When the 39 shuffles away and reforms into something more rounded.

'The 39 Project' began as an attempt to provide some degree of analysis and structure to the seemingly random and chaotic cauldron of my life.  It permeated every sector of my life as it would as it tied in with my thirty ninth year on this funny old planet or my 40th (I am never sure where one begins and one ends).  I had the equivalent of a 'bucket list', the '39 Possibilities'.  I had no wish to put myself under any pressure, hence 'possibilities'.  Surprisingly, I actually fulfilled many of the points I created.

I am not going to list all of the '39 Possibilities', but some were simply about keeping me open to ideas.  Some were very personal including getting off anti-depressants, which unsurprisingly led to the realisation that there was little difference my being on medication or off of it.  In fact, my thought processes are clearer and I can actually feel again.  Never underestimate the value of family, friendships and being acutely aware of your own needs, desires and moods.  Depression is cyclical and each day is different.  Being in the present is important.  I am not depressed at the moment and I know the signs.  Some of the things I was going to do, I didn't explore.  I was going to play around with the number 39 in different contexts.  I also did not visit 39 cemeteries, parks and London landmarks.  This was a tad ambition with limited time available.  But I have learnt to appreciate the serenity and beauty of cemeteries and parks.  Also the aesthetics of gravestones and tombs. 

Gravestone in a Berlin cemetery.  I have become increasingly fascinated with the little objects that are left around the gravesite.  Symbols of protection such as angels and candles to illuminate the way forward.

Oh yes, one thing I nearly did succeed in doing was listening to a different album each day I desired to listen to some music.  I only cheated with Camille O'Sullivan's 'Changeling' which I listened to on more than one day.  The possibility of variety helps to broaden my capacity to appreciate other things.  I found myself appreciating the variety of albums I own and trying rarely heard albums.  David Bowie, The Who, Nick Cave, Elvis Costello and Bob Dylan kept popping up in the list.  Indeed, my appreciation of The Who has gone up exponentially.  'Tommy' is a brilliant album.

Another list I created gives me a record of all of the books I have read this year.  I made a conscious effort to read more books with a non-fiction leaning, although I did find myself reading a lot of biographies, particularly of extreme personalities.  Most recently, 'Antonin Artaud: Blows and Bombs' by Stephen Barber.  Antonin Artaud is one of my personal heroes from the world of theatre and he touched on many other cultural forms too including poetry and art.  He came up with a new kind of theatre that was never properly realised but he remains one of the most influential figures in my life.  He effectively sought to create a new language of the theatre, one that was far less dependent upon the written word.  I recommend that anyone with any interest in theatre read his collected book of essays, 'The Theatre and Its Double'.  It blew me away.

There is so much more I could say about the '39 Project' but all I can say is that I didn't learn the 'I Ching', nor did I apply the dice life to my everyday decision making processes, just for fun.  I have learnt that next year, the blog I write based on my personal experiences will be called something different and I have reached the point where I am no longer concerned with needing to know the dates when I have done things or read things.  Life is not about order and structure all of the time.  It is more important to embrace the random and emotional.  Things change.  Loss is a sad inevitability of being a human being.  Horrible things happen but do we let them define us or move on?

Explore, embrace and discover!

I will see you soon!

Barry Watt - 16th March 2014.

Afterword.

'Changeling' by Camille O'Sullivan is an album of cover songs on the Little Cat Records label.  She is well worth seeing live too.

'Tommy' - The Who - The Deluxe edition with the extra live disc is great fun and is available on the UMC label.

'Antonin Artaud: Blows and Bombs' by Stephen Barber.  This book is published by Faber & Faber.  It is a great introduction to a complex and deeply troubled innovator who has sadly become more important posthumously than he was in his lifetime.

'The Theatre and Its Double' by Antonin Artaud.  This book is currently available in an Alma Classics edition.  It's a collection of essays on the theatre and Artaud's take on what it should become.

The 'I Ching' is one of the oldest Chinese texts.  I can't help you with how to use it as I haven't studied it yet.  Lots of books covering the I Ching.

