Had a few pints with Andy at the Neptune last night. There was some kind of folk musician playing some kind of blues influenced thing. Not my cup of tea but he was quite good, in an almost completely bland way. There is something grim and desperate about the Neptune. I'm never quite sure what it is. All the clientèle are men of a certain age (late middle age) and there is the air of resignation about them... what they are resigned to is beyond me. There is a desperate air of something... There are also always at least a couple of these late middle aged men who have had too much to drink and 'play up' in the kind of ways that toddlers do. Getting attention. There was one such character there last night who was clattering up and down 'in time' to the music and shouting out inane remarks to the performer. Another of these characters asked the jumper if 'he liked Stevie Wonder'. This puzzled the jumper who replied that he didn't. 'I thought you would' the other, equally drunk late middle aged man replied 'he was exuberant too'. As midnight passed by, the middle-aged barmaid began doing some kind of tango or waltz with some late middle aged men to a tune from the stereo - some kind of rock'n'roll number. My table kept being knocked. It was all rather claustrophobic.
I don't think I'll be drinking there again.
Monday 25 November 2013
Tuesday 19 November 2013
Advent Calendar Days
Time flips, folds in on itself, slips sideways.
Starts to feel like December, those advent calendar days, old, old Decembers... being 13, just moved to , London from Scotland. Addicted to computer games for my Spectrum, loving Crash! magazine, poring over 'A Pictorial History of Horror Movies', probably by Dennis Gifford, and starting to wonder if the house we had just moved into was haunted. Above my head the advent calendar hangs...
...and new Decembers too... being 40, and having finished work until after Christmas, and I'm wondering into town, and I've just got paid my bonus, and I go into Trafalgar Street Records, and I find 'Mystery Animals of the British Isles', and I've just got back from seeing my parents at Perranporth, and I didn't know it then, but that would be the last time I would see Perranporth (my parents were to move to the Midlands next year)...
We're lost here, on this infinitely looping mobius strip that never seems to quite loop back to itself again.
Only the past is real.
Starts to feel like December, those advent calendar days, old, old Decembers... being 13, just moved to , London from Scotland. Addicted to computer games for my Spectrum, loving Crash! magazine, poring over 'A Pictorial History of Horror Movies', probably by Dennis Gifford, and starting to wonder if the house we had just moved into was haunted. Above my head the advent calendar hangs...
...and new Decembers too... being 40, and having finished work until after Christmas, and I'm wondering into town, and I've just got paid my bonus, and I go into Trafalgar Street Records, and I find 'Mystery Animals of the British Isles', and I've just got back from seeing my parents at Perranporth, and I didn't know it then, but that would be the last time I would see Perranporth (my parents were to move to the Midlands next year)...
We're lost here, on this infinitely looping mobius strip that never seems to quite loop back to itself again.
Only the past is real.
Monday 18 November 2013
Face
It wears mask after mask after mask, and you remove mask after mask after mask, and beneath all the masks, finally, is the one face that you never want to see again.
Saturday 16 November 2013
Under the Trees
Walking back home from work last night, and the air is clear and I can see stars. It feels like snow - already! - though surely this must be a mistake, as it still feels like it should be late summer. But no - late summer is long gone - even autumn is passing away and despite the rapidly depleting leaves on the trees, this is the beginning of winter.
There's a full moon high up in the sky, far, far back, though it's light is lost amidst the street lights. I watch it through the branches of the trees as I walk down Temple Gardens. The trees are part of the grounds of some large house - or series of houses. This house - or series of houses - is not residential, though I am unsure as to their function. I imagine it to be some educational facility, some obscure private college. The trees tower over the path. A stone wall, the height of a man, stops access to this miniature wood, and the trees actually grow from head height - the top of the wall is actually the ground the trees grow from. It looks quite suspicious, these huge trees, growing from this - I'm not sure what you call it - kind of hillock in the middle of the city. Last night it struck me how alluring this wooded area was - all the more alluring as it is on private ground and cannot gain access to it (though I suppose it would not really be that hard).
I watched the moon through the branches. Wondered what was buried beneath the trees.
It really has begun to feel Christmassy now - adverts on the television, Christmas lights in town, and this blog approaching it's fourth anniversary, which means its outlasted any relationship I've had.
Well, Saturday morning, and it's cold and wintry but sunny again. Cup of tea to drink, then off to Hove sorting office to pick up a parcel that didn't get delivered yesterday.
