My Haiku —

*

*

Chiaroscuro ~
sly Jesus pique ~
my moon’s resplendent.

*

Skinned nettle-stem ~
spun a dancing helix ~
I have cordage.

*

Sunlight ~
stalked my cheap suit ~
the day I buried her.

*

Following birdsong ~
skull’s sullen ‘teen’ ~
cheeps.

*

Overcast ~
yet weeds look sunny still ~
seedy season.

*

Two doolally daubers ~
brawling Ernst ~
gave Tanning what for!

*

Obiter dictum ~
dark stare decisis ~
oh nobile officium!

*

A sizeable clot ~
an encryption of braiding and rope uncut ~
my neighbour’s grass.

*

Odious rapine node ~
stem-end a shriekery of yellow ~
dandelion!

*

The pillowcase and rope ~
were in place ~
cusp!

*

Small in scale ~
a grisaille of lichen ~
our Scottish bothy.

*

My eyes speared ~
full moon flicks ~
a posey-glow.

*

Brazen badinage ~
sparkling spit at bus-stop ~
spring sun.

*

The cuckold’s ire ~
skipped like a flea ~
winter sunset.

*

Crunch and crackle ~
though the tide kisses a soft au revoir ~
shingle.

*

An auld yin’s fingers ~
rosily rasp ~
frost on window.

*

Brittle laughter ~
borne upon clown-garb ~
crows caw on.

*

Thistle slough ~
sighs in a heart-glow ~
eclipse!

*

And here’s how it should be done:

*

Old pond’s silence ~
a frog jumps ~
splash-sound!

(Matsuo Bashô: 1644 – 1694)

*

Galloping horse ~
sniffing their hocks ~
scent of violets.

(Chiyo-ni: 1703 – 1775)

*

Hey boatman ~
no pissing on the moon ~
in the waves!

(Kobayashi Issa: 1763 -1827)

*

To believe in Buddha ~
in the blue truth ~
of the wheat ears.

(Ogiwara Seisensui: 1884 – 1976)

*

Mute*American:Genocide*Polemic —

*

*

*

*

*

Speechless!

*

Visual Artist: Barry X Ball —

*

*

‘The artist, taking the life-cast head of his New York gallerist as a jumping-off point, in a concerted effort to reinvigorate the sub-genre of romantic portrait sculpture, has here conjoined his signature fever-pitch execution intensity and a newfound conceptual tenderness. Realized as a mirror-image of the subject, at 85% scale, in an exceptional specimen of dramatically-figured, exuberantly-colored translucent onyx, exhibiting a layered surface suffused with a ‘sfumato’ overlay of foliate relief and coincident miniscule diagonal / radial flutes, the stony surrogate captures, in soft Galatean contravention of its obdurate materiality, a moment of poignant reverie. The artist-designed integral / modular base, it’s tapering parabolic sweep flowing into the sculpture’s glass-polished flute stem (which, in turn, terminates in a silhouetted arboreal fringe), conceived in parallel with the sculpture, precisely-fabricated in stainless steel, limestone, acrylic-spray-lacquered aluminum and wood (and a variety of subsidiary materials) by a studio-coordinated consortium of disparate fabricators, is reminiscent, alternately, of traditional ‘socles’ and mid-20th-century Modernist furniture pedestals. The resultant deceptively-diminutive ensemble, created with deep reverence for and specific focus on the history of sculpture, makes an expansive case for the critical reconsideration of prevailing contemporary practice, while simultaneously probing both the subject’s psychology and her complex relationship to the artist.’

2007 – 2008

*

*

*

*

*

*

Installation Title:

‘… paired, mirrored, flayed, javelin-impaled, cable-delineated-pendentive-funnel-suspended, squid-like, priapic / labio-vulval, Janusian meta-portrait lozenges of the artist, screaming, and Matthew Barney, in two guises: determined combatant and recently-deceased, resigned stoic, with the first composite figure richly embossed, in a manner reminiscent of late-Renaissance Milanese parade armor, with a cornucopia of silhouetted motifs: Abrahamic ecclesiastical symbols, animals, decorative flourishes, and protuberant, warty, half-spheres; and the second devoid of embellishment, in book-split, medially-bifurcated onyx from Baja California: half an exuberantly-variegated, intensely-colored, fractal-patterned, striped-and-spotted white-yellow-red; half a comparatively-uniform semi-translucent, nacreous, pale yellow-white with differing surface treatments keyed to the corresponding swag-draped corporeal flay strata: a glistening mucosal sheen for the splayed entrails, either miniature horizontal flutes or a micro-stippled matte finish for the mid-level viscera, and either gnarled, ridged, sfumato-esque soft-focus ornamental relief or, again, diminutive horizontal flutes for the epidermis, with eyes and oral features gleaming, respectively, with a moist, lachrymal / salivary polish, with mannered, attenuated, crown-like cranium-top shatter-burst exit-wounds.’

2000-2007

*

The Breathing Earth Simulation: by David Bleja —

*

*

Forget the illustration above, momentarily …

… and let me tell you about the Link provided below:

*

I loved this little simulation … simple … but very informative. Quite mesmerizing too; when you leave it running for a while.

See how your own country compares by hovering your pointer over it. The science of it all is, of course, an approximation … but this is all explained if you scroll down the page … so it is an in-exact science simulation; but it illustrates our need of one another superbly well.

