i am exploded

I made another one of these pamphlets, this time with a nice painting of the universe on the cover. It is a kind of sequel to my Encyclopedia, which I wrote in 2012 and published in 2013. It's inspired by all sorts of things I'm interested in. The text is more or less a stream of silly thoughts. The treatment I have then given this text is something I discuss at the front of the pamphlet. It's a technique I first saw in a children's book by Graham Oakley, and I'm sure something like it probably appears in Finnegan's wake or something. I've messed around with language in this way a tiny bit but it was while reading Alan Moore's Jerusalem that I saw it used to great effect as a Kind os exploded fourth dimensional angelic language (I had already decided to call this pamphlet 'I am exploded' by this time, as a reference to feeling exploded by the complicated world, like a Haynes manual illustration).

Anyway, I've used a kind of word substitution bricolage here for my own purposes and I hope it is not inappropriate. It's not as clever as the things it was inspired by but it made a piece of text I was getting a bit bored with a bit more interesting. 

An afternoon of homemade pop

poster by Emma Falconer

The Fenestration are so wonderful and they have agreed to play at this small thing in a very lovely art cafe. It'll be good to play some Nervy Betters songs this year too.

woad

Here's my first attempt extracting pigment from the woad plants I grew. You can get it really deep blue if you know what you're doing, but for a first attempt from just a few leaves, I'm really pleased. I've going to collect more and dye some cloth to make a tabard. that's the plan. 

I got a lot of good information from this website.

Also knitting a balaclava

jam

Prehistoric flint mine

Blackberry picking

Blackberry jam

Woad harvesting

I'm having a fun year, I've floated around in the sea a couple of times and been on some boats and learned to grow things. I've been working on a big project, started in 2016 and thrown in the bin two or three times since then. It's starting to look as if it might get finished, though it still needs a lot of work. I would usually prefer to finish a thing as soon as possible, so I've got lots of little activities to keep me from getting impatient.

That jam (got my instructions from the bbc)
Picked about 1.3kg of blackberries
rinsed them and picked off stalks
put in a bowl with about 1kg of jam sugar (with pectin in)
mixed about a bit until sugar started to dissolve
left in fridge overnight
put in a big pan
put a small saucer in the freezer
squeezed in a lemon
put pips in a tea strainer and left in the mix (more pectin)
heated for about 20 mins
tested now and then by putting a spoonful into saucer from freezer 
poke with finger, looking for the surface to wrinkle
ladled into jars
put jars in pan of water (water needs to cover the lids)
heated for about 40 mins to force out air

That woad (got my instructions from woad.org.uk)
Leaves seemed full size so i picked them (got to do it before they flower)
stored in fridge (bad idea, they should be in a bag in a cool place, i read) 
gonna blanch them in water (not boiled) for about 20 mins
gonna cool them rapidly in ice water
gonna squeeze out their juice (wearing gloves)
gonna add soda ash and stir it up
gonna put them in jars and let the pigment settle to the bottom
gonna see what happens

Reading
Riot days, Maria Alyokhina
I hate the internet, Jarett Kobek
Demanding the impossible, Peter Marshall

Listening to
Why did you separate me from the earth?, Anohni
Krulle bol, This is the kit
Light green leaves, Little wings

scrap book

the video of this video was taken by Nicol Parkinson

Work in progress, sounds a lot like Movietone/Crescent right now

been listening to

In Mexico, Movietone

Five Knuckle Shuffle, Crass

Song of the black dog, Tissø Lake

Music exists disc 1, Tenniscoats

Dream Dogs

I recently got a music streaming app so I could join in with a group playlist thing at work. The mix making part is fun. For now I prefer to be annoying and just write lists that you'd have to then go and search for. 

scrap book

have been reading

An Individual Note: Of Music, Sound And Electronics, Daphne Oram

The Flounder, Günter Grass
Voice of the Fire, Alan Moore
Inferno, Dante
A Child of Isis, Nawal El Sadaawi
Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, David Sedaris 
The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon
Reality is not what it seems, Carlo Rovelli

have been listening to
RTJ3, Run the Jewels
Is this Desire?, PJ Harvey
Les Anciennes Falaises, Fránçois
To Pimp a Butterfly, Kendrick Lamar
Awfully Deep, Roots Manuva
Arular, MIA
Vespertine, Björk
Smell of Female, The Cramps
Spread out against the Sky, Moscow rules

have been learning about (you can search-engine most of this)
Henry Darger
Diogenes
Making a guitar pickup from scratch
Making a shoebox projector
Making a rhubarb crumble cake
How to grow plants
Taoism
LGBT+ older people and healthcare (shared with me by J. a colleague)

have been growing (I added some links for seeds on the links doc)
runner beans
tomatoes
cucumbers
dill
courgettes
strawberries
raspberries
pumpkins
woad

Pamphlets

heavily redacted rock 'n' roll memoirs

I've made three of these little pocket pamphlets now. I got a ruler and measured dimensions and margins etc. of an old penguin pocket paperback for the format. They're about 32 pages/10,000 words each. At the moment I'm only really printing them by request, but there are a few stocked at the excellent radio/on record store in Bristol. I have one more planned, which will be called I am exploded. In the mean time, you can read my 'memoirs' for free!

Mask

This mask has been evolving for about a year now. It started as a mask of my face made with water-activated gum tape. Every so often I distorted it and modified it. It has been a nice back door into painting and sculpture. My favourite contemporary painter and sculptor is probably my friend Jennifer Caroline Campbell. Her brilliant use of colour, composition, materials and processes probably made me want to have a go at something like that in my own way.

useful resources link

I used to love it when person websites had links pages to the author's favourite things on the internet. This isn't exactly that, but it's something I wanted to do for a while. I've put a list of links together to the places I've used to get materials and records pressed and so on. I thought it might be useful. It'll be linked on the little sidebar under useful resources and I'll try to keep it up to date. A lot of these things were recommended to me by other people but I don't think I could remember all their names so won't list them just now.

some pictures hanging

Here are some prints of a series of linocuts I made a while ago. I hung them up in a cafe in my town along with some of the booklets I've been making. A few of the booklets have been sent to Radio/ON in Bristol.

radio/ON

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