The dice life as pushed by Luke Rhinehart in his series of 'Dice' novels.  The best one being 'The Dice Man', which is currently published by HarperCollins.  If you need an intelligent, controversial book with a variety of possible applications in day to day, give this one a try.  'Fiction' at its very best.

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Graffiti - Exploring the Symbols of Now!

You know how much better you feel when you leave the house on a mission?  Well, I had a little project in mind yesterday, in addition to the usual pleasurable excursions.  The other day, I went to the Vaults in Waterloo to see 'The Cement Garden' and was amazed by the path least travelled that had to be negotiated to access this concrete mass of tunnels and secret places.  The directions to the venue read like a treasure hunt for anyone with anything resembling any kind of intellectual curiosity for London and its spaces.  Down stairs into an underpass that immediately overwhelmed with me.  Graffiti adorned the walls, a bright antidote to the detritus that otherwise occupied this partially lit tunnel.  I decided to go back yesterday to take some photographs.

Graffiti has always held a peculiar fascination for me.  It has both an aesthetic quality and paradoxically, a quality of destructiveness.  Destruction should not be solely interpreted as negative.  It has a transformative quality.  It can hold up a mirror to life and the moods of a nation.  It has the potential to make some quite powerful points about day to day existence.  It also has an egalitarian quality that is not always apparent within the world of art where an exhibition can cost £13 to visit for the sake of feeding a self-perpetuating narcissism not tempered by mortality.  Don't get me wrong, graffiti in its temporality is perhaps even more self-loving but at least, it's free in all senses of the word.

I went down into the underpass and was surprised to see the artists themselves producing their works.  I think I have only seen this phenomenon once before and that was in Barcelona, where I believe a wall was given to local artists for them to decorate as they chose.  I am not sure if the artists are supposed to be performing the act of creation down in this tunnel but I suspect that there are few objections to this space being used for something more attractive than fly tipping and urine trails.  The first image that struck me was the image below of a couple clearly in the halcyon days of their relationship.  It just resonated with a positive energy clearly at odds with the grey concrete slabs joined together in unholy union, destined to crack in the future.

 

Secretly, don't we all aspire for the perfect relationship?  A partnership borne of the moment as opposed to relationships covered in the horrors of yesteryear.  I like the details in the background of the London landmarks.  The London Eye and other representations of buildings that look a lot more pleasant than the phallic salutations to the Sun, knocked up by architects lost in their own patriarchal dreams.

 

As I was taking photographs, one thing I did realise was how organic graffiti art is.  It is an associative and collaborative art, one piece runs into another.  It is not exclusive.  Yes, an artist may create their own piece but someone else will come along and add a new work or a tag.  It is transient and subject to being whitewashed at any moment.  It is an art form for dreamers and those who prefer movement and change to the staid gallery fragments laboriously worked on for months.  I like all forms of art but sometimes, the thrill of the moment is more exciting than the clinical perfection of an oil painting of a fruit bowl.

 

Below are a selection of images that took my fancy and indeed, as is so very often the case with life, each choice is so individualistic that my reasons for liking them speak as much about my personal interests and obsessions.  Most art allows for a myriad of interpretations and that's why it's beautiful.  The artist merely provides the means to a multitude of climaxes.  Good and bad.

 

A book adorned with a key and crosses or a rare type of cheese?  A comment on life and religion.

 

A rich symbol of the world of magic.  A vision of hope.  Pulling the proverbial rabbit out of the top hat.

 

 

A richly satirical take on the Marvel character, 'Captain America'.  The ejaculating penis may or may not have been created by the same artist but the same point comes across nonetheless.  The gung ho militarism of Western civilisation.

I liked the patterns and the tears.  Looking at it closely, you can see the letters forming the word 'London'.

I have seen the tag for 'Lager' before.  He must be a London based artist eager to mark his time on Earth with paint.

We are all part of a tribe, we just need to know how to work with that knowledge and grow.

Something about the dark side of life, feeling down in the midst of bloodshed.

Spirals.  So complicated.  I have never thought about them.



