My Work

I have 'a work'... or maybe that should be 'a Work' with a capital W. It was a chap today on his bike who stopped and told me 'I like your work'. This had been said to me last year several times by passing admirers. And I started thinking, 'Hmm, I have a work, my work is taking shape. The problem we have today however is that few of us have the time or the headspace to find our work having been sidelined into the sideshow that is man's awful economy. As soon as you stop feeding this economy and stop labouring you liberate yourself from your chains and begin to free yourself into Work. Work that is natural and enlivening. Labour is the opposite of this: it is exploitative and exhausting. As old Bernard (Steigler) says below: Bullshit jobs are everywhere. It is our duty not to kowtow to them. As many a wizard knew, 'tis better to be an unemployed sorceror than a well-paid rapist.

Never labour! 

You may recognise the bespectacled face of the French philosopher (and former armed robber) Bernard Stiegler talking about 'bullshit jobs'. This guy was the man (sadly he passed away last year) and his Technics & Time (both parts) are massive. He, like Ivan Illich, could articulate the exact moments where man went wrong and started to become a monster. With Illich it was tools, the manipulating hand, and power that did not belong to the body, and with Steigler it was transport, the act of being carried, and the act of sharpening the stone. Lately, Steigler lamented the death of capitalism (or at least its spirit) and the fact that most people had shitty little jobs that did nothing for them except deplete and exhaust their vitality (cf. Jennifer Anniston's flipping the bird to her boss in the film Office Space).

Never labour! Better unemployed (and making use of the time-space that unemployment affords) than someone else's little bitch.

Hunchback

I saw a young man today staring into his smartphone and instead of seeing a human being I saw a deformed monstrum that could have been any number of hunchbacks from popular history. This is what a permanent stoop does to the spine, it collapses it until you are literally spineless and hunchbacked. People now waddle (they can't walk anymore) about with downcast eyes as if there were a weight upon their head. So far, the industrial realm and man's backwardness (earned through Progress & Science) has destroyed man's heart & mind. Now it's time for his spine.

The South Bank Show: The Unminced Word

In the spirit of John the Baptist (whose birthday anniversary it was yesterday, Monday 28th June), what better place to baptize the congregation than beside the river, a few more chapters and verses from the voice of the one crying in the wilderness. Indeed, I only found out today (Sunday 27th), courtesy of Radio 3s choral evensong that it was the eve of JBs birthday. At that moment a light pierced my brain for I had doubts about starting a new work so soon after the last. But the bridge (the canvas) has been cleaned and painted which is what I was waiting for. And I finished my last piece (Memos from the End Zone) at the end of March so it's time to re-Mind. And of course, having asked the big chief to present it some time back (to which big chief said yes), I thought o myself, this is a sign. I have no choice. And then I thought back to an episode of OZ I watched the other day where Sister Peter-Marie asks the simple-minded ('brain-damaged') Cyril O'Reilly whether or not he believes in God. To which he titters and tells the sister that it's a silly question. Sister Pete asks him why. And Cyril replies, 'Well, you don't choose God. God chooses you.'

And then you realise that God has chosen everyone, except most people are so confused by the industrial realm and a work that desecrates (the land, each other, the animals) that they just can't know it. 

So, here we are, beside the river once again, preaching the word of 'God', the word of 'Nature', the word of the One crying in the wilderness...

The Gatekeeper

They say the 'gatekeeper' takes on many forms. One must keep one's eyes and ears open however if you are to catch sight of it for these forms are rarely as 'visible' as the gatekeeper I met today up above Barrhead. This was a gatekeeper who would not be moved however, who was 'keeping the gate' whoever came calling. Sometimes it's better to take the long way round.

Take Dad For A Hike On Father's Day

That was the headline for an article in the LA Times this Father's Day morning. My curiosity was peaked. If only to see how ridiculous my own dad (now 85) would find it. Indeed, we have several suggestions for Dad (sic), not just hiking. There is running too, of which the article writes: Let Dad pick how far he wants to run. (How far? Run? Are you mad? I don't think my father has ever run in his life, he may not even know what the word 'run' means, seriously).

Then, there's the birdwatching. (Birdwatching? Really? My father, in spite of his rather large back garden, barely knows what a bird is. He certainly doesn't know that there is more than one type).

Then, there's forest bathing. (Forest is another word that my father may not be aware of. You see, in Scotland, they have cut all our forests down and replaced them with factories and motorways. Factory bathing, maybe?)

Then, lastly, of course, there's the hiking. Routes for Father's Day hikes abound, the LA Times writes. Maybe you want to take him to Inspiration Point? (And my father's thinking, can we drive there?)

So, there will be no blood, at least none that is moving, this Father's Day for dear old pater. His car is his body and his feet are wheels. The last time he went for a walk was when I forced him on one in Warsaw when he came to visit me 12 years ago. This was the same last time he visited a park (perhaps the only time), and certainly the first when he saw a red squirrel bounding up to him (to which he almost fainted). So, nature is not the first port of call for father, having spent almost seventy years sorting out other people's electrics as an electrical engineer (whilst ignoring his own body's engines and electrics). I could take him to John Lewis' though.

