Thoughts for the Days

 

What is art anyway and why does art matter?

Also why do fonts matter?

(Asking for a friend).

Some Choices

Fireplace, paper plane, pizza oven, the tomb of Jesus, geometric nonsense, distorted shoe box, Bessemer Converter, bedroom tissue carton, variations on the golden ratio, oblivion, Turkish Delight, sarcasm: You Choose!

Amazon on Acid

"I swear that big grumpy box is eyeing me up. It wants to eat me. Why am I attractive to cold cardboard carton creatures? Perhaps it's seeking revenge for my recycling or refuse efforts, I've crushed a few of it's mates I suppose, burned others. Either that or it wants to package me up, smother me in Prime labels and bar codes and send me of to an address in Glasgow instead of the lawnmower and plant food that the family there are expecting. Like the Velvet Underground's "Gift". All in all I'm uneasy, agitated and  bordering on total paranoia. Amazon, I quit!"

When Cats Burp

 

Cat contradictions: When a nearby cat burps, all you get is the awful whiff of some disgusting meaty/fishy cat food meal that they've recently had. No apology either. Ugh! Despite that they are still lovable. Also it wasn't them who chose and bought the cat food 😕.

Unmixed Heritage

 

I found out the other day that the term "mixed race" has been replaced by "mixed heritage". No sure how these things happen or how compliance is achieved but fair enough, somebody will be happy. Less offence may be taken albeit the multiple wrongs done in colonial history and it's sporadic invasions are sadly well beyond any kind of retrospective correction. People argue that words and names make a difference (they probably do) but there's always someone who's left behind in these academic and complex rebrandings i.e. older people like me who can't think clearly.

I however, looking back on my family history, am of an unmixed or even fixed/stalled heritage. Bordering on incestuous due to an understandable inability to travel or explore (?), the tiny East Neuk villages I hail from were ignored and uninterrupted by incomers for centuries. Family trees are often close to being straight lines. People married locally and so generations grew poorer, shorter and stupider and so on ... the unmixed heritage model built up pure but peculiar blood and breeding with no mongrel additions or invasive species. We lived on potatoes and herring, alcohol and/or periods of enforced abstinence and temperance. A few convenient world wars helped to steady the number of inbred victims and religious guilt did it for the rest by banning sex as it just might be seen as "fun".

Unnecessary footnote: Our cats (as above) are highly mixed to the point of being feral in all but behaviour. What doesn't kill you makes you strong, or at least it makes you interesting.

Slow Spillage

I quite like the idea of a slow spillage sign being applied to a stream of lava, crawling in slow motion down a mountainside and gradually thickening and burning up the ground it covers. Anyway this is about a DIY road sign spotted locally. A Sharpie written white board on an old black chair warning passing motorists that diesel has been spilled all over the road. 

A short while after I'd clocked this, a wagon from Edinburgh City Council arrived and scattered absorbent material across the offending area. The homemade sign remains on station, guarding the damaged stretch of roadway. Someone, somewhere is a well loved folding chair short tonight and are unable to sit by the kitchen table. Remember them in your thoughts and prayers.

Vague and Absurd

I've noticed that despite appearing to be composed of strait lines in concrete and wood, Dundee's temple of inequality and tone deafness, the V&A, is squint and cock-eyed in a number of places (if you look closely). Not sure if this some formal but informal style, a deliberate trick or just "how it all turned out" due to the vagaries of materials and settlement. It remains an enigmatic building that I continue to like despite myself, interesting on the outside, strangely full of wasted space on the inside and somehow unable to produce exhibitions with any kind of "wow" factor. Like some alien thing it just doesn't gel with the world outside and the city it sits precariously on the edge of. Fife looks on blankly as the V&A's tortured jaw butts out across the Tay with a silent menace.

The latest exhibition, entitled Disco (?) looks for all the world like it was pulled together from the 5th year school notes of some upper class kid travelling around Europe on her trust fund in the 90s. So it's mostly full of privilege signals, absolute pish and chatty tittle tattle ("here's my first ever joint in France etc."). Some might argue that it's worthy of being put out there as a record but frankly there's no connection in there that fits with Dundee life or Scotland's art scene, not now or in the 90s. The days when you could stick Polaroids on a wall along with old DJ flyers and Sharpie notes name checking your pals and call it art have I think long gone.

I wonder how long it will last before the plug is pulled.

Sympathy for the Seagull

 

Seagulls circle endlessly I sing silent harmony (as the they feast on redundant building materials deep inside the skip). Slim pickings among the timber, plaster and plastic. Move on, go over to Burger King or the bins by the fish and chip shop. Live in the civilized wild and forget your great fishing heritage as you scramble in and over the dry land waste. This is no longer your world to plunder, we've twisted it and broken the chain and you just suffer the ignominy of this miserable trashcan future. The humiliation of perpetual skip diving now that life no longer teems in the muddy dark waters.

Do whatever thou wilt

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law: so taking some inspiration from these words I reduced the size of the vid to the actual size it is mainly because I realized that the visuals I'd used had been resized by me previously into odd, slightly incomprehensible or unsuitable sizes. Had I gone to proper movie school or done actual media studies I'd have known this but I obviously don't so I am forced into cheap and cheerful, clumsy recovery action that's probably OK for the time being, as if I could care less.