Cute, sometimes, I just like things that touch me as they did when I was a child.









Having spent some time walking around the underpass taking photos, I became increasingly aware of the power of graffiti.  Also the myriad means through which these street artists express themselves.  The phenomenon of 'tagging' is slightly less interesting to me than the more image based work of other artists.  Although, I do enjoy seeing the 'tagging' in strange locations alongside railway lines and rail bridges where I am left to speculate, how they got their mark up there or down there and lived to tell the tale?  It has the potential to change lives, to communicate in war torn countries where censorship prevails.  This is my celebration of immediacy and the creativity of the anonymous minorities.  Your work lives in our hearts and mind.

 

Barry Watt - 24th February 2014.

 

Afterword.

 

'Captain America' is copyright to the Marvel Entertainment Group.

 

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A day like any other surrounded by the predecessors of the dead.

Today was bright and sunny yet in my heart, I just felt down and de-energised.  A vapid excuse for a human being.

The day began with a visit to the Burlington Galleries to see the Bill Woodrow exhibition.  His compositions ranging from deconstructed machinery either embedded in concrete implying historical value or in pieces across the floor.  Neat lines of components and segments that once formed a tape recorder being one composition.  Some of the pieces were painted with nectar and his fascination with beekeeping was evident too.  This was a twenty minute exhibition, one of those experiences that mean more if you simply absorb and run.  Modern art should come with a time limit.  It can be as transient as a sunny day and quickly replaced by the next best thing.

Following this visit, I stumbled my way to Green Park, where I tried to ease my mind by looking at birds, trees and squirrels.  I was saddened by the fate of the squirrels.  Domesticated scroungers who were literally eating out of the hands of people who fail to realise how wildlife is rendered useless and subject to harm through such unnecessary benevolence.

Squirrel on the scrounge.

I concluded my day at the Soho Theatre for 'Arthur Smith Sings Leonard Cohen (Volume 2)'.  This production restored my faith in human creativity.  Arthur Smith arrived on stage shortly after the culmination of 'What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding?', Elvis Costello's version of Nick Lowe's song.  Then through an hour of song, comedy and poetry, he simultaneously revealed aspects of his own life, Leonard Cohen's life and the nature of comedy.  Leonard Nimoy's poetry was the subject of particular ribbing, owing to his fixation on the eternal 'me'.  Towards the end of his performance, Arthur Smith made reference to the fact that 'the living are just the dead on holiday' and uttered the immortal phrase, 'Happy holidays!'  On a day when I feel there is little point, it takes an image of the ephemeral nature of humanity to cheer me up.  Leonard Cohen would be proud of your act, Arthur Smith!  Although, the nude guy in the Leonard Nimoy mask who leapt across the stage towards the end of the show will forever taint my appreciation of the Vulcan mindset.

Barry Watt - Sunday 16th February 2014.

Afterword

The Bill Woodrow exhibition has finished but the Arthur Smith show is running at the Soho Theatre until the 2nd March 2014 and is well worth seeing.

'What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love and Understanding?' originally appeared on Nick Lowe's album, 'The New Favourites of Brinsley Schwarz' and by Elvis Costello on his seminal 70s masterpiece, 'Armed Forces'.

'Vulcans' appear in some little known science fiction programme called 'Star Trek'.

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The 'New Year' - Proceed With Confusion

I do not like New Year.  I have a long standing aversion based on a multitude of factors, not least an overwhelming sense of restlessness if I have nothing planned.  The 2013/2014 schism was slightly less painful.  I remained at home and acknowledged something was going on, whilst I played catch up with various programmes I had been meaning to watch for some time.  Don't get me wrong, I have had some good New Year's celebrations out with friends but I have also had some that still bring tears to my eyes (acting as a mediator in a nightclub between two friends as their relationship shattered before my eyes, whilst my body desperately needed to use the loo owing to a stomach bug of some description, that immediately springs to my mind).

