An ancient little green book.
Rumi the ancient deep thinker ruminates that somewhere between the good, the bad and the ugly, there is a 'field'.... "I'll meet you there" he says. I ruminate that one should not readily ruminate (round the ragged rocks the ragged rascal ran) but rather enter said field. Surely it is far too Smug to wait knowingly for the promise of an 'after life'. For life may pass thru us only the once. Our 'unique particular' as Hesse rightly names it. Where the symptom of the universe passes through the unique 'us' just the once.
There is no sense of 'entitlement' in Hesses statement it is more an acknowledgement that ideosyncrasy is something to celebrate and that life can be short.
Miranda in 'The Tempest' proclaims .....
“O, wonder ! How many goodly creatures are there here ! How beauteous mankind is! O BRAVE NEW WORLD, That has such people in't !”
“O, wonder ! How many goodly creatures are there here ! How beauteous mankind is! O BRAVE NEW WORLD, That has such people in't !”
Yet, MAN-kind is not always beauteous or as benevolent as Miranda believes . Indeed often far from it and here lies the rub.
There were and are some rare ones.
O brave new world' the quote, was of course used later by Aldous Huxley for his great dystopian novel 'Brave New World' and his tale of the noble male John the Savage - a male far removed from the superficial posturing male i.e Sergeant Troy, the shallow rogue from Hardy's 'Far from the Madding Crowd'. As an outsider, Huxley's John Savage takes his received values from Shakespeare - an ancient little green book he read like a Bible on the reservation.
Like Gabriel OAK below, John Savage is a rarer character - Mr Oak being from Thomas Hardy's 'Far From The Madding Crowd'. Read both books.
Photo: Bathsheba Everdene (Julie Christie) & Gabriel Oak (Alan Bates)in the original film adaptation of Thomas Hardy's novel.
Rule no.1; Don't mistake kindness for weakness - nor mistake consideration, receptivity or sensitivity for sentimentality. Beware too much ambition - too much progress.
n.b Kompridis argues for the importance of receptivity to democratic
politics, romanticism and critical theory. I have argued for it and for 'The Slow Movement' on a weekly basis in - terms of ecological crisis and our outlook on threatened habitats - and how we manage ourselves, our holistic wellbeing etc.
John Savage (like Gabriel Oak) is a central protagonist - a strong character. (Huxley and Hardy being inside their own male creations - their protagonists) The authors ideals are personified in these characters. This too is 'authorial practice'. politics, romanticism and critical theory. I have argued for it and for 'The Slow Movement' on a weekly basis in - terms of ecological crisis and our outlook on threatened habitats - and how we manage ourselves, our holistic wellbeing etc.
John has rejected his own “savage” tribal Indian culture and is yet also revolted by the faux “civilized” immersive 'State' culture. A seductive but reductive thrill seeking, pill popping charade.
Now he is the ultimate outsider. We need more Bathesheba Everdene's , more Thomas Hardys. More Tess Duberville's. As an outsider, John Savage takes his received values from Shakespeare - an ancient little green book he read like a Bible on the reservation. This enabled him to attempt to articulate his own complex emotions and reactions in the new world.
Billy Shakes and indeed Hardy, tackled the human wound - navigate it and expose it - they do not sentimentalise it nor prettify it - they see it honestly and feel it and say it as it is - any embelishments are accurate to their eye and senses - and like Heaney, Plath and Hughes - they roll and laughs amid the tumult - the lightness and weight of it. And so it goes etc etc.
Whereby the cynic, the materialist, the nihilist and suspicious are mostly free of such thought - and measure and observe from afar with their own self protective instrumentation.
John, like Branwell, a sensitive but strong idealist - struggled in the new vista. It overcame him. He took the pill. Contemporary consumerist society's biggest trick via saturation marketing is its omnipresense. This seduction and sedation of our freewill was predicted by Huxley and co. The steering away from the real - the authentic. Be that social and political or in terms of appreciation of the day to day.
Whereby the cynic, the materialist, the nihilist and suspicious are mostly free of such thought - and measure and observe from afar with their own self protective instrumentation.
John, like Branwell, a sensitive but strong idealist - struggled in the new vista. It overcame him. He took the pill. Contemporary consumerist society's biggest trick via saturation marketing is its omnipresense. This seduction and sedation of our freewill was predicted by Huxley and co. The steering away from the real - the authentic. Be that social and political or in terms of appreciation of the day to day.
The Sun, The Heliosphere & Spartacus
Ovid.the Roman Poet Who wrote the mythic narrative poem 'The Metamorphoses' Greek adult myths in Latin. 43 BC.
A solar flare is a phenomenon where the Sun suddenly releases a great amount of solar radiation, much more than normal. Solar flares are unlikely to cause any direct injury, but can destroy electrical grids and equipment. (And melt wax & feathers! )
The famous song goes "Mama always told me not to look into the eyes of the sun. But mama, that's where the fun is!"
A Song titled 'Blinded by the light' : Indeed Icarus flew too close to the Sun. ''Into the blue his red wax did run''.
Wax seal. Ovids 'Metamorphoses' tales are all strong analogies as are Lewis Carroll's 'Alice' , Shelley's 'Frankenstein' and Wilde's 'Dorian Gray'.
Upon seeing the unseen, the meta-physical and the unviewable, for the very first time
- one steps back. (See brand new unique black hole photograph below)
And like the Hughes poem when the moon steps back upon viewing Ted's daughter, new born Frieda Hughes (and as she stares too - amazed upon seeing her first full moon) .
"Moon!' you cry suddenly,
'Moon! Moon!'
The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work
That points at him amazed"
- one steps back. (See brand new unique black hole photograph below)
And like the Hughes poem when the moon steps back upon viewing Ted's daughter, new born Frieda Hughes (and as she stares too - amazed upon seeing her first full moon) .
"Moon!' you cry suddenly,
'Moon! Moon!'
The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work
That points at him amazed"
Full Moon And Little Frieda. (by TH)
(Read full poem)
Like the looking glass, this new black hole is one more philosophical, cosmological threshold. Too close for comfort.
Do we step in like vain Narcissus or buckle up like brave Alice ? The adventuress ! - as she grew up. (grew tall literally)
Vast radio cameras have captured the first image of the mythic black hole, heralding a revolution in our understanding of the universe’s most enigmatic objects at the heart of the Messier 87 galaxy, 55m light years from Earth.
The great lost minds who would have loved to have seen this image. Ada Lovelace, Einstein, Turing, Ovid etc
Anthropocentrism - Ovid & Narcissus
Carravagio & mirror
When we look longingly into the pool of space we must not expect to see ourselves nor seek company or communion for that only comes internally first. And we seem a fair way off yet as a race. Vain Narcissus became a flower, his tragedy was missing out on rare Echo as Narcissus disappeared into himself. That's Anthropocentrism right there.
The FERMI Paradox "Where is everybody in the Universe'' ? Through the hole - through the looking-glass - it may just be us? The Concept of FERMI's Paradox is that despite the huge odds for extra-terrestrial Life beyond Earth - we have located nothing.
On Earth we develop strong attachments to People and Place.
Discuss this visually and in Text - but as Poetics and speculation not seeking empirical science. Sources : Popular Culture - Existentialism
Task.
The exploration of textual and visual language in relation to Psychological states companionship and friendship - collegiality - sharing, transference, intuition, instinct, love. family.
(excuse grammer just notes)
Marcel Proust's Irremediable solitude: (Beckett) Sam Becketts quote: “Friendship, according to Proust, is the negation of that irremediable solitude to which every human being is condemned.”
Marcel Proust's Irremediable solitude: (Beckett) Sam Becketts quote: “Friendship, according to Proust, is the negation of that irremediable solitude to which every human being is condemned.”
*Individuality and solitude are ostensibly, on the face of it, to be celebrated but do ask Mr Robinson Crusoe more about that on the long term affectations of distance.
I say ...or said ....''Distance is something to make up - or sometimes to seek out. Closeness then comes back too.' (mm)
On connections we encounter - atavistic resonance - why one thing stirs us and not another.
''Triggers enable this conflated connectivity to spark - and one could say almost make the gene remember or reminisce.'' ( Its a source of wonder - I do wonder about it )
''Triggers enable this conflated connectivity to spark - and one could say almost make the gene remember or reminisce.'' ( Its a source of wonder - I do wonder about it )
Whirlwind Soup & Matriarchal Mists - Misty eyed losses
Ms Sapho
Ms Joyce
Ms Jones
Ms Price
Lickerish Bog Black Tea
Medicinal Whisky in the Jar'o
And so it goes -
and they go.
"We've got these people all revved up John" said June Carter
June & Johnny - Strong but humble
Vital Statistics of the Planets Misaligned page 548
The Moon p549
Mercury revs p561
Venus or Mars
Look its Misty Mr,
Ever so misty
Minted Thyme
Hum it aloud
Far far away
From madding crowd
Doremi Faso,... 🎶
Latino
Italiano
Destiempo !
(The wrong time)
Whisky in the Jar-oh
....
Above is verisimilitude in fine form - from the filmic landscape of 'Walk the line' performing the duet. I'm going to Jackson.
Hey, will you sing a song with me?
I would be very pleased to sing a song with you
Sure look nice
Thank you, I'm glad to be back in Folsom
Well I like to watch you talk
I'm talking with my mouth.
.
Photo : Graham Nash 1968 California 
...........................................................................
fleeting time - flēotan - to float - afloat
(mm; from a longer essay 'Engines' )
Fleeting comes from the old word flēotan, which means to float - the love float at the procession - at the Gala - at the Fair - fleet of foot.
Branwell Bronte, Lorca, Kundera and Pinter knew this stuff - they breathed it in.
Gifted Branwell is the author of this painting. Yet he painted himself out. His absent visage now sits in-between his equally gifted sisters.
In this painting there is an absence and yet there is presence felt. A bioluminescence.
So it is a sad but also a glowing painting - because the same man also possessed the lightness seen illuminated here - the lightness of being - as well as the weight of it. He was flawed yet had a warmth like a LAMP - that lit up gloomy rooms. I imagine that when he stepped outside on a summer evening his coat would become coated by the most beautiful of moths.
Branwell Bronte, Lorca, Kundera and Pinter knew this stuff - they breathed it in.
Gifted Branwell is the author of this painting. Yet he painted himself out. His absent visage now sits in-between his equally gifted sisters.
In this painting there is an absence and yet there is presence felt. A bioluminescence.
So it is a sad but also a glowing painting - because the same man also possessed the lightness seen illuminated here - the lightness of being - as well as the weight of it. He was flawed yet had a warmth like a LAMP - that lit up gloomy rooms. I imagine that when he stepped outside on a summer evening his coat would become coated by the most beautiful of moths.
The painting can also be read *semiotically as male withdrawal by the males own hand.
A frugal removal from what ?
Well whaddya got?
Capitalism Consumerism Competition - entanglement - materialist society - ?
It ticks all the boxes.
In Branwell's case De-materialising from Victorian repression and parochial attitudes - a strict upbringing - which likely fuelled his exotic excess.
Well whaddya got?
Capitalism Consumerism Competition - entanglement - materialist society - ?
It ticks all the boxes.
In Branwell's case De-materialising from Victorian repression and parochial attitudes - a strict upbringing - which likely fuelled his exotic excess.
*semiotically ( relates to signs and their wider significance, from sēmeiōsis, to signal, to interpret as a sign )
S u c h S u p e r c i l i u m
Willow Warbler call - just arrived here now from mid April from Africa - here until October
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqpTqEPI004
Skylark - Woodlark - Lullula - Nightingale - Snipe - Curlew - Lapwing - Leeshaw
Distance is something to make up - or sometimes to seek out. Closeness then comes too.
Be it in the classical work of Homer's Odyssey, Telemachus' - or in Jane Eyre, James Joyce or Philip Guston's swaggering late paintings defiantly show a SHREK like irreverence to linear time, control and blinkered authority. Learn lessons from Guston and Shrek.
The Poet, novelist, musician or the good teacher - encourages the listener to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on fixed certainties freedom is dead. The totalitarian world, whether founded on Marxism, Fascism or anything else, is a world of intellectuall answers rather than speculative questions. There education and liberty has no place. The failing of 'Authority' comes from having a rigid answer for everything. The wisdom of the Humanities comes from having a question for everything.