There's a full moon high up in the sky, far, far back, though it's light is lost amidst the street lights. I watch it through the branches of the trees as I walk down Temple Gardens. The trees are part of the grounds of some large house - or series of houses. This house - or series of houses - is not residential, though I am unsure as to their function. I imagine it to be some educational facility, some obscure private college. The trees tower over the path. A stone wall, the height of a man, stops access to this miniature wood, and the trees actually grow from head height - the top of the wall is actually the ground the trees grow from. It looks quite suspicious, these huge trees, growing from this - I'm not sure what you call it - kind of hillock in the middle of the city. Last night it struck me how alluring this wooded area was - all the more alluring as it is on private ground and cannot gain access to it (though I suppose it would not really be that hard).
I watched the moon through the branches. Wondered what was buried beneath the trees.
It really has begun to feel Christmassy now - adverts on the television, Christmas lights in town, and this blog approaching it's fourth anniversary, which means its outlasted any relationship I've had.
Well, Saturday morning, and it's cold and wintry but sunny again. Cup of tea to drink, then off to Hove sorting office to pick up a parcel that didn't get delivered yesterday.
Monday 11 November 2013
Sunday
10:30am, Sunday morning. Costa Coffee in the North Laine.
I watch Sarah come in, stand by the table I am at and then leave. I see her walk into the studio. Has she really not seen me? I phone her, she comes back in. She actually hadn't seen me. She suggests that she was looking out for my usual black and I was wearing a red shirt. I think some kind of dimensional irregularity is more likely.
After a lovely coffee with Sarah, I discover it is a lovely day. I wander down to the beach, and in the time-lapsed November heat, I sit on the pebbles for a few hours, working on a drawing. I try not to think of the rubbish A3 sketch book I have bought (paper too thin, the ink bleeds).
I meet up with Al, Claire and Graham at the Meeting Place cafe. Graham is down for the weekend for the Colour Out of Space festival. We walk up the Lewes Road - some exhibition in Phoenix Place, but it is closed. We look through the windows. Skeletal animals melded together - hands coming out of ribcages holding eggs, long alligators with wrong heads dressed rags. 'Looks like Dr Mengele has been at work' says Graham.
We go to the Basketmakers and talk about ghosts and serial killers, plane crash sites and childrens television shows.
After they head off to the festival, I head home. It seems to take me an age to get home. I have dinner and am exhausted, and fall asleep on my bed at about 10:30am, listening to a 53 minute drone track called 'Himmelhvaelv' by a musician (or perhaps group of musicians though I think this is unlikely) called Rumforskning.
That was such a quick weekend.
I watch Sarah come in, stand by the table I am at and then leave. I see her walk into the studio. Has she really not seen me? I phone her, she comes back in. She actually hadn't seen me. She suggests that she was looking out for my usual black and I was wearing a red shirt. I think some kind of dimensional irregularity is more likely.
After a lovely coffee with Sarah, I discover it is a lovely day. I wander down to the beach, and in the time-lapsed November heat, I sit on the pebbles for a few hours, working on a drawing. I try not to think of the rubbish A3 sketch book I have bought (paper too thin, the ink bleeds).
I meet up with Al, Claire and Graham at the Meeting Place cafe. Graham is down for the weekend for the Colour Out of Space festival. We walk up the Lewes Road - some exhibition in Phoenix Place, but it is closed. We look through the windows. Skeletal animals melded together - hands coming out of ribcages holding eggs, long alligators with wrong heads dressed rags. 'Looks like Dr Mengele has been at work' says Graham.
We go to the Basketmakers and talk about ghosts and serial killers, plane crash sites and childrens television shows.
After they head off to the festival, I head home. It seems to take me an age to get home. I have dinner and am exhausted, and fall asleep on my bed at about 10:30am, listening to a 53 minute drone track called 'Himmelhvaelv' by a musician (or perhaps group of musicians though I think this is unlikely) called Rumforskning.
That was such a quick weekend.
Saturday 9 November 2013
Remember only Fragments
My first full week at work, well 30 hours, done.
Fragments:
Waking up at 9:30am, lying about reading Donna Tartt's 'The Goldfinch'. Leaving for work at about midday. Coffee in town somewhere - usually the Bystander cafe - and working on a drawing of a woman whose dress may be made of branches. Slipping out of known Brighton into unknown Brighton - that semi-industrial era to the left of Trafalgar Street.
