THE PEN IS MORE PORTABLE THAN THE SWORD
Frosting On The Railroad
The diary is getting full - no complaints here though. Next month (that would be September if I have my facts correct) sees a double-headed working trip to Colorado, delivering the first draft of The Family Of Noise to my pseudo-agent, wrapping up the Sci-Fi Tattoos book and a house move on the cards - throw into the mix that the day I come back from the States, Eleanor leaves to go to some week long 'thing' in Dubai and that's September pretty much finished before it has begun. Also on the cards somewhere in there is a meeting about re-booting The Ballad Of The Goat-Faced Boy project which I have medium-sized hopes of getting back on the table after it fell off. Not that I actually have a diary - I can't think of anything worse then having a diary when you have lots on your plate. That would be just one big fat reminder of all the things you hadn't done.
Talking of things I haven't done - I have quite a long short story that I need to wrap up: The Run-Along Man Sells Spoons. It's quite something - well I like it anyway. Now I have written that down I think I may have mentioned it here before. It needs shopping out into the big wide-world somehow so I'm going to take some time out soon and see if I can talk anybody into playing host to Arthur Conan Doyle crosses paths with Monster Magnet. It's clocking in at 10,000 words right now - so that's quite a long short story really. Let's see how it wants to end and take it from there.
•••
I used to love magazines for their own sake - that ought to be obvious being as I've spent most of my adult life around then in some form or other. Is it my imagination, or are they suffering badly right now? My own mag aside (obviously as I'm not allowed to have an opinion about that) , the only other magazine I buy and read without fail every single month is Vanity Fair. (I love the way the distributors think they know the mag and choose to sell it amongst women's magazines almost as much as I love the way they think they know my mag and choose to sell it either with bike mags or up on the top shelf). Vanity Fair is excellent - it has world class writers, doesn't skimp on the photography, has superb thought behind the production and the iPad edition rocks hard too. I take a lot of cues from Vanity Fair but hopefully, nobody can tell.
So, this week, I picked up a copy of National Geographic Traveller hoping for inspiration because I love travel writing when it's from the heart. But that's not what I got...
What I got, mostly, was 180 odd pages of watered down press releases that do nothing more than appease advertisers. There's a couple of good (even great) features in there but for the most part, that's not what I expected from National Geographic at all. When you see a story about New York and the intro says "If you think you've seen New York, think again" and the pictures that follow are of the Statue of Liberty, Central Park, Grand Central and a shot of the skyline... well it doesn't bode well for wanting to really get into the guts of the thing. When did readers become stupid and lazy? (I'm tempted to state here that it was the day they switched the internet on but it's asking for trouble).
That left me with two trains of thought:
1. Mail National Geographic and tell them that when they were tired of their editor, they should maybe give me a call. I'm not perfect but that mag needs some big steel balls if National Geographic are going to keep their reputation intact going forward. Then again, what the hell would they do with a loose cannon on the deck?
or:
2. Start my own travel writing blog where I could see if I was able to back up Point 1 in relative safety. Yeah... it's easy for me to sit here and take a pot shot but in my defence, I'm not doing it anonymously. Could I be good at travel writing? Could I be great at travel writing? Could I be the most loved and hated travel writer of all time?
Not a clue. Let's build a blog to work with and see how that pans out. I'll be sure to mention it when it goes live and you can all pile in with your size tens if you wish.
Anyway, if you want travel writing done properly, pick up a copy of the book (or audiobook - which is also top notch) Travels With Charley from John Steinbeck. It may be over 50 years old but hey, Game. Set. Match as far as I'm concerned.
•••
On which subject - take a look at this train which is run by Renfe I believe - it's a luxury cruise liner and I would give many, many right arms (don't care who they belong to) to write a story about it for... well, I'd write about it for anybody to be honest. If you guys pick this up from a tag, sincerely... drop me a line and let's set something up.
•••
That was a lot of words without even so much as a picture break, so to make up for it, here's The Posies performing the entire - yeah, ENTIRE - Frosting On The Beater album at Donostikluba 2008 (which I believe is in San Sebastian). Go make tea first... it's over an hour long.
Dear Sean Penn...
Dude - why didn't you drop me a line to let me know about this film you made? I mean, it's seven years old now and yesterday was the first I had ever heard of it. Do I have to mail you stationery or what? Anyway, it could well be my most favourite film of all time - and that's saying something, so thanks. Thanks for making a film worth staying up all night for. I know it's your job, but hey - these days you have to stand up and be seen waving the little flag of awe when somebody does what they say they're going to do.
Seriously man - I cried, I laughed, I thought about my life, eventually went to sleep and quite possibly woke up a slightly different person.
•••
For any of my friends passing by, you should watch it - it's widely available on Netflix.
Home
Been away on holiday. After all of that posting a couple of weeks back about missing the home front, we packed the car and went exploring.
As luck (or perhaps good management) would have it, I found myself on a hillside I've always been on good terms with. The hillside consists of something like twenty five different fields of which, one is really, really small and for as long as I can remember has had something of a reputation for 'allowing' other things to live in it. I won't explain because explaining stuff takes the magic away.
Anyway, I'm in this field and the er... 'thing' that lives there hands me a mental picture of a Funeral Stone. I didn't know what a Funeral Stone was either, so don't sweat it - some of it will become clear (a lot) later. I got a little obsessed over this stone and figured I needed to find it - at which point, I was handed (in the same way) a map of how to find it.
Thus, we filled the car up (again) and hit the road. Several hours later that also took in a 20 mile dirt track and a head on 'almost' incident with a large farm vehicle, I got us across what I can only term as Hobbit terrain.
And now I have decided that some things should possibly not be spoken of...
I may come back to this post another day.