My chief objection to the conceit that is 'New Year' is the simple fact that it is not a new beginning.  It is a continuation, so the idea of celebrating the demise of the previous year as a new one begins is quite frankly, rubbish.  Let's view this rationally, calendars and time devices are means through which the human race chooses to impose order on nature and a universe it simply does not understand.  In reality, time continues, things move, change occurs.  Humanity's arrogance cannot dispel the realities of mortality.  Now to complicate things further, different cultures use different calendars.  As such, the arbitrary date that the 'New Year' begins can occur at any point in the year.

Now from my rather cynical perspective, I remain somewhat confused by the almost apocalyptic tension that surrounds New Year's Eve.  If we think back to 1999, the naysayers and scientists alike were imagining how at the stroke of Midnight of the year 2000, the world would essentially descend into chaos, falling planes and computers so confused by numerical change that nothing would ever be the same again.  Nothing happened.  Historically, there has always been a set of feelings and traits connected with any culture at the 'end of a century'.  The French refer to the  'fin-de-siècle' and the manifestations of the moods and aspirations of a culture can be most readily seen in the creative mediums such as books, the theatre, music, film etc.  I would be tempted to argue that the same feelings kick in at the apparent end of every year.  For some reason, New Year's Eve becomes a time for reflection.  If the year has been fulfilling, the date is resonant with passionate feelings of optimism.  If things have been bad, it becomes a tawdry, awful moment where attempts are made to force everything horrible back into cupboards and boxes.  Chucking out the skeletons in the desperate hope that the 'New Year' will help to provide some kind of coherent meaning for the suffering.

Whilst I was out and about on New Year's Eve during the day, I thought about many things including the concept of 'New Year Resolutions'.  The idea of creating little goals for yourself at any point should be commended, if only to remind yourself that you live and achieve.  In the past, I have half-heartedly created 'New Year Resolutions' such as 'Be happier' etc.  Yesterday, I read a sign which read 'Proceed with Caution'.  It was a plaque on the side of a wall.  I considered that this may make a good point of demarcation in the next stage of my life.  Then a more powerful phrase sprang to mind that could be far more liberating and interesting:

Proceed With Confusion


What does everyone thing about the prospect of proceeding with confusion?  What are your resolutions?

Barry Watt - Wednesday 1st January 2014.

Afterword  

For a good introduction to the concept of 'fin-de-siècle', please see Wikipedia.  This article is copyright to the Wikipedia Foundation Inc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fin_de_si%C3%A8cle

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'Everyone's A Winner' - Another Day in the Life of a Londoner with time to Lunch.

'Everyone's a winner' shouted the Big Issue seller outside one of the upmarket fashion boutiques in Old or New Bond Street (it's hard to tell the difference these days, they blend into one another).  In an age of conspicuous consumption where it's hard to define where humanity ends and the jewels on a butterfly brooch begin, where are the 'winners'?

Yesterday was spent buying boots then traipsing around the West End and its adjacent streets, seeking meaning and solace amidst the glitter and fauna of retail executives' summer dreams (such elaborate window displays and the products that adorn the windows are the result of many sleepless nights and drawn out meetings).  I had other plans that I realised but my wanderings and reflections served to fill in the gaps.

Trafalgar Square served as the focal point of my journeys yesterday, I began there and spent some time hanging around its concrete nothingness.  It is a space, pure and simple.  Its value and meaning comes through the people, animals and objects that are dropped in this arena of tradition.  Outside of the National Gallery, performers seemingly unaware that painting yourself gold and standing very still was old hat years ago in Covent Garden and the street performers in Barcelona do it so much better, clearly not so worried about hypothermia in very low temperatures.  There was one performer who intrigued me.  He had a whip and was loudly and aggressively instructing the rather bemused wanderers to 'LOOOKK ATTTTTT MEEEEE'.  As he explained, he needed an audience.  One performer in search of an audience standing on his case, the sound of his whip swishing and cracking as it hit the concrete seemed to be unsurprisingly having the opposite effect.  Fear is not always a primary motivation for humanity when it seems its entertainment.  The possibility of getting hurt tends to lead us away from such aggression.  Yet...  Given a different set of conditions, we thrive on sensations of fear and disgust.  The horror genre works on the safety in numbers philosophy or simply being in an environment where we can watch or read with the recipient of the horrific act or acts being unaware that they are being spied on.  The world of sado-masochism also enjoys the pleasure/pain principle but in very controlled situations.  I am gradually being led to a position where I feel that there is a need for performers who test the comfort zones of the audience, if only through pushing their sensibilities to the limit.  In a vicious world, why do we continue to labour under the belief that things will ultimately get better and that bad things are not inevitable?  Does it help us to sleep at night or simply to turn away from atrocities that maybe we could help to address or stop?

