There has been a recent response to the new atheism of Dawkins and Hitchens. It seems a new book is published each week to present counter arguments. I began to wonder why this might be. After all, why would anyone care what other peoples faith entailed.
Religion appears where reason fails. When we are suffering, when death is near. It appears where we can not understand yet know. When hit with the wonder of nature, the wonder of the stars, space, infinity some feel elation. Others are unable to enjoy their insignificance. To look to the sky and turn to Gods seems very tragic; to look to the stars and think of astrology instead of astronomy is the failure to enjoy wonder; to consider infinity and try to shrink it in to religious understanding to me feels negligent as a human. To not see the sheer beauty in a tree or the raw majesty of existence, requires a dour mind, the type that may prefer a tree spirit, the type who imagines some fantasy or supernatural existence.
When I was a boy my two closest friends were Jewish. To this day I enjoy the company of Jews. It is in a jocular levity they have, a distrust of established ideas that attracts me. No surprise that they didn't believe in Mohamed or Christ being a walking God. Their God didn't walk among us.
As we grew up each system we entered took us different ways.
Tuesday 31 January 2012
Christopher Hitchens vs. Peter Hitchens (2/14) (RELIGION & THE FUTURE OF...
I posted the film of Christopher Hitchens debate with Tony Blair on religion. Perhaps a better opponent is Peter, his brother
Sunday 29 January 2012
Zumba
Around the late 1990s, when Viaga came out, you would hear otherwise normal, middle aged men calling furniture, cars etc. 'sexy'
very unsettling
These Viagra overdose related saw grown men dry humping objects like young dogs on your leg!
Now, to compensate for their partners late flush of sexuality in their autumn years are getting tanked up on Zumba 
Last Delivery
On thursday I set off for Exmoor to deliver some last pieces of furniture for a house that is somewhere near completion. It is a journey I have made several times. I furnished a cottage throughout; four post beds, single beds, chests of drawers, dressing tables, bedside units, kitchen dining table, side tables, desk, chair, bookcases, welsh dresser. There is still more to do for the second house.
In America everyone seems to be in therapy, not just the mentally ill or substance dependent. No bad thing. We can all learn, unburden ourselves of baggage we carry. I wonder too if we all shouldn't at some point have a breakdown and enter rehab. Some never get chance to stand back, gain some perspective, take a long hard look at themselves.
One of my favorite popular artworks of recent years was a work by Michael Landy. He made a machine that incorporated a conveyor system that carried objects to their destruction. Over a two week period he destroyed everything he owned. Such a liberating thought.
When I first exhibited work at the annual show in Cheltenham my girlfriend of the time was at art college there. I invited her and her friend along to show off. They weren't impressed. Nothing to trigger thought, nothing you were allowed to interact with. I couldn't explain it. For half an hour I could see how others might see what I did. Rather than accept their view I hid behind the artists alibi of 'you don't understand.' I liked my stuff and a few others but agreed that most of the stuff there was self indulgent. I tried to seperate my work in my head. These may be my peers but I'm not like them.
From then on I have not felt comfortable. Hardly anyone can afford it, no one in my socio economic group and so you communicate to few. No one who matters to you.
Is it healthy to spend so much time dwelling on objects?
The deeper you get in to any system the less able you become to escape. You have to believe. Your life depends on it. Like a priest who falls in love and succumbs to the pleasures of the flesh I have lost faith.
Working against your intuition is a route to depression, even death. There was something so close to me I dare not distrust it. My sense of self was dependent on it. I had bought in to it.
I even taught others to follow in to a world I could no longer defend.
The route to homelessness, prostitution, drug dependence, extremist politics is hard to see. How do people end up in such a mess? It is through small, incremental steps. It is by the support of wrong 'uns.
I began in trade joinery. A seemingly benign occupation. I could help fix peoples homes.
I returned to education having had to wait until I was a mature student. I had filled the years between learning a trade. Rather than abandon this I used it as a step.
At college I mixed with others who supported an unhealthy world view. We aspired to make decadent objects. We became materialist to a perverse degree. I went on to work with other materialists. Joined a forum where everyone agreed. No outside voice to tell us we were perverse. I met middle aged men who described furniture as 'sexy', very disturbing. Beware of the internet. You can find a forum to support any view, however dangerous.
Once I had been to university I no longer saw how trade had been perverted in middle class hands. The designer craftsmen were not working class folk who had learnt the craft through apprenticeship but Ruperts and Ashleys rejecting their backgrounds to work with their hands.
Think of the name Designer Craftsmen. Rejection of the humility of trade; a need for authorship. The name says it all, it is equally about the maker as it is the object, it is about the pleasure they get from making. Ultimately self indulgent. It isn't furniture made for living. It is furniture that says, 'look at me!'. Furniture about making furniture. The Prog Rock of furniture. Furniture with 20 minute drum solos furniture to show off with in tight spandex pants.
I was good at it. That made me continue. All around showed approval . But it wasn't where my talents lay.
Most of my work operated like conceptual art. It illustrated a theory. Ideas existing in words. Linguistic constructs.
All other work was just to pay the bills.
Delivering those last pieces felt good
In America everyone seems to be in therapy, not just the mentally ill or substance dependent. No bad thing. We can all learn, unburden ourselves of baggage we carry. I wonder too if we all shouldn't at some point have a breakdown and enter rehab. Some never get chance to stand back, gain some perspective, take a long hard look at themselves.