Radio Chaos
Last Thursday morning, I got called in to the BBC offices in Great Portland Street to record my section of a programme about how tattooing features in fine art - or possibly how fine art features in tattooing. Hosted by the lovely Mary Anne Hobbs for the BBC4 Culture Show, it was damn good fun - I always think radio is a peculiar beast to be involved in. A small part of me suspected that we would all be in a room together but I found myself to be the only one in London that day - everybody else was presumably in the same boat elsewhere. The weird part about it is that as soon as the actual work begins, you forget you're not all in the same room and treat it as if you are. After a few minutes you can even begin to predict body language by the tone of a voice. You get to know when somebody is about to falter and you can fill in a blank or pre-empt where a 'polite' gap will be that you can interrupt. For 50 minutes, I thought that this could be exactly how Matt Murdock operates but Matt Murdock would not have stolen his BBC pass that they asked to be handed back in - and neither would he have taken a picture of a lonely recording booth:
No idea when it airs - I don't think they know yet either but I'll post here when it does. Here's the link to their home page - there's some good stuff on there and it feels good to be in such company. I'll file that one in the 'win' column.
...and if you ever get invited to take part in anything to do with the BBC radio, I suggest that you pick up your own coffee from just a few yards down the street. This cup on the desk is not indicative of what they actually serve - just a happy forethought on my own behalf.
Sometimes, I Really Want To Go Home
Holy mother - it's August tomorrow. How did that happen. Statement not question. Truth be told, the last 'event' I can remember in recent memory might even be Christmas. Today, I had to revisit my (still) great idea of not owning anything as I wander through life. This is because Eleanor made me play a silly game called "If you could move back home to Wales, where would you like to live?" - which prompted searching online around some of my old stomping grounds, and I happened to find this:
and this:
and, er... this:
All of those pictures link to the estate agent pages. Right now I am feeling pretty homesick which is something of a surprise considering I couldn't wait to get the hell out of the place 25 years ago. Then again, at the time I was living in a single room not much bigger than a dog kennel in a house shared by eight other guys I didn't even know, in a town that was on its knees - so my prospects where pretty damn grim to say the least. It was the right thing to do at the time.
25 years later, I'm kind of thinking that in reality, I might actually like to be that successful. Maybe that's what I'm missing. Maybe I should really want this sort of stuff to make it happen, because when you don't want anything at all... that's very easy to get - and exactly what I have got.
Perhaps I should plan the biggest ever DaVinci Code killer and then cough up some small change from it to own something like this - (where, if I have my geography right, I would have royal neighbours not too far away):
Who wouldn't want dolphins in their back fucking garden!
I am buoyed by the fact that I have seen some of the houses successful authors own - but then, they all have finished books that sold well.
This is definitely a two cigarette problem.
Storm
It's 2.30am and I've just witnessed a real 'calm before the storm'. I put my pen down after a long writing stint only because there was lightning outside, so I went to investigate.The sky is full and heavy with black clouds that look like they've been created with CGI but there's nothing else. It's not hot or cold. There's not a whisper of a breeze. No animal noises, no cars... not a damn thing. Even the animals in the house are remarkably quiet. I can't quite describe it other than to say, the world outside appears to have stopped - almost as though it's waiting for something important to happen. It's times like this that you can cut through modern science and its matter of fact way of destroying everything magical and understand why Gods were put in place by way of explanation. It's late and I'm tired - but I think I'll pull up a garden chair, smoke a few cigarettes and see how this is going to pan out for a little while. Somewhere out here, are the answers to everything.
Storm
It's 2.30am and I've just witnessed a real 'calm before the storm'. I put my pen down after a long writing stint only because there was lightning outside, so I went to investigate.The sky is full and heavy with black clouds that look like they've been created with CGI but there's nothing else. It's not hot or cold. There's not a whisper of a breeze. No animal noises, no cars... not a damn thing. Even the animals in the house are remarkably quiet. I can't quite describe it other than to say, the world outside appears to have stopped - almost as though it's waiting for something important to happen. It's times like this that you can cut through modern science and its matter of fact way of destroying everything magical and understand why Gods were put in place by way of explanation. It's late and I'm tired - but I think I'll pull up a garden chair, smoke a few cigarettes and see how this is going to pan out for a little while. Somewhere out here, are the answers to everything.
Moths.
Earlier today, I posted a page about the release of the comic tattoos book - then I made the mistake of looking at the white pad I'd left on the table, the one that I'd scrawled all the things I still have to do before the end of the month and simply fell into a black hole of depression. Well, not so much depression as a clinical professional might have it but it felt pretty damn low all the same. It started with some errant thoughts of 'however much you do, there's still another bunch of stuff waiting around the corner to busy yourself with' - which more or less means that no matter how much you really think the last thing you did was great (or at least as fine as it could be at the time), there's no time to appreciate it because (if you're like me) your next project has to kick its ass from here to the edge of the planet. And so the circle continues. This could well be the story of my life though if I asked around, it's very likely that a lot of people feel like this.
Back when I was writing songs, when I really hit my stride with it, I wrote so many - maybe 60 or so - over a three or four month period, that I look back on now as being damn good that I'm just pissed off at myself in hindsight that I never did anything with them. It wasn't that I was scared of failure (or success) - in my opinion they simply weren't good enough and thus spent the rest of their lives sitting on old cassette tapes or scraps of paper. Having a job that forces you into a pretty harsh schedule for writing (the mag comes out every four weeks) a lot of that mentality has disappeared based on the fact that if you don't do it and do it good, you won't have the job for very long.
It hasn't disappeared altogether though. Which is my round-about way of saying I'm having doubts about The Family Of Noise - more than the story itself, I've made it difficult by trying to say something within its pages. I can feel it there but man, it's buried deep at the moment and I'm digging in all the wrong places. Which - given all I said above - makes me feel like throwing it in the trash and starting again.
Except, this time I won't because I've done that too many times and been sorry as hell afterwards.
