When the brain starts to work again

Over the last couple of days, it has felt as though my brain has come back from an extended period of holiday. I'm beginning to understand patterns again. Things are pulling together into a bigger coherent picture.

It feels like the clearing of a heavy fog. As a result the state of stasis is easing. Writing has begun again, and the creative energies are flowing. You will see more here too.....

bright by echo of bright recall

bright by echo of bright recall
there is nothing more

only the neatness brought about when we tidy as we go along
turning everything into some sort of song

then there is the won mind-set
no idea why!

then there was the loss of a consonant in a clever
smug sort of whatever

and finally we let it all go
pretend that nothing has happened

seal the secrets in a small envelope,
light a candle,

hold the secret over it
until it ignites, then let go and

watch the paper turn to blackened feather
light, and fragment, into the air

gone forever, burnt out of existence.

The words begin

The words begin

Like something that slips down the page - not sure

And an image
that is all that poetry is
something that we can picture in our mind

like the arrival of god
at a party when he hasn't been invited
and the host is busy pouring drinks
nobody knows the way to speak

so the first person to open the door, says
"sorry, I know we must have met, at some point that is,
but I have no idea who you are, and you’re not coming in here!"

The door slammed shut…and then silence
nothing to say
the music dies away as the guests wonder whether
they have missed something really important
of consequence.

for it is all of consequences
outcomes
within the chaos of complex adaptive systems
we all try to make some sense.

seek out a god
and then when we find one,
we shut the door, refuse to recognise
ignore the voice in our head
and strike him off the guest list

safe in the company of those we know.

train fragment

…travelling through the country from London to the North West of England on a train. Looking out of the window, there are huge formations of clouds hanging in an otherwise blue sky. It is the end of an exhausting working week…

Blogger suggestions

Another day, another dollar. Blogging with Microsoft Word does make this whole process easier. The new facility, here, is a really good development. But what about Categories for Blogger? When are we going to see that development appear?

Blogger did a user survey recently – when are we going to get feedback, and what are they doing with the suggestions that were made in the survey?

Another thing that Blogger could provide, would be the facility to post a number of drafts and then have them automatically post to the site so that there is always a post from the backlog when there is nothing new. Other blogging tools can do this – why not Blogger? Is it just me, or do Google seem to be resting the whole development of Blogger since they bought it?

OK, whinge over!

I’m very blog-light at the moment as I rush about with the day job, and try to realign my life after a stack of changes. Things should pick up soon – promises, promises…

Escaping writer's block

New words
New creations
New intimations of creativity
Old spaces
Seen before spoken
Somewhere we have been before
Law taken over
Wondering whether there is more in the dust
Specks that have recovered
Speeches that have been replayed

Once the lines have opened
There is not much left to the sands of timeliness
Such as the scan of a mission best replayed

U B U W E B :: Glenn Gould

I've been a big fan of Ubuweb for a while now. The site hosts all manner of avant garde and dadaist media, including texts, mp3's and videos / films. There has been a feast of fascinating material on the site for some time now.

After a summer overhaul, there is now a lot of new material on the site. Follow the link to find three sound files of radio programmes created by Glenn Gould back in the 60s and 70s. I first heard these on UK's BBC Radio 3 which hosted a tribute evening to the pianist a few years ago, and broadcast the programmes which were originally heard on Canadian radio. They are bold adventures in radio, Gould literally using the studio as a composing instrument. Well worth a listen.


U B U W E B :: Glenn Gould

taking words apart

Taking
Opening all out
Splitting a cloud like candy floss
Breaking air apart
An atom-smasher
Blaster.


Other words
Pretend
But do not understand the flow
Through all connections
No rejections
No sorry.


Not part
Not apart
Not even one strong sense of innocence
Would be enough
To split sides
Make asides
Not see.


Even when
The words are spent
The spoken sounds are louder than the heard
The things I say
Are not the same
As yours.

On returning

…and so another holiday comes to an end. We spent this one in the south of France, soaking up sunshine, wine and food.

Whilst away I read ‘The Da Vinci Code’ by Dan Brown. Yes, I know, I must be the last person to read it. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was in a completely different genre to the sort of things I would normally read, and that made the enjoyment even greater.

Poetry is about to step back into the foreground as I begin work on the second intense phase of creativity of this year.

Life in the maelstrom

Sometimes life just gets in the sights, and the time for communicating beyond the face to face shrinks away so that there is nothing left. No blogging for a couple of weeks now. I read in many places that bloggers shouldn't apologise for not blogging. It's like starting a speech with "unaccustomed as I am to public speaking"!