10.40 am : Getting set to visit The Peoples History Museum of democracy and liberty. On foot : A superb resource for students of things that matter. This is a photo register - everyone returned safely to base camp - and no students or animals were hurt in the making of this film.
On research:
I say to students that reading, research, earth’s history - and one’s own history - is for me, like applying a stick to a bicycle wheel as it spins, you interact with it - and you get a humming sound back, and that vibration is akin to gravitational waves coming back at you. A voice to react to - stimulation to ignite deeper matters.
For me and my own working methodology - well I think I am very lucky, it is a perceptive trip, very sensorial and immersive, it is an interactive, special, 'going down with the sun' type of space for me. Mythological and real all at the same time – an active place - a subject of both present and future. Not frozen or stuck. The engine is running.
The
''I fell in love with this book while I was in Prague. The book is layered with many stories that will certainly help you laugh and forget about all the narrative problems that intersect with our own real problems. This is the kind of book that one should read when the world seems to be at its worst'' Book Review One of the most beautiful books I've ever read.
below :
A self caricature of himself by Branwell Bronte (1847) his last drawing : In bed waiting to go. Bronte at the end - in the last minutes of his life - made sure he was stood up - he wished to go into the blue yonder stood on his feet - which he did. .... Bravo brave Branwell !
Triggers enable this conflated connectivity to spark connectivities and one could say almost make the gene remember or reminisce. (mm)
Lecture slides
Triggers enable this conflated connectivity to spark connectivities and one could say almost make the gene remember or reminisce. (mm)
Lecture slides
A Fortunate Man; The Story Of A Country Doctor
John Berger gives attentiveness to the sensual world with responsiveness to the imperatives of conscience." s.sontag
None of us are invulnerable - not even mighty Achilles ! And so the Achilles heel is real.
However periods of vulnerability give us strength - and allows self knowledge and wisdom.
On reading Bergers text again last week on the train into work I noticed for the first time a small but important passage of the book where a large male patient shows his vulnerability, his acumen and his mature knowledge of his own sense of self.
He describes where his personal sense of self lies physiologically and emotionally inside his body. He is talking about the location of among other things, his consciousness. Where he feels his consciousness sits.
(I'll paraphrase the quote in the book - as I don't have the book here- but the man says something like this ...
''Behind the eyes - he says - yes, I think that's where I am, where I live - just there '' I think it is a beautiful observation.
So this is where he 'sits' and where he feels himself to centre - not so much his weakness but where he is centred. So to go near it with needles etc ...well ! Holistcially we are made - and holistically we operate. In Classical, Eastern and Medieval thought - this idea of a locus is prominent.
So where are we ? Head - Heart - Eyes or an amalgam of these. I shared the pages with a colleague and she said ''head, maybe head & heart''. This location of self defines our pathway - our motives, priorities and incentives - the shallow incentive of materialism - chasing wealth - or to follow the incentive of other socially minded matters.
Many believe ones consciousness can travel - and be felt - it can extend beyond the body. We don't know this empirically. Yet we can be separated by miles or even life and death and still feel someone inside - this is not uncommon.
Is this location our Achilles heel. Our vulnerability as well as our strength - are they inexplicably bound together ? Perhaps.
The saga of the death of Achilles appeared in later Greek and Roman poetry after Homers Iliad.
In Greek Myth, when Achilles was a baby, it was foreseen that he would die young. To prevent this his mother Thetis took Achilles to the River Styx to dip his body in its waters; however, as she held him around the heel, his heel was covered by her grasp and not washed over by the magic water of the river. Achilles grew to be a man of strength who survived many great battles. In the end a poisonous arrow lodged in his heel, killing him shortly afterwards.
As a metaphor we can run with this analogy - strengths - vulnerabilities - desires etc - it is the acute acumen and logic of the head forever wrestling with the intuitive heart - a great duet going on there - a couplet - the vulnerable places and the stronger places - interlocked - amor fati ! To be or not to be.
The short but full life - Dylan T - not invulnerable.
None of us are invulnerable - not even mighty Achilles ! And so the Achilles heel is real.
However periods of vulnerability give us strength - and allows self knowledge and wisdom.
On reading Bergers text again last week on the train into work I noticed for the first time a small but important passage of the book where a large male patient shows his vulnerability, his acumen and his mature knowledge of his own sense of self.
He describes where his personal sense of self lies physiologically and emotionally inside his body. He is talking about the location of among other things, his consciousness. Where he feels his consciousness sits.
(I'll paraphrase the quote in the book - as I don't have the book here- but the man says something like this ...
''Behind the eyes - he says - yes, I think that's where I am, where I live - just there '' I think it is a beautiful observation.
So this is where he 'sits' and where he feels himself to centre - not so much his weakness but where he is centred. So to go near it with needles etc ...well ! Holistcially we are made - and holistically we operate. In Classical, Eastern and Medieval thought - this idea of a locus is prominent.
So where are we ? Head - Heart - Eyes or an amalgam of these. I shared the pages with a colleague and she said ''head, maybe head & heart''. This location of self defines our pathway - our motives, priorities and incentives - the shallow incentive of materialism - chasing wealth - or to follow the incentive of other socially minded matters.
Is this location our Achilles heel. Our vulnerability as well as our strength - are they inexplicably bound together ? Perhaps.
The saga of the death of Achilles appeared in later Greek and Roman poetry after Homers Iliad.
In Greek Myth, when Achilles was a baby, it was foreseen that he would die young. To prevent this his mother Thetis took Achilles to the River Styx to dip his body in its waters; however, as she held him around the heel, his heel was covered by her grasp and not washed over by the magic water of the river. Achilles grew to be a man of strength who survived many great battles. In the end a poisonous arrow lodged in his heel, killing him shortly afterwards.
As a metaphor we can run with this analogy - strengths - vulnerabilities - desires etc - it is the acute acumen and logic of the head forever wrestling with the intuitive heart - a great duet going on there - a couplet - the vulnerable places and the stronger places - interlocked - amor fati ! To be or not to be.
The short but full life - Dylan T - not invulnerable.
The short but full life - Dylan T - not invulnerable.
.........................................................
Below; The very best of films at that time about status , the snobbery of class - labour and love - living in the now and not in the corporate or intellectual
NOT a sentimental film - a Political film ! ( read Thoreau) 
.........................................................
Below; The very best of films at that time about status , the snobbery of class - labour and love - living in the now and not in the corporate or intellectual
NOT a sentimental film - a Political film ! ( read Thoreau)
film still from Mademoiselle
He felt the "sweet lightness of being rise up to him out of the depths of the future and the past .... but then he was hit by the weight - the consequence (Milan Kundera)
We have all felt this instinct - one recognises instantly that there is a depth or history to what you are doing, seeing and feeling - what one is experiencing. It is that atavistic resonance that lets you know there is an instant connection to a place or person - there is something unknown or subliminal there but likewise something familiar.
Amor fati - love of fate -
Nietzsche's spirit of acceptance occurs in the context of his radical embrace of suffering. For to love that which is necessary, demands not only that we love the bad along with the good, but that we view the two as inextricably linked.
''Only great pain is the ultimate liberator of the spirit….I doubt that such pain makes us ‘better’; but I know that it makes us more profound.''
Nietzsche on 'eternal return'.
" Eternal return is the idea that our universe and our existence has occurred an infinite number of times in the past, and will continue to occur ad infinitum. In this theory, time is cyclical rather than linear. The idea of eternal return is an ancient one, but Nietzsche, a 19th century German philosopher, popularized it for modern times. That's why the narrator of Unbearable Lightness refers to it as Nietzsche's concept.
Nietzsche explored what the consequences of such eternal return would be. In his eyes, eternal return was das schwerste Gewicht, or "the heaviest weight." It was a petrifying concept to imagine that our lives have been and will continue to be repeated endlessly. But one could learn, through philosophy, to love the idea. The proper mind can embrace this weight, rather than be terrified by it. Nietzsche seems to conclude in Thus Spoke Zarathustra that we must live and act as though our lives functioned in eternal return, suggesting that we give our own lives meaning and weight by behaving this way. This brings in the concept of amor fati, or the love of one's fate. To embrace eternal return is, roughly speaking, to love one's fate. And the major question is this: which is better? Do we want lightness, or do we want weight? Which do we choose? Kundera takes a look at Parmenides, a Greek philosopher in the 5th century B.C. who considered the same question. Parmenides argued that lightness was positive and to be desired, while weight was negative. But the narrator of The Unbearable Lightness of Being isn't so sure about this. "The heaviest of burdens is […] simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment," he says (1.2.4). "The heavier the burden, […] the more real and truthful [our lives] become" (1.2.4).
During the course of the novel, the narrator refers to the lightness of being in two different ways: the sweet lightness of being, and the unbearable lightness of being. A few characters are able, momentarily, to revel in the sweet lightness of being. A key example is Tomas, after Tereza leaves him alone in Zurich and returns to Prague: "Suddenly his step was much lighter. He soared. He had entered Parmenides' magic field: he was enjoying the sweet lightness of being" (1.14.7). For two days, he feels the "sweet lightness of being rise up to him out of the depths of the future" (1.15.4). For it only lasts for two days before he is "hit by a weight the likes of which he had never known" (1.15.4), namely, his compassion for Tereza.
Nietzsche's spirit of acceptance occurs in the context of his radical embrace of suffering. For to love that which is necessary, demands not only that we love the bad along with the good, but that we view the two as inextricably linked.
''Only great pain is the ultimate liberator of the spirit….I doubt that such pain makes us ‘better’; but I know that it makes us more profound.''
Nietzsche on 'eternal return'.
" Eternal return is the idea that our universe and our existence has occurred an infinite number of times in the past, and will continue to occur ad infinitum. In this theory, time is cyclical rather than linear. The idea of eternal return is an ancient one, but Nietzsche, a 19th century German philosopher, popularized it for modern times. That's why the narrator of Unbearable Lightness refers to it as Nietzsche's concept.Nietzsche explored what the consequences of such eternal return would be. In his eyes, eternal return was das schwerste Gewicht, or "the heaviest weight." It was a petrifying concept to imagine that our lives have been and will continue to be repeated endlessly. But one could learn, through philosophy, to love the idea. The proper mind can embrace this weight, rather than be terrified by it. Nietzsche seems to conclude in Thus Spoke Zarathustra that we must live and act as though our lives functioned in eternal return, suggesting that we give our own lives meaning and weight by behaving this way. This brings in the concept of amor fati, or the love of one's fate. To embrace eternal return is, roughly speaking, to love one's fate. And the major question is this: which is better? Do we want lightness, or do we want weight? Which do we choose? Kundera takes a look at Parmenides, a Greek philosopher in the 5th century B.C. who considered the same question. Parmenides argued that lightness was positive and to be desired, while weight was negative. But the narrator of The Unbearable Lightness of Being isn't so sure about this. "The heaviest of burdens is […] simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment," he says (1.2.4). "The heavier the burden, […] the more real and truthful [our lives] become" (1.2.4).
During the course of the novel, the narrator refers to the lightness of being in two different ways: the sweet lightness of being, and the unbearable lightness of being. A few characters are able, momentarily, to revel in the sweet lightness of being. A key example is Tomas, after Tereza leaves him alone in Zurich and returns to Prague: "Suddenly his step was much lighter. He soared. He had entered Parmenides' magic field: he was enjoying the sweet lightness of being" (1.14.7). For two days, he feels the "sweet lightness of being rise up to him out of the depths of the future" (1.15.4). For it only lasts for two days before he is "hit by a weight the likes of which he had never known" (1.15.4), namely, his compassion for Tereza.
Question;
You stated earlier that when you draw ''There is usually a confluence of emotive contexts that entangle and evolve as I work through the drawing'' ... What do you mean by that exactly ?
MM: Well, at other times, when walking, driving or teaching and not drawing daily - then I am still thinking about that space. Obviously some places and previous encounters we experience in our early lives are very intensive and fix an impression - it may be beauty or loss - they hold you both with the same grip very often - and they can become preserved in the mind.