Essentially, we share the one sod and the one lump of rock; is it not ‘not before time’ we started looking after it?

There are a good few Links provided on-site for those of you who may wish to delve deeper.

(And, eh, apologies to any rabid [rancid] Capitalists out there, for the illustration above: I’m just mischief-making … it’s as in my nature … as it is in yours to exploit)!

*

The Breathing Earth Simulation.

*

The Most Beautiful Piece Of Ochre Ever Held By A Primate —

*

*

*

The world’s oldest example of abstract art?

*

No, not at all; of course not. But, given those marks were made at least 70,000 years ago; something intriguing was definitely going on.

That ’something’ may well have happened— and probably did —before this piece of ochre ‘Art’ was contrived … but as it is— as I type —the earliest known example yet discovered: it, for the moment, points to this period as quite a significant juncture in our history as a species.

The reason it has proved such a stunning find:

It— for the scientific community —knocked a strongly-held and widely-spread theory of human development back by almost 40,000 years. (It’s never a good idea to place too much faith in ‘gospel’).

This piece of shaped and inscribed ochre was discovered— along with one other —in 2001, at Blombos Cave in South Africa (290 kilometres [180 miles] east of Cape Town). It can be dated from its exact position in the metres of strata on the cave-floor within which it was found: all the other gradually built-up evidence of human habitation and natural in-fill … evidence, for the most part, pertaining to survival (diet: and the acquisition/consumption thereof).

It has been subjected to rigorous scientific study and there is now no doubt the scoring— the geometric striation —was conceived and produced with deliberation. The marks were not made haphazardly; they’re not accidental (i.e. they were not made as a result of running a flint, chert or obsidian blade across the ochre to, say, test for sharpness … and they are not the result of the limitations imposed by the human body in holding something in one hand and absent-mindedly marking it with an implement held in the other). The particular ochre (from this locale) has been subjected to an equal degree of testing and its specific properties— with regard to how it will flake, fracture and crumble when subjected to just-as-specific varieties of pressure and stress —have been documented, with electron microscope, and comparisons made:

The marks were drawn! They were not ’sliced’ into the ochre by running a sharp slither or ‘blade’ along it; the design was inscribed with downward pressure and a point … a ’stylus’.

Why is this important: because it is the earliest example of the human mind creating something in the abstract … some thing symbolized something else … even if it was only in the mind of the individual who created it while they created it. That 70,000 year old piece of ochre— that externalized cerebral messaging — that intent —could be transported … could be shown … described … and discussed. It ceased to be a piece of ochre; the human mind had transformed it into something else entirely! It wasn’t a weapon and it wasn’t a tool, and it had no practical application, as an object in itself, to the lives people then led: it was extraneous to survival. It was a ‘leap’ in the processes of human thought.

This ‘event’— previously —had been thought by the boffins to have taken place about 30,000 to 35,000 years ago.

It is known, because the skeletal evidence has been discovered, and its gorgeous sequential evolutionary development studied (though some among us would say their gawd was having another chuckle), that modern man— our Subspecies sapiens, in the Species sapiens, in the Genus of Homo: i.e. Homo sapiens sapiens —had, by 200,000 years ago, diverged and advanced to tentatively and tenuously exist and coexist on the continent of what is now Africa. Our species did not leave Africa until about 70,000 years ago though: Homo erectus is surmised to be the first species of upright-walking, tool-making/-using, hunter/gatherer Great Apes to move North into colder climes (first setting forth 2 million years ago btw … and it is believed ‘he’— from fossil evidence of the species discovered on islands —had the ability to make rafts too). And— get this —up till 18,000 years ago we shared the planet with at least three other distinct species of upright-walking, tool-making/-using, hunter/gatherer Great Apes.

What has proved far harder to fathom was when behaviour, we could and would recognize and embrace as our own, first came into being. (Any evidence would have rotted— or been abraded to a good deal less than a memory —in the millennia since it was first produced). Think of it as a ‘light bulb’ moment: when was the ’switch’ thrown? At what point did those— our —early brains develop suffice to engage with endeavours and behaviour external to the rigours of our hunter/gatherer past? When did the cerebral leap take place? (Though, to look at much of modern man’s behaviour; you’d be forgiven for wondering if it ever did).

The cave-paintings of bison, auroch, mammoth, ibex, boar, deer, cattle, bull and horse etc at Lascaux in France (16,000 years old) and Altamira in Spain (18,500 years ago, then a break in usage till 16,500 years ago) … and the earliest examples of cave-painting yet discovered at the Apollo 11 caves in Namibia (23,000 to 25,000 years ago) … had proven the most solid collection of evidence as to when this ‘leap’ had fully gestated into a sophisticated cultural norm and necessity; they don’t tell us when it started though.

Not only animals are represented by this cave-’Art’. Symbols proliferate: geometric patterns comprised of dots; and rods and bars repeated in linear sequence. As do basic narratives of the hunt; or stylized human bodies and body-parts (e.g. the vulva and, of course, its associations with fertility); and hand marking … both impressed and ’stencilled’. These paintings are encountered predominantly in far-from-accessible areas of the cave-networks … painted, we presume, in relative isolation by chosen-for-the-task individuals and by the light of burning fat or oil. They obviously had a special and specific purpose: they were not decorative. They were indicative of something symbolic.

