GLASTONBUGGED; A Rant

As has been reported in the press, the Pilton Pop Festival is once more about to pollute our airwaves, digital and cable networks and utterly spoil all Correctly-Thinking People's weekends virtually everywhere. I, for one, am appalled at the length of time I would be expected to have fun, Get On Down, Strut My Funky Stuff, (Sho' Nuff) and generally Shake the Old Rump of Steel Skin to The Groove That Makes Yo' Booty Move.

I certainly will not be experiencing anything like this event and I would deter any normal and self-tax assessing, dental appointment keeping, straight queuing upstanding pillars such as myself from doing so either.

Give us all the "Birch" that's what I say.

Can I do the techno bit first time?

Apparently not first time but...wait...what image from yonder windows break?
This is a little chap I met upon my travels. What type of travels would one need to be on in order to meet such a fellow? Feckin' lengthy ones it may be surmised.

I used to read books and among them were a couple by Whitley Strieber. (or is it Streiber?) "Communion" and "Transformation" are tomes a person must suspend their disbelief for, if indeed one had any disbelief to suspend in the first place. The jury is still out on my suspenders(or is it judges who wear suspenders, hard to tell when they always sit behind big desks so you can't see their legs)

Anyway, these books cover the author's own experiences of alien abduction. I will say experiences and not alleged experiences because I don't think he's a good enough writer to have made it all up. Also, though at the time he seemed convinced enough that it was all a bit woo, there is no absolute statement that he left the planet, danced on spaceships etc. My views on the matter and related themes may well be discussed at some later stage. Suffice to say this. There has been more weird shite that has gone on, and is going on, in the human experience, both globally and historically, than any of us alive can get our heads fully around.

And so onto my little friend. He was made in what is best described as a fit of pique. Not the pique that is hurt pride, but that which is stimulation. I had suffered a shock to my system ie. the ending of a relationship. Huge pent up energy was spent on this and at the same time 8000 words of a "book" that I have yet to finish 11 years later. The relationship however was reconvened after a month long break, and went on to bear many fruits, one of which is my son(currently asleep just a few feet from my rattling keyboard.)

The grey guy pictured, who I call the High Priest, is one of what was supposed to be many. He is a he, despite the apparent lack of genitalia. He remains to this day the only piece of sculpture I have ever exhibited publicly. He is the High Priest because all the other dudes I have yet to manufacture were to be dancing around him. The inspiration came from Whitley's recounts, and the artwork of a brief flame in my distant past. I've seen quite a few images of rituals involving one being calling to the skies and several dancing around the one. It's not an uncommon theme in art. What the heck, there's a feckin' fine line between inspiration and plagiarism. Could you draw this line with absolute accuracy between all the so called original artworks and their alleged contemporaries? Yeah? Then drop me a line, cos you are the most talented and knowledgeable art critic on the planet. Or maybe you are the most opinionated? That's not for the likes of me to judge. That would make me opinionated beyond my usual sphere of practice.

Perhaps one day I could tell you a little about my dreams on the visitor stuff. Until then, I'll just have to sleep, perchance to dream, as a new day is soon to dawn and the gulls about this neighbourhood can be tireless in their aurally penetrative daybreak shrieking.
Adieu.

THE TOP OF AN INDIAN WOMAN'S HEAD

Many, many years ago, when my world (this time around) was still young and relatively unadulterated by the crushing reality of despondency or the gleeful joy of natural mania, I was often simply a bit bored. My mother, bless her overstretched tan tights, was usually busy doing...well I was never quite sure, let's call it pottering. She alone was charged with the task of entertaining the boy beset by ennui. Once in a while, the plastic age into which I was born would produce a packet of bright coloured felt tip pens, and a small piece of Finland rehashed as a new sketchbook.

"Why don't you draw mummy a nice picture of something?" Looking back as adults, I expect all those drawing sessions blend into one for most of us. But I remember one as distinct from all the others. I remember picking up that pen and turning over the fresh, new smelling page. I crushed the spine of the sketchbook with the consummate skill of a bush hunter, and viewed the virgin sheet with coccyx-tingling anticipation.

And then...nothing. Not a sausage, no flicker, nowt, bugger all, zero, zilch. A kind of inspirationectomy had been performed without anaesthetic. No matter how hard I tried, I could not think of a single thing I should draw. And so I just drew a line, starting bottom left and climbing in a gentle arc to top right. Hmmm, what next? Another line, running down from the first a kind of oblique angled tangent. Aaha! Let's put a large dot right there. Hey! Now we're cookin'. Before long I had constructed a "pikcha", no great shakes, which had to resemble something. So how do I name it, cos you must name all your "pikchas". Well, take a look at it and see what it resembles. Eureka!!

And so my picture, that day's creational masterpiece was entitled "The Top of an Indian Woman's Head". One could quite clearly see resemblance.

I recall another session.

After one of those "Oh that's not fair" type conversations with my Dad, desperate and convulsing with indignation, I set about the pens with the gnashing fervour of a revolutionary in the grip of a coup. I produced the most damning likeness of my father imaginable (to me), and entitled it. "Dad, My Enemy"

I showed it to my Dad, expecting my declaration of hostilities to provoke the next volley of parental unfairness which would give rise to yet further indignation. His countenance broke into a smile, then emitted genuine laughter. How deflating. Oh, how my ire had been instantly disarmed.

And you see, the world beyond my childhood changes very little.

I am presented by the cyber world, with an infinite variety of fonts, formats and fantasia.

I could write most accusingly, with fire and spite borne of life's most bitter experiences.

I could look at these blank text boxes and know that it is just for me, me, ME that all of the computerised "small pieces of Finland" have been laid out like unadulterated drifts of snow, waiting for me to piss my name into them.

And you could be my Mum and say "That's nice darling, what is it?"

You could be my Dad and quell my deepest anger with laughter, not derision, just mirth.

And where would I be then?

Well I'd be in front of the computer, just like you are now.