring talismanic figure. Though he'd previously said the primary importance of his career left him no time for a love relationship. He falls in love with Imam, almost as though this were for the very first time. Hermione and Angie, apparently having been written out of the Bowie story line a long long time ago. 

The wall-to-wall is calling

The late renaissance in his career prior to his death, had a mordant mode, a mortal impulse, a need to cross all the T's and dot all the I's in his life, just in case you haven't quite got it right in your head yet. Maybe he needed to double underline to reassure himself too. He looks back at his life as if he was Lazarus, resurrected complete with bandages and buttons for eyes. 

It lingers, then you forget

There are aspects of Moonage Daydream which brought a lump to my throat, and are truly moving. The perspicacity of what Bowie says, is often quite startling. The world that Bowie's imagination dwelled in constantly fascinates whilst also remaining a puzzle. Both he and his imagination remain enigmatic. This film gets the nearest I've seen to portraying what motivated the man. That the creative thrust became a sort of personal quest for identity. A manifestation of 'the essential soul' of this one man. You don't have to be a fan to enjoy this movie, but if you are it shows you a whole other dimension to him.

Oh Oh Oh Oh - You're a rock n roll suicide.

One of the things that Bowie dabbled in and even went on a retreat once, was Buddhism. Not really a joiner of any institution, religious or otherwise, he acknowledged that what he took away from the experience was the impermanent and temporary nature of all we do. That for him this meant the centrality of life became paramount. He loved his life and attempted to live it to the full. Along the way he was an example, helping others begin their own personal quest, by turning himself into a visibly vibrant source of inspiration.

CARROT REVIEW - 8/8

QUOTATION MARKS - David Bowie

 

' Everything is rubbish,
   and all rubbish
   is wonderful '

   David Bowie.