These are of course my own perceptions – but interesting coincidences occur for me whilst making work and go beyond my own rational day to day understanding. Despite intrepid neurological science we simply don't know as yet how the brain truly manifests consciousness. It is something that current science has yet to fathom. Diagnostic research on known phenomenas such as remote viewing or ESP etc has been intensive for years. Much of these observable phenomena are claimed by traditional science to be neurological 'pattern recognition' - or at worst as quackery - and yet perhaps it is not Twilight Zone oddity but something untapped and very capable and natural to our perceptive ability and thus atypically very 'humanist' - and ontological 'of the human' - of the 'human condition' ?
The Scottish Lady who can detect Parkinsons disease even on undiagnosed patients via her sense of smell, is a very real and recent example of extraordinary perception. The late Dr Oliver Sachs work and his books are evidence of other beautiful rarities. There is also an excellent research duo, both Psychologists, working at Leeds Becket University on how the mind and brain perceive the material and immaterial. Extra sensory perception has been used by the establishment in many instances with success - it is not widely accepted nor reported for it is something science nor academia have empirically equated.
We are spellbound when we read Shakespeare, Ursula Le Guin, Joyce, Plath, Hughes, Carter or Pinter or look at a William Blake, Goya or Francis Bacon painting because they generated a sublime mythic connectivity and captured the poetics of life in an almost cryogenic freeze frame - the extraction and distillation of the Sublime and the Mythic - and through this Lens we see not only the Human and the Earthly Condition - but also the possibilities of our wider Ontology, the unknown or 'Super nature'. It is an ephemeral timescale that we have on Earth – we don't get long to work it out, all the universal Shakespearean content, trials and reward, the metaphysics of the human condition.
For me it feels negligent not to look hard at all of that matter face on, eye to eye. I can only do that through the Lens of my own experience. It is not for me to presume or visualise other people’s experiences. Ultimately much human creative investigation and expression is, I suspect, allusive of our material mortality and an inquisitive emphasis on how we live - a focus on 'being' here. .
I think the concept of our human mortality, our mortal caducity is something many of us learnt early as Children. That lesson and awareness matters in my work. I make things to explore or preserve that kind of matter, to perhaps once placate or re-balance some sort of loss or 'lack' (Lacan) - and to evidence that it mattered then and that things alter but still matter now (Not unlike the archetypal initials carved into a tree. Recorded crudely and then left out to be weathered by time and the elements).
I say what is 'Matter' exactly ? Well we are all made up of stars, Carbon, H20, amino acids etc. It goes beyond interesting! (Laughs).
So yes, it is ultimately about engaging with this matter positively and not shying away into escapism and displacement activity. In Particle Physics the theory of 'quantum entanglement' is complex - but I grasp the notion of two or more points in separate spheres being in contact with one another remotely or instantaneously - the lack of a 'threshold' - where a conventional notion of 'time' and distance falls away. A point where the ever present and the very faraway converge and manifest a thought or an action. Very like how osmosis occurs. It occurs in the conscious human mind all the time and happens when we think deeply or dream and when we engage in this type of creativity. Coleridge famously wrote the epic poem saga Kubla Khan more or less in his sleep after dreaming the whole tale (granted via Laudanum /Opium). There are obviously many many more sober examples. Songs Paintings Novellas Poetry etc. So a Humanist would celebrate all of this - as well as the mystic or shaman.
There are times I prefer the drawing to take a back seat - because it can take over - but you must accept it and exercise it. If you give it a run out once a day - stretch its legs - then it will settle down by the hearth and let you get on with the other things. If I didnt teach then I dont believe I could have sustained my own work in a vacuum. Teaching enables a constant recipricol communal evaluation - discussion frames things and gives it purpose beyond the selfish act - yes it's very sustaining and 'Humanities' students are a pleasure to work with - so it's not work really - its a warm receptive space. Precious.
How far back does memory really go in terms of atoms and DNA. There is muscle memory and what of the sub- atomic. The heart and brain - DNA memory. Can our atoms, like other birds and animals, recognise one another / communicate.
There are incredible stories to seek out that may demonstrate this. It is accepted that when memory is recorded in the genetic material - it is stably inherited and It becomes glued as genetic memory. Therefore by definition it is a memory present prior to birth yet exists in the absence of that individuals sensory experience. It is incorporated into the genome over long spans of time' by the genomes direct ancestors.
*According to Dollows Law ''an organism is unable to return, even partially, to a previous stage already realized in the ranks of its ancestors.”
However, there are very rare documented cases of 'Atavism' beyond the obvious ones like Dewclaws or vestigial tails etc. These atavisms appear to evidence that evolutionarily traits that have disappeared phenotypically do not necessarily disappear from within an organism's DNA. The gene sequence remains but is dormant and can be reawoken. The unused gene may remain deep in the genome for many generations. As long as the gene remains intact then stimulation from triggers in the genetic control suppressing the gene can lead to it being reignited and newly expressed.
Therefore this re-ignition of a dormant gene can be applied beyond darwinian morphology to sensory thought - feelings and behaviour - Proustian thought. Our phenomenological brain sequences that sit within the particles of our genetic dna (ancestral memory, racial memory - experience - feelings that can influence an individuals senses, thoughts and actions. Triggers enable this conflated connectivity to spark vague connectivities and one could say almost make the gene remember or reminisce.
On connections we encounter - atavistic resonance - why one thing stirs us and not another.
''Triggers enable this conflated connectivity to spark - and one could say almost make the gene remember or reminisce.'' ( Its a source of wonder - and I do wonder about it )
Question;
You stated earlier that when you draw ''There is usually a confluence of emotive contexts that entangle and evolve as I work through the drawing'' ... What do you mean by that exactly ?
MM: Well, at other times, when walking, driving or teaching and not drawing daily - then I am still thinking about that space. Obviously some places and previous encounters we experience in our early lives are very intensive and fix an impression - it may be beauty or loss - they hold you both with the same grip very often - and they can become preserved in the mind.
The Scottish Lady who can detect Parkinsons disease even on undiagnosed patients via her sense of smell, is a very real and recent example of extraordinary perception. The late Dr Oliver Sachs work and his books are evidence of other beautiful rarities. There is also an excellent research duo, both Psychologists, working at Leeds Becket University on how the mind and brain perceive the material and immaterial. Extra sensory perception has been used by the establishment in many instances with success - it is not widely accepted nor reported for it is something science nor academia have empirically equated.
We are spellbound when we read Shakespeare, Ursula Le Guin, Joyce, Plath, Hughes, Carter or Pinter or look at a William Blake, Goya or Francis Bacon painting because they generated a sublime mythic connectivity and captured the poetics of life in an almost cryogenic freeze frame - the extraction and distillation of the Sublime and the Mythic - and through this Lens we see not only the Human and the Earthly Condition - but also the possibilities of our wider Ontology, the unknown or 'Super nature'. It is an ephemeral timescale that we have on Earth – we don't get long to work it out, all the universal Shakespearean content, trials and reward, the metaphysics of the human condition.
I say what is 'Matter' exactly ? Well we are all made up of stars, Carbon, H20, amino acids etc. It goes beyond interesting! (Laughs).
So yes, it is ultimately about engaging with this matter positively and not shying away into escapism and displacement activity. In Particle Physics the theory of 'quantum entanglement' is complex - but I grasp the notion of two or more points in separate spheres being in contact with one another remotely or instantaneously - the lack of a 'threshold' - where a conventional notion of 'time' and distance falls away. A point where the ever present and the very faraway converge and manifest a thought or an action. Very like how osmosis occurs. It occurs in the conscious human mind all the time and happens when we think deeply or dream and when we engage in this type of creativity. Coleridge famously wrote the epic poem saga Kubla Khan more or less in his sleep after dreaming the whole tale (granted via Laudanum /Opium). There are obviously many many more sober examples. Songs Paintings Novellas Poetry etc. So a Humanist would celebrate all of this - as well as the mystic or shaman.
There are times I prefer the drawing to take a back seat - because it can take over - but you must accept it and exercise it. If you give it a run out once a day - stretch its legs - then it will settle down by the hearth and let you get on with the other things. If I didnt teach then I dont believe I could have sustained my own work in a vacuum. Teaching enables a constant recipricol communal evaluation - discussion frames things and gives it purpose beyond the selfish act - yes it's very sustaining and 'Humanities' students are a pleasure to work with - so it's not work really - its a warm receptive space. Precious.
How far back does memory really go in terms of atoms and DNA. There is muscle memory and what of the sub- atomic. The heart and brain - DNA memory. Can our atoms, like other birds and animals, recognise one another / communicate.
There are incredible stories to seek out that may demonstrate this. It is accepted that when memory is recorded in the genetic material - it is stably inherited and It becomes glued as genetic memory. Therefore by definition it is a memory present prior to birth yet exists in the absence of that individuals sensory experience. It is incorporated into the genome over long spans of time' by the genomes direct ancestors.
How far back does memory really go in terms of atoms and DNA. There is muscle memory and what of the sub- atomic. The heart and brain - DNA memory. Can our atoms, like other birds and animals, recognise one another / communicate.
There are incredible stories to seek out that may demonstrate this. It is accepted that when memory is recorded in the genetic material - it is stably inherited and It becomes glued as genetic memory. Therefore by definition it is a memory present prior to birth yet exists in the absence of that individuals sensory experience. It is incorporated into the genome over long spans of time' by the genomes direct ancestors.
*According to Dollows Law ''an organism is unable to return, even partially, to a previous stage already realized in the ranks of its ancestors.”
However, there are very rare documented cases of 'Atavism' beyond the obvious ones like Dewclaws or vestigial tails etc. These atavisms appear to evidence that evolutionarily traits that have disappeared phenotypically do not necessarily disappear from within an organism's DNA. The gene sequence remains but is dormant and can be reawoken. The unused gene may remain deep in the genome for many generations. As long as the gene remains intact then stimulation from triggers in the genetic control suppressing the gene can lead to it being reignited and newly expressed.
Therefore this re-ignition of a dormant gene can be applied beyond darwinian morphology to sensory thought - feelings and behaviour - Proustian thought. Our phenomenological brain sequences that sit within the particles of our genetic dna (ancestral memory, racial memory - experience - feelings that can influence an individuals senses, thoughts and actions. Triggers enable this conflated connectivity to spark vague connectivities and one could say almost make the gene remember or reminisce.
On connections we encounter - atavistic resonance - why one thing stirs us and not another.
''Triggers enable this conflated connectivity to spark - and one could say almost make the gene remember or reminisce.'' ( Its a source of wonder - and I do wonder about it )
.........................................................
older academic posts - repeats from older posts
.........................................................
older academic posts - repeats from older posts
Albertine Sarrazin, Dubbed the ‘petite saint of maverick writers’ by Patti Smith, whose life story is as intriguing as the electric prose of her cult novel, Astragal
Summer Reading: At the age of twenty-one, a sad and hungry Patti Smith walked into a bookshop in Greenwich Village and decided to spend her last 99 cents on a novel that would change her life forever. The book was Astragal, by Albertine Sarrazin. Sarrazin was an enigmatic outsider who had spent time in jail and who wrote only two novels and a book of poems in her short life - she died the year before Patti found her book, at the age of twenty-nine.
Older posts / BA Creative Practice 2011/12 - Programme leader
notes; Project notes.
Question: Can sound - music - performance - stimulate people with memory loss and dementia and other complex 'shutting down' neural conditions and help to re awaken them to the pleasures of self awareness and their own sensorial and earthly history ?
Watch the film below and also get the book by Oliver Sacks ''The Man who mistook his wife for a hat '
and his book 'Awakenings' - get the book and see the DVD Film with Robert De Niro and Robin Williams ( true Story about Sacks work )
Research this work and any contemporary work in your community that you may know of or can locate. Produce a log book of visual and Aural ideas and concepts for potential workshops that you could propose for triggering memory and making people embrace new life, emotion and vigor from external stimulation.
Your recent Project X work with the Library special collections will support this project.
Watch this first please to kickstart your project - this is the main theme
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1406732546/alive-inside-a-story-of-music-and-memory
Kate Bush CD album 'Ariel' may also help in giving you some ideas of suggestive soundscapes - and
visionary-women-who-paved-the-way-for-electronic-music - link now broken
OUTCOMES - mainly research based but create visuals and concept visuals - montage drawing photography etc to support. The proposed possibles can be made or proposed as .....