It's times like this I wish I had some kind of mentor kicking around or a writing group, anything that would prop me up for a few days and tell me it will be fine if I work through it one word at a time - but right there, I've already told myself the only sensible thing available. On the plus side, that's a lot of time saved for both of us.
If the tool of choice was a guitar, I'd smash it up tonight just for the hell of it. Somehow, smashing up a pen seems a rather hollow gesture.
So instead I did something I don't do very often (or often enough maybe) and took to the bath with three unfinished boos to read. It's still pretty hot here today so the window was wide open. The darker it got outside, the more moths came in until finally, there were at least twelve of them in there and I thought I had better get out before it got messy. There was a fine looking one which I believe is called a 6-Spot Burnet (not a geek - I looked it up for the sake of the post here), some regular looking beasts and finally, there was the one that dive-bombed the water after I'd pulled the plug that I rescued and left on the side of the bath to dry out.
Somewhere in here, there is a lesson.
When you see the light, fly towards it, then: shine like a diamond, be a regular joe or drown yourself because you're not paying attention to what's going on.
Or maybe it was just moths in the bathroom.
With my frame of mind tonight, I think it was just moths but my soul knows better...
Don't Try This At Home
After all this time, I finally witnessed it with my own eyes. The kid must have been all of 10 or 11 and figured that he could go from a standing position to standing on top of the iron bars around the trolley park. C.M. Punk in the making perhaps? No. It doesn't take but a second to go from hero to zero as you slip and land face first on the concrete, smashing your mouth open and breaking your specs. Less time than that even.
Don't say they didn't warn you.
•••
Work continues on The Family Of Noise. I don't get along so well with this kind of weather we're having, I guess I'm built for a more 'wet' climate which means I am wandering around like a dog, notebook under arm, looking for the coolest place in the house to bed down and write. File under: not very constructive.
Also not very constructive is getting hooked on a book that you know your own will never be as good as.
I know this for a fact and am quite accepting of it. If it's even almost as good, that will be good enough for me. This guy held the number one spot for me last year with a book he had written some years previously but it was so 'huge' in its delivery, it stomped all over some literary greats. The man is Graham Joyce. Last year's book was Some Kind Of Fairy Tale and his latest that I'm ploughing through right now is The Year Of The Ladybird. Somebody at the publishing house needs to get some traction behind this because Joyce deserves to be much more widely read than he is at the moment. To kick back and say 'I really wish I had written that' is not something I say very often - and it's normally about a song when I do.
Maybe I should say it to nobody but myself? Follow it with some warlike cry of "Joyce, I'm coming to get you!" Yeah... that's what I'll do - but only to myself.
So while you wait for me to finish The Family Of Noise, go read Fairy Tale and Ladybird. Not necessarily in that order. This is what Ladybird looks like. Go find it:
So good, if you think you might have a book in you, it will make you think twice about putting pen to paper.
That's probably not the greatest blurb quote you can say about something, but you get the picture.
•••
..and now back to work.
The Nanny State. No Saucepans. Bogus.
I spent a few insightful hours in A&E yesterday evening with Eleanor who needed her drained out pretty urgently. That aside, I haven't been to an A&E department for long time. I had to think long and hard about when I last took that trip and it was back in 1993 when I cut the top of my thumb in half with a big serrated knife. Something to do with a very long serrated knife and a cabbage as I recall. The stitches hurt more than the original wound. Over the years, I have been there with the kids though - it's always fun going to A&E with the kids. Like the time one of them smashed herself on the top of the head with a swing and gashed herself open... when you go to A&E with kids you get asked some weird questions: "Is this really your daughter?"
"Where you alone with her at the time?"
"Has this happened before?"
You can only imagine. This is how they deal with children who might be in danger from their parents - I hope they catch some people like that but it seems mighty ineffectual to me if all you're doing is ticking boxes on a computer screen. It's pretty easy to lie to any of those questions if you were of such a mind. It probably doesn't help when a smart arse like me answers "Is this really your daughter?" with "I hope so..."
So... yesterday. A weird cast of characters as ever down there. A kid whose nose had been bleeding for over an hour, a girl who had swallowed a bead and a poor twenty something man who had a little cut on his head from football practice. There were at least three people with twisted ankles and probably the most serious, were the ones who didn't look like there was anything wrong. There was also a pregnant woman who had fallen down the stairs and had been told it would be quicker to go there than the maternity unit.
The kid with the nose was seen pretty fast which was nice to see because it looked really bad - the moral of the story is if you want to be seen fast at A&E, put on a good show. The girl with the swallowed bead - man, she should have been sent home. There were four of them there altogether and what the hell is anybody going to do about that? They were a huge family too (like super f.a.t.) so what's worse? Swallowing a bead or chowing down on a McDonalds? I think I'm allowed to make light of this because she came skipping into the joint. It wasn't like she had it stuck in her throat and couldn't breath or swallow. Maybe I'm being harsh there. I would have given my kids some food to flush it down with and made sure they had a pulse, were still breathing and let nature do the rest. Like you would with a dog.
Shit. Am I bad parent?
The twisted ankle thing? Really? You went to A&E with a twisted ankle? Bunch of pussies. Seriously you are. At least one of you drove yourself there. How bad could it have been? Anyway, some other people seemed to come and go (I switched off after the initial intrigue) but for the three hours or so that we were there, the pregnant woman who fell down the stairs had still not been seen. It's not a very private place so a) this is how me and everybody else knew what was wrong with people when they checked in and b) some people love to tell other people who have been waiting a long time what's wrong with them.
I'm not commenting on the effectiveness of our NHS A&E system here but even at its lowest common denominator, (that would be to stop somebody badmouthing the system to everybody that walked in - everybody can live without that sort of PR), surely they should have got her through the system a bit faster than that - because that's exactly what all of us sitting in there were thinking. That must have been 30 or 40 people within those three hours who all left thinking it was wrong. You couldn't fuck up a business any easier or faster than that if you tried - could you?