One of my favorite popular artworks of recent years was a work by Michael Landy. He made a machine that incorporated a conveyor system that carried objects to their destruction. Over a two week period he destroyed everything he owned. Such a liberating thought.
When I first exhibited work at the annual show in Cheltenham my girlfriend of the time was at art college there. I invited her and her friend along to show off. They weren't impressed. Nothing to trigger thought, nothing you were allowed to interact with. I couldn't explain it. For half an hour I could see how others might see what I did. Rather than accept their view I hid behind the artists alibi of 'you don't understand.' I liked my stuff and a few others but agreed that most of the stuff there was self indulgent. I tried to seperate my work in my head. These may be my peers but I'm not like them.
From then on I have not felt comfortable. Hardly anyone can afford it, no one in my socio economic group and so you communicate to few. No one who matters to you.
Is it healthy to spend so much time dwelling on objects?
The deeper you get in to any system the less able you become to escape. You have to believe. Your life depends on it. Like a priest who falls in love and succumbs to the pleasures of the flesh I have lost faith.
Working against your intuition is a route to depression, even death. There was something so close to me I dare not distrust it. My sense of self was dependent on it. I had bought in to it.
I even taught others to follow in to a world I could no longer defend.
The route to homelessness, prostitution, drug dependence, extremist politics is hard to see. How do people end up in such a mess? It is through small, incremental steps. It is by the support of wrong 'uns.
I began in trade joinery. A seemingly benign occupation. I could help fix peoples homes.
I returned to education having had to wait until I was a mature student. I had filled the years between learning a trade. Rather than abandon this I used it as a step.
At college I mixed with others who supported an unhealthy world view. We aspired to make decadent objects. We became materialist to a perverse degree. I went on to work with other materialists. Joined a forum where everyone agreed. No outside voice to tell us we were perverse. I met middle aged men who described furniture as 'sexy', very disturbing. Beware of the internet. You can find a forum to support any view, however dangerous.
Once I had been to university I no longer saw how trade had been perverted in middle class hands. The designer craftsmen were not working class folk who had learnt the craft through apprenticeship but Ruperts and Ashleys rejecting their backgrounds to work with their hands.
Think of the name Designer Craftsmen. Rejection of the humility of trade; a need for authorship. The name says it all, it is equally about the maker as it is the object, it is about the pleasure they get from making. Ultimately self indulgent. It isn't furniture made for living. It is furniture that says, 'look at me!'. Furniture about making furniture. The Prog Rock of furniture. Furniture with 20 minute drum solos furniture to show off with in tight spandex pants.
I was good at it. That made me continue. All around showed approval . But it wasn't where my talents lay.
Most of my work operated like conceptual art. It illustrated a theory. Ideas existing in words. Linguistic constructs.
All other work was just to pay the bills.
Tuesday 24 January 2012
The Craftsman by Richard Sennett
These sort of books usually fall at the first hurdle in attempts to articulate what exists outside of words. My dog has prehension, even craft skills but speaks no words. This one though could change your life.
I have long wrestled with many of the ideas he does yet never come close to arranging it in a pattern understandable to anyone else. This book is a seminal work on the subject.
My belief can be summed up with the phrase 'making is thinking'. It is the reason I find no duality, other than in the structure of language, of 'designing' and 'making'. We do one thing in a certain way. Class prejudice drawn from a perceived hierarchy is based on the seperation of theory and practice, (working with hand or with head), false distinctions that cloud our thinking and ruin lives.
Romans drew on the Greek distinction of theory and practice to legitimate their domination. The Craftworker slaves dwelt in an anonymous space between worker and personal service.
I strongly recommend this to anyone interested in making things, in fact anyone interested in humanity.
Every page makes you sit back in awe, savouring the pleasure of understanding washing over you like some wonderful drug. Like cerebral speedballs mainlined in to both hemispheres where most craft theory leaves you bogged down in word porridge.
A lifetimes thought has gone in to this book. Concepts that Pye or Dormer would stumble around, spending whole books with, always just beyond their reach, just past their peripheral vision he nails with a few words.
There is a biological reason why coordination between unequal members works. This led me to question if the spectrum of disparate finger strengths and the reasons why this is successful has social implications. Such 'domain shifts' keep falling forth once you are in Sennetts mindset. A domain shift, for example; Christopher Wren saw experiments injecting coloured and poisonous fluids in to dogs veins, this enabled him to promote one way systems in to urban planning for London after the great fire.
The 'fraternal hand', the lesson of minimal force represents finger restraint among stronger digits, the crux of physical coordination, this must have social refection. A team of equally skilled technicians is not as successful as a varied group.
After each chunk I found myself reluctant to move on, wanting to wallow in my new understanding, fearful of forgetting details yet each subsequent part developes his ideas further.
One part I struggled finding complete agreement on was CAD. Intuitively I think that rolling an idea round with a pencil, back and forth from mind to paper explores the unmade object far better. It is the mistakes and the resulting pain, having to laboriously redraw that developes the vision.
In learning a musical instrument it is the mistakes and the rush of joy when you get it right that steer you and preserve attention. This sort of learning is not fassionable as it is hard.
CAD with its' swift ignorance does lead to bland results. I have been asked to accept something advanced by the CAD faithful, that I can not see. Their belief is so strong I have come to feel quite alone. Novelty and laze blinds them.