The Spoken word, Music and the idea of SOUND as a narrative and transmitter of feeling and ideas is the key to the project - but a VISUAL piece / object ( s) must also be included to PROP your idea and be something that can be passed around as a tactile trigger to accompany the idea
hence this will be very helpful reading also for you - so please read it through
http://www.thepsychologist.org.uk/archive/archive_home.cfm?volumeID=23&editionID=193&ArticleID=1741
CONTEXTUAL *Prepare notes ( self evaluative and critical) of your summer task to go towards work for your new contextual task in September - your task will be to write an essay on this subject specifically - or on your own research into the subject - ideally both ... OR to write an evaluation of the books and films above.
ENJOY best wishes and see you in September MACK ( Manning )
Older posts / BA Creative Practice 2011/12 - Programme leader
notes; Project notes.
Question: Can sound - music - performance - stimulate people with memory loss and dementia and other complex 'shutting down' neural conditions and help to re awaken them to the pleasures of self awareness and their own sensorial and earthly history ?
Watch the film below and also get the book by Oliver Sacks ''The Man who mistook his wife for a hat '
and his book 'Awakenings' - get the book and see the DVD Film with Robert De Niro and Robin Williams ( true Story about Sacks work )
Research this work and any contemporary work in your community that you may know of or can locate. Produce a log book of visual and Aural ideas and concepts for potential workshops that you could propose for triggering memory and making people embrace new life, emotion and vigor from external stimulation.
Your recent Project X work with the Library special collections will support this project.
Watch this first please to kickstart your project - this is the main theme
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1406732546/alive-inside-a-story-of-music-and-memory
Kate Bush CD album 'Ariel' may also help in giving you some ideas of suggestive soundscapes - and
visionary-women-who-paved-the-way-for-electronic-music - link now broken
OUTCOMES - mainly research based but create visuals and concept visuals - montage drawing photography etc to support. The proposed possibles can be made or proposed as .....
The Spoken word, Music and the idea of SOUND as a narrative and transmitter of feeling and ideas is the key to the project - but a VISUAL piece / object ( s) must also be included to PROP your idea and be something that can be passed around as a tactile trigger to accompany the idea
hence this will be very helpful reading also for you - so please read it through
http://www.thepsychologist.org.uk/archive/archive_home.cfm?volumeID=23&editionID=193&ArticleID=1741
CONTEXTUAL *Prepare notes ( self evaluative and critical) of your summer task to go towards work for your new contextual task in September - your task will be to write an essay on this subject specifically - or on your own research into the subject - ideally both ... OR to write an evaluation of the books and films above.
ENJOY best wishes and see you in September MACK ( Manning )
Reseaching archives
2015 summer research project - Level 6
a chance to evolve your own authorial practice and celebrate your identity and voice - PLAY with visual materials,nuance and notion.
The amalgam of genuine research and playful intuitive Experimentation = strong work = good grades.
Marsha Rowe and Rosie Boycott in the Spare Rib offices, 1972. Photograph: David Wilkerson
2015 summer research project
Here is your Level 5 and 6 Creative Practice research task(s) It is optional and not assessed - but recommended for deepening your studio and contextual synthesis and knowledge. ( constellations distillation task)
Research the periodical 'SPARE RIB' (in print 1972-1993) and its social / historical 'context'. There are no anachronisms in the archive - for it is an historical document in its own right - and a time capsule of its own 'Feminist' Zeitgeist. (what is 'Zeitgeist' and what is an anachronism ?)
Marsha Rowe (left) and Rosie Boycott, co-founders of the feminist magazine Spare Rib, in 1972. Photograph: Sydney O'Meara/Getty Images
Regarding 'anachronisms' the archive at your disposal is not, say, a book about the Magazine with an authors view - subjective account (open to error etc) -
... It IS 'the actual magazine' itself (online) for you to research as PRIMARY material ( you are reading the contents in its time period etc )
Read through them - buy some on ebay ? dont get too bogged down by interesting theoretical issues at this stage - i.e How has Feminism evolved or changed ? Just study the SPARE RIB archive contents and its design - the fashions and societal stance - and consider it all as a whole ? - is it 'of its time' ? and what is its relation to 'the now' ? How does it relate or not relate with today Can this set of documents trigger any visual responses and your own imagination - empathetic responses - ?
Make intuitive visual experimental work 'inspired' by the contents and themes - invent and make things up in response - connect your own work and ideas - amalgamate and improvise - be playful - in 2d or 3d or both.
Take inspiration from the themes raised by the article. Hopefully you will find work in the contents that actually resonates and consolidates some of your own current thinking and ideas for creative expression - thoughts on identity and Artistic making / Societal inks etc.
very good Guardian Article here -
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2015/may/28/spare-rib-the-top-10-reads-from-the-archives
then study the archive in full below- be patient it takes time to LAOD up the full size pages and images
full archive here https://journalarchives.jisc.ac.uk/britishlibrary/sparerib
very good British Library contextual bite size articles here from the main tree
http://www.bl.uk/spare-rib/
Triangulate and juxtapose your research by joining up your interests with other Archives - visit and use the SLIDE archive at MMU ( join Johns Flickr and twitter feed ) to find local images from this era that may support or juxtapose with your own thinking - Design - colour, fashions - Politics - social tropes or trends etc?
*and then also Visit the exhibition in special collections on Art Schools and Protest for a further source of material.
This whole Task will require an genuine interest in researching text and image - or visiting the archive - and reading through it for source material, connections and threads - then responding with visual and material experiments of your own - inspired by the connections you have made and found - this is all stimulus for further work next term. Research the archive with patience and depth - use a good PC /Mac not a phone etc - the British Museum / Spare Rib images take a while to load up on the archive pages;
Read Men too - read Patchen & Bukowski and Richard Brautigan - a fine punchy counter balance to the 'Oxbridge' poets ( Image of Patchen book from collection of mm)
Hard Feelings Prose and text from Spare Rib (from my collection / mm)
two other texts I recommend are the following - again used sucessfully as curriculum texts in the past - they are old books now but strong insights anecdotes and facts - and both very readable in a day or so - hard to put down - and both by Rosalind Miles
Dear Level 5 / 6 I will be publishing the room number for tuesdays all day lev 5 powerpoints asap - today I'm contemplating other matters with some weekly updates and links to seminar books we discussed on Tuesday: so for follow up.
*these are the authors and books mentioned in my last semianr with level 5 - may be of interest to some not others
Murray Bookchin
2. Stone tape theory ( again - yep ! this always makes an annual appearance )
some of you were asking and were curious about my talk at Birmingham City University ; here are some of the Semiotics and Image workshop 'Metaphor and Metamorphosis" images slides content etc
two good students below Olly & Eve
me, mid mess
by 'ambition' - read ... 'ambition for your work' - and your autonomy as an individual - autonomy Individuality - shared, and hopefully socially minded
real science fiction - comets over moominland -
'Lore' and 'making things up' - outsiders welcome
The Rear View lens - the future is now ? Archives;
time travel; Chris Marker and Atget :
Weegee
Poets
Diane De Prima 
'zones' of magic and disbelief - merging the future and the past - Solaris & Stalker
Stanisław Lem & Strugatsky brothers
qKQ~~60_12.JPG)
the importance of ones own historical palette / mythologies ( a little of mine - I used to dig Peat !)
survival ......... 1930s germany and paris
Violette Szabo, Noor Inayat Khan WW2 and fighting National Socialism" 1930s Europe
Lee Miller in Hitlers bathtub: and in the field
all our anthropologies
The Primitive - the rear view mirror - anthropology and the human as 'artefact'
more tales of the unexpected
'UN / Reality' and the Noumenal .... Ghosts in the machine / stone tapes - inner space outer space. Betty & Barney Hill
genesis p orridge and Orlan
the child and the inner lens - the toddler mind as a brilliant spongey 'SOFT' machine - recording this and that
Slavoj ZiZEK; possibly the best living critical thinker and speaker
( Flux magazine 2009 , illustrations by MM - editorial layout John Walsh )
this DVD is a must for anyone interested in Film and Human 'being' deconstructs the self, Hitchcock Tarkovsky and Lynch
Poets
Stevie Smith & Basil Bunting - the voice as 'drum'
More mythologies, felt frogs , female icons / Euro Chic
Changes in seeing ; feeling; Kent Landscape by mm
Anecdotes: ''But who is going to protect us and will we survive ''? cold war fears , anxiety and Post Traumatic Stress in children - the danger of adrenalin
shot on location in and around the tiny village of Le Rat, in the Corrèze with
Jeanne Moreau
Mademoiselle
Anecdote: The Exogenous and the Endogenous - - and how we come upon things :
My Falmouth Lecture : The Memory and the Whistle :
Slide 1; Curlew, Snipe & Lapwing Chicks :
Life on Moors ( Mars) :
And ...when not to acquiesce
celebration - in the small things
.....................................................
Drawing and the figure : Week
one:
Tutor mm
Drawing & Observation:
Is Drawing like a Poem ? economical and 'Analogous' to Song' ?
research metaphor and analogy in visual language
Brice Marden, David Smith, Bacon
Above - Improvise on your drawings when you get them home - evolve them
Research list - to do: search on Pinterest for
Millais drawing
Rodin drawing
Rodin Watercolour
Kiki Smith
Narrative drawing observation and seeing ones self not just the sitter:
Research : Kiki Smith, Andrew Wyeth,
Sir John Everett Millais Slight Sketch for the painting Ophelia 1852
below TWO drawings by RODIN
Auguste Rodin (French, 1840–1917) Graphite with wash of watercolor and gouache on cream paper;
above; Wyeth, Baskin, Shahn, Matisse poster - see the 'interior' of figure
and below Ned Ludd ! -
Unison Songs. In the spirit of the age, they were classless: written for everyone to sing, adults and children alike.
Literary facts & film 
Recommended Books / film for this month :
studio carpet by dieter roth
Recommended books to have around and to dip into. Don't only read other authors always - also read your'self' and your reactions to the books - place your thoughts down - or around you. In your BA journal etc
Vistas ! FOR only £3.50 you are missing out not reading the TLS to keep up to speed with societal & literary views ! spend half an hour with this rather than scrolling social media - keep it in your bag !?
-
Linked to previous drawing workshops 2014/5 / and 2017- 19 our anecdotal seminar - drawing sessions on channeling time / historocity / people / place / Life spans - diversity - equality - originalities - interpretations - drawing - music - text - sound & vision
The Person / Us / Humans - Good People and their being thus are enough as them selves - NOT only as their materialised manifestations of their expressions - their songs music poetry voice drawing art etc
Recommended TRAP DOOR magazine - ordered for Library
Drawing workshop - anecdotal content - The essence and real quality of being part of histories tumbled conflated immersive engine - as opposed to being a statistic, myth, legend, or fiction.
In 2004 I wrote and initiated a term long 12 week project about Zadie Smiths writing - 'White Teeth' - this later novel by Smith is recommended to in 2020
Bernadine Evaristo 2019
Winner of the 2019 Booker Prize. This is Britain as you've never read it. This is Britain as it has never been told. From Newcastle to Cornwall, from the birth of the twentieth century to the teens of the twenty-first, Girl Woman Other follows a cast of twelve characters on their personal journeys through this country and the last hundred years. They're each looking for something - a shared past, an unexpected future, a place to call home, somewhere to fit in, a lover, a missed mother, a lost father, even just a touch of hope . . . 'Masterful . . . A choral love song to black womanhood in modern Great Britain' Elle 'Exceptional. Ambitious, flowing and all-encompassing, an offbeat narrative that'll leave your mind in an invigorated whirl... [It] unites poetry, social history, women's voices and beyond. You have to order it right now' Stylist 'Bernardine Evaristo
The Armstrong text is Western centric - historical Roman / Greek etc centric but it is VG
Harari is highly lauded and rightly so - read both books listed here by him 'Sapiens' and '21 Lessons' 
‘This powerful book serves as a timely reminder of what our forefathers forged out of the ashes of the Second World War – an international order based on cooperation and interdependence together with a bold, fearless domestic agenda that set about creating a new society’ David Lammy
Research all the following for a larger awareness of the grey complex histories of our species and future possibilities
Research ‘femme savante’
seminar notes: gender - Rrose Selavy & & The Book by Vidal ''Myra Breckinbridge'' - read the book
Duchamp - the handle - to handle Royal Acadamey pdf
Duchamp and Dalí both insisted on the importance of the individual, a concept they each explored in their work, primarily through consciously developed and performed identities: Dalí as a dandyish, extravagant showman and prolific artist; Duchamp as an ironic, solitary figure who by the 1930s many thought had relinquished art-making entirely. Although their public personas differed greatly, the two artists are united in their need to actively construct for themselves a unique identity.
