Sun, set, west

It happens every day. Same place but different times. Red skies at night etc. Some are brighter, more vivid, bigger than others. Some dull days it goes almost unnoticed apart from the loss of light. Often photographed and highly filtered, an easy image to torture for one's own ends. Ancient civilizations may have worshiped this moment, a slit shining through a standing stone or confused it with the activities of a dragon swallowing the sun. Some call it "wine o'clock". Some just dip their sun visors as they drive west and hurry to get home, blinded by the light. Peasants leave the fields and prepare a well earned meal. Birds will spin and swoop across the skies celebrating their fellow feathered gods before they roost. You choose.

Meanwhile I recall the dragon moments and memory and how real they seemed at the time.

Khruangbin

I like this strange funky Texan band called "Khruangbin" (Thai for airplane apparently).

Blame the Infiltrators

The infiltrators are traitors. They have infiltrated the organization. They have influenced the decisions. Affected the outcomes. Changed everything. They nudged. They argued. They got their way.

We listened. It sounded reasonable. It sounded believable (but they were unbelievable). Realistic even. We compromised. We bent. We traded a few things. Trivial things it seemed. We allowed ourselves to be won over. Firstly in small things. The small things grew. We lost focus. We became divided. We changed course slightly and ... over time that makes a huge difference.

Now we're firmly stuck in the wrong place. Bullied and confused.

I didn't see it coming. That's the truth. Now it's too late. A house divided against itself cant stand. Just ask Edgar Alan Poe. "Then in walked Roderick Usher..."

I was singing that tune in the shower the other day.

Common Experiences

This morning I was at the council dump, down-cycling various things: metals, plastics, oils, timber and a small amount of bagged up landfill. I'll never see those things again but future archaeologists, time traveling grounds contractors and aliens will no doubt dig them up and ponder how they came to be in the earth and what they were used for. Religious artifacts, food containers, bodily adornments and idols usually top the list of their suppositions - so says the Discovery Channel.

By lunch time the sun was out properly and no longer shackled by the weight of those dumped possessions I felt light as air as I drove out on the open road. The car was positively flying and though I am mortal I briefly was immortal. This sensation is a common human experience I guess. I pondered reverse reincarnation, the works and life of Franz Kafka and the rise of ignorant politicians. The radio was blabbering Brexit related updates but said "no data - no data" on the screen even though it was tuned to a news/talk station. I agreed.

Beggars Banquet

The Rolling Stones in sepia with fake food, costumes and stuffed animals - by Michael Joseph.

More apostrophe anxiety: For some reason Beggars Banquet is not Beggar's Banquet. So it isn't the Banquet of any of the Beggars around the table. The Beggars do not own the Banquet (yet?) Perhaps there is another meaning, something deeper, something over my uneducated head. Or maybe not. 

Back in the day it was only the second side of this album that was ever played at parties and social gatherings. That kind of thing doesn't happen anymore now that technical advances have been made and the concept of 20 minutes of a whole band or artist's music being played at one time is unthinkable. Not quite sure how I ever heard "Sympathy for the Devil" (track 1, side 1), there must have been other listening models that made that possible, I can't recall them.

Independent Literature

Sitting there in a YES book display in the fair city of Perth among all the worthy clattering and chattering political tomes are copies of ...

The Tale o the Wee Mowdie that wantit tae ken wha keeched on his heid.

Or £3.49 on Amazon if you are interested.

Three stages of creation

Number 1: Wash in the big, blobby areas to check that your composition works. Use cheap paint because that's OK at this point. Does it make you smile? Bit of a sanity check that.

Number 2: Add some colour, some detail, ensure that the message in the painting is coming across. Don't be afraid of biting social commentary and realism.

Number 3: Work up* light, shade and the finer and more detailed points that might bring the disparate characters in the piece to life. Tonal quality and clarity of expression are very important. Don't skimp on these. Sweat the job, take pride in your work and give your brushes a good clean now and then.

Disclaimer: This arty piece of art was of course created by our own @Coldwar_Steve and he deserves full credit, I'm simply doodling in the margins. The original artwork might be some old Renaissance piece done by a geriatric painter back in the day or maybe more likely Hogarth. Style is such a vague indicator and substance is meaningless.

*Work up is a copyrighted term that can only be used by fully qualified driving instructors and proper artists with actual fine art degrees from reputable schools.

Miles of tiles

If tiles were somehow related to reptiles, instead of staying in place with cement they could scuttle across walls, be independent but organized by some central brain. Reptilian worlds collide. Bathroom and kitchen walls coming alive, slowly. Cold blooded 'tiles. Operating theatres and diners, friezes and living mosaics across parks and public spaces, at the drive-thru and in subways. You're not alone. Tongues catching passing insects, colours changing as they try to camouflage themselves. Confused avian predators. Tiles as snakes, moving in new patterns. Tiles with eyes, forked tongues, regrowing damaged parts. Underground trains flash by in the dark, an amber eye slowly opens to focus. No need to grout on a regular basis or apply any bleach, just don't lean against the wall or expect your towel to stay in the same place.

Agriculture

Agriculture: but mostly straw bailed up,  presumably for silage. Winter may well be coming.

