Duane Michaels

Pottering around in my little study, looking through some items I haven't looked at for a while. I say study, it is really a long, narrow boxroom which I made into a study, two walls covered from floor to (high Victorian) ceiling with bookshelves, the third wall is my Movie Wall, covered in cinematic prints and portraits while strings of coloured lights hang over head between shelves. Everyone needs a quiet space to retreat to and although everywhere in my flat is technically my space this little jammed study really feels like mine. There is something very comfortable to me in having books shelved so high I need ladders for the top rows, towering over me, castle walls made of literature for my little space. I'm sure a therapist would make a lot out of that; personally if they did I would just hit them with a hardback. More therapists need that sort of brusque therapy I think.

Tons of SF as you can imagine but also history, myth (you might be surprised how often Myth and History interact and intertwine, one an attempt to create a narrative of who we are and how we come to be, the other a more emotional but no less true description of why we are. I find they work best together) science, travel, reference, art, architecture, classics, graphic novels and, of course, poetry. Sherlock Holmes once remarked that a man should keep so much useful information for day to day use in his brain and for the rest he should keep a well stocked library. I think I've followed that all of my reading life (which goes back to before I began school, I just can't stop reading, be it a Beano annual or a history of the Spanish conquest of the Incas).

I also have several volumes of photography; it probably isn't any great surprise to learn someone who loves literature and cinema is also fascinated by the 'pencil of nature'. The use of nothing more than light, shadows and chemical reactions (or today digital processing) to create images frozen in time into which we can read so much, creating entire little narratives around a single still image. I'm not sure I always agree that a picture is worth a thousand words, mind you - it depends very much on the writer or the photographer or painter. Squeezed between two hardback photography collections (one a Magnum collection, the other American Memorial Photography - that's pictures of the dead to most of us) I found a small catalogue from an exhibition I saw years ago at the old Portfolio gallery in Edinburgh.

I had heard the name of the artist, Duane Michals, before and had come across a few of his pictures in magazines and books, but only a few. In I wandered not knowing really what to expect and found a delightful range of single images, series and prints with poetry - in some cases Duane gives both a picture and words, a mixed media of senses overlapping, the eyes drinking in imagery, the brain processing it with one section while another decodes language and that indefinable part of the brain we call imagination combines them and creates that wonderful sense of emotion that good art always rouses in us, an inanimate object becomes the interface between artist and viewer, connecting them without ever meeting, exchanging emotions, memories, ideas...

Art is always interactive, never passive; we have to engage with it on different levels of emotion and intellect and memory and experience otherwise all we are doing is looking at an object and then we know our imagination has atrophied which is the first symptom of the decay of the soul. Oh dear, here I was ready to simply mention Duane Michals and show a couple of images I scanned in from this old exhibition catalogue and instead here I am talking about books, imagery, poetry and the way our memories and emotions filter and shape those works (and vice verse?). Oh well, it is my blog and if I feel like rambling on why shouldn't I?



The exhibition had a number of works, some singular, some part of series, which I later found is a recurring theme with Duane - in one series he had persuaded Richard Gere to pose as a 40s style gumshoe for some Noir-esque images in a series around the walls which were like looking at individual movie frames. You know frames, those little rectangles of still images which flicker past a projector lens so fast we believe we are seeing true movement. Walking past them on a wall I could follow a genre tale but I was also aware very much of how that tale is constructed and how we view that construction as I looked. The Madame Schrodinger's Cat image from below is part of a longer sequence which mixes humour with scientific philosophy and also manages to feature a cute cat.


Other images were on their own or sometimes Duane had combined his love of poetry and philosophy with the image; I wondered sometimes which came first, the photograph and then the lines or did some lines in his imagination spark the idea for the image? So I scanned in a couple to put on here; I do like the dream imagery of this one with the rather lovely poem while the one above with the crucifix 'gun' is an image which once I saw it years ago has stuck in my imagination ever since; simple but effective and one which invites the viewer's mind to conjure up all sorts of little narratives around it. I hope you like them.

Red Alert

So the UK has stepped up to Red Alert; as all Red Dwarf fans knows this is a serious step because it involves changing the bulb first. Naturally as a good citizen I have been alert all day for suspicious characters. Alas in Edinburgh during the Fringe there is almost nothing but suspicious looking characters around, so I have up and had a cuppa, the standard British repsonse to any crisis from a traffic accident to global warfare.

