Jimi, are there harps in heaven.
For your ears, hearing, making, breathing
Rhythm round the planes of colour like
Light itself, the frequency is that high.
James Marshall Hendricks
Born 27th November 1942.
weekend
In search of lost time
I’m sitting on Bute street
In my head the French bookshop
And French bakery Bonne Bouche
Are still here, smelling of books and
Bread, livres et pain
I’m still sitting on Bute street
I open my eyes, I can smell Mama
Pho and it doesn’t go with my
£pp3.50 flat white
I’m looking at a shop called Blanc
With towels and a sign ‘Fashion doesnt
Have to Cost the Earth’ instead of
Books in French
Now I know how old women feel
The ones who talked about the
Old days as if they were better
Now they’re gone
I will not come here again to
Look for the past, I will not
Find it, I will go somewhere
Else to remember.
Postcard from Hoxton
These money people float
Their money makes them
So light
Their soles are not touching
Anything, they live like
Angels
No memories staring back
From the streets they pass,
The ex-
Council blocks they buy
When they come down from
Heaven.
But they never land, they
Glide an inch above real
Living
You can still hear the mortals
From time to time, they
Break out
With feet that know the old
Streets, feet that can’t float like
Angels.
(Written somewhere between Shoreditch and Hoxton)
Londoner in New York
Too tired and bleary eyed to write
Prose, hears my ears my beatnick
Cray kick of a poem written here
In Lincoln’s Inn about Lincoln’s over where
Where I was 10 hours ago, in the
Village, the Greenwich Village, under
Another sun, spiked with different
Blossom, buzzed with New York
Chatters, oldish dames:
“I need a man, not a wimp, I told
Him straight.” Hair fuzzed with
20 years or more of dye, the cheaper
Kind. They look at me, I am not
From here, but then who is? A
Chinese man who could be
Mad takes his place on the
Next bench and sits squarely
Facing me and looks straight into
My face.
I feel no threat and
Accept that this is part of what
I expect from park life’s big apples
And feel a little disappointed when
He takes out his newspaper and holds it
Two inches from his face, short sighted and sane
The dames on the opposite bench continue and their
Chat becomes background, like the
Shriller chirps of the spring birds
Amongst the cuddly coos of pigeons,
The bill I hear now is from an older broad:
Fifty, with shortish darkish ash
Hair, glasses, comfy grey trousers, fishnet
Socks catching bulging ankles sitting snug
In red sneakers, she’s curled up on
Her newspaper, oozing appreciation of the day
Never had looks, never needed them, fashion her own hip.
She puts down her reading and is lively with the young petitioners who’re
Taking their blue Hillary Ts round the park, she’s not
Pro, can’t make out why, can’t hear fom here,
And the scene changes to a little Ray-banned man
Wearing the same leather jacket he wore in his 20s, strolling along with a
Sloppy slice of Joe’s fresh mozzarella, nothing better can be found
Or should be, this is what his Sunday is all about, he may have a
Family, but they’re not about, he may not have a job or he may be Al Pacino
Who cares, we’re all here in the park, come what may, it’s New York and
What’s more, it’s Spring.
A stroll in the park
Oh there is a peace that
Blows out my core and
Shakes every pip in its
Case
Oh there is a place in my
Bark that creaks when I
Stretch out my feet on
Air
A pace made of peace is
My breath as it breaks
Space between each step’s
Brace
Highs of low-rise Copenhagen
A daisy on a cocktail.
A lively day – time candle.
A rainy splash of chocolate.
A bread stack deep as
A page of princess and her pea.
A chair you fold like
A viking at lunchtime for
Happy meat and hotter apple.
Deciduous awe
In the bark there is a
Swirl,
Press it, let its edges round
Yours,
Look down the avenue’s
Trees
With wind reaching in, to
Spine,
To the roots of your soul
Twined
To Earth’s grace, rolling on
Round itself, round the sun,
a God.
Last weekend I saw an exhibition, watched a film and dreamt of reality…
I wonder if Klee, Schendel and
Godard are together
On the other side, sharing thoughts
On existence or death?