I guess people are just doing their jobs and budget cuts simply slide down from top to bottom like they do everywhere. I don't think it's any different in a country where you don't have the NHS. You probably have to wait just as long and then pay. Although it does raise an interesting point over whether 'cut to the head football man' and 'sprained ankle man' would even have been there in the first place. Personally, I would have gone to the supermarket and bought some of that 'spray plaster' and got on with my life. I'm already behind with Luther as it is.
Somewhere in there, is an important dividing line over how to make the system work better but it never will while there are pussies clogging it up.
Most of all though, I was so disappointed that there wasn't a boy waiting to be seen with a saucepan stuck on his head that I had to text at least four people and tell them so.
Footnote: It occurs to me that if you took all the money from the parking fees across an average year and put it back into the system it belongs in (ie the hospital and not the local council), they could probably afford some more Doctors and other assorted staff to make it run a little smoother. There's likely to be a simple equation out there to figure that out isn't there?
Footnote 2: It also occurs to me that if you've spent money on three televisions in the waiting area and have them switched on, you could maybe turn the sound up so people could watch them - then most wouldn't notice how shitty everything has become. Just a thought...
Very Important History Lesson
I love this little doc - so will you if you give it a chance. Thanks to my buddy JJ for sharing that. Those were good days...
An Interview With Greg Craola Simkins
The world outside is an odd place at the best of times. Recently, the media appears to have become aware of tattooing and related fine art - or to be more precise, how tattoo culture has seeped into a world it perhaps shouldn’t have. To this I say: ‘just because you’ve decided to notice it, doesn’t mean it wasn’t happening before.’ Thus, with great pride and other wholesome things, I sat down with Greg Craola Simkins to figure some stuff out... and got more than I bargained for:
I have admired from afar - very afar. Then I admired from slightly closer but a book is still quite far away. To find yourself in the eye of the hurricane, up close and personal while digging on a story is the best feeling in the world. A family man first and foremost these days, the former graffiti artist Greg Simkins - better known to the world as Craola - is startlingly easy to get along with. That’s no surprise to be honest - if you are able to digest a person’s work properly, you’ll find that when the work is intense, the person is not. If the work is lacking, the frustration sits with the artist.
Greg still gets up frighteningly early in the morning - mostly, we’re on the same wavelength for this conversation but mornings are only for the birds surely...
“Honestly, I'll draw or paint at the drop of a hat or any opportunity I get, and to clarify, it's not because I'm the most dedicated artist around, it's because I have kids. I am obsessed with making art, but the reason for the early start time is so I fulfil my glamorous duties at home such as cleaning dishes, changing diapers, keeping my five year old from running into traffic and - all joking aside - enjoying my family and watch these kids grow up. I try to work the hours my dad worked when I grew up. Seven to four or five every day, drawing late night with weekends off.”
I struggle with this concept but it’s not really important - or maybe it is... that will become clearer later. The purpose of my stay here is to do what I love doing and that’s trying to figure out the inner workings of a word class artist. As a writer, I don't plan anything - I turn up at the page and see what the page wants to do. I may have a vague idea of where to start, but I find planning ruins most things for me - takes away any spontaneity that is likely to happen. As for working when other people are around - that’s a major crime around here.
“I understand what you're saying and I feel you to a point. I look at my sketch time as my writing time and my painting time as the editing of those ideas I came to when drawing. I also don't fully flesh out a painting at drawing time because I love discovering new things that the painting is asking me to do. You just start seeing new things in the rendered shapes once the paint goes on, that's the time to be spontaneous and I love that part of painting.
“I share my studio space/warehouse with four other dudes, Kevin Pasko, Bob Dob, Graham Curran and A.J. Dia, so there’s never a dull moment. There are plenty of guys to bounce ideas around with and they aren't afraid of being honest with a "that sucks" at the appropriate moment. I do see some differences with my work prior to having people in the studio, but it is hard to gauge if the work has altered because of that or if it's because it's just the natural progression. I do get away to draw though. I prefer to being "alone in public", like at a library or a coffee shop to draw. A change of scenery is always good.”
We’re bandying the phrase and concept of “work” around here like it’s something everybody understands but one look at any (take your pick) of Greg’s pieces reveals that not to be the case at all. The concept of originality in a world in which the obvious paths have been worn dry is tough. Personally, I deal with it like this - I smash opposing concepts into each other - things that have no right to go together and make them work. I wonder out loud if that’s the way Greg’s brain works without even consciously thinking about it anymore?
“Wow, that's almost exactly how the pieces come together. It started making more sense to me when my interest in coral reefs collided with forest wildlife and wanting them to "meet". After that, everything was game and there were no more boundaries. Composing the morphs has become almost unconscious and more about textures colliding than creatures. It is a license to try anything and everything out and make them fit seamlessly.”
I dare say that a vast percentage out there will be somewhat surprised to learn that Greg is a Christian. A church-going man who finds a spirituality there that fuels a very large part of his work - whether that be conscious or otherwise is in the eye of the beholder. I didn’t know this beforehand, but once learned, went back to Greg’s work and came out with a different view than I came in with. Funny how knowing a person even a little bit changes how you look at what they do. So would I be a million miles away from the truth if I were to suggest there were subtle nuances here of 'giving' and 'taking care of each other' as a primary themes?
“You are correct. I am a Christ follower, I would say I am Christian - and am - but the term has become loaded and trampled by so many people in the media, and I believe rightfully so in some cases. There are many people out there professing to be Christians and then doing everything in their power to expose their ignorance to anything that is in the Bible they claim to believe or of Jesus whom they profess to follow. Just watch TBN (Trinity Broadcasting Network) for a few minutes and you'll get my drift. It’s a carnival sideshow that has no idea what it’s doing.