Trafalgar Square is like a Pagan stone circle without the spiritual centre.  It has monuments to everything.  My old friend the blue Cock still occupies the Fourth Plinth.

 

The 'Hahn/Cock' sculpture by Katharina Fritsch, still resplendent on the Fourth Plinth.

 

Nelson's Column and the other monuments also guard the area, the last bastions of tradition, not yet tarnished by logos but rendered as clichés through never-ending photos.  Fragments of time past, holidays that serve to fill the time and expand the mind.  Also the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square, the gift from Norway for the United Kingdom's support during the Second World War looks oddly bereft during the day, reliant on the lights to help it sparkle by night.

 

The Christmas Tree in Trafalgar Square.

 

My main memories of my journeys around Trafalgar Square yesterday involve the warning signs advising people not to feed the birds and also not to go in the fountain.  Both options were clearly on my mind as I spend some time rebuking the advances of amorous birds and the water seemed so appealing in pretty cold temperatures.  Also sitting down reading my book, I was reminded how absurd our daily work rituals are.  Two waste management representatives walked around the Square over and over again using one of those devices for gripping rubbish and chucking it in the plastic bags they carried.  Every so often, they would pick up the bins and empty them into their bags.  This is their permanent occupation.  I am not criticising their job as it is necessary and it provides employment but somehow, our decadent lifestyles have caused the waste mountain we are drowning beneath.  Our cardboard sandwich packets, our Polystyrene cups, the weird plastic bits that fasten our bottles preventing the risk of contamination.  We are submerged and losing breath in our convenience culture.

 

On a brighter note, yesterday was not simply a day of pessimistic reflections, I also attended the 'Mood Swings' exhibition by Bob Dylan at the Halcyon Gallery and 'Julie Madly Deeply' at the Trafalgar Studios.  One contained smashed car doors with bullet holes, gates and paintings of fractious relationships, the other a delightful cabaret focusing on Julie Andrews' life through her songs and roles.  Can you tell which was which?

 

So 'everyone's a winner'?  To the victim, the spoilt?

 

Barry Watt - 20th December 2013.  

 

 

Afterword

 

 

'The Big Issue' is copyright to The Big Issue Foundation and basically remains one of only a small number of magazines I will purchase as a percentage of the sales goes to the homeless vendor.  Also it's a magazine that actually has something to say beyond blowing smoke up a fashion house's rear end or massaging the ego of a multinational media company.

 

The 'Hahn/Cock' sculpture is by Katharina Fritsch and is still on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square.

 

The 'Mood Swings' exhibition is on at the Halcyon Gallery until the 25th January 2014.  It's a pretty eclectic mix of Bob Dylan's work, ranging from his metal works to his very funny Revisionist art, taking magazine covers and recreating their content.  Please see the link below:

 

http://www.halcyongallery.com/

 

'Julie Madly Deeply' is at the Trafalgar Studios until the 4th January 2014.  It's a very intelligent and funny take on Julie Andrews' life.

 

http://www.atgtickets.com/shows/julie-madly-deeply/trafalgar-studios/#overview_tab

 

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This is not a diary - A day in the life or a life in the day of a confused conundrum.

It's 12.15 am and I am about to relate the events of yesterday as perceived by me.  They could be of little interest to anyone else.  But if you think about it, do you ever stop to break down your day into the minutiae it possibly deserves, exploring where you have been in the hope that it will show you where to go?

Here we go...

