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Burning
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Monday, December 19, 2011 |
For him, logs are everything, this small town dictator, his battledress undone, the cap barely fitting over his still unruly, though greying curls as his enemies corner him in the backyard just by the woodpile, their grievances stretching back to the very beginning of time, the very start of it. And he can only holler and bluster and wave his arms, expecting instant obedience, outraged that the old magic seems to have worn off. And there he is, naked and bleeding now, stuck on top of a pyre, looking just like Guy Fawkes and it's Bonfire Night all over again ..
But who's this jostling for a place at the top? Joan of Arc. Ah how they both love their logs, both require the martyrdom, for the preservation of their stubborn ideals, the sanctification of their egos. They both love their uniforms - for her, a simple sackcloth shift, covering, shapeless and uncomfortable to wear, her hair cut in a boyish bob, almost a tonsure, with the statement wooden cross around her neck, her bare feet, her white legs. The pious and terrified expression that so becomes her.
And who will light the fire beneath their feet? What will be the final hymn they sing as the smoke rises and the air crackles with heat, their flesh crisping and bursting like popping corn? Come on, baby ..Labels: Joan of Arc, logs, martyrdom, trees |
| 5:51 AM
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Are you dancing??
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Wednesday, November 23, 2011 |
I've always loved dancing. I wanted to be a ballerina but in my itinerant RAF childhood there were never any classes I could go to - and anyway they were only for officers' kids. Bleat, the injustice, blah blah - I doubt if I could have managed the anorexia. This didn't stop me dancing by myself, a habit I have retained into the dotage. Plus I took classes later - in ballroom, latin american, and modern dance, then more recently in salsa and swing. It's all good, as they say. But when were the best dance times? A manic music mad teenager dancing at rag raves in Leicester, much too young to be out, to The Who, Geno Washington, The Animals, to Motown and Soul at the all night gigs held in sweaty clubs like the Burlesque, chemically enhanced. So many gigs through the 70s - progging out to 10 Years After or drifting to the Third Ear Band and Kevin Ayres, rocking against racism to Aswad and Misty. Then the pogoing to punk and shoe gazing to the Smiths. All that Talking Heads and Modern Dance Bowie, township music, new age trance. I've even danced the techno. But tomorrow night I will be dancing, even if nobody is asking, to all the above at the Forum in Darlington, music provided by a series of playlists and a mighty iPod. Me and my handbag. |
| 5:14 AM
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The Traveller Unravels
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Saturday, October 22, 2011 |
Sometimes the pavement won't stay beneath your feet, things fall apart, and the physical world rises up against you. It's the epitome of paranoia when you can no longer trust your own furniture. But it happens, readers, it happens.
Maybe it's jet lag - as I was in New York City last week, moving at a speed about five times that of my normal days. Moving and watching and listening and mind boggled by the whole experience: seeing Karen O's Stop the Virgen's. three brilliant movies by Paul Tschinkel introduced by the man himself, playing Poetry Bingo at the Bowery Poetry Club. But mainly just crawling those streets, where everything is surreally familiar from books and songs and movies, giving the whole place a dream-like quality, as if you have been here before, seen these places, heard these voices.
One beautiful moment was in Washington Square on Columbus Day listening to some old boys (ie my age) playing jazz in autumn sunshine. I wrote a poem to commemorate:
Washington Square, Columbus Day
Riffslinger play jazz in a shady corner
of the square. The blue notes ascend
from the trumpet, then fall, like leaves,
just turning. That lift, then the gentle descent
as three old guys combine, offer
the wisdom of their years through
the power of shifted air.
All over the city, different tongues
undulate, clack against palate
emerge between lips, sing songs
from every corner of the planet.
Traffic hums by, sirens zigzag,
construction workers throw metal
against metal, call out like parrots.
New Yorkers wear tight buds, close
their ears to the neighbourhood noise
create a soundtrack to each day
separate and individual, navigate
blocks and avenues, intent,
forward looking, definite,
treading their own straight way.