Pablo Ruiz Picasso— mad misogynist egomaniacal bam though he was —was, upon encountering these images for the first time, quoted as saying: (artistically) ‘We have learned nothing!’

They’re not Art though. It has been hypothesized the cave-painting was spiritual: perhaps ‘votive’ offerings— facilitators —with regard to the specific community within which they were produced: with a mind to future success in the hunt. The rock formations upon which they are painted may also suggest a connection between this world and another perceived: many of the animals are painted upon cherry-picked rock shapes— bulges and concavities —which naturally (to the human eye) suggest their forms. It has been suggested that, with the ‘dancing’ light in which they were produced and subsequently viewed, and the ‘artistic’ sophistication with which many of the later images are painted— e.g. an attempt at chiaroscuro is often made — the animals are not outlines; they are contrived in the ’round’ with an acute anatomical understanding of the animals in movement —the symbolized animals would become ever-more animated: alive! These animated ‘apparitions’, from an otherworld, could be touched (as most animals in the wild can’t; until they’re dying or dead) … they could be engaged … manipulated … and, in a way, for a shaman in a trance-state … the future could be ‘touched’ also.

This advanced and sophisticated work, along with earlier examples of ‘Art’ (the Woman of Willendorf and her ilk mentioned in the previous Post) had led many to believe the ‘light bulb’ moment in modern human development took place, as I said, at about 30,000 to 35,000 years ago. But the ochre from the Blombos Cave— overnight —knocked this notion for six: by a phenomenal margin too … ‘for six’ to the nth degree.

Ochre was an important mineral resource to early man. The paintings described above used many different, natural and easily-found, minerals but ochre (a naturally-occurring iron oxide in rock formations) proved particularly attractive because it is soft … easy to powder, mix with water/fat, and apply to a variety of surfaces. As a pigment its properties have good longevity and an intense opaque colouration. It is believed painted body-adornment with ochre helped define some of these early communities from their neighbours; as it does still, throughout the world, today. Ancient ‘graves’ have been found where the bones were polished to a sheen and painted with this mineral (among others). Documented, obviously cultural, behaviour from archaeological sites and anthropological study have found instances where the bones of the most-honoured deceased are carried between the various nomadic and seasonal settlements … or buried, in shallow graves, within the dwellings of the living, in a section of the home reserved especially for this purpose … and it is suspected this behaviour stretches far far back into our prehistory.

Though the lump of ochre from the Blombos Cave (and its companion) are unique in their marking … thousands of similarly-worked pieces of this mineral have been found: little cuboids and conical ‘pencils’ … obviously shaped, by a human hand for a specific purpose, and abraded further by use. And it was used for millennia upon millennia upon millennia. Artists, and some of our modern-day cultures, use it still (in much the same way it always was: even, we now know, 70,000 years ago).

Why does this excite me so much? Well, as an artist, I’ve expounded for years in support of the discipline I studied. I’m usually met with a fair degree of hostility. But take a look around you: almost every damn thing you own, or can see, or interract with, started off life as a symbolic mark … by an artist; a designer; an engineer; an architect; a writer; an inventor; a composer; a musician; a computer programmer; a carpenter (you get the idea). A mark on paper or whatever: an externalized abstraction of human thought— symbolizing some form of human potential —created the world around you. What that primate, in that cave, started off 70,000 years ago (as far as we’re aware presently) led to the ‘light bulb’ moment: the ‘leap’; symbolism; ‘artistic’ endeavour; storytelling and received wisdom; ceremony and spirituality; pictography; writing; mathematics; science; philosophy; et cetera et cetera.

Our brains had evolved.

The next time you’re gabbin’ on the phone, and— absent-mindedly or consciously —pick up a pen or pencil to have a quick doodle; think about that primate in the Blombos Cave (you might even be related)! I’m sure this lump of ochre— their deliberate and deliberated upon ‘doodle’ —was discovered by or shown to companions at some point; perhaps that is why it was found within the cumulative strata of their cave-midden … misunderstood and judged to be of no value. She or he was laughed at for the dalliance maybe. But she or he is perhaps— if she or he was the first —the reason you’re able to read this now (without first having to sweep the shell and bone and useless ‘doodles’ into the midden à votre caverne).

‘Artists’, without a doubt in my opinion, were among the first to be laughed at maliciously and with ignorance …

… they are all laughing last still.

That beautiful piece of ochre …

… created by:

Kingdom: Animalia … Phylum: Chordata (with backbone) … Class: Mammalia (females have mammary glands) … Order: Primates (a single pair of pectoral mammary glands) … Family: Hominidae (humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, orang-utans) … Genus: Homo … Species: sapiens … Subspecies: sapiens …

… (i.e. Homo sapiens sapiens) …

… is the ultimate FanTabula Rasa! (And— until it can be proven otherwise —the progenitor of them all).

*

Make an informed choice:

EVOLUTION!

*

Gil Grachison, April 2009.

*

A Word About Art (My Final Word) —

*

*

A Word About Art (My Final Word):

*

My Carving:

*

Think: decomposing fungi and the new shoot’s ascension. Think: of a cigarette latchkeyed to weep, smokey tendrils skyward, in a sun-touched tray. Think: rivulets of resin from the wounded pine. Think: of repose; and the fingers and toes of a new-born. Think: rain-drenched leaves … rotting moistly to mulch. Think: surrealist elbows and think— with a giggle —of Salvador’s curlicued ‘tache. Think: of laughter as a million mating snakes. Think: of sadness sloughed.