Bernadine Evaristo 2019
Winner of the 2019 Booker Prize. This is Britain as you've never read it. This is Britain as it has never been told. From Newcastle to Cornwall, from the birth of the twentieth century to the teens of the twenty-first, Girl Woman Other follows a cast of twelve characters on their personal journeys through this country and the last hundred years. They're each looking for something - a shared past, an unexpected future, a place to call home, somewhere to fit in, a lover, a missed mother, a lost father, even just a touch of hope . . . 'Masterful . . . A choral love song to black womanhood in modern Great Britain' Elle 'Exceptional. Ambitious, flowing and all-encompassing, an offbeat narrative that'll leave your mind in an invigorated whirl... [It] unites poetry, social history, women's voices and beyond. You have to order it right now' Stylist 'Bernardine Evaristo
by duchamp from exhibition 1930
*These books are a range of materials for diverse / neuro-diverse learners in education and beyond.
Also some of the books above and below are on the ' wellbeing / Covid lockdown list / numbers / contacts / at the bottom of this page
original evocations by Bach
'This conflation of the previous and the current are what fuels propulsion' mm
''It all begins and ends with Bach''. said Ludwig Van (but it doesnt end though Ludwig)
What colour is this piece ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1A7Jts4_Ag
Mary Garden - for Moira
Louise B
Colour - the feel of a colour - the sound of a colour
Listen to this historic link :
Debussy & Mary Garden Interview about Debussy and her singing Pelleas Act 3
Lecture Slide:
Rain - 1915 by Apollinaire
notes to the future - notes to the past ; NOVELLO
Note from the future to the past says - send help.
Do tend to things
Lytill Ihon and Robyne Hude Waythmen ware commendyd gude; In Yngilwode and Barnysdale Thai oysyd all this tyme thare trawale.
*notes from previous wellbeing seminars 2015 - involving drawing - creative writing
When Herman Hesse wrote that 'Every man or woman is not only him or herself for he or she is also the unique particular, always significant and remarkable point where the phenomena of the world intersect once and for all and never again'
Hesse is not saying we shouldn't embrace our shared social sisterhood or brotherhood etc nor is he claiming that we should ignore our collective strengths as a closer knit society or humanity. He is stating that personal experience - though often shared - is always unique and particular to the individual - we are all different due to a myriad of circumstances, responses - the quirks and nuances of an individuals genetic make up within the 'self'. Using this unique auto biographical experiential voice and knowledge is vitally important for any Artist, Musician, Author etc if they wish to make work that has genuine authenticity and honesty - and crucially if we wish to share it as a visual 'opinion' / subtle experience - OR indeed to 'raise the volume' and make societal work that supports, subverts or criticises society. This 'voice' should also be applied to any smart creative school or Institute that seeks to cultivate and harbour creativity. Seeking to emote new knowledge takes risk and deeper levels of self awareness beyond the superficial, aesthetic skills - it requires digging deeper - down through the strata of surface turf that can stifle intuitive germination - stifling original ideas and concepts.
Digging a little deeper through the top soil is necessary if we wish to 'Practice or Teach' Creativity. This is Authorial Practise. The over intellectualism of the Arts is concerning. The esoteric turf of intellectual and analytical theory within the Creative Arts and Humanities.
Don Marquis the great American poet and writer said something along the lines of - to publish a line of poetry is akin to throwing a feather down into the grand canyon -(there will be no grand resounding echo).
Now I may have added the last echo bit - but Marquis' truth can also be applied to the act of producing a drawing, doodle or painting - or playing the fiddle - or indeed to any non commercially commissioned creative practise. It is akin to whispering to ones reflection in the mirror - not an act after approval and with no aspiration attached to it other than the doing. Making at its best and most honest is most often just performed as a statement of existence - an individual or collective act of being.
Authorship helps navigate away from potential senses of absence or disenchantment, away from ones own anthropocentrism. It placates the illusions and negativity that we can feel from status anxiety etc. Creative Practice can steer us away from 'the Other' toward levels of contentment through reflexive engagement - observing what is occurring - learning - remaking and re-owning things presently - in the present tense. Preserving these observations ‘seen’ or perceptions ‘felt’ in a drawn act - as an expression of visual or sonic language or text etc - is an entanglement of sensory observations from the present and of the past - depicted and preserved into one capsule – and therefore the work may become an expression of immediate experience - and even if the work has a natural involvement with the historical past - the work is paradoxically born out of knowledge and feeling gained in the present - therefore it is a recording of that present moments perceptions and not an echo. As a result the work when successful helps define a more acceptable personal state - a new paradigm - the friendship or 'fellowship' that Orwell talked about - important today amidst the plethora of simulated 21 century commercial and social media stimulus that is both heterogeneous and conflicting.' The value of living well - alive, alive oh.
A drawing - a composition - sounds on a flute etc - affinity with biophilic nature - be it walking in forests - or sat by the Sea - it may all sound very 1967 but its rather older than that .... all ancient cultures believe these act as gateways into transcendental dimensionality,
Watts & Tolle call it your 'essence identity'
............................................................................................
#Polykettle Project / A United Nations Nasa International project / lens / written originally 2015 - re written Jan 2020 level 4 unit x 
#Polykettle Project written originally 2015 - re written Jan 2020 for Level 4 Unit X
The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record, a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.
What are the diverse contents of the Golden Record?
Adapted from a Scottish Hymn - the song 'night has yet to fall' - will last for BILLIONS of years as part of the golden record mission - aboard Voyager
Bach, Mozart and Blind Willie Johnson - a conflation of the previous and the current
DO WATCH THIS short clip of why this is important
Question ? will Voyager - willie & mozart all appear back on the horizon in the future - flown full circle
notes * A full list of all the music is listen on line and you can hear it all on the nassa website etc and youtube
Each record is encased in a protective aluminum jacket, together with a cartridge and a needle. Instructions, in symbolic language, explain the origin of the spacecraft and indicate how the record is to be played. The 115 images are encoded in analog form.
Many images show our diversity and range of miriad cultures that go beyond skin colour
And full NASA slides and Images all should be researched - some here
Field Recordings that will sing for billions of years
0:02 / 3:25
#POLYKETTLE project research list - Golden Record
Cosmos Song by Artist Louis Armstrong
Alima Song music of the Ituri forest - listen to them all before assuming / presuming
Level 4 : Please do your homework Betty & Barney did
Betty and Barney Hill Papers, 1961-2006
for this University archive always use this if citing Preferred Citation
polykettle project now complete and recorded
Lovely new book with pictures and visual language by an Alumni of ours - available now 
Read world citizen / Emigre and Immigrant Poet / expert.
A poem of Alston Moor
WH AUDEN
Watershed - Aug 1927
Who stands, the crux left of the watershed,
On the wet road between the chafing grass
Below him sees dismantled washing-floors,
Snatches of tramline running to a wood,
An industry already comatose,
Yet sparsely living. A ramshackle engine
At Cashwell raises water; for ten years
It lay in flooded workings until this,
Its latter office, grudgingly performed.
And, further, here and there, though many dead
Lie under the poor soil, some acts are chosen,
Taken from recent winters; two there were
Cleaned out a damaged shaft by hand, clutching
The winch a gale would tear them from; one died
During a storm, the fells impassable,
Not at his village, but in wooden shape
Through long abandoned levels nosed his way
And in his final valley went to ground.
Stranger, turn back again, frustrate and vexed:
This land, cut off, will not communicate,
Be no accessory content to one
Aimless for faces rather there than here.
Beams from your car may cross a bedroom wall,
They wake no sleeper; you may hear the wind
Arriving driven from the ignorant sea
To hurt itself on pane, on bark of elm
Where sap unbaffled rises, being spring;
But seldom this. Near you, taller than the grass,
Ears poise before decision, scenting danger.
Research ‘femme savante’
seminar notes: gender - Rrose Selavy & & The Book by Vidal ''Myra Breckinbridge'' - read the book
Duchamp - the handle - to handle Royal Acadamey pdf
Unison Songs. In the spirit of the age, they were classless: written for everyone to sing, adults and children alike.
Carl Sagan - Ann Druyan - nice book
Literary facts & film
The WW2 Occupation / Holocaust film below - is a sentimental film - but it works well
Recommended Books / film for this month :
studio carpet by dieter roth
L I B R A R Y
Recommended books to have around and to dip into. Don't only read other authors always - also read your'self' and your reactions to the books - place your thoughts down - or around you. In your BA journal etc
Vistas ! FOR only £3.50 you are missing out not reading the TLS to keep up to speed with societal & literary views ! spend half an hour with this rather than scrolling social media - keep it in your bag !?
this video and more are now many more of Rosies insights at the bottom of this entry page
-
Linked to previous drawing workshops 2014/5 / and 2017- 19 our anecdotal seminar - drawing sessions on channeling time / historocity / people / place / Life spans - diversity - equality - originalities - interpretations - drawing - music - text - sound & vision
The Person / Us / Humans - Good People and their being thus are enough as them selves - NOT only as their materialised manifestations of their expressions - their songs music poetry voice drawing art etc
Recommended TRAP DOOR magazine - ordered for Library
Drawing workshop - anecdotal content - The essence and real quality of being part of histories tumbled conflated immersive engine - as opposed to being a statistic, myth, legend, or fiction.
In 2004 I wrote and initiated a term long 12 week project about Zadie Smiths writing - 'White Teeth' - this later novel by Smith is recommended to in 2020
Bernadine Evaristo 2019
Winner of the 2019 Booker Prize. This is Britain as you've never read it. This is Britain as it has never been told. From Newcastle to Cornwall, from the birth of the twentieth century to the teens of the twenty-first, Girl Woman Other follows a cast of twelve characters on their personal journeys through this country and the last hundred years. They're each looking for something - a shared past, an unexpected future, a place to call home, somewhere to fit in, a lover, a missed mother, a lost father, even just a touch of hope . . . 'Masterful . . . A choral love song to black womanhood in modern Great Britain' Elle 'Exceptional. Ambitious, flowing and all-encompassing, an offbeat narrative that'll leave your mind in an invigorated whirl... [It] unites poetry, social history, women's voices and beyond. You have to order it right now' Stylist 'Bernardine Evaristo
The Armstrong text is Western centric - historical Roman / Greek etc centric but it is VG
Harari is highly lauded and rightly so - read both books listed here by him 'Sapiens' and '21 Lessons'
‘This powerful book serves as a timely reminder of what our forefathers forged out of the ashes of the Second World War – an international order based on cooperation and interdependence together with a bold, fearless domestic agenda that set about creating a new society’ David Lammy
Research all the following for a larger awareness of the grey complex histories of our species and future possibilities
Research ‘femme savante’
seminar notes: gender - Rrose Selavy & & The Book by Vidal ''Myra Breckinbridge'' - read the book
Duchamp - the handle - to handle Royal Acadamey pdf
Written by Rebecca Bray
For the Learning Department © Royal Academy of Arts
Duchamp and Dalí both insisted on the importance of the individual, a concept they each explored in their work, primarily through consciously developed and performed identities: Dalí as a dandyish, extravagant showman and prolific artist; Duchamp as an ironic, solitary figure who by the 1930s many thought had relinquished art-making entirely. Although their public personas differed greatly, the two artists are united in their need to actively construct for themselves a unique identity.
Cat. 31 At first glance, the person in this photograph appears to be a fashionable woman of the 1920s. Wearing a low-set feathered hat and several necklaces, her gaze is direct, cool and questioning. At the time, her appearance would have been recognisable as a ‘femme savante’, an educated, intellectual, artistically literate woman. She is, however, none other than Marcel Duchamp. This 1921 photograph demonstrates his visual, even flamboyant, exploration of assuming an alter ego, Rrose Sélavy. This character was not a one-off occurrence, but an identity that Duchamp assumed many times during his career. He apparently signed or co-signed works ‘by Duchamp and Rrose Sélavy’ and even appeared (in a photograph taken in the same costume) as the face of an imaginary fragrance, Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette (Beautiful Breath, Veil Water).