I’m an old girl in the square, aware
that my ears are fine tuned to hear
these notes, like secrets whispered,
coded messages hidden under benches,
unavailable to the smart couples and
their dainty dogs. The music breathes,
tracks time flowing like water, like sand.Labels: jazz, Karen O, New York, Paul Tschinkler, poetry the Bowery Poetry Club, Riffslinger |
| 8:01 AM
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wordles
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Friday, September 30, 2011 |
Decided just to copy it here - so many wordles, so little time .. |
| 7:26 AM
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Wordles
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Spent this lunchtime running a workshop in Darlington for older people. It was fun - a mix of people who are already writing and those who had decided they can't, but did anyway. I used pebbles gathered from many a beach to provoke a set of words which people then turned into a few lines. Some beautiful stuff emerged:
searching and finding the perfect pebble
for throwing and skimming its history
pounding for caves - movement of earth
what ages - or is ageless
sun on seashore to smooth time away
(this last Dickinson esque offering from a lady who insisted that as a scientist, she could not be a poet - but she pocketed my pebble all the same).
I put everything into a wordle which you can find by using the link above.Labels: Darlington workshop older people poetry pebbles |
| 6:53 AM
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The Future
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Tuesday, July 26, 2011 |
I guess I try to live a day at a time. That's not easy, especially on a day like today when my brain is so poorly attuned to its proper business and everything is fuzzy around the edges, minutes melting on Dali clocks. My actual clock meanwhile has stopped (new battery needed) so it has been 9.30 for a couple of days now. Whenever.
But The Future will be here coming at you with its pointy shouldered suits, its transporter tubes, its robots, its artificial intelligence, its food in a pill. Nothing about me and my life will fit into it. The Future despises clutter, favours capsule living, minimalist decor. Spending hours looking for that note you wrote on the back of a receipt whilst in a shopping centre and which is the basis of a marvellous poem you will never be able to recreate will be punishable by extermination, a vapourising of you and all your messy accumulations that will leave the world a cleaner place. You are not productive. You spend your days like a dog trying to follow a scent but being lured off track by other more interesting smells until you are left staring at your own bottom.
The Future will have no truck with The Past and certainly not with the detritus the past leaves, washed up and left on the shoreline for you to pick over endlessly, Robinson Crusoe style.
I found Tricia at a table top sale in Saltburn. I think tomorrow belongs to her.Labels: dolls future |
| 7:15 AM
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Wild
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Saturday, June 18, 2011 |
As much fun as I dreamed it would be - finding a piece of river deep enough to swim in, being ladled into the new wet suit and just getting in. Gilde and float, observing the occasional sun make shadows on the overhanging rocks, listen to the birds full throated, not phased by the rubber fish beneath them, the real fish a little more circumspect. A large cranky heron made his magnificent mechanical way overhead. Then to sit naked on the flat stones drying off, unobserved. Wow. Primal moment, haven't felt so happy and in the moment for a long time.Labels: wild swimming water birds |
| 7:02 AM
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Babel
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Tuesday, April 19, 2011 |
Looking forward to Babel - a spoken word event I have organised with the help of the Forum in Darlington. First venture in my town since the dear departed Hydrogen Jukebox. It's not that I want to recreate that (though it was pretty fab) - just have felt for a while we need something going on with words and music and hey, I live here. No point in wishing I lived in NYC is there, since anyway people in cities are blase and unappreciative whereas small towners try to squeeze every last drop from their lives. Don't listen to that Andy Warhol. Local is where it's at.
Just hope people will come. I recently read in a local library (naming no names) to the librarian and a man hiding behind the shelves. It was Shrove Tuesday. The librarian, who was lovely, told me that a pancake making session had stolen my audience. What you gonna do?
Thanks to Ellie Grassick for the poster / flier. |
| 9:54 AM
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