“Sometimes my work is taking a shot at this very picture. I have a piece called "Prey" that I recently painted which showcases a lamb walking into a room full of wolf snakes draped in sheep skins. It is loosely based on Matthew 7:15. The Lamb is representational of unblemished purity boldly walking into a horrible fate by those He knows to be liars and murderers. These wolves are described as people professing to be "believers" and the passage is directed to "the Church".
“As far as the majority of my work goes however, I don't approach it theologically. I don't attempt to put messages in most pieces, "Prey" and "Here Stands Matt Riddle" are exceptions. I enjoy creating narratives about interactions and relationships between worlds that wouldn't normally meet under any other circumstance than popping into my brain. I believe my world-view seasons my work and that comes out in instances while drawing and painting without a forceful push. I have said it in the past: I am attempting to explore the depths of creativity that we have all been given in the likeness of a vastly imaginative Creator.
“I'm amazed that we can even be contemplating things in such a way with our minds totally irrelevant of the natural world. Things that don't make sense somehow manifest just by daydreaming. It’s pondering ideas of time, eternity, infinity, minds, souls and the basic question of "Why are we here?" that has me battling back and forth daily. As much as I'd like to just believe we popped into existence out of absolute "nothing" (and I mean real nothing, not particles, or vacuums, because that would be something) I can't buy into it. Even the multiverse discussions I have heard just push back the ultimate timing of the Big Bang and ultimately, you have to ask the question "Where did the Multiverse come from?".
“Watching William Lane Craig debate Lawrence Krauss on these topics and similar discussions are inspiring. These discussions also give me great ideas for creating my own imaginative worlds and ask the question "What would be going on in another universe separate from our own, what would we see there?". Then topics such as relationships, love, longing to be loved, heartache, suffering, regret, courage and as you have pointed out - giving and ultimately sacrifice - seep their way into the narrative as I draw ideas. These thoughts are just there and I am sure are a result of what I take into my mind - be it through discussion, reading, podcasts or sitting and pondering the world before my eyes.”
'That’s pretty heavy', I thought to myself - but in a world where people think putting a pineapple on a bed and drawing a square around it is art, also relevant and worth pointing out by not editing down any part of that segment. On a totally different subject, when you work like this, one idea must surely lead to another that doesn’t fit into what you happen to be doing at the time. Do these ideas get put to one side to become something else or are they simply let go?
“Each painting has a life of its own and the time frame can go from one day to many months. I tend to jot down notes and sketches in my little sketch books so as to never lose my ideas. Sometimes I scan them in and put them in "idea" folders logged under whichever show I am working on. That becomes a time stamp for the idea. I then either leave it there to address later, or copy and paste it into future folders so as not to lose the thought.
“I am discouraged that I won't be able to paint the majority of ideas I have stored away in these folders. There isn't enough time in the day to address these sketches and at times I find myself irritable. By not being able to visibly kick out an idea, I am left to wonder about it. It consumes me sometimes.”
Let's talk about mistakes and criticism: are you able to live comfortably with both once a piece is finished? Most great artists I know are incredibly hard on themselves. The good criticism you are grateful for but pay little attention to - and the bad, you take very much to heart and analyse it to see if you can better yourself or whether that person just didn't get what you were trying to do.
“I have a lot of critics in my life surrounding me closely. Be it my friends, studio-mates, family members or acquaintances. I also know my limitations. I am nowhere near where I want to be. I am always frustrated... always. A lot of times, it is my drawings that kill me. I am in such a hurry at times because I can't wait to see the painted version, that I push the drawing out. It usually takes a few weeks after I finish a painting that I can begin to enjoy it - especially the larger ones. I tend to like to paint the big ones way more than the small, but I still need to separate from it for a while before I can engage it again and begin to enjoy it. I am excited to have my new book out right now but am totally unable to look at the early chapters of it. Most times I feel like a huge phony and that I am going to be found out as being a horrible artist. I think I definitely fall into the trap of being my worst critic.”
Ah - the old impostor syndrome that all true originals feel on a daily basis. Here she is again, doing her thing. Is it harder or easier as you go along to make a decent living and put food on the table? Do you find that - particularly after a successful period - you wonder how you can ever better yourself or progress forward fast enough? Do ever feel like you're er… what's a good way to put it - only as good as your last piece of work?
“That's a great question. I always live with the realisation that I need to be a good steward of what I have. We live very thriftily, stay well within our means because what I do could disappear in an instant. Buying art is a luxury item for people and not on the top of their lists if times get rough.
“I am not performing surgeries or anything like that which will always be necessary. So thinking realistically, I have to do the best job that I can and work as hard as I can to be honest to my work, but also to provide for my family. It is hard to contemplate these things, but necessary. We are grown ups now, it is important to take things seriously. It’s important to progress and learn as much as I can as I go so as to better myself and my work - but that’s half the fun of it, so it weighs in my favor.
“The journey is scary and awesome at the same time. I don't want to go back to not painting full time, but if that was to be the case, so be it. There are things far more important than art and keeping my family safe and fed is way up there on the list.”
There's a good question in an interview online in which Greg says: "I have this fear that if I get too stoked on one moment then that's where my growth ends". I like that and it sits well with me but is it possible to improve forever? Is anybody able to project themselves forwards and see themselves in ten years - twenty years - and even begin to imagine what they’re capable of? I guess the big worry may be that one day, you do a piece that is so good (to you personally) you have to wonder where on earth you're going to go next.
“I still feel that way. I want to progress until I die. If my technique ever gets polished to where I want it to be, maybe I'll be able to fully realise the narrative end of things and the conceptual side in more depth. Perhaps that side will take over and my interests will become more abstract, who knows. I am taking each day at a time and chasing after concepts that haunt me and trying to add new things to my tool belt everyday.
“I hate my limitations though. It makes me sick that I can't do certain things with my drawings. More exploration is in order.”