Key to understanding the layered significance of Duchamp/Rrose is the name. Rather than a misspelling that stuck, Rrose Sélavy is a deliberate pun, intended to prompt wider connotations when looking at anything created of or by her. Exactly what Duchamp meant by the pun is somewhat less clear. The most common interpretation is that it sounds like Eros, c’est la vie (Eros, that’s the life. Eros is the Greek god of erotic love); but it has also been interpreted to mean arroser la vie (make a toast to life). Perhaps its ambiguity is one of the reasons why Duchamp made this pun, so that viewers would understand it differently based on their own associations and allowing for slippage of meaning. Puns appear many times throughout Duchamp’s artworks and notes; they became an important element in his artistic identity, a way to encourage certain readings of works that otherwise may seem impenetrable. Often deciphering these puns relied on understanding an in-joke, or on being part of the specific circle of friends and artists known to Duchamp – to non-French speakers, for example, the name Rrose Sélavy is not an obvious pun. Duchamp began to use puns as a way to promote his elusive persona, while also helping those ‘in the know’ to interpret his works.
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Duchamp’s exploration of a female identity is particularly relevant when considered alongside today’s discourse surrounding gender. Duchamp’s decision to ‘change sex’ at will was a radically unusual one for the period, suggesting he believed gender and identity to be a fluid concept, an idea which has only recently gained mainstream acceptance. However, it is important to approach Rrose Sélavy within the context of the period in which the persona was created. The status of women in the art circles Duchamp frequented would have been limited, with women often seen as being muses for male artists rather than recognised as artists in their own right. Duchamp would deliberately ‘put on’ the persona of Rrose Sélavy for the creation of artwork, rather than as a part of his lifestyle, or to make a political or feminist statement. With even her name acting as a pun, Rrose Sélavy seems to be less a fully formed person than a personification of Duchamp’s ideas about playing with identity.
Bernadine Evaristo 2019
Winner of the 2019 Booker Prize. This is Britain as you've never read it. This is Britain as it has never been told. From Newcastle to Cornwall, from the birth of the twentieth century to the teens of the twenty-first, Girl Woman Other follows a cast of twelve characters on their personal journeys through this country and the last hundred years. They're each looking for something - a shared past, an unexpected future, a place to call home, somewhere to fit in, a lover, a missed mother, a lost father, even just a touch of hope . . . 'Masterful . . . A choral love song to black womanhood in modern Great Britain' Elle 'Exceptional. Ambitious, flowing and all-encompassing, an offbeat narrative that'll leave your mind in an invigorated whirl... [It] unites poetry, social history, women's voices and beyond. You have to order it right now' Stylist 'Bernardine Evaristo
by duchamp from exhibition 1930
*These books are a range of materials for diverse / neuro-diverse learners in education and beyond.
Learning celebrates diversity and differentiation - there is more information and helpful videos below.
Also some of the books above and below are on the ' wellbeing / Covid lockdown list / numbers / contacts / at the bottom of this page
original evocations by Bach
'This conflation of the previous and the current are what fuels propulsion' mm
''It all begins and ends with Bach''. said Ludwig Van (but it doesnt end though Ludwig)
What colour is this piece ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1A7Jts4_Ag
Mary Garden - for Moira
Louise B
Colour - the feel of a colour - the sound of a colour
Listen to this historic link :
Debussy & Mary Garden Interview about Debussy and her singing Pelleas Act 3
Lecture Slide:
Lecture Slide:
Rain - 1915 by Apollinaire
notes to the future - notes to the past ; NOVELLO
Note from the future to the past says - send help.
Do tend to things
Lytill Ihon and Robyne Hude Waythmen ware commendyd gude; In Yngilwode and Barnysdale Thai oysyd all this tyme thare trawale.
Tales From The West Riding
*notes from previous wellbeing seminars 2015 - involving drawing - creative writing
When Herman Hesse wrote that 'Every man or woman is not only him or herself for he or she is also the unique particular, always significant and remarkable point where the phenomena of the world intersect once and for all and never again'
Hesse is not saying we shouldn't embrace our shared social sisterhood or brotherhood etc nor is he claiming that we should ignore our collective strengths as a closer knit society or humanity. He is stating that personal experience - though often shared - is always unique and particular to the individual - we are all different due to a myriad of circumstances, responses - the quirks and nuances of an individuals genetic make up within the 'self'. Using this unique auto biographical experiential voice and knowledge is vitally important for any Artist, Musician, Author etc if they wish to make work that has genuine authenticity and honesty - and crucially if we wish to share it as a visual 'opinion' / subtle experience - OR indeed to 'raise the volume' and make societal work that supports, subverts or criticises society. This 'voice' should also be applied to any smart creative school or Institute that seeks to cultivate and harbour creativity. Seeking to emote new knowledge takes risk and deeper levels of self awareness beyond the superficial, aesthetic skills - it requires digging deeper - down through the strata of surface turf that can stifle intuitive germination - stifling original ideas and concepts.
Digging a little deeper through the top soil is necessary if we wish to 'Practice or Teach' Creativity. This is Authorial Practise. The over intellectualism of the Arts is concerning. The esoteric turf of intellectual and analytical theory within the Creative Arts and Humanities.
Don Marquis the great American poet and writer said something along the lines of - to publish a line of poetry is akin to throwing a feather down into the grand canyon -(there will be no grand resounding echo).
Now I may have added the last echo bit - but Marquis' truth can also be applied to the act of producing a drawing, doodle or painting - or playing the fiddle - or indeed to any non commercially commissioned creative practise. It is akin to whispering to ones reflection in the mirror - not an act after approval and with no aspiration attached to it other than the doing. Making at its best and most honest is most often just performed as a statement of existence - an individual or collective act of being.
Like the megalithic hand stencil in the cave of dreams. ''I am here'' .... and if the work survives ''I was here'' ( the hominid hand on the cave - or the 'graffiti' on the alley wall.
Authorship helps navigate away from potential senses of absence or disenchantment, away from ones own anthropocentrism. It placates the illusions and negativity that we can feel from status anxiety etc. Creative Practice can steer us away from 'the Other' toward levels of contentment through reflexive engagement - observing what is occurring - learning - remaking and re-owning things presently - in the present tense. Preserving these observations ‘seen’ or perceptions ‘felt’ in a drawn act - as an expression of visual or sonic language or text etc - is an entanglement of sensory observations from the present and of the past - depicted and preserved into one capsule – and therefore the work may become an expression of immediate experience - and even if the work has a natural involvement with the historical past - the work is paradoxically born out of knowledge and feeling gained in the present - therefore it is a recording of that present moments perceptions and not an echo. As a result the work when successful helps define a more acceptable personal state - a new paradigm - the friendship or 'fellowship' that Orwell talked about - important today amidst the plethora of simulated 21 century commercial and social media stimulus that is both heterogeneous and conflicting.' The value of living well - alive, alive oh.
A drawing - a composition - sounds on a flute etc - affinity with biophilic nature - be it walking in forests - or sat by the Sea - it may all sound very 1967 but its rather older than that .... all ancient cultures believe these act as gateways into transcendental dimensionality,
Watts & Tolle call it your 'essence identity'
............................................................................................
#Polykettle Project / A United Nations Nasa International project / lens / written originally 2015 - re written Jan 2020 level 4 unit x
#Polykettle Project written originally 2015 - re written Jan 2020 for Level 4 Unit X
feels & fuels propulsion ..... through interstellar space - above betty & barney
The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record, a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.
What are the diverse contents of the Golden Record?
Adapted from a Scottish Hymn - the song 'night has yet to fall' - will last for BILLIONS of years as part of the golden record mission - aboard Voyager
Bach, Mozart and Blind Willie Johnson - a conflation of the previous and the current
DO WATCH THIS short clip of why this is important
Question ? will Voyager - willie & mozart all appear back on the horizon in the future - flown full circle
notes * A full list of all the music is listen on line and you can hear it all on the nassa website etc and youtube 
The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University, et. al. Dr. Sagan and his associates assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales, and other animals. To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings from Earth-people in fifty-five languages, and printed messages from President Carter and U.N. Secretary General Waldheim.
"The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space."
- Carl Sagan
Each record is encased in a protective aluminum jacket, together with a cartridge and a needle. Instructions, in symbolic language, explain the origin of the spacecraft and indicate how the record is to be played. The 115 images are encoded in analog form.
It contains the spoken greetings, beginning with Akkadian, which was spoken in Sumer about six thousand years ago, and ending with Wu, a modern Chinese dialect. Following the section on the sounds of Earth, there is an eclectic 90-minute selection of music, including both Eastern and Western classics and a variety of ethnic music. Once the Voyager spacecraft leave the solar system (by 1990, both will be beyond the orbit of Pluto), they will find themselves in empty space. It will be forty thousand years before they make a close approach to any other planetary system. As Carl Sagan has noted, "The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet."
The definitive work about the Voyager record is "Murmurs of Earth" by Executive Director, Carl Sagan, Technical Director, Frank Drake, Creative Director, Ann Druyan, Producer, Timothy Ferris, Designer, Jon Lomberg, and Greetings Organizer, Linda Salzman. Basically, this book is the story behind the creation of the record, and includes a full list of everything on the record. "Murmurs of Earth", originally published in 1978, was reissued in 1992 by Warner News Media with a CD-ROM that replicates the Voyager record. Unfortunately, this book is now out of print, but it is worth the effort to try and find a used copy or browse through a library copy.
Many images show our diversity and range of miriad cultures that go beyond skin colour
· Anatomy 8, World Book
· Human sex organs, Sinauer Associates, Inc.
· Conception , Albert Bonniers; Forlag, Stockholm
· Fertilized ovum, Albert Bonniers; Forlag, Stockholm
· Fetus, Dr. Frank Allan
· Birth, Wayne Miller
· Father and daughter (Malaysia), David Harvey
·
And full NASA slides and Images all should be researched - some here
Field Recordings that will sing for billions of years
0:02 / 3:25
#POLYKETTLE project research list - Golden Record
Cosmos Song by Artist Louis Armstrong
Alima Song music of the Ituri forest - listen to them all before assuming / presuming
Level 4 : Please do your homework Betty & Barney did
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDjRAdZCKUU
Betty and Barney Hill Papers, 1961-2006
for this University archive always use this if citing Preferred Citation
[Identification of item], [Folder number], [Box number], Betty and Barney Hill Papers, 1961-2006, MC 197, Milne Special Collections and Archives, University of New Hampshire Library, Durham, NH, USA.
#Polykettle Project International / written originally 2015 - re written Jan 2020
polykettle project now complete and recorded
a 100% pass rate - first class work - well done all !
Hip Hip Hooray from Babar
Lovely new book with pictures and visual language by an Alumni of ours - available now 
How To Be Extraordinary - words by Rashmi Sirdeshpande , art by annabel tempest, edited by emily wilson lunn, design by puffin books
Read world citizen / Emigre and Immigrant Poet / expert.
Culture and Art Polymath, the late John Berger
A poem of Alston Moor
WH AUDEN
Watershed - Aug 1927
Who stands, the crux left of the watershed,
On the wet road between the chafing grass
Below him sees dismantled washing-floors,
Snatches of tramline running to a wood,
An industry already comatose,
Yet sparsely living. A ramshackle engine
At Cashwell raises water; for ten years
It lay in flooded workings until this,
Its latter office, grudgingly performed.
And, further, here and there, though many dead
Lie under the poor soil, some acts are chosen,
Taken from recent winters; two there were
Cleaned out a damaged shaft by hand, clutching
The winch a gale would tear them from; one died
During a storm, the fells impassable,
Not at his village, but in wooden shape
Through long abandoned levels nosed his way
And in his final valley went to ground.
On the wet road between the chafing grass
Below him sees dismantled washing-floors,
Snatches of tramline running to a wood,
An industry already comatose,
Yet sparsely living. A ramshackle engine
At Cashwell raises water; for ten years
It lay in flooded workings until this,
Its latter office, grudgingly performed.