I am, cynical bugger that I am, more than a little suspicious of all of this supposedly thwarted attack. I'm not saying there was no threat to be dealt with - since we have almost no details it is impossible to really know that. However I am deeply cynical because it seems almost every time Blair's government is in trouble either over their Middle Eastern policy or resistance to their continuing plans to do what the Nazis could not and turn us into a police state by imposing more controls and reducing our liberties 'for our protection' a large terrorist scare suddenly materialises. Remember the infamous army tanks around Heathrow a few years back? How many high-profile sweeping arrests have we had from Edinburgh to London, people held for days, major intelligence lead ops only to end up with little to show for them at the end of it? Always just after the government has had trouble over their foreign policy or been thwarted in their attempt to force draconian new legislation through. And yet although the nation is in such crisis the Prime Minister is still on holiday and parliament has not been recalled from recess - gee, must be really serious.

None of this is to say there isn't a real threat of course; only an idiot would assume that. But the powers that be do have a vested interest in keeping the populace scared - a scared populace is less rational, less thoughtful and more likely to be more easily manipulated to go along with certain programmes. We only have to look at the way we were continually lied to about WMDs and the imminent 45 minute danger to us from Iraq to see the lengths the buggers will go to in order to herd the mass of the populace into the sheep pen of their choosing (while making sure those few who raise suspicions are villified as 'friends of terror'. Now a mere day after the government's hard man John Reid (who always reminds me of some nasty boss in an old British gangster film) tells us we must be prepared to sacrifice more liberties to fight terror we have this enormous action.

No, not suspicious at all. When politicians talk about the enemy within they mean lunatics like the London bombers, people who are British but so brainwashed by funamentalism they will committ atrocities. While this 'fifth column' use of the term is legitimate I also tend to think that the enemy within is anyone who threatens our traditional way of life: our freedoms, liberties, legal protections and democracies. By those terms quite a number of those politicians count as the enemy within. What did we use to say in the 90s? Trust no-one and the Truth is out there. Just don't expect the government to set up any public enquiries to tell us the Truth.

And as Boing Boing and others noted, this emergency measure of denying people from taking even small hand luggage onboard planes is deeply illogical - if this is indeed necessary to protect flights then why wasn't it necessary before? Liquid chemical explosives are not a new development after all. And what about after this emergency? If someone carrying on a small rucksack with a bottle of contact lens solution is a potential danger today then when will it ever not be? But can you imagine airlines not having it rescinded when it pisses of passangers and hurts business? And what the hell is with banning books and magazines??? Are the worried some terrorist will clobber the aircrew over the head with a hardback bestseller? Or are they reminded of the wave of mid-air hijackings during the 70s where Arab terrorists took over TWA planes using rolled up magazines? I wonder, do you think Tony Blair will be allowed to read a book on his flight home? Actually perhaps we should ban certain books and round up writers and members of reading groups just in case, eh?

Oh, and one little note to the authorities protecting us all by stopping folks carrying on books and spectacle cases onto flights: those plastic bags you are giving people to put the few bits they can have with them are more dangerous, that's why all plastic bags have big warnings on them. If some mad fundementalist (or just irate flier who cracks under this shit) sticks a poly bag over a pilot's head, don't say I didn't warn them. Hmmm, come to think of it are we sure the pilots and cabin crew are safe??? Blimey what about their personal baggage? What about those mini cans of drinks they have on board, couldn't that contain explosives? And I heard that some engineers filled a 747 with a highly explosive liquid (they used the euphimism 'aviation fuel' I believe - very dangerous stuff).And let's not get started with the dangers of in-flight peanuts. And those sharp edges on the pilot's wing badges. Blimey it is a miracle we're not ducking falling aircraft everyday.

Thank goodness there is a new Armano Iannuci show to take give us a giggle on BBC2 (and so soon after his new radio show, excellent).

Just 1 Page - charity comics

Just 1 Page is a comics anthology where a number of artists each contribute a page on a general theme (this year's issue is football, the previous one was team-ups) and is one of the independent titles added on to the FPI site recently. Along with an auction of original art (from fresh talent and a number of established artists like Charlie Adlard) the money raised all goes to help Childline, so you can get comic goodness, bid for some cool original art and help a good cause too. More details and some of the art are over on the FPI blog.

Free Josh Wolf

We've all read about blogging reporters and journalists in repressive regimes like China and Iran being imprisoned and worse for speaking out on their blogs. Well it appears our much-vaunted Western democracies are no better - not happy at bullying employers trying to control what folks blog and do in their own time the American government has stepped in an imprisoned a blogger. Josh Wolf refused on principle to hand over footage demanded by the Gestapo... Sorry, Federal authorities of trouble at a G8 protest he covered in San Francisco so he has been imprisoned. Thus perish all enemies of the regime... We must maintain respect for authority (best said in a Cartman voice)... We must maintain discipline in the citizenry... We must all obey orders...

