The process of making images of the diminishing spaceman has thrown up an interesting distraction. Before I blow and brush the surplus gold dust away, the disapointing man is hidden behind a sort of cosmic cloud, a precious spillage far more beautiful than he. Once revealed he seems lost. The spaceman, removed from the context of his tumbling fall, is merely a dumb arrangement of golden motes.
To say that I was saddened to hear of the death of Actor Corey Haim would be a slight exaggeration. To be brutally honest I cannot recall which one of the “Lost Boys” he played. Discovering however that he died at an age which is irrefutably less than mine.
In the studio I am currently working on a series of drawings of an ever diminishing spaceman. By “studio” I mean on the floor of my flat. I am again preparing boards with black paint, a process which involves painting, smoothing, swearing and defending the pristine paintwork from a cat that instinctively knows that black surfaces are the warmest. The next stage will involve the delicate application of gold powder to a varnish painted drawing. I have no illusions that this will be in any way successful. A rather more likely result is that I will be left with a finely gilded feline ornament much like Des Esseintes’ tortoise.
My efforts today have centred on preparations for a trip to Lincoln where I will be delivering a talk to students of the university. I have one ready but can never leave it alone. I add and remove images constantly mainly in the hope of finding a good way to end it. In “Swimming to Cambodia” Spalding Gray describes a time when he could not leave home without hearing a positive word on the radio. Often these signals would be ridiculously out of context. He would hear something like: “the death rate is ‘up'” and he could go out.
Here follows another list of searches that have washed up on my blog. Often it is easy to see what people seem to be looking for. Other searches however appear to be the vague pilgrimages of the bored. I myself (like many others I am sure) am guilty of typing in my own name hoping, I think, to find something new or unexpected.
San Antonio Texas, “slow shrink man”
New South Wales, Australia, “God’s silver tapestry spread across the night. And in that moment, I knew the answer to the riddle of the”
Waterloo, Ontario, ” recurring image have we seen at least 3 times in the pearl”
London, “Malcolm Quinn”
Windsor Board of Education, Ontario “Monte Cristo pearls”
Ever behind the times, I was sad to discover that Spalding Gray committed suicide in 2004.
My sideburns have been trimmed, the grey and brown cuttings held, like a Victorian keepsake, in an inlaid wooden box. I had not made a decision to cut them nor was I wholeheartedly set on the path of continuing to grow them until I reached Whitstable. I was, I admit, beginning to appear much like a Dickensian character, a look that was beginning to attract curious looks in the street. Not that this was worrying me overmuch in a town where many people are positively mediaeval in their demeanor. Nevertheless in an act of characteristic certainty my companion took matters into her own hands and I have been shorn. Now I am myself certain of my path. I intend to sculpt my sideburns into near perfect replicas of Mr Cushing’s. I have only to decide which incarnation of Van Helsing to emulate.
Saturday, 6 March 2010
Christopher Frayling suggests that the key to Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ may be the scene where Harker is beset by three vampire ladies. He thinks a similar traumatic event may have happened at the story’s genesis when Stoker whiled away time with Byron, Pollidori and the Shelleys in Switzerland. I too was wasting time in London yesterday, waiting for my companion while she underwent a gruelling phd tutorial with Mark Fairnington, Nichola Foster and Malcolm Quinn, a fearsome threesome. I decided to visit Mark Aerial Waller’s video installation at Cell Project Space. As I entered I saw the crouching Mr Waller being beset himself. This time the aggressors were three topless furies. Well, I assumed they were furies, so awful was their acting that there was not one jot of fury about them. Still, this seemed to be the point. I did enjoy Mr Waller’s low crotched fencing suit and a simple trick with the mirror filter.
I am presently engaged in looking for new lodgings that will accept one neurotic, but well behaved cat. I have offered to shave her as illustrated.
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