Time can be a cruel mistress. It runs out for everybody eventually but I have one final question and it’s a good one if not only because I'm curious for myself: I like a lot of the same things as Greg, literature and art-wise - I'm a spiritual kind of guy for sure, but not a Christian - so I'm interested as to what an artist like Greg makes of a writer/artist like Clive Barker (and similar), who kind of exist on the same plane but approach the art from the darkness as opposed to the light. Is the artist part able to appreciate things like that or is it preferable to stay away from them as not being something wanted or needed to influence your work, no matter how good they may be?
“That is a good question. My studio-mate Kevin is a huge Clive Barker fan and talks about him all the time. I still haven't read him. Just synopses of his works or what Kevin describes. And of course I appreciate works that come from other angles than what I hold. I appreciate the technical skills and creative flow of thought very much.
“The fact that there is even an approach that would be considered ‘darkness’ versus ‘light’ and that the two sides of thought are in opposition drives my creative juices. How are these things grounded if there were no ultimate good? These things bounce around in my head all day long. But to get back to your point, I do personally favour fiction which is fantasy based and balances good versus evil. The entire back story of my White Knight hero (some of which I have written just to document for myself) is about the grey areas we find ourselves in between the two sides but trying to strive towards ultimate good in an otherwise dark and scary world.
“My interests have been leading me these days more towards things that I find beautiful and fantastic as opposed to horrific and depraved, and then past that to why do we consider such things beautiful or depraved, what gets us to that point?”
Those must sadly remain questions for another time - another life even. Right now, my head hurts a little from being enlightened.
I wonder sometimes if people only look at pictures in magazines, never bothering to take in the text that runs with it and that’s something that comes with the territory I guess, but just this once, I hope that’s not the case...
“The Outside” is available now from all good bookshops and by mail order - in fact, you can grab it right now, here.
craola1.blogspot.com • twitter.com/craola • facebook.com/craola • craolasimkins.tumblr.com
In Which I Decided To Judge Things By Their Cover...
I was looking up at the sky yesterday evening and it occurred to me that everything that's ever happened on this planet has happened beneath that sky - and with the exception of a few things that have caused humans to clash with each other on a grand scale, you'll never know about any of it. The more I thought about this, the more I considered exactly how much we don't know about it. History has been, gone and remained largely uncatalogued because millions of people didn't die. That's all we've left behind? A legacy of death? I guess we could throw in sporadic moments of inspired engineering, painting and adventuring but you could more or less stuff all of that in a single large volume if you tried hard enough. That's pretty sad don't you think?
And right at that moment, I really wanted to write a spiritual book. I've read enough of them in my time to know what makes a great one. From Coelho to Castaneda to books by people that don't even have names - there's some great material out there. But there's also a lot of wisdom that slips through the cracks because it doesn't come from a 'good enough' source. Take this quote for instance, which is from Michael Connolly's detective, Harry Bosch:
"Either everybody counts or nobody counts"
Maybe I'll work on the idea. Then again, as Denis Leary pointed out: "Fuck it, it was like this when I found it."
•••
Comic book project approaching completion here... this week I've wrapped up five more interviews with some great people, including one that has come barreling straight out of my teenage days which has been pretty cool to be honest. I'm really appreciative of exactly how much time some of these guys have handed over to me but I'll save the thanks column for somewhere a little more permanent than here.
Anyway - I can see the end from here - of the written part anyway. A couple more things to wrap up and then I'll need to switch to production mode on the design front. This one is going to be very much an all hands on deck (all four of them) if we're going to get it finished in time. Funny how much I still like that 'making' part of the process - I hope it never leaves. It's like having a hand in laying the foundations of a house you're having built.
•••
A while back, Penguin released some classic books with the covers redesigned by tattoo artists and now they have done the same again with street artists. Here's a couple from the run that I thought stood head and shoulders above the others - which can all be seen here.
Maybe I'm biased, but these two are also the best written amongst the collection. I really like the cover art for What A Carve Up too, but I haven't read that - so will simply have to judge the book by its cover and say it looks great. Will add to list.
•••
Back to work... accompanied today by Mick Ronson. Good choice Sir...
Beware of Darkness - In All Its Forms
It seems like a lifetime since I found a new band that I thought was worth a damn - let alone one that I thought the whole world should know about. I guess the world might know already about these guys but they only crawled across my radar this morning - there's every chance that the next time I go out, I'll be met with a hundred t-shirts proclaiming me stupid and slow in hindsight. Beware of Darkness. This is their site - jump onto youtube and you might find some video clips there. This is the album cover for 'Orthodox' and hellfire, it's wonderful for all the right reasons. If you're feeling lazy, you could fire comparisons of Jet hooking up with The Black Angels at them, but that still wouldn't hit the mark:
Why did I not know about this before this morning? Cross at self... but satisfied.
•••
I know I spend far too much time in the bookstore. Maybe I'm soaking it up for when it's no longer there. They have these cards on the counter at the moment: "The book that made me." The idea is that you fill it in (I guess about the book that changed your life) and then drop it in a box never to be seen again.
I thought hard about this. That's a tough call - but the universe has a way of giving you a good shake every now and then. Many times I've gone on record that since the day it came out it was always Clive Barker's Imajica, until around fifteen years later, I picked up Susannah Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Both are large. Both suffered the same fate - from the second they were begun, I barely moved or slept until they were finished, though I suspect I smoked a lot and ate far too many packets of crisps.
Weighing them up against each other, I still can't pin it down. I guess it's no big deal really. I hear a rumour (a decent rumour) that Jonathan Strange is about to be become some kind of TV show - and I don't want to watch it. I will, but I don't want to. Imajica on the other hand has largely been forgotten about by the masses - apart from those of us who have read it of course. We will never forget it. Couldn't if we wanted to.
I was kind of leading up to making a decision there wasn't I and it looked like I was headed for Imajica. It sits comfortably. See, if I say Imajica, that's OK. I can live with that. If I say Jonathan Strange, my heart always says "yeah, but what about Imajica?" So I guess I have decided. I don't like it though. Good job nobody is making me choose really.