And, further, here and there, though many dead
Lie under the poor soil, some acts are chosen,
Taken from recent winters; two there were
Cleaned out a damaged shaft by hand, clutching
The winch a gale would tear them from; one died
During a storm, the fells impassable,
Not at his village, but in wooden shape
Through long abandoned levels nosed his way
And in his final valley went to ground.
Go home, now, stranger, proud of your young stock,
Stranger, turn back again, frustrate and vexed:
This land, cut off, will not communicate,
Be no accessory content to one
Aimless for faces rather there than here.
Beams from your car may cross a bedroom wall,
They wake no sleeper; you may hear the wind
Arriving driven from the ignorant sea
To hurt itself on pane, on bark of elm
Where sap unbaffled rises, being spring;
But seldom this. Near you, taller than the grass,
Ears poise before decision, scenting danger.
Stranger, turn back again, frustrate and vexed:
This land, cut off, will not communicate,
Be no accessory content to one
Aimless for faces rather there than here.
Beams from your car may cross a bedroom wall,
They wake no sleeper; you may hear the wind
Arriving driven from the ignorant sea
To hurt itself on pane, on bark of elm
Where sap unbaffled rises, being spring;
But seldom this. Near you, taller than the grass,
Ears poise before decision, scenting danger.
Research ‘femme savante’
seminar notes: gender - Rrose Selavy & & The Book by Vidal ''Myra Breckinbridge'' - read the book
Duchamp - the handle - to handle Royal Acadamey pdf
Unison Songs. In the spirit of the age, they were classless: written for everyone to sing, adults and children alike.
Literary facts & film 
Recommended Books / film for this month :
Recommended books to have around and to dip into. Don't only read other authors always - also read your'self' and your reactions to the books - place your thoughts down - or around you. In your BA journal etc
Vistas ! FOR only £3.50 you are missing out not reading the TLS to keep up to speed with societal & literary views ! spend half an hour with this rather than scrolling social media - keep it in your bag !?
-
Linked to previous drawing workshops 2014/5 / and 2017- 19 our anecdotal seminar - drawing sessions on channeling time / historocity / people / place / Life spans - diversity - equality - originalities - interpretations - drawing - music - text - sound & vision ; The Person / Us / Humans - Good People and their being thus are enough as them selves - NOT only as their materialised manifestations of their expressions - their songs music poetry voice drawing art etc
Recommended TRAP DOOR magazine - ordered for Library
Drawing workshop - anecdotal content - The essence and real quality of being part of histories tumbled conflated immersive engine - as opposed to being a statistic, myth, legend, or fiction.
In 2004 I wrote and initiated a term long 12 week project about Zadie Smiths writing - 'White Teeth' - this later novel by Smith is recommended to in 2020
Bernadine Evaristo 2019
Winner of the 2019 Booker Prize. This is Britain as you've never read it. This is Britain as it has never been told. From Newcastle to Cornwall, from the birth of the twentieth century to the teens of the twenty-first, Girl Woman Other follows a cast of twelve characters on their personal journeys through this country and the last hundred years. They're each looking for something - a shared past, an unexpected future, a place to call home, somewhere to fit in, a lover, a missed mother, a lost father, even just a touch of hope . . . 'Masterful . . . A choral love song to black womanhood in modern Great Britain' Elle 'Exceptional. Ambitious, flowing and all-encompassing, an offbeat narrative that'll leave your mind in an invigorated whirl... [It] unites poetry, social history, women's voices and beyond. You have to order it right now' Stylist 'Bernardine Evaristo
The Armstrong text is Western centric - historical Roman / Greek etc centric but it is VG
Harari is highly lauded and rightly so - read both books listed here by him 'Sapiens' and '21 Lessons' 
‘This powerful book serves as a timely reminder of what our forefathers forged out of the ashes of the Second World War – an international order based on cooperation and interdependence together with a bold, fearless domestic agenda that set about creating a new society’ David Lammy
Research all the following for a larger awareness of the grey complex histories of our species and future possibilities
Research ‘femme savante’
seminar notes: gender - Rrose Selavy & & The Book by Vidal ''Myra Breckinbridge'' - read the book
Duchamp - the handle - to handle Royal Acadamey pdf
Duchamp and Dalí both insisted on the importance of the individual, a concept they each explored in their work, primarily through consciously developed and performed identities: Dalí as a dandyish, extravagant showman and prolific artist; Duchamp as an ironic, solitary figure who by the 1930s many thought had relinquished art-making entirely. Although their public personas differed greatly, the two artists are united in their need to actively construct for themselves a unique identity.
by duchamp from exhibition 1930
*These books are a range of materials for diverse / neuro-diverse learners in education and beyond.
Also some of the books above and below are on the ' wellbeing / Covid lockdown list / numbers / contacts / at the bottom of this page
original evocations by Bach
'This conflation of the previous and the current are what fuels propulsion' mm
''It all begins and ends with Bach''. said Ludwig Van (but it doesnt end though Ludwig)
What colour is this piece ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1A7Jts4_Ag
Mary Garden - for Moira
Louise B
Colour - the feel of a colour - the sound of a colour
Listen to this historic link :
Debussy & Mary Garden Interview about Debussy and her singing Pelleas Act 3
Lecture Slide:
Rain - 1915 by Apollinaire
Do tend to things
Lytill Ihon and Robyne Hude Waythmen ware commendyd gude; In Yngilwode and Barnysdale Thai oysyd all this tyme thare trawale.
*notes from previous wellbeing seminars 2015 - involving drawing - creative writing
When Herman Hesse wrote that 'Every man or woman is not only him or herself for he or she is also the unique particular, always significant and remarkable point where the phenomena of the world intersect once and for all and never again'
Hesse is not saying we shouldn't embrace our shared social sisterhood or brotherhood etc nor is he claiming that we should ignore our collective strengths as a closer knit society or humanity. He is stating that personal experience - though often shared - is always unique and particular to the individual - we are all different due to a myriad of circumstances, responses - the quirks and nuances of an individuals genetic make up within the 'self'. Using this unique auto biographical experiential voice and knowledge is vitally important for any Artist, Musician, Author etc if they wish to make work that has genuine authenticity and honesty - and crucially if we wish to share it as a visual 'opinion' / subtle experience - OR indeed to 'raise the volume' and make societal work that supports, subverts or criticises society. This 'voice' should also be applied to any smart creative school or Institute that seeks to cultivate and harbour creativity. Seeking to emote new knowledge takes risk and deeper levels of self awareness beyond the superficial, aesthetic skills - it requires digging deeper - down through the strata of surface turf that can stifle intuitive germination - stifling original ideas and concepts.
Digging a little deeper through the top soil is necessary if we wish to 'Practice or Teach' Creativity. This is Authorial Practise. The over intellectualism of the Arts is concerning. The esoteric turf of intellectual and analytical theory within the Creative Arts and Humanities.
Don Marquis the great American poet and writer said something along the lines of - to publish a line of poetry is akin to throwing a feather down into the grand canyon -(there will be no grand resounding echo).
Now I may have added the last echo bit - but Marquis' truth can also be applied to the act of producing a drawing, doodle or painting - or playing the fiddle - or indeed to any non commercially commissioned creative practise. It is akin to whispering to ones reflection in the mirror - not an act after approval and with no aspiration attached to it other than the doing. Making at its best and most honest is most often just performed as a statement of existence - an individual or collective act of being.
Authorship helps navigate away from potential senses of absence or disenchantment, away from ones own anthropocentrism. It placates the illusions and negativity that we can feel from status anxiety etc. Creative Practice can steer us away from 'the Other' toward levels of contentment through reflexive engagement - observing what is occurring - learning - remaking and re-owning things presently - in the present tense. Preserving these observations ‘seen’ or perceptions ‘felt’ in a drawn act - as an expression of visual or sonic language or text etc - is an entanglement of sensory observations from the present and of the past - depicted and preserved into one capsule – and therefore the work may become an expression of immediate experience - and even if the work has a natural involvement with the historical past - the work is paradoxically born out of knowledge and feeling gained in the present - therefore it is a recording of that present moments perceptions and not an echo. As a result the work when successful helps define a more acceptable personal state - a new paradigm - the friendship or 'fellowship' that Orwell talked about - important today amidst the plethora of simulated 21 century commercial and social media stimulus that is both heterogeneous and conflicting.' The value of living well - alive, alive oh.
A drawing - a composition - sounds on a flute etc - affinity with biophilic nature - be it walking in forests - or sat by the Sea - it may all sound very 1967 but its rather older than that .... all ancient cultures believe these act as gateways into transcendental dimensionality,
Watts & Tolle call it your 'essence identity'
............................................................................................
#Polykettle Project / A United Nations Nasa International project / lens / written originally 2015 - re written Jan 2020 level 4 unit x 
#Polykettle Project written originally 2015 - re written Jan 2020 for Level 4 Unit X
The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record, a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.
What are the diverse contents of the Golden Record?
Adapted from a Scottish Hymn - the song 'night has yet to fall' - will last for BILLIONS of years as part of the golden record mission - aboard Voyager
Bach, Mozart and Blind Willie Johnson - a conflation of the previous and the current
DO WATCH THIS short clip of why this is important
Question ? will Voyager - willie & mozart all appear back on the horizon in the future - flown full circle
notes * A full list of all the music is listen on line and you can hear it all on the nassa website etc and youtube
Each record is encased in a protective aluminum jacket, together with a cartridge and a needle. Instructions, in symbolic language, explain the origin of the spacecraft and indicate how the record is to be played. The 115 images are encoded in analog form.
Many images show our diversity and range of miriad cultures that go beyond skin colour
And full NASA slides and Images all should be researched - some here
Field Recordings that will sing for billions of years
#POLYKETTLE project research list - Golden Record
Cosmos Song by Artist Louis Armstrong
Alima Song music of the Ituri forest - listen to them all before assuming / presuming
Level 4 : Please do your homework Betty & Barney did
Betty and Barney Hill Papers, 1961-2006
for this University archive always use this if citing Preferred Citation
polykettle project now complete and recorded
Lovely new book with pictures and visual language by an Alumni of ours - available now 
-->
;books / juxtaposition is to be encouraged in all expressions
Students do read Maya Angelou, Primo Levi and Dee Brown if serious about knowing and discussing world history and diversity, racism, genocide protest and understanding - respecting the history of your mothers / fathers / grandparents
I read the full Maya Angelou set when I was about 30 - so any young minds who follow this page have plenty of time to do so too.
Unison Songs. In the spirit of the age, they were classless: written for everyone to sing, adults and children alike.
Carl Sagan - Ann Druyan - nice book
Literary facts & film
The WW2 Occupation / Holocaust film below - is a sentimental film - but it works well
Recommended Books / film for this month :
Recommended books to have around and to dip into. Don't only read other authors always - also read your'self' and your reactions to the books - place your thoughts down - or around you. In your BA journal etc
Vistas ! FOR only £3.50 you are missing out not reading the TLS to keep up to speed with societal & literary views ! spend half an hour with this rather than scrolling social media - keep it in your bag !?
-
Linked to previous drawing workshops 2014/5 / and 2017- 19 our anecdotal seminar - drawing sessions on channeling time / historocity / people / place / Life spans - diversity - equality - originalities - interpretations - drawing - music - text - sound & vision ; The Person / Us / Humans - Good People and their being thus are enough as them selves - NOT only as their materialised manifestations of their expressions - their songs music poetry voice drawing art etc
Recommended TRAP DOOR magazine - ordered for Library
Drawing workshop - anecdotal content - The essence and real quality of being part of histories tumbled conflated immersive engine - as opposed to being a statistic, myth, legend, or fiction.