Space Time Continuum

Encountering the great beyond close at hand: I opened my eyes this morning, struggled into unsteady wakefulness and the conscious world only to see before me conclusive proof that as I slept, once again a great tear has occurred in the space time continuum. I'm sorry but this was on my watch. I must remember not to fall asleep and so allow this to happen. Sometimes I think I take a little too much responsibility upon myself but I guess that's just my nature.

Look up at the stars

I like to think that we invented space-rock before it was a thing. There are other things I quite like to think, few if any of them are actually true but the pleasure I get from thinking them makes it all worthwhile. This is known as "telling yourself stories that you know are fictional or not accurate", it's a fairly common aspect of human behaviour, look out for it as you travel life's highways and low-ways, you'll find lots of examples.

Bedside Rum and Miles Davis

 

I like to get a good rum buzz early in the morning so I always ensure there's a bottle ready and available at my bedside. Rum is both tasty and nutritious, like apple pie and ice cream or hard boiled eggs smothered with pepper and salt (other things I like to have at hand for nocturnal and/or early morning sustenance). Please don't take this nutritional advice as being in any way useful or worth acting upon.

Struggling with confidence when it comes to musical theory and playing out or jamming? This quote from Miles Davis might help (or it might make it all worse).

Self Testing for Covid

Covid testing via the self service mail shot kit method isn't so bad. Dib-dabbing the nose and throat are momentarily unpleasant but doable. I imagine those that get a sexual kick out of gagging will be happy enough and may well order extra tests. 

The tricky part is of course managing to urinate precisely on the "S" for sample mark when only two tiny dribbles are allowed. Control and accuracy are required and it's not all that easy for men of a certain age, not sure how the ladies are managing with this one either. Incidentally I scored a reasonable enough "C" which apparently stands for "Control", I was hoping for a C+ but damn right there, I made it.

Macedonian Goat Pizza

 

Well these are remains of what at one time was a full 360 degree pizza. Now sadly reduced to the cold leftover slices. Not sure about the actual goat content either as I just made that up to make the title more interesting. There may be traces there among the peppers, chilli, red onions and Greek cheese but I doubt it. It was quite tasty. Tea, supper and breakfast.

Touched by the Hand of Rick Beato

It's just an accident of the algorithms but nice to be in the temporary company of the illustrious Rick Beato on our YouTube screen. Clearly he's yet to discover us and to honest it's pretty unlikely that he ever will. Nice when two diverse worlds collide in the virtual reality of fake reality though.

Sometimes life is hard and unforgiving but a hearty, meaningless slogan always helps: today's suggested slogan being "look around and take precautions". This little number knocks "get Brexit done" and other SPAD engineered Tory pish straight into a cocked hat. You read it here first.

Miss that boy

Easily deserving a million likes on YouTube we're launched into the hard to handle romantic, heart rending, torch song/performance/video category. Will it happen I wonder? We stand at another creative crossroads making the usual slow start in our ongoing tussle with obscurity and fame.

Barcelona Taxi

From the archives; a short instrumental memory of a taxi ride in Barcelona which was a lot less traumatic and edgy than the track itself. Basically I thought it was a nice snappy, aftermarket title for the piece and perhaps any folks who have suffered tricky city taxi rides might find that the tune lines up with their experiences. So though the tune's from the archive, the video is by our newly acquired lazy visuals bot who mechanically scoured the www for inspiration.

National Freelancers Day

 

NFD was yesterday, strangely I didn't receive a box of cakes, a corporate logo sweatshirt or even a few words of encouragement from my remote and salaried masters. It simply passed like any other day, quietly, uneventfully and was ended by a nice tea after a hot afternoon cutting the grass and then quaffing a cool beer or two watching the footy. 

Maybe we weren't included here in Caledonia as we're not really a proper nation, just a rag-tag tribe of kilted ferrets fighting in a sack like drunken sailors and we'd only waste the day. The psyche is complex but predictable. Soon I'll be an OAP and even more conflicted about what stereotypical label to moan about.

Analogue Man: The Movie

As you might know we tend not to make many music videos due to the high technical costs, the need for professional production values and our complete lack of expertise at fiddling around with computers and such things (hence the analogue theme). Anyway we've befriended a homeless bot and in a nifty exchange for bed, board and a few drinks now and then it's settled in and begun to produce videos randomly. There's a full clutch of broody videos that are being brooded over by our AI house guest and we'll be releasing them as and when the holy spirit guides our clumsy footsteps.

I find my best visual ideas come when I'm plucking the long white hairs that grow within my nostrils. It begins as I reach a state of dim self hypnosis and depart the visible world and tune into the celestial voices that inhabit our bathroom ceiling via the cosmic receiver that is the large chrome magnifying mirror into which I am gingerly peering into my nostril cavities. And so the wild ideas and strange visions abound like drunken angels or flying snowmen. I can't really explain it any further.

Stabbing in the dark

Parking these images here in the hope that come the day I am not randomly stabbing in the dark through plasterboard to locate a fixing in a stud partition in the utility room. The hazards are power cables, drain pipes and hot and cold water supplies, so I don't want to hit them. These are my (badly recorded and liable to some slight misunderstanding) reference points should the dark demon of DIY need to arise within our household and I actually have to do something technical, time will tell.