Think: craniate and animal bone … weathered, polished and dew-bejewelled. Think: labial fold licked, bellybutton and lobe. Think: beetles beauteous and legion and thoroughly absorbed in their singularity. Think: bacteria mul-ti-plied and mag-ni-fied. Think: complex knots and convolution. Think: plaits and nautical braiding. Think: sodden corduroy and seaweed submerged. Think: penetrative plunge and the surge of re-emergence. Think: tension and tauten the thought. Think: ligament, knuckle, and the momentary epidermal crimp. Think: fingerprint. Think: of the helix … mirrored and— one with the other —rapt!

Think: of the crease, and of the crevasse, of the brain, and of the intestine, and— most of all —of desire.

Think: crenellation— and the splay —of ribcage. Think: brassy apparatus before all demand it be purely, pristinely, steel and stainless. Think: jellyfish, cuttlefish and octopi. Think: cavities … the pleated ear; the nostril; lubricious genitalia wilting and sated. Think: clitoris and clitoral hood. Think: crêpe … and the withered cock dumb in docility. Think: tears on a bairn’s cheek … evaporating. Think: swathes of hair underwater. Think: of the freedom in a frown. Think: interwoven and unravelled. Think: of the serpentine. Think: tongue and nipple and the delicious itch. Think: of light-wood piercing dark-wood … and dark piercing light. Think: of fingers entwining the incomprehension of love and and the incomprehension of hate in an orgasm near-as-damn mutual. Think: ripples. Think: f—ked-upon and sweat-drenched sheets on an empty bed. Think: of the prophylactic spent … and consider the beauty in its repellence. Think: one million mating snakes … again. Think: one solitary armadillo … for the hell of it. Think: of a young willowy girl lazily, but expertly, exploring herself and …

…think: of her fingers, in the darkness, rolling the moon along its parabola in the night sky …

… think: of the contraction, the muscular flutter, and the explosion of her orgasm as a sunrise.

Come …

… think: ebb and flow. Think: pagan.

Think: of me.

*

My Craving:

*

Think: upon our first night together. Think: of the deep and warm but unutterable bond— between you and I —which the years and the love, and the deceit, and the malice of others cannot disentangle … or dissemble. Think: that any anticipated unease or discomfort does not— in our reality —exist. Think: of lying in one another’s arms— or on our backs —whispering in the caver’s cathedral of our being. Think: of saying all that needs to be said with our eyes. Think: of the narrative bubbling forth from the silence. Think: of bodyheat. Think: of what you want to happen— or what you need to happen —happening. Think: of the tingle and sparked charge of touch. Think: of our first kiss as being just that … our first kiss. Think: of laughter and giggles (both internal and aloud). Think: that my tears do not stem from pain … they are the release of pain. Think: of my love for you having never diminished because it has, quite simply, just started; and will always be reborn. Think: of lost years.

Think: of me.

Think: of time … the brevity of both human life and— moreso —human happiness.

Think: of potential.

Think: of love as expressed by the eyes— and the eyes alone —of Michelle Yeoh in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Think: of Willem Dafoe’s psychological molestation of Laura Dern. Think: of the spiky-haired French lead in Les Amants du Pont Neuf. Think: of my absorbtion and arousal on viewing Cronenberg’s Crash. Think: of ‘The Dude’ in The Big Lebowski. Think: (with the slightest tilt of reality) of Beatrice Dalle’s self-destruction in Betty Bleu … as simply a better way of living. Think: of Nicholas Cage’s kung-fu. Think: of Amelie’s eyes and Buster Keaton’s sorrowful stare. Think: of both the humanity and the futility of-it-all in Charles Bukowski’s poetry. Think: of me asking whether you’ve read The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake. Think: of Kundera’s Unbearable Lightness of Being. Think: of two books by a Scottish author, Alexander Trocchi … Young Adam, and Invisible Insurrection of a Million Minds. Think: of me reading, over and over, Catch 22 and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. Think: of me asking you to source a poem, An Artist, by Seamus Heaney, because it will help you to understand me— and us —better. Think: of me planning to follow in the footsteps of Alasdair Gray; peppering my novel with self-penned illustration. Think: of the great Henri Cartier Bresson laying down his camera, for the last thirty years of his life, to pursue what he came to consider the higher calling … drawing and painting. Think: of Picasso, his genius and his misogyny … and the suicide of his ex-partners. Think: of Frida Kahlo in her birdcage. Think: of Francis Bacon being beaten to sexual climax. Think: of me— and then —think of us. Think: that what we have is anything but destructive.

Think: of our first passionate kiss … and our bodies becoming less than solid.

Think: of pressed flesh and liquid limb.

Think: of us as sharing lung.

Think: of lava lapping at the loin and a strobed mind’s eye. Think: of my joy. Think: of an old malignancy fleeing my body with the curiosity of caress. Think: of me disengaging from the kiss to skate a silken fingernail over the spasmed tic ‘n’ twitch of belly, and breast, and arm, and thigh, and soul. Think: of me nuzzling and nibbling your flesh. Think: of love as a tender mastication.

Think: of submission as an orgasm in reverse.