I almost gave in to CAD, so dogmatic have been the claims, that I began to question why I made furniture at all. CAD ranks alongside routing MDF for unpleasantness as a part of the job , unsurprisingly they often go together.
CAD freed up drawing so that those without skill could create a simulacrum of a drawing and a such we saw a democratising of skill. Such special effects may shock for a day but look dated very quickly. We may get there, these are early days. And of course, CAD should not be judged as a replacement for sketching, we can use both.
University education has been rendered all but obsolete by Wikipedia.
People no longer mate in the normal way but book each other on the internet and engage in bedroom gymnastics that we could not have drewamed of back in the 70s.
So why can't CAD replace drawing?
Or is it a case that computers are a new toy that we believe is capable of more than it ever could be. Claiming CAD can equal hand drawing at its' best is the same as suggesting a machine can think. One day maybe, not yet though.
I have long wrestled with many of the ideas he does yet never come close to arranging it in a pattern understandable to anyone else. This book is a seminal work on the subject.
My belief can be summed up with the phrase 'making is thinking'. It is the reason I find no duality, other than in the structure of language, of 'designing' and 'making'. We do one thing in a certain way. Class prejudice drawn from a perceived hierarchy is based on the seperation of theory and practice, (working with hand or with head), false distinctions that cloud our thinking and ruin lives.
Romans drew on the Greek distinction of theory and practice to legitimate their domination. The Craftworker slaves dwelt in an anonymous space between worker and personal service.
I strongly recommend this to anyone interested in making things, in fact anyone interested in humanity.
Every page makes you sit back in awe, savouring the pleasure of understanding washing over you like some wonderful drug. Like cerebral speedballs mainlined in to both hemispheres where most craft theory leaves you bogged down in word porridge.
A lifetimes thought has gone in to this book. Concepts that Pye or Dormer would stumble around, spending whole books with, always just beyond their reach, just past their peripheral vision he nails with a few words.
There is a biological reason why coordination between unequal members works. This led me to question if the spectrum of disparate finger strengths and the reasons why this is successful has social implications. Such 'domain shifts' keep falling forth once you are in Sennetts mindset. A domain shift, for example; Christopher Wren saw experiments injecting coloured and poisonous fluids in to dogs veins, this enabled him to promote one way systems in to urban planning for London after the great fire.
The 'fraternal hand', the lesson of minimal force represents finger restraint among stronger digits, the crux of physical coordination, this must have social refection. A team of equally skilled technicians is not as successful as a varied group.
After each chunk I found myself reluctant to move on, wanting to wallow in my new understanding, fearful of forgetting details yet each subsequent part developes his ideas further.
One part I struggled finding complete agreement on was CAD. Intuitively I think that rolling an idea round with a pencil, back and forth from mind to paper explores the unmade object far better. It is the mistakes and the resulting pain, having to laboriously redraw that developes the vision.
In learning a musical instrument it is the mistakes and the rush of joy when you get it right that steer you and preserve attention. This sort of learning is not fassionable as it is hard.
CAD with its' swift ignorance does lead to bland results. I have been asked to accept something advanced by the CAD faithful, that I can not see. Their belief is so strong I have come to feel quite alone. Novelty and laze blinds them.
I almost gave in to CAD, so dogmatic have been the claims, that I began to question why I made furniture at all. CAD ranks alongside routing MDF for unpleasantness as a part of the job , unsurprisingly they often go together.
CAD freed up drawing so that those without skill could create a simulacrum of a drawing and a such we saw a democratising of skill. Such special effects may shock for a day but look dated very quickly. We may get there, these are early days. And of course, CAD should not be judged as a replacement for sketching, we can use both.
University education has been rendered all but obsolete by Wikipedia.
People no longer mate in the normal way but book each other on the internet and engage in bedroom gymnastics that we could not have drewamed of back in the 70s.
So why can't CAD replace drawing?
Susan Cain - Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
How times change. It seems only yesterday we were holding collaboration up as the modus operandi for original design. At Furniture Futures, a symposium held at the V and A organised by John Makepeace in 2010 there were many speakers who all brought fresh thought to the table. If there was any thread running through all speakers presentations it was one of collaboration. Now a new book puts the misconception to test.
Susan Cains Quiet argues that what she calls 'the New Group Think' is profoundly misconcieved. Solitude produces the best results. Collaboration may be more fun, providing the comfort of noise and company, and it is increasingly part of our education, work and culture, but it works against originality.
Cain is making an obvious point but one which seems to have been forgotten: 'People are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interuption'.
Research supports her. In a survey of 600 computer programmers at 92 companies, it was found that, while those within the same firm performed similarly, there was a huge gap in effectiveness between companies. Those offering staff a degree of privacy produced the best results.
Where did it come from, the obsession with groups? One explanation is the unquestioned and wrong headed assumption that, if one person can produce a good idea, several together can only achieve more Our culture may be self obsessed but, wierdly, it is also one in which the noise of crowds drowns out the unconventional and individual.
The aversion to solitude is now pervasive. One would think, for example, that writing would be an obviously self reliantprofession. Yet, thanks to creative writing courses, would be authors are encouraged to believe that, if they meet other writers regularly, sharing their problems, reading out their latest chapter, they will not only learn more and feel less alone, but will actually write better.
It is disasterous and politically harmful that schools are infecting children with Groupthink. Solitude is good. It may be harder work, requiring more self discipline and generally be less fun, but it forces individual ideas and character to come through. No matter what the tewam leaders might say, it is likely to be a lot more personally satisfying too.
