04_sb: Doing Things and Making Plans

On Monday I am going to recreate a photograph. If you are following this blog you might recall an earlier piece of writing I did:

In the picture he is about eighteen, ten years my junior, looking smart, handsome, walking down the promenade with his father, who looks at the camera, with some kind of annoyance, discomfort, or sadness. That was Bridlington, though / Brid / And that was my father, not me.

And I have decided to re-take this photograph in Blackpool, not Bridlington., on Monday afternoon. I will be walking on the stage right and my father will be to the left, one stage behind.

The new photograph will be taken by Philip Sykes, who has been my friend now for some years. I am going to put on my new suit. It is light grey with white pinstripes. It cost £7.99 from The Children's Society in Lancaster, and it looks the business. I am going to structure a walk through Blackpool with my Dad, based on the structure of that Album by Trespassers W. Phil is going to document it from a distance, video and digital stills, very likely. My mum is going to tag along so Dad has some company on the train. He has to get back for a choir practice that night, otherwise we would spend the whole 24 hours together. That is far as the planning has gone. It will be good to spend some proper time with Phil, as well. Sometimes you are too busy to have friends, so I am calling the time we will spend together "work" in order to justify it.

I found something in an interview with Cor Gout from Trespassers W, where he cited a review they got from a critic. He said: A man and his son are orientated on places and spots which don’t exist anymore", but that was Drederich Diedrichsen, not me.

I think this is a piece I am making as a reader, which is to say, an interpreter. The rules aren't hard and fast, I think they cut you loose and teach you self-reliance, perhaps, but solo work isn't really my bag, normally, and it's strange to be working like this, normally I just have a little idea, do it, then another little idea and do that. So all in all I'm feeling the benefit, and it's lovely to be up here.

sb_03: Trespassers W

Hungover it's awful, but:

1.
In Oxfam the other day I happened upon a record, a fine-looking, very well packaged record, the artwork reminded me of Do Make Say Think's Winter Hymn, Country Hymn, Secret Hymn, but it is actually called Roots and Locations, by a Dutch group, Trespassers W. It cost me £4.99

I looked in the Gatefold Sleeve and found: a / A record; b / A press release booklet; c / A Catalog of Trespassers W releases; d / A booklet the size of the sleeve with Lyrics and artwork; e / An A-5 sized photograph of the band, printed on AGFA photo paper,with the following written by hand:

///

photo: Ada Fesever

Trespassers W
at 'The Memorial'
at The Hague

left -> right:

Peter Bos (.)
Ronnie Krepel (.)
Hayo den Boest (.)
Fran van den Bos (.)
Car Gout (.)

///

The Memorial says 1914-1919, and at the last line of it reads:
ZIJ ZIJN DAAR - WAAR NACHT NOCH NEVEL IS

The album artwork, is a score for my performance, a structure that is new to me.

The record is a concept album about "the city of The Hague set in the fifties, set around the story of a father and son". Then it says something about politics. It makes me think of that picture of my father, and his father (at Bridlington, not Blackpool. Brid). In the Roots and Locations Lyrics:

FROM 'THE MAN' "Until he turned around and found out / Until he turned around and found out" Then it says something about time. FROM 'THE PARK' "The bewildered child stormed into the waste ground (...) circled (...) three times / And then leaving" FROM 'THE ROOM' "Soundless movements (...) lines, white on paler white" FROM 'HEXIO PERFECTO DE LA LUXE' "Here come the pretty waitresses / Sh-boom, Sh-boom, La La La La La La La La La La La La / Sh-boom, Sh-boom, La La La La La La La La La La La / Sh-boom, Sh-boom, Life could be a dream, sweet".

2.
Researching Trespassers W I found an interview with a member of the band (I think it was with Cor Gout), and the interviewee put in an image of a text of a song he had been working on (click on the picture to see it big and legible):



















(the image comes from www.fictionalize.org/index.php?2006/03/01/5-trespassers-w).

The Interviewer asked him:

"Do you sometimes have what I call a feeling of "belonging" (when you feel totally well, your feet standing firmly on the ground and your head buzzing with ideas, just "in tune"?

He replied:
Once again: the sunny day in the Scheveningen Wood feeling. Also: on a stage, when everything seems to fall in its place and things seem to be going on just by themselves. Or: riding on my bike, hearing the voices from the houses and the pavements tell me all sorts of secrets. Or: late at night, when segments of imagination come together in a totality with a ‘sound’ and a ‘rhythm’.

3.
In the Carl Sandburg Poem, The Sea Hold, the one that I edited down, I cut the following line

"I am a loon about the sea,
So are five men I had a fish fry with once in a tar-paper shack trembling in a sand storm".

I think the five men that Carl Sandburg had the fish fry with were, left -> right:

Peter Bos
Ronnie Krepel
Hayo den Boest
Fran van den Bos
Car Gout.

