willing to be very slow

 "I try to work one sentence at a time and be willing to wait a long time until the next sentence comes. I'm just willing to be very slow, and let the back of the mind come forward."

Lynda Barry

poetry is of many sorts and is all around us

"I think the first aim of someone teaching poetry in a high school should be to continuously demonstrate that poetry is of many sorts and is all around us; that a rhymed political slogan is poetry of a kind, for example, and the lyrics of a song by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, or Bob Dylan may be poetry of a very high order; that inevitably most people have commerce with poetry in some part of their lives"

Thom Gunn

Sketch for Feral Child picture

Theatre vs cinema

"In my opinion, manga is very cinematic and three-dimensional. When people compose panels, it’s like they’re aware of where the cameras are positioned, whereas illustration in the west is more like a play, with fewer close-ups and the camera at eye level."


Fumio Obata 

This was interesting. It got me thinking about how much cinema has actually influenced the visual arts. I just take it for granted that the influence of cinema is everywhere, has saturated every art form,  but Obata is implying that western visual culture is more static and traditional. More like theatre than cinema? I read this and then looked up at my painting on the wall and, yes, it is at eye-level (strangely, I spend a lot of time taking perspective out as far as possible; eye-level all the way up and down, is how I think about it). And, yes, although I'm primarily influenced by film stills and old paintings, I can see what he's saying about the staticness, at least in my images.
I suppose, I'm thinking; Why don't I want to use the moving camera? The dramatic, expressionistic looking-up or looking-down viewpoints. I don't, do I? The film stills that appeal to me are, as Obata said, at eye-level and not super-close-up.
I have been thinking recently about the quality of film stills as opposed to other forms of photograhy and other images. Why are they so interesting?

I was a middle-aged werewolf

Other title; Werewolf Dad

self portrait as a werewolf - in progress

All the problems of creativity are problems of living

"Essentially, I think all the problems of writing are problems of living. And all the problems of creativity are problems of living. They are all problems which we all share. I had been brought by my particular path to an experience of certain structures breaking down that I realized were old. For example, today I drove over the Brooklyn Bridge and remembered all the things I’d read about the infrastructure of American roads and bridges being in bad repair. I thought, “Am I entirely safe here?” It’s been here a long time, but it doesn’t mean it always will be. It’s that feeling of realizing that your consciousness, what appears to be your individuality, is actually resting on old, possibly decrepit structures."

Rachel Cusk

Creativity as another war enterprise.

"If war contributes to the construction of society, then those who instead of wanting war are engaged in aesthetical enterprises will infact be using more than others their prohibited violence in other war enterprises.

Destructiveness and violence are absolutely crucial for seriously good creativity.

Matisse for instance talked of his work in terms of rape."

Juliet Mitchell

I have a game

"I have a game in which I put a small pebble on a sloping board, then roll a pencil towards it – each roll of the pencil, always from the same position, pushes the pebble further. I make a series of marks where the pebble stops. I’ve chosen the gradient, the pebble and the pencil, but the randomness throws up surprises which intuition, or measurement, never can. Is this nonsense?"

Harrison Birtwistle