My walk to work merged into my day at work.  The sight of Peckham Rye Park in the half light, a space that either seems unworldly with strange low level mists, bleak or wildly beautiful.  Work ranged from manically stressful to eerily quiet, culminating in a random act of origami, resulting in the creating of a 'bored fish', which I presented to a work colleague as a gift.  As ever, lunchtime served as a respite to the ravaging system, imploding beneath its own weight.  The futile dreams of improvement and superiority immersed in a cash strapped reality.  Sitting in Ruskin Park watching the Crows as they loudly communicate their disdain for the human carrion frolicking in their manor.  Wings flapping wildly in the wind.

After work, catching the 68 to Waterloo, the none-too-memorable journey, stopped as usual in Camberwell awaiting the new driver.  Getting off, walking to Kingsway.  My usual café, Café Amici, usual order which the waitress knows, jacket potato and tuna and the best Mocha in town.  The waitress with the smile to thaw even the coldest of hearts.  Then off to the Tate Modern.

I walked around the 'Dreams' section of the Tate Modern.  Max Ernst and Picasso et al vying for my affections.  Something about the Surrealists and modern art does it for me.  Free association, headless female torsos, distorted figures, found objects incorporated seemingly at random into complex comments on the explosions of the psyche.  If your psyche could regurgitate, what would it produce?

Then into the 'Paul Klee: Making Visible' exhibition, marvelling at an artist who numbered all of his works, clearly fixated with systems and order.  Not odd then to discover he was a Master at the Bauhaus Art School.  His work is a complex mixture of styles, some canvasses filled with colour squares.  Some of the other paintings more complex and textured scenes framed theatrically by arches.  He also had a fixation with fish.  I am left wondering how random and 'unconnected' our meaningless acts of creation are?  'Bored paper fish' anyone?

Leaving the exhibition, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself in the shop, selling lots of merchandise connected to the artist.  So much expensive stuff in one small space.  A reminder that art is only important if it can be repeatedly resold?

I opted to walk over the Millennium Bridge on my journey to my next destination.  I looked back and saw the massive Tate Modern chimney thing strikingly framed in a rusty sky with a crane gently cavorting with it.  As I walked the bridge, I looked at the people taking photos and performing their acts on the bridge.  Someone was dressed like a Transformer, which made no logical sense.  A child ran across the bridge, breaking quiet conversation with the thud of youthful movement, but who was he running from or to?  His past or future?

Hitting the Thames Path, I was overcome by thoughts of Susan in Austria, exploring every time zone and memory alone and in company.  I looked up and imagined London as a series of colours, each building reduced to its essence, all structure removed.  Think of those two dimensional panoramas and you will know how I felt.  Just colours and lights.  The familiar rendered indistinct.  I was accompanied by Gulls as they flew and still I imagined Susan, this time escorting me, an unmasked companion unburdened by the past, finally liberated.  But she wasn't there, except in my heart.

My journey past the ancient graffiti strewn concrete walls.  I saw messages such as 'Annie... You taught me all there was to know.' That wasn't the message, but it was the sentiment.  The exact wording is never as important as the emotions it evokes.

Up past Charing Cross, Leicester Square and Soho where tourists hungrily tried to capture the lanterns of Chinatown with their mobile phones.  'I was here' stamped in pixels on a memory card to reveal to those back at home.  I passed the alfresco urinals, glamorous punctuation marks to a time long ago when people threw their excrement on the streets from their windows.

Into the Soho Theatre for 'Barb Jungr: Mad about the Boy and No Regrets'.  Down in the Basement where I felt like an extra in a David Lynch film, watching Barb Jungr, brilliant interpreter of others' songs.  She was wearing a low cut black ball gown and her vocals lifted me.  A jazz singer for people who tire of the structures of jazz.  She opened with the Dylan number, 'Tangled Up In Blue' and culminated with a Cohen song, 'A Thousand Kisses Deep'.  She moved the audience, moved through them and even physically touched them.  Outside the Basement space, she stood with the pianist selling CDs.  There is nothing so humbling as a performer selling their own wares.  A funny moment occurred when I asked if she would sign the CD I chose to buy.  She said 'yes, if I would open the CD'.  The glorious world of shrink-wrap resulted in Barb and I tearing at the plastic together.  She signed it and I headed home through Soho, home to late night post work happy people, flinging themselves in every direction, unable to retain any sense of equilibrium or in some cases, decorum.  Who needs social etiquette when you can have alcohol?