New England House, brooding and dreamy, a hospital-factory of a place. Creaky old lifts. Wide corridors, paint flaking in a kind ways. Call scripts, mini-briefs, charity chats, fundraiser stats. Standing with the smokers at breaktimes, still unused to early nightfalls. Mint Aeros, and waiting for 9:00pm. Saw goodbye to my fellow trainees. Head along the darkness by St Annes Well park. (Last night, a man tying up his shoelaces on the wall. Pass by, and over my music, hear him shouting at someone in the Friday night park 'watch your fucking language, bruv'. Walk on under spectral or lurid white lamps.
Baked potatoes and cheese. Repeats of Peep Show. Fall asleep by 1:00am.
Deep dreams.
Remember only fragments come 9:30am.
Fragments:
Waking up at 9:30am, lying about reading Donna Tartt's 'The Goldfinch'. Leaving for work at about midday. Coffee in town somewhere - usually the Bystander cafe - and working on a drawing of a woman whose dress may be made of branches. Slipping out of known Brighton into unknown Brighton - that semi-industrial era to the left of Trafalgar Street.
New England House, brooding and dreamy, a hospital-factory of a place. Creaky old lifts. Wide corridors, paint flaking in a kind ways. Call scripts, mini-briefs, charity chats, fundraiser stats. Standing with the smokers at breaktimes, still unused to early nightfalls. Mint Aeros, and waiting for 9:00pm. Saw goodbye to my fellow trainees. Head along the darkness by St Annes Well park. (Last night, a man tying up his shoelaces on the wall. Pass by, and over my music, hear him shouting at someone in the Friday night park 'watch your fucking language, bruv'. Walk on under spectral or lurid white lamps.
Baked potatoes and cheese. Repeats of Peep Show. Fall asleep by 1:00am.
Deep dreams.
Remember only fragments come 9:30am.
Monday 4 November 2013
Condensation Time
It starts to feel like this time last year. I had a week off from work I remember. Sunny and pleasantly cold then too. I remember waiting for a book to arrive from Amazon. I remember even later in that year - toward the end of the month, when the cold turned darker, more sober, and summer began to seem a long time away.
My first full day on the phones today - well, six hours - I do not finish until 9:00pm. This will be, at least for the present, the immediate future, walking home in a darkness only a few hours from midnight. As I do not have to be up early (I start at 2:00pm) I imagine that I will not go to bed till deep in the small hours.
Sunday 3 November 2013
Saturday Night / Sunday Morning
pen and ink on 7.5" x 10" paper
October - November 2013
There's more art to be found at my facebook page which is here.
A quiet Saturday night in did mean that I finished the picture I've been working on over the past week. I watched the Space 1999 episode 'War Games' whilst doing so, but ended up paying no attention to it; lots of explosions and vaguely cerebral, heavily psycho-drama atmosphere. It's surprisingly dark... but as I can't seem to watch any DVDs these days, after the episode had finished I turned it off and worked in silence instead. This unsettled my flatmate who popped his head around the door 'you're working in silence, not any music?'. We discussed downloading music from Amazon... which got me to downloaded a long 53 minute drone / ambient piece by an artist whose name sounds either Finnish or Russian. I put it on as I went to sleep; lots of dark, bubbling waters, like something lost in winter, deep underground. Woke up at about 1:00am, fully clothed on my mattress. Eventually sliding under the covers was heaven.
Awful dreams last night. I can't remember any of them, but all I know is that in the dreams I was deeply depressed, full of an unassailable despair and crisis. The emotion of these dreams followed me into waking. Lying there in the bright light of a November morning, sick with desolation. The feeling soon faded however, and by 9:30am (only an hour ago now) I got up, had a cup of tea and came on here, whilst listening to the album 'The Actual' by atmospheric prog-metal band Reading Zero.
Time for another cup of tea, and perhaps a few more chapters of Donna Tartt's excellent third novel 'The Goldfinch'.
Saturday 2 November 2013
Friday 1 November 2013
Secret Industrial Country
I work now at New England House on the 7th floor.
Sarah once had a studio in the building, and I remember buying a massive drawing board / easel that took four of us to carry back from here. January 2007. Snowy air. After-pints in the Evening Star. I never really used the board, sat cross-legged on the floor to draw instead.
The building is massive, and has the feel of a gently decaying factory; hospital-wide corridors and paint-flaking walls, creaky industrial lifts and a cafe on the 3rd floor. I peer from the windows into the centre of New England House; a courtyard surrounded by windows, looking back from rooms that seem to be used as store-rooms.
It is situated in an odd industrial part of Brighton town centre; down from the station, turn left into this shop-less slip of new buildings and Sainsburys, deserted and dreamy. This is a million miles from Brighton, a secret country, even if from the windows of the seventh floor I can see for miles back to all those places I've known for years.
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