I was actually leading up to something here - last night, I noticed that Clive Barker had posted some words about Imajica - being as I must have sold about 1000 copies of it over the years simply from talking about it non-stop, I'm going to paste it here with a clear conscience for you to read too. Enjoy it even - if it makes any sense:
I never came closer to giving up like I did with Imajica, never doubted more deeply my skills as a storyteller, was never more lost, never more afraid. But never was I more obsessed. I became so thoroughly immersed in the narrative that for a period of several weeks toward the end of the final draft a kind of benign insanity settled upon me. I woke from dreams of the Dominions only to write about them until I crept back to bed to dream them again. My ordinary life - what little I had - came to seem banal and featureless by contrast with what was happening to me- I should say Gentle, but I mean me- as we made our journey toward revelation. It's no accident that the book was finished as I prepared to leave England for America. By the time I came to write the final pages my house on Wimpole Street had been sold, its contents boxed up and sent to Los Angeles, so that all I had that I took comfort in had gone from around me. It was in some ways a perfect way to finish the novel: like Gentle, I was embarking on another kind of life, and in so doing leaving a country in which I had spent almost forty years. I do not discount the possibility that I will one day return there, of course, but for now, in the smog and sun of Los Angeles, the world seems very remote.
There's something about this paragraph that says I'm not the only one who thinks it's as close to perfect as a novel will ever get. Unlike many of his books, there was never any talk of a sequel and despite rumblings, there's never going to be a movie of it. Not in a million years. It can't be done. I would put an awful lot of money on the fact that not even Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro could pull it off properly even working together with a bottomless pit of money.
Then again, Susannah Clarke has played a good game by not even having a website - if you want any information about Jonathan Strange, you're just going to have to read the book - that's all there is.
Still... it's one war that's not worth fighting. Not really. Sooner or later, maybe something will come along and join them.
•••
Talking of great things, I've just started to watch Torchwood: Children of Earth again. Quite easily - and by a long, long way - the best television sic-fi show of all time. Yeah - even better than Doctor Who - apart from the Family of Blood storyline. As a five episode story arc, I've never sat through anything better written or more enjoyable. Seriously... I could watch it over and over for days on end and not get bored of it.
•••
Meanwhile, work continues. Never had something in my head that's wanted to move so fast onto paper and into the real world before. I'm not quite being Barker-esque about it, but I can see how that could happen to a man. If you're hankering for something quick but very cool to read, try this from Doug Crandell. It's really very good...
Hanging At The Palace, Snow And A Great Sandwich
I'm going to treat myself to an exclusive here - something I don't do very often, but I think it's cool so to hell with it. Last month (and man, that flew past quickly) I got my excellently talented friend Jenny May Finn to shoot some footage from the Great British Tattoo Show. Whatever your opinions on tattooing, the show or anything else for that matter - you can keep them to yourself here. What this is, is a three minute time capsule of a great weekend where a bunch of friends (or at least like-minded people) got together at Alexander Palace in London and had a blast for two whole days. Sometimes, that's reason enough to do anything...
The music is from a now defunct band called Nemonix who I saw in a basement bar in Wrexham once upon a time. I hate a waste of good talent, so have resurrected them temporarily in the name of entertainment. Once the video has been dropped into the iPad version of the mag and released into the wild, I'll take the security off it and if anybody wants to share it after that, knock yourselves out - that will be sometime around the middle of next week.
•••
Pretty soon, I'll be releasing some pages from the comic book tattoo project - and man, there's some good stuff kicking around. As part of the bigger scheme of things, over the next couple of days, I'm running up an interview with Jason Rockman (Slaves on Dope singer/DJ/pop-culture columnist amongst other stuff) - who in turn is about to enter into a photo-shoot for me in Montreal with Tim Snow. I headed on over to Tim's site to check out his work and found more than a few things to linger over. If you like photography done right and are appreciative of such things, head on over to here where you can surf yourself blind and pay particular attention to the shots of CBGB's and the shot of Rob Zombie in full Rob Zombie mode that, if I was still fifteen, I would surely pay a good £10 for to have that as a giant poster on my wall.
Remember when they use to do those photo-mag things? I forget what they were called now. Pop-Shots? They were magazine size but folded out into an A0 size monster - I know I picked up a couple of Kiss variants around the time of Dynasty and also Creatures of the Night. I don't think I've seen such a thing as a product recently... surely there must be a market for X-Factor spin-offs? Things ain't like they used to be out there.
Anyway, amongst Tim's work was a snap of something that is simply beautiful - I hope he doesn't mind the fact that I took a mini screen grab of it - you can see the whole shot for yourself if you surf through the 'people' portfolio. Here it is:
Holy shit. Look the fuck at that fucking sandwich. I could eat that off the page I'm so damn hungry right now. I plan on getting over to Canada sometime early next year - just to hang out and see what's going on out there really... but I'm going to find out where this very sandwich is constructed and that my friends, is known as "the first port of call". I think this even beats the shit of the previous "best sandwich in the world" that I blogged about a couple of years ago. Sadly, the coffee house that created that one has now shuffled off this mortal coil and gone to the great sandwich making shop in the sky, but I still remember it well:
Bacon and brie on toasted granary bread with pear chutney.
Sounds basic right? I can hear what you're thinking: "Ain't such a big deal." It was a big deal to me. It's not often you'll drive 40 miles out of your way just to get a sandwich.
In this life, all you've got is the little things... in this life, you're on your own.
•••
And now: back to work...
WELCOME TO WHEREVER YOU ARE
It’s about a guy trying to keep it together while falling apart. It’s about life, love, fathers and daughters and the ever lurking presence of the Grim fucking Reaper...