Monday 23 January 2012
Education Furniture Designer makers
After leaving college I was asked by several universities to do some teaching. Gaining qualifications to be able to lecture part time was a primary motivation in returning to study. I hadn't thought about it properly. Just because I was able to design and make it didn't mean I was able to pass these skills on.
All young lecturers are thrown in to a system not of their making and have to slot in. I was like Bambi on ice. I didn't really know what we were doing. At least on craft based courses I could lean on my experiences from my own education. I was too young to see that this wasn't the best foundation.
Ultimately I packed it in. I didn't think I was doing it well enough. This was the sole chance some would get at further or higher education, their only chance to lay the foundations of a career. Very important work. Not a job like making where you can go get a new piece of timber if you cut it too short. The students were leaving as moderate makers lacking the speed of someone spending a similar amount of time in a trade environment and designers that didn't break the mold. There were exceptions, some I am still in touch with, but these were successful despite rather than due to their education.
Since then I have thought long and hard about what we were doing wrong as lecturers and would like another go sometime. It isn't wise to employ a lecturer straight from college. Others my age have stayed in it perhaps never having the self reflection or high standards. There is a case for fresh, youthful enthusiasm but it is countered by the fact that such lecturers produce youthful enthusiastic designers, not necessarily good ones.
I went to college in 1990. By then there had been a first generation of designer makers. Many of these had gone in to teaching. If you study the first 25 or so designer makers of furniture whos' work appeared in magazines and shows you can see that each of them was following a new and separate line of enquiry. Most of these trained as designers or artists before learning how to make. Their work shows a flair that few have managed to mirror. Why should this be?
After graduating the first generation believed they had work of merit to show. The public weren't so enthusiastic. The makers tended to support their work by other means. Some, a very small number existed in a commercial sense but most had help from the crafts council or taught.
This generation of makers came of age at a time when there were serious concerns about the future of the crafts. If you read David Pyes 'The Nature of Art and Workmanship' you can sense a genuine fear that the hand made was under threat, that the one off craft object could be lost to industry. Pye was the Professor of Furniture at the RCA when many of these makers passed through. Though Makepeace, Alan Peters and others
took differing routes Fred Baier, Rupert Williamson, Richard La Trobe Bateman and others formed the backbone of the 1970s craft revival in furniture. Whether they were aware of it or not they were a reactionary movement.
Once in teaching positions they naturally tried to address faults in their own education and protect the future of craft. The courses they taught on; Shrewsbury, Rycotewood, Parnham etc. had a similar system. Students would be taught a technique such as a dovetail joint then asked to use this in a design that they would have to come up with. A typical example is a first year project that I did which required we learn how to make a traditional draw, a frame and panel back or door and use these in a wall cabinet. This pattern of teaching is contrary to other Furniture Design courses. These courses are a few of the overall body of furniture design courses. This system encourages the student to think in a certain way. I still find it uncomfortable.
The project that opitomises the folly was a project to design a 'hallstand' that needed to incorporate a draw and be able to hang a coat. The pieces that resulted are a hilarious group of oddities. I side stepped the brief by abandoning it altogether.
If you look at the bulk of designer maker furniture coming out of colleges it bares the same hall marks.
The majority, perhaps I dare say all of the first generation of designer craftsmen were from middle class backgrounds. Names like Rupert, double barreled even were common. They had no desire to be seen as trade. None of them came from a trade background.
In the crafts there is a communal knowledge, shared values, a family, sometimes unionised that protected the working classes.
Art is when something new is made. At the top end of trade it occurs just as it does in artr colleges. Let us explore these two, quite different routes to originality.
Originality is asked of students. When you take a trade, through years of practice, to fresh, never seen before levels we can call it art. George Best took football to a level at that time never seen before. Stradivari the violin maker took violin making to a new height we may call art.
Few these days will submit to the discipline of craft until they break through in to art in this way. Few take the trade route. Alan Peters may be seen in these terms.
Tracy Emin may take a shit in her handbag. This may be new and as such is art. It may not be good art but it is art.
This route is much easier for a student to aspire to. Indeed we encouraged them to do this.
I'm running out of energy but will come back to this.
The point I was getting to was that the way the first generation were taught was clearly better. Enough time has transpired to see that the educational experiment that they launched from finding little craft in their courses has gone wrong somewhere.
I have an idea to remedy this and will come back to explain it soon.
Sunday 22 January 2012
Craftsmanship
Craft provides a communal knowledge that exists outside of words. It can only be passed on by spending many hours in the workshop with someone. Practice in isolation will not get you all the way.
It is in many ways like religion; common knowledge existing outside of words, ritual passed down, a support structure. This all provides legitimacy.
What is art? is the most common question. Sennett argues that what is autonomy? is a better question.
Craft provides a family, it takes away problems of value and purpose. The DMOU provides this family for some. The knowledge of craft is communal. It is why it is so easy to put peoples noses out of joint. It is like religion.
Originality occurs when someone does something not done before. This originality is art.
Originality comes from the Greek poesis meaning 'something where before there was nothing'
The reason I stopped teaching craft and design in universities was because I didn't think I was doing a good job. I didn't think I was producing good designers or good makers.
What is Art? What is Autonomy?
Craft has a family to defend its' merits, the artist, as an original has only the defence 'you do not understand'
The artist need only be original. This will not always provide autonomy.