Think: of me returning you to this point of departure. Think: of coming … with fondness. Think: of me turning you over to lie gently— prone —on your belly. Think: of me kissing your nape and playing with your hair. Think: of the heat in my breath and note my growing labour in the simple act of breathing. Think: of me drinking down your scent. Think: of me tasting a state of being unknown. Think: of a relayed funicular of fingertip scudding softly along the fairway of your spine.

Think: of my cock … hot … hard … harried by patience.

Think: of it.

Think: of others.

Think: of pulling me in but just think it … don’t do it … not yet. Think: of me … not wanting to force … not wishing to steal … desiring to be absorbed. Think: of me bearing low once more to kiss your neck; and whisper the curse and worthiness and unworthiness and curse of my devotion. Think: of my hands searching … investigating … remembering the thrill of intrusion. Think: of cock and balls and leery mute lewdness brushing buttock and sentience and gall. Think: of me inching down your body— incrementally —with breath, tongue-tickle and lip. Think: of your own arousal. Think: of my skin dusting yours. Think: of touching yourself … and don’t. Think: that I know newly discovered lines, textures and form embody the profit of living; not the demerit of time. Think: of our bodies at twenty years old and surrender to the notion that— in our minds —they always will be. Think: of how long I’ve waited for these moments. Think: of my overwhelming, inescapable desire to plunge into you … to swim in you … to melt into you. Think: of me. Think: of me as a boy. Think: of how I will have to be taught, and given the time, to learn what you like.

Think: of me coming.

Think: of the spasmed shaft.

Think: not yet.

Think: of my heart pounding. Think: of the blood searing through me to inflame and engorge. Think: of my hands mapping contour and crease and conviviality. Think: of my wonder. Think: of my knowing all about you and knowing nothing. Think: of me as lost … and wishing to remain so.

Think: dirty!

Think: of me tasting your skin with a slick wriggle. Think: of my whispered— and occasionally coarse —sentiment. Think: of me drunk— paralytic —in an otherworld of odour. Think: of a cascade of kneading and stroking and cupping and licking. Think: of me as an animal. Think: of my sighs distending to ohs and low groans. Think: of my need. Think: of me wanting to f—k you desperately … but relishing and savouring the wait and anticipation more. Think: of my desire to consume and be consumed. Think: of the glistening baubled bead of pre-cum as it twinks to crown the tip of my dick. Think: of me, beyond care or propriety, releasing, f—k … oh f—k … I f—ken love you.

Think: of me honey … and aid my escape.

Think: of my fingers probing a slow ascendant dance of massage along the muscled confines of your spine. Think: of the soft hiss and rippled rasp of skin upon skin. Think: of my breathing. Think: rhythm and arrhythmia. Think: of closing your eyes and seeing it all. Think: of the prickle of ball-hair on buttock. Think: of my alertness and concentration. Think: dissipation. Think: of me braiding descendent trails of kiss, breath and saliva as I squeeze and ease the boules of tension and knotted toxin from below your shoulder’s bladed promontory. Think: of communicating your enjoyment and contentment. Think: of f—king me as a gift … an honour bestowed. Think: of me easing down to the base of the bed until my legs straddle your feet. Think: of hair on sole. Think: tickle and prickle and irritation and not giving me— or yourself —the pleasure of knowing it bugs you. Think: tension and, again, tauten the thought. Think: of me reaching forward to softly grab and compress the backs of your thighs. Think: of me gliding a gaze along your body … as it lies prone in the candied candleglow. Think: of me collapsing inside, with need, at the sight. Think: of me trailing fingertip along the length of your legs and over the swell of your cheeks. Think: of me blowing soft, warm jets of air over creases and kinks. Think: of me tracing long, thin, silken pinstripes of saliva along your thighs. Think: of me blowing upon the design. Think: circles and figures of eight. Think: arabesques and filigree. Think: sin-spiralled ever-decreasingly. Think: of wetness and chill as you become aware— as I absorb myself above —of slimly-threaded semen the pulse of my cock is tacking to your feet and calves. Think: of the warmness I will endeavour to reinstate. Think: of me kneading your arse, kissing each cheek in turn, and slightly parting the gluteal fold. Think: of me slowly blowing again. Think: of me wanting to kiss— and tongue —your arsehole.

Think: of me.

Think: of me placing my hands under your shins— gently —just below the knees. Think: of me slightly— just slightly —parting your legs. Think: of how good your arse must look to me in the low light. Think: of talking and don’t. Think: of me stretching over and along your length so I can take your hands, from where they lie at your side, in mine. Think: of me slowly returning to your centre with kiss and sigh and lick and groan and curse and the unintelligible and the divine. Think: of me biting down gently upon your flesh. Think: al dente. Think: of the heat in my breathing. Think: of my growing excitement. Think: it cannot be long. Think: of me releasing your hands and placing my own against your inner thighs … to splay your legs further. Think: of how wet you are. Think: of me rearranging my posture to allow my legs to nestle between yours. Think: of my hands … now more insistent … rougher … less polite … rolling and broiling along and over and between and under your thighs. Think: of my fascination with your buttocks. Think: of a thousand kisses. Think: of fingernail and tweak and tickle and the hard hard grab. Think: of me pressing my body down low to nuzzle your backside. Think: of me craning my neck. Think: of me grabbing a cheek in either hand. Think: of me tonguing the crease. Think: of your own pelvic tilt and tease. Think: of me craning my neck further … lower … to taste and avail myself of your own lubrication.

