Everywhere – if I go downtown – I am referred to as ‘brother’. I am tempted to use it in response – if you call me brother I’ll call you the same. Continue reading “brother, where art thou from?”
amazing cave
This shop has opened up in an old building which backs onto the Don. The owners are living above the shop with two balconies facing out over the river. I’ve been driving past often and never had the opportunity to stop and look inside, the spot is well of the beaten track tucked in a corner of an old industrial area which has gentrified in spots but is still both small scale industrial and hosts a fair amount of sex workers.
The owner was sitting inside, his name is Aaron. He was tired as he’d been down at a market inside the M25 and not slept. He intends to sell classic guitars and amps as the speciality. My reason to stop besides pure interest was that S had said ‘Give them that old radio’. So I carried an old valve radio in and said ‘this is for you’. ‘I don’t have that taste’ he said, so I explained I didn’t want to sell it but give it to him. He accepted and we talked a while.
My daughter E wouldn’t come in because she was scared by the stuffed birds in the room, the taxidermy. The shop has been building up (‘organic’ he called it fairly) for some two months or so. I drove past early on with an artist friend who said ‘For an amazing cave its not very amazing’. I thought that mean and born of jealousy. The place thrilled me partly as its colours and taste took me back to so many places from the past. Rather like a café in Attercliffe it recalled a site in Venice from the early 80s, by a canal, a dream of a sort, sleeping on a table after the bar closed. Then maybe an Islington I never knew but Leytonstone High Road in the 60s and an unimagined taste born of class unconsciousness. You were there M! Stuffing falling out of the upholstery…
I also told Aaron about the design/production fashion company who were to occupy the old factory across the river; that I’d thought he may have taken the shop knowing that this was to come? But he didn’t know although he was interested in the conversations of the old works locally. He said many customers or passers by were prostitutes and that he hoped to be able sell guitars to the boys down at the skate park.
Good luck to Aaron. To the Amazing Cave.
practising structure
My daughter E is doing something for the first time and showing me. She explains that this is the way she usually does it. She has no way of doing it though, she is just doing it. I ask her if that is the case, does she have a way to do it or is she inventing one straight away. Yes she is making it up. Why? She doesn’t know.
Structure, my child and others too seek to order the world immediately, to have objective standpoints with which to look at the world, a desire for representation. What she has learned to do and what she is practising is structuring, that is what she is explaining to me.
day dreaming
humans around a fire and a human from the future arrives
they capture and kill the visitor
later, become the visitor, they kill themselves
throwing them on the flames is what i day dreamed
wood blewits
I’ve captured some wood blewits freed from the earth. The year ended here but I’ve yet to finish with them. The issue is not one of faith but how to avoid it. Temptation is heaven born, all the more delightful for that. So, eyes open till the end, violet like leaves on the forest floor the longer year to mark with brief repetition.
ruskin the cataloguer
I went on a tour of the Ruskin Gallery and stores with Louise Pullen curator and archivist of the Ruskin Collection.
contest and context
A conversation with J:
Me: I’ve taken the lead on a campaign to negotiate with the Council to keep our local Park House open and in community use.
J: That’s so good, to be involved in some form of activism.
Me: Activism today is different to the past. There was a time that the activist took an approach that prioritised some form of demand, of insisting on rights. This didn’t suit me, I find conflict difficult to work with. In the current atmosphere where the 3rd sector is to a large extend being formulated as an agent of the state the implication is that there is a position of negotiation to be found. The context within which the problem is found sets the agenda so to speak. The catch comes when there is no agreement on context – if the context becomes understood as a global capitalist market then the negotiation takes on a different colour to when the context is how do we deal with stringent central government cuts to local government budgets. I find the position of seeing myself as a mediator easier than being a contestant.
paracademia
Paracademia is where you bring academic knowledge to work in fields not strictly academic, or where the non-academic works within academia as a partner. The paracademic is ever more present as on one hand academic paid work is in retreat and on the other academia is obliged by new regimes to engage with the outside world.
integration
I’ve been writing or am always about to be writing about integration. My current stock reply to any questions is that the Jews died in Germany not because they weren’t integrated but precisely because they were integrated. Integration is a question of what is it into which you are integrated. Everyone is integrated even if into something that excludes them.
protecting bodies
The furore over Kate Middleton’s body and the film of the Prophet share an important feature – outrage protects the body of the believed and the offending article (the photo/the film) both offend the believer.
In the west few believe in Royalty and it is the young woman to-be-Queen who believes in herself and as such appeals to the law as defence. In Islam people do believe in the Prophet and appeal beyond law to themselves. Kate Middleton has a private belief system where personal models of society that are sacred are upheld by the law. For the faithful the public belief system is sacred itself.