A snooker player such as Ronnie OSullivan who has taken the game to new levels is peerless; he is an original and can be considered an artist.
Tracy Emin too may be an original, she may be doing something new. Shitting in your handbag may be new. This too may make you an artist.
You can be a bad artist too. It is being original, not good that is the qualification.
There is a current desperation for autonomy. People think this can be found more easily in art than craft. Being crap but original is easier than becoming so proficient at a craft that you become an artist.
In the designer craftsman furniture field students are taught to aspire to originality, at any cost.
Exhibitions rarely see new makers mastering thier craft before escaping the family in to new areas. Becoming artists as, arguably John Makepeace or Fred Baier. These two do new things. New things inspire wonder. . It is assumed that doing something new along side rudimentary craft skills will suffice.
I think that students shouldn't be confused like this. There is no shame in the family of craft.
Designers, also need not learn craft. Herein lies the trauma.
In Rennaisance times the apprentice left home and entered the new home of the workshop. Here they learnt discipline.
Now students are taught in a way that is niether fish nor foul. They learn a technique then are asked to use this in a fresh design. Their design sense is corrupted immediately.
I would keep the designers seperate from the makers. I wouldn't have designer craftsmen, that strange animal neither horse nor pig. At least till they could do one thing properly.
FDMA forum posting
My current thinking is like Bambi on ice.
A recent posting I made on an internet woodwork forum started as if I was drawing a motorbike and finished as an elephant. Some of the points were quite clever but the connections were poor.
It was word porridge,
thought salad,
idea slurry,
mind mud,
conceptual compost,
letter soup,
reasoning risotto,
brain blamange,
cerebral sileage,
clapshot, mashed root vegetable main course, unrelated mind matter, sewage, homogenous head humus.
Losing my Religion
Having craft behind you is like having a family. Like having a religion. So casting it off could be hard.
I no longer want to make furniture. I want to study writing.
The common body of experience you can draw from, a knowledge that exists outside of words, ritual passed down, tacit knowledge, a support structure. Just like a family. Just like a religion.
David Hockney and Damien Hirst
It is a pleasant sensation when you open a paper and see art shows in the news. For this alone I am grateful to David Hockney whose show at the Royal Achademy opened yesterday and, apparently has sold out for months ahead. What a joy to see folk taking time to go see a mans drawings. The papers, the critics need an angle. This saddens me. Does there need to be so much judgement? He enjoys looking at the Yorkshire countryside and painting it, that is enough for me.
Damien Hirst has his show at the various global Gargosians. A retrospective of his spot paintings. Critics try to draw a thread where there is none. Like asking is opera better than football. Hirsts graphic medicated charts are optical joy for me, Hockneys do contribute to the history of looking. I like an artist that dare position themself in historic context and not appear vainglorious.
And they both grew up near to each other. Hockney in Bradford, Hirst in Leeds. Why does this part of the country produce so many good visual artists? I have touched on this before. Manchester and Liverpool produce music, Leeds and Bradford visual artists.
Mid Life Crisis
The mid life crisis is a stage all go through. Not the ubiquitous mourning for lost youth; the ponytail, the motorbike, but a more significant stage. It happens when you cease to care what other people think of you and you begin to care what you think of other people. It is when you realise that there is more behind than ahead.
I am coming towards 50. I can remember being at Freds workshop when he hit the half ton. I think he feared his best days were done. How wrong that would have been as recent years have shown
My mental health has always restricted me, the resultant drug use never helped. Now I feel haste. A hunger to put the irrelevant aside. There is so much to do, so much to write. I can not justify making furniture anymore. Taking work to perpetuate a situation I neither like nor need is pointless. I will make something special when the opportunities come along but no more crap. There is enough crap in the world already.
St Johns Frome
Taking Tex in to town as the day came to a close, the light changed to pinks and blues. I stood staring, eyes to the sky.
It often happens to me; I see some wonder that causes me to lose my breath. To be consumed by awe. I look around and people walk on by, unmoved. It is as if a spaceship is landing and they can not see.
Not sure if the picture captured it though. Maybe it was in my head.
The Boring repetition of Illness
It is obviously difficult for people to understand how others see the world. I recall talking to Philip Hussey about reality. At the time he believed it to be a fixed thing that we all could see to varying degrees of accuracy. At the time, due to bouts of mental illness and experiences with drugs, I advanced the idea that reality was what we perceive. I was wrong. It is disconcerting thinking back to last year when, as an example I could hear people discussing me. As I couldn't see them it was obvious they were beneath the pavements surface. On closer inspection I could hear them more clearly as I passed by manhole covers. Why people had chosen to group together, hide underneath service inspection shaft covers I didn't ask. At the time, for me, this was real.
As I recover the temptation is to grasp any evidence of normality and seize it. Because I can hold a conversation people assume am well. If I am happy they think the same. This can happen despite being ill. I can be contentedly delusional at times. Perhaps we all are. Most days I can construct a reasonably coherent world view. From these apparently normal interactions people mistake intelligence for truth. My illness has meant I have been subject to delusions. Once I realise a mistaken reading of reality I become very unsettled. Upset emotionally even.
As I make the early steps out in to the world friends assume I must be recovering from reactive depression; to pat me on the back, tell me the worst is past. The belief I must have hit bottom and be on a steady upward slope has fooled me several times. It will be a while.
It will be a while. I must be patient. I know I have been and am still a pain in the arse. I miss appointments. I can't be relied on. The slope is generally upward but has ruts, dips and even holes to negotiate.