Personally, crude though the wording may be, I prefer Rage Against the Machine's retort "fuck you, I won't do what you tell me" - especially when you keep trying to take bites out our freedoms. Funny how police authorities love using video technology to film the public, protestors and others but aren't so keen on it being in the hands of others (can you say Rodney King, boys and girls?). These numpties forget how linked the world is today. Josh's blog can be found here. The revolution will be televised. Then webhosted around the world. Spread the word.

Trekking Camelot

I picked this link up via Teardrop to a video mash-up of the Camelot song from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (I mean of course the ggggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaiiilllll) as sung by the classic Star Trek crew - brilliant!

Woody

Pretty quiet but relaxing weekend; there's something so nice about lounging around in the garden, drinking, reading, chatting, tickling Dizzy's tummy then thinking, mmmm, time for some dinner, hey, it is still light, still warm, let's have the food out here too. And more drink. Ate and drank outside until dusk fell and the bats came squeaking out, flying overhead with that disctinctive, leathery flapping sounds they make (doesn't sound remotely like a bird) - Mel hates them, I, of course, love them. Finally head back inside(except for Dizzy who has been dozing inside the open window sill for ages but not decides she needs to go out and explore the dark garden), finish stuffing ourselves with yummy cheesecake, more wine and watching Annie Hall on Mel's new LCD TV.

Brilliant movie, it has a classic Woody Allen moment where he tires of listening to a too-loud boor in line behind him at the cinema trying to impress his date with his knowledge of media theory. Woody eventually tells the man he is a fool, the man smugly declares he teaches a class in this subject at a prestigious school. So Woody turns round and declares "I just happen to have George Marshall McLuhan right here, why don't we ask him?". McLuhan tells the man he is a fool and doesn't understand his books at all. Woody turns to camera "wouldn't it be great if real life was like this?" Love that scene (plus McLuhan was one of the few mdea writers I respected during my college years).

I had forgotten about the blink and you miss him appearance of a young Jeff Goldblum in there (and apparently Sigourney Weaver, who is a guest at this year's 60th Film Fest in Edinburgh, is in there too, but I must have blinked and did miss that). Also has the priceless scenes where adult Woody not only has flashbacks to his childhood, but actually walks into the scenes, including the one where he kisses a girl in class then argues with the teacher. Teacher in flashback telling off young Woody as old Woody exclaims he was only manifesting an honest interest in sexuality. That's not normal for a young boy that age the teacher points out; it was for me, he replies. With him there, it was for me too, although I sometimes worry I peaked at that tender age; still at least I haven't married my own step-daughter. How snoggable is Diane Keaton in that movie?

Day of the Jackal

There is a famous scene in Freddie Forsyth's thriller Day of the Jackal (the film version having the ultra-upper class Edward Fox in it I think) where the international assassin shows how ridiculously easy it is to obtain fraudulent passports. Teardrop kindly sent me a link to this piece on the Register that he was blogging about which shows that, far from protecting us, the new biometric passports governments like the UK and US are shoving down citizen's throats (for their own good of course) as about as safe as a Kosher butcher in Beirut. And since this is the first wave of the tech Blair etc want us to have in our ID cards it blows yet another hole in that scheme, not that this will discourage a government which has made its decision and will stick to it no matter how many citizens tell them to stop and how many IT companies tell them it won't work...

Meanwhile the Sunday Herald has a great story about Lebanese folks living here in Scotland who are getting assistance from the Lebanon government's legal affairs folks to try and have charges brought against Tony Blair for war crimes by aiding and abbeting the supply of weapons to Israel. The revealtion that the UK was allowing the US to supply weapons to Israel via Scottish airports the other week caused a lot of outrage here (and was swiftly moved to RAF bases further south, but still allowed to continue, which kind of misses the point) and from my limited understanding of legal matters may well put the government into a dodgy area of international law, supplying or aiding the supply of weapons to one side in a conflict where civilians are being targeted. I doubt it will actually come off but I wish them the best of luck with it - it would be nice to see the swine held accountable properly.

Especially since the main airport involved - Glasgow Prestwick - was recently mired in the US's rendition flights moral morass and also because some of the weapons being shipped via there include the bunker buster bombs Israelie forces used to deliebrately target and murder UN observers with recently (mistake my arse, you don't shell someone for hours while they are phoning your HQ to tell you they are UN, while you have a map which show UN locations and then when shells don't get the saftey bunker call in an airstrike with a bunker buster to finish it off by mistake. Then shell the rescue party for good measure. Mistake my arse, bloody murder, plain and simple in my opinion.)