Schrodinger's Syndrome

"When does a quantum system stop existing as a superposition of states and become one or the other?"

He was never cruel to cats (unlike Pavlov and his dogs). He was just trying to prove a point in physics. The cat, the box, the radioactive substance, the trigger mechanism, the poison are there for illustrative purposes. The point was explored, now we may be simply cats trapped in boxes.

I did think that there must be a thing called Schrodinger's Syndrome, perhaps a form of illness or delusion whereby you lead parallel lives according to various states of consciousness that you might experience; dreams, day dreams, flighty thoughts, imagination overload etc. Turns out there's no such thing but it could be said that thinking that there might be such a thing is an actual example of Schrodinger's Syndrome.

Album Anniversaries

Every other day these days is a "significant" album's anniversary. At the moment I'm still managing to stay older than most of them, 50 years? Pah! I must have grown up in some golden age, some creative hot spot that existed then, long before things started to go wrong, before people recorded music on their phones in bedrooms and public spaces. Back then they invented the technology with Meccano and used studios built out of cardboard and sticky tape. Music making then was on par with working in a coal mine or by a blast furnace. Ahem.

I don't mean any of this, looking back is a lot easier than trying to look forward nowadays, no need to explain this. BUT there was awareness of ecology, climate change, pollution and other 2019 issues even then in 1969 when the world was like a shiny new Eden to most people ... maybe not shiny or new, more tattered and torn and if I'm not too confused various cities were burning with riots or American bombing. Nobody really did anything about it then either.

Anyway, is she just hanging on for dear life on the edge of some abandoned swimming pool or emerging from a nuclear bunker? 50 years later I'm none the wiser.

Article 54

A very useful, tuneful (?) and insightful aid to getting through the next few days of Brexit via disco. 

Sculpture goals

Own goal.

Disowned goal.

Entrance of the Tin Man

On reflection: A bad day for the Tin Man, seems he fell into some kind of industrial process and was lasered into sections, but only one significant part made it back to the display cabinet. I'm guessing his heart is elsewhere so it's a return to Oz for a replacement and series of major operations. Legs, hands and feet?

Signage optical illusions or misread car-park signs (there are many more straight forward explanations). The way to go if you're inclined to fall into trance mode at any point in the afternoon or early evening. Take some time out and visit the great void of emptiness inside yourself before breezing around the shop.

In black and white

It can't happen here, the revolution won't be televised, we are the monochrome people, the heartland, a reminder, a warning, how not to do things. 

We are however quite good with tiling.

Milky Way

Sorry but that's definitely old news.

Recurring use of stock photos

The photo is not mine, too good, too old etc.: I try to remain original, but often I fail. The fail ratio is about 2:3 which I reckon is acceptable. It's mainly due to me not taking enough photos when I'm out and about, not seeing interesting things in the first place, missing opportunities, doing other things or being caught up in distractions. 

Distractions might include: cat being sick in another room, noisy neighbour, stray thoughts, sleep, strange silver object floating overhead, rushing to the shops, an unexpected phone call, itchy toe nail, a loudly boiling kettle, daydreams, actual driving, freelance work carried out elsewhere, low cloud, the sound of the waves lapping on the shore, listening to voices, concentrating on boiling eggs for 3 minutes or so, sorting out socks, searching for cobwebs, YouTube clips, reading the instructions on a ready meal, waiting for someone, staring into space. This list is not exhaustive. 

Levels

This comparison photo-shot works on several levels: Historical, cultural, sexual and auto-motive. There are a number of versions out there, the Sophia Loren/Jayne Mansfield classic being the best example but this derivative piece works quite well (and it's fabricated so that makes it fictitious also). In simple terms bigger doesn't mean best, everyone knows this but that doesn't mean everyone would choose this, that's where discernment comes in. Good and effective discernment being one of the universal secrets of having a happy life.

Avant-Garde

A brief history of AG: "The avant-garde are people or works that are experimental, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society. It may be characterized by nontraditional, aesthetic innovation and initial unacceptability, and it may offer a critique of the relationship between producer and consumer."

AG is also a security and facilities management company currently working in Central Scotland. I wonder how unorthodox and unconventional you're able to be in this type of business these days. Perhaps they only recruit seekers of the truth, pilgrims and existentialists for employment in their key company positions. Goals are vague and esoteric but they can still erect fences quite well. Even their signage might be said to be a proper AG piece, being weathered and interacting in it's free-form, outside exhibition space.

I first heard of "avant-garde" when I was about sixteen, it might have been used in some Monty Python episode or late night BBC2 doc. My sources were confused and random in those days and often mispronounced and badly used. I never really understood the term or liked the label but I would drop it into wavering conversations to try to look smart. It was often used to describe the music of Soft Machine or early Pink Floyd, creative dance and Hunter S Thompson books.

Just I was exploring what it might mean the name already had some serious cultural baggage and distortion added to it and although people use it to label genres it really is a much broader term ... in French it just translates as "advanced guard" in the military sense. It's meaningless really without being set in a clear context. For most people it's also understood to point to pretentious and confusing crappy art efforts that can only be described as avant-garde as a means of justifying or concealing the quality of the final work. Anyway nobody really uses the term anymore.

Fish box

Posh Nosh: Available now at a supermarket near you.