Yet, like going to A and E with a broken toe I was made aware just how well I am recently. In a way mental illness can be contagious as you tend to follow other peoples reasoning out of courtesy. On chatting to another patient I followed his distrust of the doctors only so far as recognising them to be replicants.
Lost in the Supermarket
Passed the bottom and stepping out. All seems okay, all appears as it should be, But a vale is torn in Asda. The plasticity of reality, the dum dum dumness turns my blood to treacle. I am scared.
The graveyard provides some peace. I am here. I will not turn it off so must face it.
Life is a brief slash in the darkness that was before and will be again, we all succumb to the innevtable. A tear in the black; a letterbox to peep through. No accurate view of what is really going on but it is all we get. And it is so beautiful. So much. So frightening. 
Tuesday 17 January 2012
Hernia
There is an apocryphal tale from my childhood that I still bare a scar from to remember it by. I was two years old or there about and suffering from my first serious illness. Hernias are notoriously painful and mine presumably was too. Sat with both my parents the doctor gently prodded me locating the source of the pain. Each time they asked 'does it hurt?' I would respond bravely 'no!'
Both parents recited the story making it in to family legend. I suspect my fathers presence being instrumental in my heroics.
My work ethic deserves no religious claims. Brought up by my father as a devout atheist I have none yet he had a white working class conservative attitude to work. The rhetoric still echoes in me, 'the world doesn't owe you a living' being among his favorite slogans on the matter.
For a year or two after leaving home I did rebel, trying to see work in the dark responsible way of earlier generations. The toil of pit and mill still echoed round northern towns in the 1970s. It would take Thatcher to deliver unemployment and resignation through her destruction of industry.
Choosing to become a joiner was a whim. I had no great revelation as some do on the wonders of timber and constructing frames. There was a growing awareness in me of the structure of the man made world around me and a feeling I may feel duty bound to contribute. The real feeling, if I am to be honest was much closer to dissatisfaction with shoddiness. A frustration that others hadn't thought designs through, hadn't bothered to execute them properly.
There was a sense of identity that grew. The familiarity of tools and timber. When asked what I did I could clearly explain and feeling that the explanation was easy was reassuring. Familiarity overrides safety. A common human trait to take it to the end. Death becomes preferable to stepping outside the comfort zone of knowing who you are.
There was a sense that to understand the world I should be a participant. A sense that when I woke I should join in. Scrape the ice from my windscreen. Drive to somewhere else in one of those vans and lend a hand.
Time went on and I found myself not just taking part but orchestrating work. Coming home tired, covered in dust, aching in the shower before soothing myself with alcohol had a masochistic pleasure that assuaged the guilt.
Where had this guilt come from? Why did I struggle to lie in like other folk?
Perhaps it came from my father but it feels much deeper. As I say, not so much a sense of responsibility but a sense of guilt. Like I had done something profoundly wrong that I must make daily recompense for. I socialised with freinds from a similar fold. Other workers who couldn't feel whole nor satiated till they were sore. We formed brotherhoods of support to get us through. Always drinking. Always drinking.
Neither the work nor the alcohol could hide it. There was something wrong.
Through my younger days I was always more of an observer. Always the outsider watching them at play. Never able to dance or excel at sport. Not having the innocence to be in the moment. That glorious prerequisite for sport.
Yet I could find it in art. In drawing, in writing even. It is where my strength lies.
So often it is the case that we can not see the value in what we are skilled at because it takes no effort. It is recognised in sport that those with most aptitude do well till their teens. After this, natural ability, having always been good without having to try can be an obstacle. You train less thinking your gift will carry you but the trainers succeed. Those talentless dullards who try hardest end up on top. It is the story of Keegan and George Best.
I think of those in my old field of furniture who have no gift for design but a real hunger to be good. I think of myself who did well at school till I needed to try.
When I became ill last year I was completely incapacitated. I would wake from horrific dreams in the early hours. The streets were empty so I would take my insomnia through them. Marching along, shaking adrenalin from my back. As they day unfolded terror would keep me in. The rising volume of a boiling kettle like a train up my spine. No way to turn the volume down. Depersonalisation. Reality itself no constant. An ever changing hallucinatory storm. The anxiety and fear I had medicated against for decades came down upon me. Psychiatric diagnoses group together disparate anomalies that have nothing in common and mystify rather than clarify. Simply, I was very ill, still am ill.
Yet accepting this, giving myself space to recover had never felt an option. I thought if I can continue to work then everything else will take care of itself. As I bandaged myself up and went out to fight again I was holding up a landslide. Addictions crept in as I desperately tried to plug the holes.
Now the storm has subsided sufficiently to write this. My recovery has been long and slow. A week can go by with only a few tremors then a simple operation will catapult me in to severe mental turmoil again.
I can see now I had built a life against the grain. Fighting the natural flow had seemed part of it all. I found virtue in suffering. Pleasure in the pain.
But it brought me close to death. The call of the reaper could be heard. Each night I wanted an ending. One always comes if you want it enough.
Saul Bellow said 'death is the dark backing a mirror needs if we are to see anything'. Perhaps my subconscious sniffing around the idea of self slaughter was just that. A need for a sight of the end to deliver meaning. No one knows how close they have come. It is sinful and an insult to suicides to think about suicide when you don't have it in you. I never thought of it head on. Gary Speed became a preoccupation. I read about the single biggest killer in young men almost as an abstract. Just weighing the depth of my despair.