Think: of one finger … insistent … upon the point of entry.

Think: of me.

Think: of me raising my head once more. Think: of anticipation as our very being drawn taut as a harp-string … sweaty and oxidized … but set to sing. Think: of me slowly— softly —kneading your buttocks further apart. Think: of me staring and my breathing becalmed. Think: of me inching closer. Think: of the heat. Think: of picturing it. Think: of a moist, searing tongue-tip touching the button …

… and probing passage.

Think: submission and conquest conjoined.

Think: that even if your wish— at that moment —is, ‘please stop’, I will do so, without hesitation …

… because I realize this termination …

… is only the start of something else.

Think: of me having a lot to learn … and the patience to do so.

Think: of me … my darling …

… with love.

*

Gil Grachison, February 2009.

(BTW: you tell a woman what to think at your peril)!

*

*

The Woman of Willendorf: (see first photograph) was originally called— unwisely, to afford the find Classical attributes —the ‘Venus of Willendorf’. It was discovered in 1908 by archaeologist Josef Szombathy, at a paleolithic site near Willendorf: a village in Lower Austria near the city of Krems.

This primal and powerful object was carved from oolitic limestone; which doesn’t occur naturally in that area. From the strata within which ’she’ was found, this small portable sculpture has been dated to sometime between 24,000 and 22,000 years before the gawdly claim their ‘Saviour’ was born.

What compelled her creation is, of course, unknown but the heavy emphasis upon her vulva, breasts, and swollen belly suggest a strong connection to fecundity. The ‘beading’ on the head of the figurine could be a representation of braiding or a headdress. It has been hypothesized the objects (a good few have been discovered in a wide range of locales) were idealized self-portraits … or suggested, perhaps, a possible connection with a mushroom cult, based on visual similarities between the figurine and a young Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria) mushroom. These fungi are psychoactive: but incredibly dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing. They have been used to inspire trance among many shamanistic societies and still have cultural bearing today. It should also be remembered that many many early cultures were matriarchal.

*

*

The ‘Venus of Brassempouy: found in 1894 at Brassempouy in France, this beautiful portrait head of a woman is— justifiably —one of the most famous works of ‘Ice Age’ art.

Made from ivory— from the core of a mammoth tusk —it is an accomplished piece of sculpture. Scraped and polished in outline: the eyebrows, nose and chin are carved in relief. The pupils in the eyes are marked by little holes. The hairstyle has been created by incised horizontal and vertical lines which form a pattern of squares. This is perhaps— as with the Woman of Willendorf —indicative of braiding, but when the figure was first discovered it was thought to be a decorative hood giving rise to the title, ‘Dame à la capuche’. The head is sometimes shown on a body reconstructed from a number of broken fragments found nearby; but actually appears to be a complete work. It is 23,000 years old.

*

If you’d like to see and learn more about sculptures and other art from prehistory:

The Bradshaw Foundation

*

Video: Emily Levine’s Theory Of Everything —

*

*

TED on why you should listen to her:

‘Humorist Emily Levine works a heady vein of humor, cerebral and thoughtful as well as very, very amusing. Oh, she’s got plenty of jokes. But her work, at its core, makes serious connections — between hard science and pop culture, between what we say and what we secretly assume … She plumbs the hidden oppositions, the untouchable not-quite-truths of the modern mind.

Her background in improv theater, with its requirement to always say “yes” to the other actor’s reality, has helped shape her worldview. Always suspicious of sharp either/or distinctions, she proposes “the quantum logic of and/and” — a thoroughly postmodern, scientifically-informed take on life that allows for complicated states of being. Like the one we’re in right now.’

*

‘I love to laugh and love a good mental workout. Rarely, if ever, have I had the two together. You have the rare gift of bringing philosophy to life AND of relating it to the major and mundane in our existence. AND of doing so with a wild and wonderful sense of humor.’

— Los Angeles Women’s Foundation.

*

Emily Levine’s Universe

*

Video: Dr Nathan Wolfe & Pandemic Virus —

*

*

Ted on why you should listen to him:

‘Using genetic sequencing, needle-haystack research, and dogged persistence (crucial to getting spoilage-susceptible samples through the jungle and to the lab), Nathan Wolfe has proven what was science-fiction conjecture only a few decades ago — not only do viruses jump from animals to humans, but they do so all the time. Along the way Wolfe has discovered several new viruses, and is poised to discover many more.

Wolfe’s research has turned the field of epidemiology on its head, and attracted interest from philanthropists at Google.org and the Skoll foundation. Better still, the research opens the door to preventing epidemics before they happen, sidelining them via early-warning systems and alleviating the poverty from which easy transmission emerges.’

*

‘Wolfe’s brand of globe-trotting, open-ended viral discovery echoes an almost Victorian scientific ethic, an expedition to catalog the unseen menagerie of the world.’

— Wired

*

Links regarding Dr Nathan Wolfe and his work.

*

Visual Artist: Francis Bacon —

*

*

*

*

*

My favourite artist: Francis Bacon …

‘Champagne for my real friends; and real pain for my sham friends!’

*

Francis Bacon (1909 – 1992)

*

Please visit the excellent Wikipedia Page on Francis Bacon.