In 2004 I wrote and initiated a term long 12 week project about Zadie Smiths writing - 'White Teeth' - this later novel by Smith is recommended to in 2020
Bernadine Evaristo 2019
Winner of the 2019 Booker Prize. This is Britain as you've never read it. This is Britain as it has never been told. From Newcastle to Cornwall, from the birth of the twentieth century to the teens of the twenty-first, Girl Woman Other follows a cast of twelve characters on their personal journeys through this country and the last hundred years. They're each looking for something - a shared past, an unexpected future, a place to call home, somewhere to fit in, a lover, a missed mother, a lost father, even just a touch of hope . . . 'Masterful . . . A choral love song to black womanhood in modern Great Britain' Elle 'Exceptional. Ambitious, flowing and all-encompassing, an offbeat narrative that'll leave your mind in an invigorated whirl... [It] unites poetry, social history, women's voices and beyond. You have to order it right now' Stylist 'Bernardine Evaristo
The Armstrong text is Western centric - historical Roman / Greek etc centric but it is VG
Harari is highly lauded and rightly so - read both books listed here by him 'Sapiens' and '21 Lessons'
‘This powerful book serves as a timely reminder of what our forefathers forged out of the ashes of the Second World War – an international order based on cooperation and interdependence together with a bold, fearless domestic agenda that set about creating a new society’ David Lammy
Research all the following for a larger awareness of the grey complex histories of our species and future possibilities
Research ‘femme savante’
seminar notes: gender - Rrose Selavy & & The Book by Vidal ''Myra Breckinbridge'' - read the book
Duchamp - the handle - to handle Royal Acadamey pdf
Written by Rebecca Bray
For the Learning Department © Royal Academy of Arts
Duchamp and Dalí both insisted on the importance of the individual, a concept they each explored in their work, primarily through consciously developed and performed identities: Dalí as a dandyish, extravagant showman and prolific artist; Duchamp as an ironic, solitary figure who by the 1930s many thought had relinquished art-making entirely. Although their public personas differed greatly, the two artists are united in their need to actively construct for themselves a unique identity.
Cat. 31 At first glance, the person in this photograph appears to be a fashionable woman of the 1920s. Wearing a low-set feathered hat and several necklaces, her gaze is direct, cool and questioning. At the time, her appearance would have been recognisable as a ‘femme savante’, an educated, intellectual, artistically literate woman. She is, however, none other than Marcel Duchamp. This 1921 photograph demonstrates his visual, even flamboyant, exploration of assuming an alter ego, Rrose Sélavy. This character was not a one-off occurrence, but an identity that Duchamp assumed many times during his career. He apparently signed or co-signed works ‘by Duchamp and Rrose Sélavy’ and even appeared (in a photograph taken in the same costume) as the face of an imaginary fragrance, Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette (Beautiful Breath, Veil Water).
Key to understanding the layered significance of Duchamp/Rrose is the name. Rather than a misspelling that stuck, Rrose Sélavy is a deliberate pun, intended to prompt wider connotations when looking at anything created of or by her. Exactly what Duchamp meant by the pun is somewhat less clear. The most common interpretation is that it sounds like Eros, c’est la vie (Eros, that’s the life. Eros is the Greek god of erotic love); but it has also been interpreted to mean arroser la vie (make a toast to life). Perhaps its ambiguity is one of the reasons why Duchamp made this pun, so that viewers would understand it differently based on their own associations and allowing for slippage of meaning. Puns appear many times throughout Duchamp’s artworks and notes; they became an important element in his artistic identity, a way to encourage certain readings of works that otherwise may seem impenetrable. Often deciphering these puns relied on understanding an in-joke, or on being part of the specific circle of friends and artists known to Duchamp – to non-French speakers, for example, the name Rrose Sélavy is not an obvious pun. Duchamp began to use puns as a way to promote his elusive persona, while also helping those ‘in the know’ to interpret his works.
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Duchamp’s exploration of a female identity is particularly relevant when considered alongside today’s discourse surrounding gender. Duchamp’s decision to ‘change sex’ at will was a radically unusual one for the period, suggesting he believed gender and identity to be a fluid concept, an idea which has only recently gained mainstream acceptance. However, it is important to approach Rrose Sélavy within the context of the period in which the persona was created. The status of women in the art circles Duchamp frequented would have been limited, with women often seen as being muses for male artists rather than recognised as artists in their own right. Duchamp would deliberately ‘put on’ the persona of Rrose Sélavy for the creation of artwork, rather than as a part of his lifestyle, or to make a political or feminist statement. With even her name acting as a pun, Rrose Sélavy seems to be less a fully formed person than a personification of Duchamp’s ideas about playing with identity.
by duchamp from exhibition 1930
*These books are a range of materials for diverse / neuro-diverse learners in education and beyond.
Learning celebrates diversity and differentiation - there is more information and helpful videos below.
Also some of the books above and below are on the ' wellbeing / Covid lockdown list / numbers / contacts / at the bottom of this page
original evocations by Bach
'This conflation of the previous and the current are what fuels propulsion' mm
''It all begins and ends with Bach''. said Ludwig Van (but it doesnt end though Ludwig)
What colour is this piece ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1A7Jts4_Ag
Mary Garden - for Moira
Louise B
Colour - the feel of a colour - the sound of a colour
Listen to this historic link :
Debussy & Mary Garden Interview about Debussy and her singing Pelleas Act 3
Lecture Slide:
Lecture Slide:
Rain - 1915 by Apollinaire
Do tend to things
Lytill Ihon and Robyne Hude Waythmen ware commendyd gude; In Yngilwode and Barnysdale Thai oysyd all this tyme thare trawale.
Tales From The West Riding
*notes from previous wellbeing seminars 2015 - involving drawing - creative writing
When Herman Hesse wrote that 'Every man or woman is not only him or herself for he or she is also the unique particular, always significant and remarkable point where the phenomena of the world intersect once and for all and never again'
Hesse is not saying we shouldn't embrace our shared social sisterhood or brotherhood etc nor is he claiming that we should ignore our collective strengths as a closer knit society or humanity. He is stating that personal experience - though often shared - is always unique and particular to the individual - we are all different due to a myriad of circumstances, responses - the quirks and nuances of an individuals genetic make up within the 'self'. Using this unique auto biographical experiential voice and knowledge is vitally important for any Artist, Musician, Author etc if they wish to make work that has genuine authenticity and honesty - and crucially if we wish to share it as a visual 'opinion' / subtle experience - OR indeed to 'raise the volume' and make societal work that supports, subverts or criticises society. This 'voice' should also be applied to any smart creative school or Institute that seeks to cultivate and harbour creativity. Seeking to emote new knowledge takes risk and deeper levels of self awareness beyond the superficial, aesthetic skills - it requires digging deeper - down through the strata of surface turf that can stifle intuitive germination - stifling original ideas and concepts.
Digging a little deeper through the top soil is necessary if we wish to 'Practice or Teach' Creativity. This is Authorial Practise. The over intellectualism of the Arts is concerning. The esoteric turf of intellectual and analytical theory within the Creative Arts and Humanities.
Don Marquis the great American poet and writer said something along the lines of - to publish a line of poetry is akin to throwing a feather down into the grand canyon -(there will be no grand resounding echo).
Now I may have added the last echo bit - but Marquis' truth can also be applied to the act of producing a drawing, doodle or painting - or playing the fiddle - or indeed to any non commercially commissioned creative practise. It is akin to whispering to ones reflection in the mirror - not an act after approval and with no aspiration attached to it other than the doing. Making at its best and most honest is most often just performed as a statement of existence - an individual or collective act of being.
Like the megalithic hand stencil in the cave of dreams. ''I am here'' .... and if the work survives ''I was here'' ( the hominid hand on the cave - or the 'graffiti' on the alley wall.
Authorship helps navigate away from potential senses of absence or disenchantment, away from ones own anthropocentrism. It placates the illusions and negativity that we can feel from status anxiety etc. Creative Practice can steer us away from 'the Other' toward levels of contentment through reflexive engagement - observing what is occurring - learning - remaking and re-owning things presently - in the present tense. Preserving these observations ‘seen’ or perceptions ‘felt’ in a drawn act - as an expression of visual or sonic language or text etc - is an entanglement of sensory observations from the present and of the past - depicted and preserved into one capsule – and therefore the work may become an expression of immediate experience - and even if the work has a natural involvement with the historical past - the work is paradoxically born out of knowledge and feeling gained in the present - therefore it is a recording of that present moments perceptions and not an echo. As a result the work when successful helps define a more acceptable personal state - a new paradigm - the friendship or 'fellowship' that Orwell talked about - important today amidst the plethora of simulated 21 century commercial and social media stimulus that is both heterogeneous and conflicting.' The value of living well - alive, alive oh.
A drawing - a composition - sounds on a flute etc - affinity with biophilic nature - be it walking in forests - or sat by the Sea - it may all sound very 1967 but its rather older than that .... all ancient cultures believe these act as gateways into transcendental dimensionality,
Watts & Tolle call it your 'essence identity'
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#Polykettle Project / A United Nations Nasa International project / lens / written originally 2015 - re written Jan 2020 level 4 unit x
#Polykettle Project written originally 2015 - re written Jan 2020 for Level 4 Unit X
feels & fuels propulsion ..... through interstellar space - above betty & barney
The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record, a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.
What are the diverse contents of the Golden Record?
Adapted from a Scottish Hymn - the song 'night has yet to fall' - will last for BILLIONS of years as part of the golden record mission - aboard Voyager
Bach, Mozart and Blind Willie Johnson - a conflation of the previous and the current
DO WATCH THIS short clip of why this is important
Question ? will Voyager - willie & mozart all appear back on the horizon in the future - flown full circle
notes * A full list of all the music is listen on line and you can hear it all on the nassa website etc and youtube
The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University, et. al. Dr. Sagan and his associates assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales, and other animals. To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings from Earth-people in fifty-five languages, and printed messages from President Carter and U.N. Secretary General Waldheim.
"The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space."
- Carl Sagan
Each record is encased in a protective aluminum jacket, together with a cartridge and a needle. Instructions, in symbolic language, explain the origin of the spacecraft and indicate how the record is to be played. The 115 images are encoded in analog form.
It contains the spoken greetings, beginning with Akkadian, which was spoken in Sumer about six thousand years ago, and ending with Wu, a modern Chinese dialect. Following the section on the sounds of Earth, there is an eclectic 90-minute selection of music, including both Eastern and Western classics and a variety of ethnic music. Once the Voyager spacecraft leave the solar system (by 1990, both will be beyond the orbit of Pluto), they will find themselves in empty space. It will be forty thousand years before they make a close approach to any other planetary system. As Carl Sagan has noted, "The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet."
The definitive work about the Voyager record is "Murmurs of Earth" by Executive Director, Carl Sagan, Technical Director, Frank Drake, Creative Director, Ann Druyan, Producer, Timothy Ferris, Designer, Jon Lomberg, and Greetings Organizer, Linda Salzman. Basically, this book is the story behind the creation of the record, and includes a full list of everything on the record. "Murmurs of Earth", originally published in 1978, was reissued in 1992 by Warner News Media with a CD-ROM that replicates the Voyager record. Unfortunately, this book is now out of print, but it is worth the effort to try and find a used copy or browse through a library copy.
Many images show our diversity and range of miriad cultures that go beyond skin colour
· Anatomy 8, World Book
· Human sex organs, Sinauer Associates, Inc.
· Conception , Albert Bonniers; Forlag, Stockholm
· Fertilized ovum, Albert Bonniers; Forlag, Stockholm
· Fetus, Dr. Frank Allan
· Birth, Wayne Miller
· Father and daughter (Malaysia), David Harvey
·
And full NASA slides and Images all should be researched - some here
Field Recordings that will sing for billions of years
#POLYKETTLE project research list - Golden Record
Cosmos Song by Artist Louis Armstrong
Alima Song music of the Ituri forest - listen to them all before assuming / presuming
Level 4 : Please do your homework Betty & Barney did
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDjRAdZCKUU
Betty and Barney Hill Papers, 1961-2006
for this University archive always use this if citing Preferred Citation
[Identification of item], [Folder number], [Box number], Betty and Barney Hill Papers, 1961-2006, MC 197, Milne Special Collections and Archives, University of New Hampshire Library, Durham, NH, USA.
#Polykettle Project International / written originally 2015 - re written Jan 2020
polykettle project now complete and recorded
a 100% pass rate - first class work - well done all !
Hip Hip Hooray from Babar
Lovely new book with pictures and visual language by an Alumni of ours - available now
How To Be Extraordinary - words by Rashmi Sirdeshpande , art by annabel tempest, edited by emily wilson lunn, design by puffin books
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;books / juxtaposition is to be encouraged in all expressions
Students do read Maya Angelou, Primo Levi and Dee Brown if serious about knowing and discussing world history and diversity, racism, genocide protest and understanding - respecting the history of your mothers / fathers / grandparents
I read the full Maya Angelou set when I was about 30 - so any young minds who follow this page have plenty of time to do so too.
