Le Cinema Est Sur Le Pont

Cinema is on the bridge.... a little wisdom in the wind, which was blowing quite strongly this afternoon when I ventured down to do a little stencilling. Nevertheless, in spite of the wind, and the rain on occasion, none of my stencils have ever blown away. I use my bike lock as paperweight no less, but even so, all it takes is a strong gust and it's off the pillar I've just glued it to. At any rate, cinemas are closed and so are galleries, and so are philosophical cafes... so I thought it would be a good excuse if the polis ever happened upon me from behind to say this: that in the interests of some 'entertainment' during lockdown, I thought it might be an idea to gallerize this bridge (which must have about 70 of my stencils on it so far). I mean, you'd have to be some heartless polis to arrest someone for decorating a bridge with 'insight' into man's abberant condition. Especially considering the positive response I've heard when I've been down there on the job.

Levitation & Resistantless Moving

Plain living and high thinking...

William Wordsworth

Sometimes when I'm in the hills, walking, I don't feel the walking but feel as if I may be levitating. Is this not what hill-walking is if you break it down, a form of floating, of walking upon an ocean of moisture if not of rock (which is simply moisture in another form). Removed from the mesmerizing and fastening devices down there in the city, one is necessarily liberated and freed from imposition. Poverty, abstinence, and avoiding the company of others (the three golden rules of Theodore of Pherme) lighten the bodymind even further. Nature is the only call you need listen to now. As such, there is a releasing quality to hill-walking that loosens the parasites and barnacles that have attached themselves to you. As one is released into Nature so tool is one removed into the natural way of being. This natural way is levitation and what the Austrian forester and philosopher Viktor Schauberger called resistantless movement. It is gained by entering into Nature's vortices and energy pools, and by engaging a sort of terrestrial acupuncture whereby one 'pins oneself' to places where energy levels are high and pure. I have discovered several such places in and around the Glasgow strath where the flow of energies is supreme, and where the paths towards them are paths with hearts. Consequently, when I'm there, I feel the aboriginal pull of the cosmos upon my hill-walking body, I feel the suction of the great cosmic flow... and I levitate.

Against Ambition

...it is ambition enough 'to be employed as an under-labourer in cleansing the ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge.

John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding 
 Ambition (as a lubricant for capitalism) is a disease. It used to be considered as such before we all went collectively mad. Icarus was the symbol of ambition in olden times. Ambition signalled a hankering after the attention of others, the infantile search for flattery and recognition, the seeking of the attention of others. the thirst for popularity. The word itself derives from the Latin ambi (around) + ire (to go) and it suggests a 'going around' and 'doing the rounds' of business. This is our world today where everyone under the mandate of capitalism does the rounds, goes around, in order to earn money and investment. Our whole world under this confused economy is thus nothing more than the manifestation of ambition. Which is why this world will end with disease, because it started with it.

Diseasy Jet

Another article on the BBC website advertising the people who caused this problem in the first place: aircraft carriers (the clue is in the title). How do you think this disease spread around the globe so quickly, in a matter of weeks? Because it walked? Because it was carried on the wind, or maybe the ocean waves carried it? No, because the carrier is man's wonderful flying machines that don't actually 'fly' but which 'carry (as carriers are apt to do) disease'. It seems appropriate then that the carrier the BBC are advertising has the word 'easy' in its name. The news article announces that this airline will enforce social distancing rules whilst on board by not letting people sit in the middle seats. As I read this, I'm thinking, who is writing this nonsense? And who proposed it in the first place? It's carriers like 'diseasy jet' and 'ruin air' that have cheapened our holidays to be sure. Our spirits have been diseased by being carried, by being removed from the local and our own body's cardiovascular powerhouse. Sure, it might be fun, to lie in the sun, to venture into paradise by sitting on a plane for a few hours, but it's not natural, it's not good for the planet or your own soul. We have constructed a world where we have made transport essential but it isn't. Transport is the most non-essential thing you could possibly imagine. To be carried is to be diseased. And to be diseased is to relinquish your humanity and your universal solidarity, and become a carrier. 

The Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Wisdom hath builded her house she hath hewn out of seven pillars.
Book of Proverbs 9:1

To be sure, there are more than seven pillars (propping up the glass canopy) on Bell's Bridge across the River Clyde in Glasgow. There are more like twenty or so, and they're cuboid too and not cylindrical which makes them perfect for my audacious exi-stencils which I routinely spray upon them once a week in an effort to 'respond' to society and give my voice a body. I am wary of publishers, always have been, so I enforce the DIY rule, and publish my work myself. Publishers like to think of themselves as a productive team with a variety of skillsets who can finetune and distribute your work better than you can. I disagree. Publishers are, largely, parasites who take your work and profit from it after they have pawed at it and altered its originality. I have always wanted to publish my work without the need to swim through a sewer, or jump through hoops of fire. Publish in the same way as a hillside stream 'publishes' its water or a plant publishes its flower thus allowing people to fall upon it spontaneously, by accident, and marvel at its vitality.