*

I have a couple of regrets in life. One of them is never having met my favourite artist before he died. It could have been achieved; he was a creature of habit. Sadly, so was I: we shared the self-destruct inanity— for a good long while in fact —but he harnessed the constructive far far better than I … and, though he was more-or-less based in London and I was more-or-less based not too far away in Glasgow, I failed this desire.

I can’t be sure; but I think Francis Bacon survived the ‘loss’. Now, as my own mortality tips me a wink from not too great a distance, I’ve suddenly become a little bit peeved I didn’t get off my backside.

I have spent years studying his work— the free-form concavities and fit-to-burst striations of human-and-animal, flesh and ghostly bone, juicily-riddled with Life’s isolating anguish (but adopting, with dignity, a comportment near-as-damn balletic) —and I’ve spent as many years reading articles, interviews, and books on this man’s oeuvre. I often, as intimated above, planned to ’stalk’ the bugger in London … his man-oeuvres, ho-ho … but it— as shamefully confessed above —never came to pass.

The ways in which it never came to pass almost define Francis Bacon’s invented gift to the Great Tradition in Visual Art: the deadening explosions and implosions of my own life— usually involving the heart or not being the brightest bulb in the bucket of duds — my concavities and tumescent ‘hells’ — my isolation and vulnerability —always seemed to get in the way when the notion most keenly paid a visit. I’d have loved to have thanked him though: for delighting me, bamboozling me (as another, I now know lesser, artist), making me, and absolving me in equal measure.

The closest I have ever come to a ‘pilgrimage’ was to go see an exhibition at the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin city centre (previously called The Municipal Gallery of Modern Art):

In 2001, along with a fantastic display of Bacon’s paintings, photography collection, belongings, and (never before believed to have existed and, back then, inauthenticated) sketches; the gallery reconstructed, brick-by-brick, dust-speck by dust-speck, Bacon’s London studio. This room, to the last detail, had been catalogued and archived … carefully dismantled … preserved … transported to Dublin (where Bacon was born) … then reassembled in one of the Hugh Lane’s gallery studios. The reconstruction was not, I imagine, unlike peeking into Francis’ head as an artist (and the solitary, ascetic, masochistic, nature of the man— maybe, in a way, any man —given to this endeavour). The sorrow, the pain, the drive, the futility, the obvious fire within to expunge— what he needed to express —permeated every nook and cranny and surface beheld.

The view confronting the visitor wasn’t about aspiration or success on any human level we’ve come to associate with the terms— it certainly did not illustrate what many of us would associate with artistic success and how said success was facilitated, attained and subsequently ordered —no: the view was ugly … the view declared— almost accusingly —our intrusion upon an acutely personal, perhaps demented, long-term bout of introspection, and rage, and self-healing, and catharsis, and frenzied bloodletting … a creative and perpetual and emotive cycle of psychological battle, bruise, betrayal and I-don’t-give-a-shit bravura (his valiant howls at the moon so to speak). Beforehand we got to see— and we only got to see —what this artist judged to be a ’success’ … in his eyes alone. He destroyed all of the canvases he deemed to be failures. What this exhibition at the Hugh Lane allowed us to see was how and where these polarities were brought into being. One thing was made glaringly obvious: Francis Bacon’s quest was relentless. His art was pure! It declared a fundamental Truth of what it is to be a human animal.

To somebody a little unfamiliar with this creative zeal; the studio was most definitely a tip … a bombsite. But, my gawd, what a bombsite!

The room could only be viewed, from without, through what were Francis Bacon’s first-floor windows (he lived there too; when not carousing to the cusp of oblivion, or gambling, or ‘cruising’). Had one actually been able to enter the studio, one would have found it increasingly difficult to find or keep footing and purchase. The floor was in a virtual uproar of empty discarded tins (used for mixing turpentine, oil/acrylic paint, and glaze solutions); old scrubbed-to-the-ferrule hog-hair (but bristle-less) brushes; eviscerated oil-paint tubes; stacked or scrunched and trodden photographs, books, magazines and newspapers; paint-smeared jars (paint-smeared everything); hardened rags of corduroy and other charity-shop clothing which Bacon used to impress painted pattern and texture upon his canvases; and the odd bottled testimony to his hard drinking or, alternately, discarded packaging from what can only be described as a diet contrived by the need for convenience. No pretty little neatly-ordered palette … no just out the wrapper smock … no beret!

Bacon liked to paint at night; by the unnatural light of a bare bulb in the centre of the studio’s ceiling. Bacon liked to paint alone: his paintings and portraits were done from memory and photographs. Bacon liked to paint while hungover: gutted with nausea and fractious. Bacon liked edge— a surgical edge — a psychologically debilitating edge —to his creative process. How else could he, I suspect, as he was untrained as an artist, cut through the artifice of Tradition’s banalities and the (then) contemporary’s— to him —meaningless froo-frah? (Bacon continued to paint figuratively throughout the period when Abstraction and Abstract Expressionism and Situationist ‘happenings’ and Pop Art began to introduce us to the first advances of our conceptual epoch. He once said famously that, to look upon the brushwork of Rembrandt was to look upon the birth of Abstract Expressionsim. If you get up close to a Rembrandt; you’ll find it difficult to do much more than concur).

