Icarus Building a Rocket

Editing the Monsters book is going just fine although I have less time than I need to turn it around - that and doing the Index too. Nonetheless, it'll get done. I will just have to spend less time playing guitar and doodling country songs. Actually reading something you wrote a couple of months ago with fresh eyes is a curious thing. Some of the things I can't even remember writing and juxtaposing Emmanuel Kant with Italo Calvino hardly seems credible now. Still, it does seem to make sense. Also, I seem to have been a little bit of a poseur, for example my chapter titles, such as The Child # 1 and The Child # 2 and Language of words, images and (in)completeness - what was I thinking about. But writers are like that, sometimes things come out of the mouth and fingers as we speak or type and somehow sense is made. As Bourdieu might have said, its just an attempt to understand the complexities of my multiple being... gotta laugh! Here's the fantastic Elbow and 'Lippy Kids' - go on, build a rocket boys!

Icarus and the Long Man



A long story of a long man

Is there such a thing as a perfect song for a perfect day, where we reap just what we sow? Soon there will be an 'old guys song day' this'll do for me. I love this picture because I can see this any time I like, all I have to do is drive east from my home town and there it is. But like all pictures and views there is a memory attached and a story, which, like all stories means more to some than others. And like this song, it means more than it should and probably less than it does - but hey, its a song, let's not overdo it. Its a day for songs and this is no exception.

Icarus listening

Cowboy Blues

Sometimes when two old blokes get together to sing a girl song (Carol King) it just works - so another post! I can sing this and sometimes do. I don't feel like this but I just like well crafted songs and this is a good one. Tin pan alley, yay, bring it on - such a good interpretation of a very good song.

Icarus singing

Ten Gallon Ha ha ha Hat

Having a ten gallon hat doesn't make you a cowboy, I know that. A friend of mine in a moment of madness brought this hat back from the USA for me and you can see why I only wear it in the kitchen. I have been thinking about country music today and indeed playing a bit and then I thought, I wonder if I can load something here? Not from my laptop, it doesn't seem to record sound with film these days - I know not why. Anyway, I like this, who would have thought all these guys would get on the same stage.

Icarus Over Montego Bay

An old suit never lets you down

I haven't worn this suit in a while (see pic) that's because I am sooooo fat these days - no more Lightning Slim. But that's changing and I am addressing the situation because I like that suit. My last post was about clothes and art and this should be too. But since I have just signed off the Bogeyman proofs perhaps I will resist art for the evening and just concentrate on the belly. I am especially tuned into this because I have given myself the 4 weeks that Abbi will be away. Today she flew out to Montego Bay with a huge smile on her face and who could blame her. Today's music should be reggae in honour and so here it is. It's slow, dad dancin' music, a wee bit of a swing and a wee bit of an eyes closed shimmy - and you can dance on your own to it - because you eyes are closed and you have a glass in your hand and no one can see you... hoo hoo, stir it up...

Icarus on a Sunday

Sunday

Today I nearly bought a jumper and a shirt I really liked but didn't, should I have? I suspect yes - indeed I saw two jumpers I liked and what's £200 when you are a prof, but I didn't. Is it because I am still hiding behind my guitar and because the guitar is more authentic than the pleasure of a new clothe? Perhaps I shied from the consumer fetish with a chiding heart. I am reminded of Auden when he writes:

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street

A new jumper is not a good exchange for art; for art communicates life's values better than a jumper can - consumerism meets the artistic gesture - but oh, I sigh. They were such lovely jumpers and I felt like Mina in Dracula saying, 'why can't I have them all?' Why indeed. Someone once wrote: 'Art can never ever deliver that massive personal shock, but it can act as a dripping tap, an ongoing reminder that things are not as they might be.' Of course, ultimately a jumper is just a jumper. And then I was thinking, well a boy has to wear something while the tap drips!  Indecision reigns, am I being flippant in my desire for the ephemeral cashmere that will bobble and fray while art lasts for ever as a trace of ideas and experience - alas, too late, the town is closed, the shop is shut, the day is ended... this is how it begun:

Subday is the new Sunday,

not quite a Monday
and definitely not a Saturday
but its always hard to call.
What kind of day should it be,
a last day before work day,
a last minute shop day,
a last minute work prep, iron the shirts, stock up the fridge with food for those who can't cook but must eat through the week day,
it’s a sigh day, a must I day,
an I should day,
an I could but probably wont day,
another sigh day.
Sunday, such a subday,
sometimes,
but bring it on.
It might be a jumper day but then again not...
as the thread gets tangled and snagged
on the bramble of an aesthetic thought day

 

Icarus in a rush

Poison and Wine

A tiny little post from a no-time-man, where do the hours and minutes and seconds go when you need them most? I am only posting this because I am listening to this track and they are my new pop group of the moment. I should write something more profound or discombobulating I know but my fingers ache, my head says sleep and my body says I am all written out for the time being - but I have to muster tomorrow for lots of stuff to do and be done - sigh. I just have time to say, ‘In the wave-strike over unquiet stones’

In the wave-strike over unquiet stones
the brightness bursts and bears the rose
and the ring of water contracts to a cluster
to one drop of azure brine that falls.
O magnolia radiance breaking in spume,
magnetic voyager whose death flowers
and returns, eternal, to being and nothingness:
shattered brine, dazzling leap of the ocean.
Merged, you and I, my love, seal the silence
while the sea destroys its continual forms,
collapses its turrets of wildness and whiteness,
because in the weft of those unseen garments
of headlong water, and perpetual sand,
we bear the sole, relentless tenderness.

Pablo Neruda