I'm not a fan of the glitter and the polish and the artifice but instead prefer the raw and the crude and the original. I don't like to sell, but prefer to share. This is why I'm stencilling this bridge: firstly because it is a bridge and a 'span that conjoins two opposing sides'. As far as this is concerned the bridge is not just a practical structure across which one can fare one's way but also a symbol of wisdom itself insofar as 'it joins and unites two opposing sides'. To quote Francois Julien from In Praise of Blandness, 'Wisdom consists in perceiving that opposites, far from being sequestered in their exclusive individuality, ceaselessly modify and communicate with each other. The one never transpires but in the response to the other...' Thus the bridge can be seen as 'the One' who facilitates the correspondence of 'opposites' (simultaneously dispelling duality) by responding and acknowledging the other. In a time when everyone seems incapable of response (and spontaneity), this symbol (and practice) of responding to and acknowledging the other could not be more urgent. Moreover, the fact that the bridge spans a great river - the River Clyde - further reinforces the reality of the One, since a river springs from a source which it then returns to in order to spring once again. The river is wisdom incarnate in other words, as is the bridge if seen without preconceived ideas and definitions.

Then, secondly, but perhaps more importantly, there is the openness of this 'gallery' across the river, and the wind (if not the rain) ventilating my work with its own signature. There are only pedestrians here and people can see it freely without having to enter through a gift shop, and without having to stand two feet back. Most of my work has been erased by graffiti removal guy at some point, and some of it has been responded to spontaneously by passers-by who have written remarks upon it or who have sparked up a conversation whilst I'm putting them up. This is another aspect that I admire: the ability to respond to a work that is open and everchanging, ever transforming, even if that response means its complete erasure.

So, there you have it: openness-sharing, interaction-transaction, spontaneity-response. With Glasgow's Ganges as gallery attendant.

What finer place then to display your work?

Buddha on Bells Bridge

Today, a few stencils for the overworked and the half-asleep.... In contrast to last week's session where a little old witch out jogging in her onesy (who just wanted to nit-pick and cause trouble) asked me if I was using washable ink, this afternoon, a mother and her child stopped to watch as I was putting this particular stencil up. She indicated to the child that 'the man was making art' and the young girl watched mesmerized as I pulled the stencil from the wall to reveal this... At about two years old she had no idea who this was or what it said, but it was the act itself of a grown man 'skiving' on a bridge over the river on a peaceful Good Friday (or is that 'Goofday'?) 'making art' that made the impression. When I returned home, I realized that the child was Buddha, and that her smile was the Buddha's blessing. What a difference from that wiry little witch last week!

This one is for all the parents who treat their children like some kind of monetary bond from which they can delve into in their later lives. A child is not a product, nor is it some kind of financial payback. A child is a sacred being (to use the terminology of aboriginal peoples) and as such should have nothing to do with the filthy and violent workaday world. Try telling that to the queues of parents and their spritely sprogs when they line up for the pop idol shows which, along with all that TV and merchandise crap, turns their little ankle biters into bona fide celebrities and 'adults'.

Progress, Industry, Science, all those pillars of our wonderful society, are actually viruses which have penetrated our core being and deformed us into men and women, and adults (as adulterated sacred beings), as well as deforming our planet/home as a whole. Society is a bloodbath whether you like it or not, and if you drive, eat meat, have children, or work in some frivolous dead-end job, then you are contributing towards the quagmire, and as such, like Patrick and Daniel above, you are a pioneer of progress and one of the normalized psychopaths.

All work under the mandate of capitalism is infected by it. As such it is not 'work' but 'toil' and 'coarse superfluous labour'. Watch the animals if you want to see work (work-play). Work is natural, and if it isn't it's not work. All work is the removal of noise and the spontaneous alignment of the body with its natural environment.

A jobby is small job. Thus, a job is simply a big jobby. 

Travaillez Jamais! 

Symphony of the Shooglie

Sitting on the train this morning waiting for it to leave, I was privy to the symphony of the shooglie: the hydraulic discourse of pistons and pumps letting off steam. The carraige was empty and so I sat back and listened, coffee in one hand, conductor's stick in the other... and what a symphony it was!

April in Glasgow