4.
In Neil's workshop (Tuesday Afternoon, 9.4.08) we were asked to write these cards to each other, things to get us out of trouble, difficulty: observations, commentaries, bits of advice, imaginings, situations. Two favourites: "You are passionate about all aspects of bird life but in particular, migration. You await the return of a favourite" and "Simon: Do as you would be done by". And you have to ask: why this advice, why me. I am reminded, again, of my wrongs.

5.
In Simone's workshop, we walked outside on the grounds of an old house by a field overlooking the motorway and the railway line. We were given a directive that said: Find 3 places to inhabit and 3 ways of inhabiting them, for up to 5 minutes each. Write for 1-2 minutes in response.

1 / fit in-or-around; 2 / blur the edges or merge; 3 / the body leaves a trace

In response to 2 / I spin your stillness, pull your crookedness into my bones and your decaded growing pains ache the muscles of my right arm (...) Look at me I'm dancing (...) Five crows, or black birds any way, soar at me as I outshine them. Leaves of grass. Leaves of grass.

6.
I never knew the Macc Lads did a song about Blackpool, called 'Blackpool'. This changes everything. I just got it off iTunes for seventy-nine pence. The song is mostly about chucking beer cans at cars on the Motorway. The best bit is: "An' Peter's in the back seat / An' his crack is goin' "gerrit" / He's got his finger up her like a ferret" (www.lyrics007.com/Macc%20Lads%20Lyrics/Blackpool%20Lyrics.html).

02_sb: The Sea and Unknowing:

I went to Morecambe this morning to research the workshop I will be running next week (Tuesday the 8th). I took 4 photos that are up on my Flickr.

The Rules (see Matt Fenton's first post) are giving me an unquiet mind. And I've been thinking about those three questions, the ones that Carl Sandburg made a life (or at least a living) out of (who am I? where am I going? where have I been?).
The other week someone said to me that we carry others around in us and that we carry landscapes and places around in us too (Of course; but at the moment of saying it felt revelatory). So there are lots of you already here, names that recur, voices. But this week I keep thinking about Carl Sandburg, no longer a who but a what, a set of ideas (or ideals), whose name was been given to a National Heritage site, two schools and a college. Carl Sandburg is unknown to me and I have little interest in meeting him any time soon.

I was looking old Carl Sandburg up and I found a poem, The Sea Hold, which I have re-edited:

The sea holds / an early sunset and a last morning star / five white dice / And to-day I lost nothing / except / my sea songs, sea cries, I forget so many sea songs and sea cries /the sea hugs and will not let go / knowing more about us than we know of ourselves (full text at www.bartleby.com/134/67.html)

I found out that Carl Sandburg was born in landlocked Galesburg, Illinois and lived his last years and died on an estate named "Connemara," a 245-acre farm in Flat Rock, Henderson County North Carolina, (which is, I guess, about 400 miles inland, but I note that the etymology of the name Connemara refers to descendants of Con Mhac, of the sea.) I can't find any evidence of Carl Sandburg ever leaving America and I think his seas went uncrossed OR his seas, like mine, were imagined. A the moment I am thinking of waiting until week three, fairly late, until I go to Blackpool, on three consecutive days, on the 15th, 15th and 16th of April, eight hours a day. Nothing outlandish, or crazy. Just a routine. I am going to spend 24 (nonconsecutive) hours (or three working days) asking exactly the same questions as Carl Sandburg, to to quiet him. Shh / Carl Sandburg / Shh / There / There /
Janine Antoni, an American artist sometimes makes her art as a “wilful misunderstanding of how to know something” (FN1) Searching for a dead man who was never there seems like a reasonable attempt at productive misunderstanding of Blackpool. I'm questioning whether to even go to Blackpool. At the moment I would rather go to Flat Rock, or Fleetwood, of just stay in.

FN1: Antoni, conversation with Martha Buskirk, December 7, 2001 cited Buskirk: The Contingent Object of Contemporary Art, MIT Press, 2005, p252.

01_sb

1.

On Tuesday 1st, I wrote my first thoughts in response to the rules, and I am going to spend some time this week gradually editing them down. The first thoughts weren't all that good, so this will be a pleasure. By the end of the week there will be very little left, just a few fragments. Not much, just enough.

Body to Body.
Bring to mind / an unfinished / or unfinishing /


By the Seaside... early. In the picture he is about eighteen, looking smart and handsome, walking down the promenade with his father, who looks off from the camera, with some kind of annoyance, discomfort, or sadness / that was Bridlington, though / Brid / And that was my father, not me.

Of the sea I read,
1: "It's being near Her that they want. That alone satisfies something in us" (FN1), and
2: "Carl Sandburg says that 'the sea hugs and will not let go'" (FN2)
Who is Carl Sandburg?
Carl Sandburg: January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967, an American poet, historian, novelist, balladeer, and folklorist (FN3) Carl Sandburg spent a lifetime exploring...the eternal questions, "Who am I, where am I going and where have been?" (FN4).


FN1&2: The Sea Within: Waves and the Meaning of All Things: 2006, St. Augustine's Press. FN3: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sandburg). FN4: (www.nps.gov/carl/)

t-h-r-o-w-i-n-g.blogspot.com / www.virb.com/simonbowes