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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