I suspect it took the fear of the end for me to accept defeat. To hit the rock bottom recovering addicts speak of. But suicide is worse than murder, it kills everyone. The severity of the act ridicules all others. The end of everything and that means everyone is beyond the imagining.
Both parents recited the story making it in to family legend. I suspect my fathers presence being instrumental in my heroics.
My work ethic deserves no religious claims. Brought up by my father as a devout atheist I have none yet he had a white working class conservative attitude to work. The rhetoric still echoes in me, 'the world doesn't owe you a living' being among his favorite slogans on the matter.
For a year or two after leaving home I did rebel, trying to see work in the dark responsible way of earlier generations. The toil of pit and mill still echoed round northern towns in the 1970s. It would take Thatcher to deliver unemployment and resignation through her destruction of industry.
Choosing to become a joiner was a whim. I had no great revelation as some do on the wonders of timber and constructing frames. There was a growing awareness in me of the structure of the man made world around me and a feeling I may feel duty bound to contribute. The real feeling, if I am to be honest was much closer to dissatisfaction with shoddiness. A frustration that others hadn't thought designs through, hadn't bothered to execute them properly.
There was a sense of identity that grew. The familiarity of tools and timber. When asked what I did I could clearly explain and feeling that the explanation was easy was reassuring. Familiarity overrides safety. A common human trait to take it to the end. Death becomes preferable to stepping outside the comfort zone of knowing who you are.
There was a sense that to understand the world I should be a participant. A sense that when I woke I should join in. Scrape the ice from my windscreen. Drive to somewhere else in one of those vans and lend a hand.
Time went on and I found myself not just taking part but orchestrating work. Coming home tired, covered in dust, aching in the shower before soothing myself with alcohol had a masochistic pleasure that assuaged the guilt.
Where had this guilt come from? Why did I struggle to lie in like other folk?
Perhaps it came from my father but it feels much deeper. As I say, not so much a sense of responsibility but a sense of guilt. Like I had done something profoundly wrong that I must make daily recompense for. I socialised with freinds from a similar fold. Other workers who couldn't feel whole nor satiated till they were sore. We formed brotherhoods of support to get us through. Always drinking. Always drinking.
Neither the work nor the alcohol could hide it. There was something wrong.
Through my younger days I was always more of an observer. Always the outsider watching them at play. Never able to dance or excel at sport. Not having the innocence to be in the moment. That glorious prerequisite for sport.
Yet I could find it in art. In drawing, in writing even. It is where my strength lies.
So often it is the case that we can not see the value in what we are skilled at because it takes no effort. It is recognised in sport that those with most aptitude do well till their teens. After this, natural ability, having always been good without having to try can be an obstacle. You train less thinking your gift will carry you but the trainers succeed. Those talentless dullards who try hardest end up on top. It is the story of Keegan and George Best.
I think of those in my old field of furniture who have no gift for design but a real hunger to be good. I think of myself who did well at school till I needed to try.
When I became ill last year I was completely incapacitated. I would wake from horrific dreams in the early hours. The streets were empty so I would take my insomnia through them. Marching along, shaking adrenalin from my back. As they day unfolded terror would keep me in. The rising volume of a boiling kettle like a train up my spine. No way to turn the volume down. Depersonalisation. Reality itself no constant. An ever changing hallucinatory storm. The anxiety and fear I had medicated against for decades came down upon me. Psychiatric diagnoses group together disparate anomalies that have nothing in common and mystify rather than clarify. Simply, I was very ill, still am ill.
Yet accepting this, giving myself space to recover had never felt an option. I thought if I can continue to work then everything else will take care of itself. As I bandaged myself up and went out to fight again I was holding up a landslide. Addictions crept in as I desperately tried to plug the holes.
Now the storm has subsided sufficiently to write this. My recovery has been long and slow. A week can go by with only a few tremors then a simple operation will catapult me in to severe mental turmoil again.
I can see now I had built a life against the grain. Fighting the natural flow had seemed part of it all. I found virtue in suffering. Pleasure in the pain.
But it brought me close to death. The call of the reaper could be heard. Each night I wanted an ending. One always comes if you want it enough.
Saul Bellow said 'death is the dark backing a mirror needs if we are to see anything'. Perhaps my subconscious sniffing around the idea of self slaughter was just that. A need for a sight of the end to deliver meaning. No one knows how close they have come. It is sinful and an insult to suicides to think about suicide when you don't have it in you. I never thought of it head on. Gary Speed became a preoccupation. I read about the single biggest killer in young men almost as an abstract. Just weighing the depth of my despair.
I suspect it took the fear of the end for me to accept defeat. To hit the rock bottom recovering addicts speak of. But suicide is worse than murder, it kills everyone. The severity of the act ridicules all others. The end of everything and that means everyone is beyond the imagining.
Monday 16 January 2012
Skagboys by Irvine Welsh
Great to hear that Irvine Welshs Skagboys will be out soon. By all accounts it is his greatest work. Trainspotting was a beautiful book that changed or opened possibilities for the novel. Though some found the dialect difficult it sopoke to me in a way no book had before. Using the first person narratives of strikingly different characters and rejecting conventions of symmetry it gave voice to a generation of young disenfranchised men. The players were as if I knew them and the thought of seeing them on the screen was exciting. I have seldom been so disappointed in a film as I was when I walked out of Trainspotting. All intelligence was thrown away in favour of a 'Carry on up the hypodermic' comedy.