But then all rules are set to be broken! And it is worth an apology for the low frequency of posts. It is unlikely to change until September now.

I am reading "In Search of the Miraculous" by P D Ouspensky and feeling bewildered by a lot of it. He puts across the theories of Gurdjieff really clearly - it is the theories themselves that are so baffling. The man-machine idea is fascinating. Does this have anything to do with where Kraftwerk got the name from? Man sleepwalking through life. More on this book in a later post...

Four-Fold Way

Four-Fold Way

I was pointed to this site from Dave Pollard's blog (How to save the world - see the list of sites to the right). Angeles Arrien has developed the Four-Fold Way. It sets out four ways - the way of the warrior, the way of the healer, the way of the teacher and the way of the visionary.

Well worth a visit!

Blogsome - is it better than blogger?

I stumbled across this weblog host, based in Ireland. The system is based on Wordpress technology. I use blogger at the moment and have done for over 2 years now. I like what blogger does. There is just one key thing which blogger can't do. It doesn't have the facility to sort posts into categories so that readers can select all posts in a certain category and browse through them. I think this is really important. I emailed blogger about it some months ago and got a bland response saying they were working on it. Well, I emailed them again earlier today to ask when they are planning to introduce it. If it isn't soon, I may consider switching to Blogsome. It has categories!

That poetry reading

I mentioned recently that I was due to give a reading at our local poetry group on the first Thursday in July. There were about 60 people gathered for the evening. It was the same day as the bombings in London, so there was an air of sadness and shock hanging over the audience. Earlier in the evening I had begun to wonder whether reading poetry felt like the right thing to do in the circumstances. In the end, like many people that day, carrying on as normal felt like totally the right thing.

I read 8 poems, including a number of poems included on this site recently. They were all taken from the "28 poems in 28 days" cycle which I wrote earlier this evening. I find that reading poetry to an audience changes my relationship to the poem. I hear it differently. In this reading I heard some lines as really strong, which I had not noticed before. I heard rhythms which worked, and some that didn't. Overall I was really pleased with the material - I was taken by its intensity. And I felt that I had rediscovered some of the playful side of using language again.

What did the audience make of the reading? It is always difficult to tell at a poetry reading. Unlike a live music concert, it does not conclude with booing or frantic cheering. Poetry readings are an altogether more polite affair - at least where I come from they are.

I felt an empathy from the audience. As I looked around whilst reading there was an attentiveness which is always helpful. And there was a good level of applause at the end too. The highlight for me was after the event, when one of the organisers came up to me and said "that was fascinating. Thank you."

The rest of the evening was excellent too - there was live music from a duo playing accordion and bagpipes, another poet reading, a poem of the month, and a talk about the poetry of Edward Thomas.

One good outcome from the evening was a resolve on my part to travel further afield and do poetry readings. Further reports here as they happen.

The day job tyranny

A change in job circumstances is having an impact on my usual habits and patterns. Regular posting will resume once I have some rhythms and timings sorted out.

John Cale - Five Tracks

Yes, I know that this is a 2 year old piece of music. Sometimes CDs sit in my collection for a while - I think they are good and enjoy them, but don't really rave about them because I haven't had the time to listen to them for long enough to draw out what is going on.

'Five tracks' was an EP released ahead of the 'Hobosapien' album - it contains the most beautiful music filled with contradictions. Each track has a menacing air to it, tinged with soft girl choruses. The lyrics meander around all sorts of things including September 11th New York, the reputation of Ezra Pound - one of the tracks ('Wilderness Approaching') is taken from a film. 'E is missing' has an eerie voice singing 'Nowhere .... was not here / nowhere's not there / nowhere is nowhere' to the tune of an almost Christmas carol. I love it!

Why did I put this CD on after a couple of years? I was watching 'Later with Jools Holland' at the end of last week. This is a fantastic music programme on the UK BBC. The series finished recently, and is now being supplemented with a few programmes taking best bits on different themes. It was 'loud music' last week. John Cale was on playing a version of the Velvet Underground track 'Venus in Furs' - it was an incredible performance, and has stayed with me over the last few days.

As a result, the EP has reached my play list. What now? Well I also have another album by Cale, which I haven't explored much - called 'The Academy of Peril' - a strange album with full orchestra.

I should have realised that John Cale takes time to understand. Years ago (about 30 years, I think!) I bought a second hand copy of 'Vintage Violence' on vinyl, listened to it and was bewildered. Over time it became one of my favourite records.

John Cale, a welsh viola playing genius, with one of those rock voices that waivers on the edge of tuning in an unnerving way.