Jour de Fete !

Today, in the spirit of cycling, and of father's day, a small gift of Tati on his bicycle... (We used to holiday near St. Marc where Monsieur Hulot's Holiday was filmed)... Good times ;)

Drink Water!

The day after Christiano Ronaldo removes two coca cola bottles placed in front of him during an intertview and tells the audience to 'drink water' I read of Australia's growing alcohol-free drinking binge. A new industry it appears is emerging to rival the current alcohol-fuelled one, breweries, distilleries, advertising, bla bla bla. And I cringe at the utter hopelessness of man and his 'industries' that do not work his insides - his real spirit - but which work (degrade) the outside by producing a 'spirit' that doesn't contain any spirit. So, in the spirit of Christiano, 'Drink water'! And stop your bloody nonsense.

Cornflower

I first uncovered cornflower on a little country road just behind cambusland and dechmont hill. Soon after this uncovery I started seeing blue flushes here and there. It's a wonderful flower and a wonderful colour named because of its tendency to grow in corn fields. But if you keep your eyes (and soul) open you will see them in other places too... Here are just a few spots in the greater Glasgow valley where I found them.

Corner

I once wrote a couple of poems (see below) when I lived in Warsaw about the beauty of the empty and depopulated city. Then, later on in my native Glasgow, I put together an artist book called the Empty City based upon the 'desert premise', that the desert contrary to what you may think spends most of its time in sub-zero temperatures. When applied to the city, this means that the city streets are mostly empty not full. So, I delight in seeing an empty city, unpeopled, undogged, and uncarred. It's a sublime moment to be sure, and here, I simply concentrate on a corner just outside my flat. 

IN BROAD DAYLIGHT

In the widest daylight 

in certain parts of the city 

the human element completely disappears 

there is only a vague sensation of man 

a few cracked tyre tracks in the earth 

the sound perhaps of an airplane overhead - 

This city is the solitary city 

the silent city where all the flurry 

of talk has dissolved into the air 

into the earth where the denizens 

are dispersed subterranean, into iron and steel, 

behind brick walls, insinuated into the integument of the city. 

The city, rid of its self, has become something else. 

It is still the city only not bigger not louder, but quieter, more alive. 

Gradually, the empty waste ground, 

the weeds growing through the window, 

the suddenly silent street, in broad daylight, 

smash the mind to pieces - 

ON THE CORNER OF KAWECZYNSKA & OTWOCKA

Sitting on the steps of the Basilica 

the rattle of trams 

the rustle of trees 

pigeons and people 

coming and going.

 

Drone

A few days ago a drone crashed in a nature reserve in Huntington Beach, California, scaring away the parent birds of as many as 2000 elegant tern eggs. It was the largest abandonment of eggs scientists can recall. The mass abandonment was not just down to the drone crash however but to increased traffic to the site by way of dog-walkers and cyclists who invariably disturb the sensitive area that an ecological reserve is. Both cyclists and dogs (who are banned from the reserve) are seen as predators by the birds and will consequently abandon a site if a threat is felt. Dogs (not cyclists) that are all too often kept off their leash also flush ground-nesting birds from their nests which causes them to leave and never return. All this anthropocentred ecology (which of course is the retarded version of ecology) raises an important question: who is the reserve for? Who is the forest for? Who is this island for? Who is this mountainside for? It's a question that rings around the world in sensitive areas designed to harbour and protect wildlife, or indeed in areas where wildlife live and range. Is it for pleasure-seekers seeking the next adrenalin rush? Is it for ecologically-illiterate people who are so confused at a fundamental level of being that they now have a wheen of threatening accessories attached to them wherever they go. Is it for cars? Is it for noise? Is it for the general distrurbance and ignorance that crowds of self-absorbed people bring with them? I should think not. The reserve is not a reserve for retardation or pleasure but for ecology and the opposite of retardation: genius, and the animal's ability to generete itself in peace without the interference and menace of man and his toys. The reserve as the name suggests is a place that is 'kept back' from man's usual industry and filth, and menace. It is a place that is supposed to be pristine and dedicated above all to the wild and the naturally-abiding. By allowing dogs and other disturbances into the fray and not dealing with them accordingly, for the sake of pleasing people, the wild (and peace) is relegated to the state of the dominated (and noise). Priorities change for the worse. The cathedral becomes a creche. And our children grow up in a sacreligious environment thinking man (and their own selves by extension) to be at the front of the queue for everything.

Legs Versus Arms

Legs win every time because there are no arms. All is leg. 'Arms' are actually legs that have been made into weapons. And if you don't know that you've been man-handling and manipulating, grasping and clawing, too much. And, accordingly, not walking (and waking) enough. All of man's problems began when he climbed down from the trees and his legs started arming themselves (with the sedentary, with comfort, with tools). And we all should know, on the day when a drunk off-duty LA police officer shoots his friend by accident, how dangerous a legless and armed person is.