Time went by, Welshs cash in books of its' back such as Ecstasy weren't bad but it wouldn't be until Glue that he found his way again. Skagboys doesn't sound promising, playing in to the drug porn hand yet, if al,l I read is true the book delivers. Essentially Trainspotting is an accurate look at a group of working class males growing up together and as such is peerless.
Dark Matters
The consolation of imaginary things is not imaginary consolation. Herein lies my answer to the current consensus that many atheists appear to agree with Dawkins yet find him in someway awkward to love. It seems to me very easy to not believe in the skygod, be deeply against religion yet still pray to God for help when things get tough.
Philip K Dick- The Man in the High Castle
In March BBC 1 is showing a 3 part mini series based on Philip nK Dicks dystopian alternative history book The Man in the High Castle. It is produced though not directed by Ridley Scott who made Bladerunner. As a big fan of Philip K Dick I am looking forward to watching but hope that the usual does not occur. The theme of Dicks work was 'what is real', his work tackled the subject using science fiction as a tool. Every film version of his work seems to take the superficial subjects yet ignoore the meenings. Who can forget Bladerunners omission of Mercerism, the religion or Empathy boxes? we were left with a decent sci fi film but not satisfied. It was, however, better than Total Recall or Minority Report. I keep meening to write a piece on Philip K Dick. I re read The Transmigration of Timothy Archer over christmas. One of his last books where he was assessing his religious experience of 1974. More to come.
Waves
If you think of an event in your childhood it would be right to say that no part of you that exists now existed then. It is much more accurate to think of ourselves as waves rather than chunks of matter. In the same way that no part of the water in a wave that passes by Scotland travels with the wave as it goes south to Cornwall so none of the matter we were made of as children is there in adulthood. Given that this is true how criminally responsible need I feel for things have done in the past?
The Iron Lady
I haven't seen Meryl Streeps performance as Thatcher and may not do for a while. I still recall how the 1980s began with our art and music entwined with politics, earnest small tied singers sporting NHS specks ushered in the decade. By the end of the decade we were doing our utmost to forget politics altogether as we dropped acid and pills to dance to music free from politics or performer. Let us not forget how politically divided the 80s were. By the time she was ousted by her party I no longer bought papers let alone watched Question Time. Your politics was something you kept close to your chest. Acid House saw the sons of miners dance with the sons of Lords.
2012
New year allows us to draw a line in the sand, to step culturally forward. Let us hope we never hear balding middle aged men describe inanimate objects as being 'sexy' again. The picture these perverts vigorously masterbating over ones furniture was never a pleasent image. It was a trend that hit around the time of Viagra and was undoubtedly related. There is a reason sexuality fades, ask your teenagers, this doesn't reflect well on the older 'design' types who affect an artistic staying 'in touch'. In fact best leave any issues of tactility to the young. And don't dance at weddings.
Restructuring for 2012
Having had my soul ripped apart these last few months I find myself rebuilding a new life. For years I had quietly mourned the life I thought I would never have. My breakdown has given me new hope. Now I will write those books.
Looking through my CDs the other day I found plenty that I can not remember buying. Reding old pages from my blog I honestly can't remember writing. There are vast chunks of the last 3 or 4 years that I have missed. Virtually the entirty of this blog was written whilst I knew what I was doing. I was ashamed for a while, ashamed of things I have said. I still am but I have to accept that I was seriously ill. I am not yet fully well but I can now see at least how bad I was.
Around the time Richard died I lost it. Richard was my closest freind, the one constant in my life from 18 to now. After he died the year following has but slender shards of memory. I'm still trying to work out what happened myself.
I also saw some postings I made on a woodworkers forum that feel the words of an alien. Why didn't anyone tell me I was off my mind?
Elliotts Records RIP
Back in 1987, me and Andy used to have a stall on Leeds flea market, for further reading check out 'how did I get here?' parts 2 or 3. At the time we joined a good freind from schooldays who had evolved his hobby in to a business. Elliots stall sold second hand vinyl. From here I believe he moved his stock to a shop in Halifax that ran for years before he again relocated to Huddersfield under the name Wall of Sound. Being interested in music, particularly old record shops I was pleased to read in the book 'Last Shop Standing' that Elliot was still going. The book was written by a fan of independent record shops who had travelled the country meeting those whos shops were still in business. It was with great sadness that I heard Elliot had ceased trading. To think that from the mid 80s, through thick and thin this valuable shop had survived gave me faith in life. I sincerely hope that Elliot finds a new way to get by. His achievement is a great one. Some sacrifice their love for money, others never get to do what they really want to. If you are reading, Elliot, I hope you can see this as a new beginning. I am recovering from a severe breakdown that has seen my business fall away too. On the plus side I have decided that I am going to write the books I always wanted to. If I hadn't have got ill I would still be percevering in a line of work I had long lost interest in but dare not admit. The future is bright, good luck old freind.
The Deepest Darkest Winter
I have yet to summon the strength to write about these last few months. I will do one day. It has been easily the most difficult time of my life and has left me tee total.
Saturday 7 January 2012
BEN'S PRISON BLOG: Hip Hip for the Doc!
BEN'S PRISON BLOG: Hip Hip for the Doc!: After a full hour of mind-bending tedium in the woodwork shop, the GP has rescued me from the perils of sandpapering. It seems that I'm suc...
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