Take Klee’s Creative Confession
And stir almost every line from Alphaville; use Mira’s recipe for Brazilian alphabet soup..Voilá,
A taste of something
Extraordinary yet familiar
Their attempt to put
Eternity in the palm of
Our hand.
References:
Tate Modern – Paul Klee exhibition
Extract from Klee’s Creative Confession:
“Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible….Formerly we used to represent things which were visible on earth, things we either liked to look at or would have liked to see. Today we reveal the reality that is behind visible things, thus expressing the belief that the visible world is merely an isolated case in relation to the universe and that there are many more other latent realities….Art is a simile of Creation. Each work of art is an example, just as the terrestrial is an example of the cosmic…Art plays an unknowing game with ultimate things, and yet achieves them.”
Also at Tate Modern – Mira Schendal exhibition
Mira’s explanation of her work ‘Still Waves of Possibility’ (installation of thin, almost transparent fibres)
“The visibility of the invisible, that is, of things that are in action, but without our being able to see them, such as the laws of physics or physical processes…..be faithfully of this world. And yet not to be of this world. With all its love and joy and also the inevitable suffering, with devotions and without illusions.”
The fibres hang opposite an extract from the Old Testament, Book of Kings:
“And he said, ‘Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord’. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice”
Curator’s blurb: “Schendel saw her work as activating the void, thus posed between being and nothingness…
Umwelt – environment
Mitwelt – social world
Eigenwelt – inner world”.
Guy Brett, art critic, on her ‘little nothings’ or Droguinas’: “Their fragility and Energy indicate Space as a natural thing – a field of possibility”.
Film, Alphaville, Directed and written by Jean-Luc Goddard.
My favourite quotes:
ALPHA 60 (An intelligent computer): “Time is the substance of which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along. But I am time. It’s a tiger, tearing me apart; but I am the tiger”
ALPHA 60: “Sometimes reality is too complex for oral communication. But legend embodies it in a form which enables it to spread all over the world.”
ALPHA 60: “Time is like a circle which is endlessly described. The declining arc is the past. The inclining arc is the Future.”
Vonbraun: “Life and Death share the same circle.”
ALPHA 60: “Everything has been said, provided words do not change their meanings, and meanings change their words.”
ALPHA 60: “Once we know the number one, we believe we know the number two, because one plus one equals two. We forget we first must know the meaning of plus.”
Vonbraun: reading extract from surrealist poet Paul Eluard – from his book: Capitale de la Douleur:
“We live in the limbo of our metamorphoses.
But the echo which runs through all the day
That echo beyond time, desire and caresses keeps asking…
Are we close to or far away from our conscience?”
A great article on the film and its influences:
In my shoes
Let’s write one here,
About a quest for shoes,
The quest of a girl with big
Feet, size 42, not 41, UK size
9 not 8, if she’s honest
With herself today, the
Girth from ‘little’ toe to
Big is the kind of substantial
A man boasts of but
A woman hides in shame
In a pair of furry Uggs
Under a puffy coat or
Forgiving bell bottoms,
Bravely taking on the mud’s
Jeering face.
In she goes, the MEN’s
Section, less shameful at
Christmas, fall back on
Pretence of shopping for
Spouses, brothers, uncles, boyfriends,
Big boots with big buckles
To accommodate long feet
And hairy ankles in sturdy comfort-
Firm soles, 100 % natural
Rubber to support the tread of 6 foot
15 stone, if need be, not her
Fluctuating 12 to 13 frame, 5foot 11, if
She’s standing straight, less, if
On a short date with a short man,
Mostly sitting down, if she can find
A chair and a table to hide the boot
That weighs the crossed leg down.
Still, never mind, better to be well – shod
Than tottering about in heels
2 sizes down, that never fit and
Never will, unless she gets over the
Strange condition that makes her
Feet too big: Acromegaly, it’s called,
Google it if you’re confused or bored,
Or if you find you change size
From day to day, no matter how much
Choc you didn’t eat or beers you didn’t
Drink – men have it too, but it’s
Easy for them to like big shoes.
Park perspective
Without him the light
Is glorious.
Beach-ball-bats glisten.
With him it would
Be different.
A bench would be our
Stage and all the world,
Scenery.
Being Every Day 