Standing sentry— almost goadingly if such a word exists — at the far-end of his studio —towered the skeletal frame of an easel. Propped upon that easel was one six foot by five canvas … raw and unprimed, like the bloodless greyed ochre of a cadaver: as suited Bacon’s stated and documented technique, but stretched and bearing the first deft strokes of newly-perceived and dilineated form in grey and brown. Sketchy … but not tentative … probing, calligraphic and just so. A few thin and sweeping ’slit’ slices of alizarin crimson suggested the biological and anatomical gore to come.

The only clearing, in the entire floor-space, remained extant in front of this easel. How I wanted to float above the carnage: the angular stressed polythene bags of what could only— surely —be insanity, and the other detritus of Francis’ life, and all the items mentioned before, and place my feet firmly where he had once placed his own. I get that a lot with paintings by the Masters; it is a feeling rarely reported. The odd and disturbing and jubilant impression you are somehow inhabiting another’s body for a time … their space … one arm and one brush length and one phtt of motor neuron messaging away from the possibility of making the same marks. Time negated; so so close to greatness!

I first felt this as a young boy, in London, on a primary school trip from Scotland: Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. I knew I wanted to be an artist by that point and I knew enough about Vincent’s life to— perhaps precociously —make myself aware I was inhabiting a powerful psychological node emanating from that painting. I was filled by the thrill of it. I next became aware of a similar feeling when I, in Aberdeen, first saw a Monet bronze of a ballet dancer. There, at her feet, was a perfect thumbprint resonating from the original clay modelling. I did the verboten … a quick scan left to see if anyone was watching … then a quick scan right … then I took my teenage art student thumb and mimicked the impression. Only one photograph has ever come close to evoking this delusion/kink: a Magnum photographer’s (sorry I can’t recall which) simple study of Muhammad Ali’s clenched fist in black and white. Doesn’t sound too impressive an image I agree … until you read that it’s— to the millimetre —life-size … and I’d defy any man alive, of my generation and before, not to place his own clenched fist on top.

Francis Bacon’s studio was far from black and white. The door and the walls were festooned— to an arms-reach above head-height —with little, and not so little, elliptical splodges of sickly pinks and blues and visceral hues. This was Francis’ palette … a pebble-dashed pointillistic rash— an impetigo —of enamelled and curing pigment and linseed oil.

As the visitor advanced around this studio at the Hugh Lane (really an installation), to take in the separate views from other windows, they would come across a novel and unsuspected addition: placed outside those four walls encasing Francis Bacon’s workspace, and embedded to a great depth in the floor of the Gallery (but covered, for safety, with a thick transparent perspex ’slab’), was a narrow and treacherous-looking flight of worn wooden steps. These were the original steps which led directly from Francis’ front door to the small apartment (and studio) above. There at the bottom was his front door. I was struck by the thought this particular flight of steps would not be a first choice of mine, to ascend or descend, during my own dalliance with drinking to excess.

At the head of this article I supplied a quote of Bacon’s: lifted from a documentary excerpt where he was seen doing some of the aforementioned carousing at one of his favourite London drinking dens. I’ll finish with another quote of his; but I’ll paraphrase a little. When looking at a Francis Bacon painting, imagine both the biological substance and the spiritual essence of a human have been squeezed through the weft and weave of the canvas … the painting— what survives this process —suggests that and only that which matters. If you ever chance upon photographs of his sitters— usually lovers or drinking companions —you will see Francis most definitely caught or implied what mattered. Although some of Francis’ portraits, tryptychs and studies look like they could well have been contrived upon a butcher’s block; they shriek with humanity … they challenge us to dissemble our own psyche … and they fulfil the remit of all Great portraiture and figurative study: they express what resides within; not what masks from without.

He was greatly influenced by the image of the ‘Nurse’ in Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin of 1925 (see the first photograph above) … he was compelled to try and capture the human scream of torment which, for him, symbolized so much of both twentieth century history and, in general, the human ‘condition’ … he was also greatly influenced by medical photographs and x-rays. He was never believed— before his death —to have produced or worked from sketches because (as well as claiming this to be the case) he asserted a painting— completed —should bear all the outward hallmarks of a ’sketch’ … to go further was to breach the subject’s essence and produce a figurative illustration: a superficiality.

I touched upon an important aspect of Francis Bacon’s painting technique earlier: the oil paint is applied to unprimed canvas. A serious, but planned, demerit. The reason canvas is primed— with an acrylic- or gesso-based ’skin’ —is to protect the fibres from the chemical changes taking place as the oil (usually linseed because of its slow-drying properties and colour-fast stability) oxidizes to a hard enamel … trapping the pigment, and brushwork, for a significant period. Francis Bacon used unprimed canvas because he preferred the immediate absorbency as the brushstroke was laid down. It informed the marks he made. Those marks were made in the full knowledge he was investing his Art with a major flaw: the canvas— and of course the painting supported by it —will eventually rot and disappear. Given the subject of his Art is entirely human (and a meaty nihilistic jamboree); what a wonderful— and telling —flaw with which to give future generations a sharp dig in the ribs. (I love memento mori)!

He is— if I’ve got to have one; though I’m not the greatest fan of the concept —my hero. He is also— since his death —the reason I get off my backside a little more often these days.

*

Gil Grachison, April 2009.

*

*

Visual Artist: Irem Çağil —

*

*

Irem Çağil

*