Spooks, Hank, A Renegade Device And A Biro
I realised this very morning that inside the ipad version of Skin Deep, is a link on the app that leads here. Welcome to here. If you came here from there, I should apologise for a) lack of posts lately (busy) b) lack of tattoo stuff (like I don't push enough out on the front already but I've started to drop stuff into my tumblr so maybe I'll get it repointed there) and c) there is no c. Just a mug of coffee waiting to be devoured. I started watching Californication again this morning - from the beginning. Man, I love that show and after watching all ten seasons of Spooks last week, needed to get back to some kind of non-paranoia background noise. Are any of you reading this writers? It get's fucking lonely out here - the radio is fine but sometimes, you need a little bit more company than that. The radio is directed straight at you - they pretend to talk to you and involve you, but that's not what you need. What you need - in the absence of the postman coming round with a parcel or somebody who's lost knocking on the door - is to know that life is still going on outside. Even if it is pre-recorded and you've seen it before.
Then again, isn't that most people every single day of the week?
I did seven interviews yesterday. Looming in the distance are seven more but some of these coming are with people that I've had a bit of a Pro-Crush* on since I was a kid. (*Pro-Crush: the admiration of somebody who you adored when you were a kid whose world seemed many universes away from your own). Been doing this too long to get all gooey over any of them but still, it's always weird to find yourself playing ball with people you still think are kings among men.
•••
There's a lot of idle chatter out there at the moment from people proclaiming that blogs are dead - that they're a thing of the past. That maybe true if you were looking for traffic and cash and ended up with neither. The problem mostly stems from the fact that everybody had a machine of some kind. Laptop, iPad, iPhone (though holy fuck, who the hell let those Samsung things out into the world that you can barely get your hands around), they all come with a keyboard of some description. Stick a board with letters on it in front of anybody and they think they're a writer. There's your problem. Same as every phone comes with a camera and as if by magic, you can sign up to a free account with corpwhore.com and shit, would you look at that, you're a photographer.
No. You're not. You're neither of those things no matter how much you want to be.
Sounds harsh but roll with me on this. I realised a long time ago but have only just gotten around to formulating the thoughts, that, brace yourself - the internet is full of shit. It's empty. There's nothing here to see.
Yesterday, I saw something I didn't agree with in the biggest way. I know Waterstone's have started to sell kindles (yeah, go figure - it's like selling dope at the school gates) but there was a guy in the coffee shop yesterday reading a book on one. Let's write that again. A guy was reading a book on a kindle in a bookstore. A guy was reading on the device that will eventually shut your store down and put you all out of jobs. A guy was reading on a machine that he won't be able to do in that same place for much longer because it won't be there...
There should be laws but there aren't.
I like hitting a book up on iBooks as much as the next guy but what that guy did? That's like masturbating in church. Eating a packet of crisps between courses in a restaurant. Leaving your suitcase on the seat next to you while the pregnant lady has to stand.
Isn't it?
•••
Which brings me nicely to a close. If you want to do something great with a pen (i.e.: not writing) - try your hand at this, it might suit you. This is Mark Powell and he rocks.... you can check it out for real in the next issue of the mag.
Comic Book Tattoos
“I AM TRAPPED LIKE A RAT ON THIS INSANE PLANET”
Much like the horror book in the same vein, this was a fun beast to work on - I owe a big debt of gratitude to a few people who 'knew people' along the way and there's a fair few favours racked up too.
Here's the blurb from the back cover:
It's also available at all good newsagents and bookstores - internationally.
DETAILS:
RELEASE DATE: AUGUST 5th
Softback • Full colour • 164 Pages • £7.99 • ISBN: 9780956530790
FOR THE FINAL TIME: CHOOSE YOUR WEAPON:
It's also available at all good newsagents and bookstores - internationally.
DETAILS:
RELEASE DATE: AUGUST 5th
Softback • Full colour • 164 Pages • £7.99 • ISBN: 9780956530790
The Family Of Noise Artwork
Work continues on The Family Of Noise - after one or two (like, twelve) false starts, I finally decided on the cover artwork and it looks something like this:
I might make a few tweaks to it but it's starting to feel a bit more real now than two big notebooks of handwriting that even I am having trouble deciphering. I learned something about book design today too. It's hard to let the cover do the talking for you. It's especially hard to shut it up about what the book is not about but all will become clear in time. I even left some space up at the top just in case I can find somebody to say something nice about it - I'm sure the kids will have some words of wisdom in a pinch.
•••
The project on comic book tattoos is still pin-balling around and by some miracle, we're still on schedule. I think I'm about two-thirds of the way through it but I've been propped up by Mr Gamble starting on the production and design today and that's made me feel a whole lot more like I'm working on something real too, as opposed to just collecting a bunch of stuff in an awful lot of folders. The cover is coming together fast - I'll hopefully have a post of that early next week.
•••
I finally settled on a decent newsletter delivery system too - it will only come out when there's a good amount of things to talk about. The sign-up box is up at the top right of the blog... unless you're looking at an individual post here, in which case you'll need to click on BLOG to see the full list of posts. That's a nasty ghost in the machine. Must fix that one day...
...and now. Back to work slackers.
Currently Reading This:
...and it's more than great - which is something I didn't think I would be saying. I kind of lost track with Mr King after a while and I'm still not 100% sure a sequel to The Shining is a good idea (especially one with a title that sounds like a Dean Koontz book: 'Doctor Sleep') and I really don't have the time these days to lose myself in something like Under The Dome (hypocritical maybe but I believe that starts on TV this week as a mini series - so I do have time, but it's a different kind of time, right?).
Anyway - Joyland. I've nearly finished it and will review it for guys at The Void but I suspect it's the best novel he's put out in something like twenty years - and you know why? Because he's having fun with it and letting his passion for telling a story come out rather than having to write another book because he's Stephen King.
If you like pulp stories, Hard Case Crime are putting out some really, really good material at the moment.
Get it on...