Heading down to Charing Cross past people manically lost in space and time.  Searching for a guiding light, some principle of direction.

I hit Charing Cross Station then went to London Bridge.  From London Bridge on my home bound train, I marvelled at the interesting people including a group of inebriated girls who delighted in repeating the word 'orange', as though it were a mantra for modern living, very quickly infuriating the guy sitting next to me who nearly got up to tell them to shut up.

Leaving my station, I walked the quiet streets thinking of the times I have crossed the Zebra crossing and walked the same way home.  I thought of Susan again.

Laying here I reflect on only one truth, the day lived is better than pretending to live.  Even the bad moments are necessary to inform and constrain the chaos we inhabit.

This is not a diary, this is not just my life, this is one life amongst many.  I write for you and I create for me.  What do you live for and who do you still love?

Do you want to remember?

                                                                   Barry Watt - 26th October 2013.     

Afterword

'Tangled Up In Blue' - Bob Dylan.  It originally appeared on 'Blood On The Tracks' and is copyrighted to Columbia Records.

'A Thousand Kisses Deep' - Leonard Cohen.  It appears on the 'Essential Leonard Cohen' album and is again copyrighted to Columbia Records.

Café Amici is on Kingsway, near to the Aldwich and is well worth a visit.

Soho Theatre is on Dean Street.  One of the most original and happening venues in town.  Please go and see something there.

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So how do you relax?

As I sit here, I am listening to a Joy Division live album on a Sunday afternoon.  My mind is somewhere else.  I am embracing fifty million thought pathways at once.  Some are productive, some are diverting me from the act of writing.  When I am not relaxed can I still write?  Indeed, can I even think coherently?

Relaxation is an unusual phenomenon.  If you consider human beings as biological entities, even when we sleep, our bodies are a mass of processes.  Our blood flows through each vein and artery, allowing our heart to pump vigorously and our brains to operate this complex shell of water and matter.  So essentially, when we are talking about relaxing, we are only usually referring to our thought processes.  Our bodies are always by their nature pushed and challenged.  They can take more than we allow them credit for.  In typing that statement, I surprise myself as I am feeling quite tired. 

Physical tiredness is nothing like mental fatigue for most people (it can be if you suffer from certain conditions).  Feeling mentally exhausted can lead to physical exhaustion and it is interesting to consider how one constantly offered piece of medical advice for depression etc is to exercise for at least thirty minutes a day, as it increases the serotonin levels in the brain.  So in other words, the lump of matter in our head should be the primary focus of our attention.  If we can address the needs, worries and concerns of the day, some of the ailments of the body could ease up.  It disturbs me how medication is used so regularly for headaches, without addressing the causes of the headaches.

So providing you are prepared to at least partially accept my belief that the brain by its nature is the most important part of the human body (remember that it not only controls the biological impulses but also the emotional, psychological and neurological aspects of the body).  But that leads to an immediate problem?  How do you relax something that is by its nature, constantly active  (Sparking synapses will stop for no man or woman)?  I would suggest through stimulation.

Returning to the question, so how do you relax?  I relax through stretching myself.  Stimulation through books and cultural products.  Objects, people, sensations that engage me and help me to feel.  I need to feel.  Emotional stimulation, sensual stimulation, intellectual stimulation.  Give me a park bench with someone I care about, give me bird song and a rippling lake.  Air tearing through my head.  Give me a space where I can think in a way that excludes superfluous details and leaves me with the things that matter.  I would say love to but it's a word that has been corrupted and packaged for too long.  No one remembers what it means anymore.

So how do you relax?

                                                                Barry Watt - 22nd September 2013.