Removable Type

St Monan's

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:55:00 +0000

The desert and the moon

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:11:00 +0000

As I write this, there's a blood red moon rising in a navy blue sky. The colour contrast is beautiful; I tried to take a photo but my phone would never do it justice. It's times like these that I regret not keeping a decent camera on my person. Maybe that should be a new resolution, but you'll have to make do with the description above. Incidentally, I've been told that a red moon means that there have been sandstorms in the desert and the orange pigment is created by dust particles that have been kicked up into the atmosphere.

I'll be updating Removable Type sporadically over the next week or two, if possible, due to very exciting secret reasons. Normal service will resume shortly. To bring you up to date with my thoughts over the past 24 hours, I was writing a speech last night and was struck once again with the incredible difference between words written on a page and spoken aloud. Any decent novel or poem will have been spoken before it is read. This was why Wordsworth intoned his verse as he roamed the lake district. If it hasn't been given voice, how can you expect it to have any?

On a mundane note, I'm considering getting a second hand PC to write on, having fallen back into the bad habit of using my laptop sans keyboard and mouse. The idea is to strip back the software and possibly sever the internet connection in order to exalt my powers of concentration. I tried to rehabilitate an old mini-ATX system that I built in 2005 but the hard drive has corrupted. On top of this, the processor is an Athlon and without the constant shrill whirring of the cooling fan I'm afraid it may burst into flames. That may be OK when you're gaming, but isn't ideal for anything that requires a degree of serenity. The damn thing sounds like a hovercraft and I'm half expecting it to float around the room.

The First Philosophers

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 00:33:00 +0000

'According to Heraclitus, the Sibyl, with raving mouth, utters things without humour, without adornment, without perfume, and yet, thanks to the god, she reaches down a thousand years with her voice.'

- Plutarch, On the Failure of the Oracles at Delphi These Days to Use Verse

It's snowing and I've been reading Robin Waterfield's The First Philosophers. It seems that the Presocratics lived at the crossroads between recorded time and the great and dimly lit expanse of human prehistory; between systems of thought that endured ice ages and those that developed with literate cultures. They are where our conscious and subconscious histories meet.

The problem with writing

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:17:00 +0000

No matter how fluidly you type, it will never sound like this.

The world at play: independence and creativity in games

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:23:00 +0000

Snowfield

I'm excited about what indie game developers can do these days. One of the great things about reading is that we receive an undiluted transmission of the author's vision. The same can be true of film. This is why directors like Alfred Hitchcock are referred to as auteurs: they had 'final cut', enough authority to create something that was purely theirs.

There was a time when all games were made in this way. Now, thanks to digital distribution and an abundance of expertise, game creators can have that power too. A handful of like-minded people or a lone bedroom coder can create something strange and, occasionally, wonderful.

It's an age old way of expressing your reaction to the world: create your own. Minecraft is so popular because it harnesses the creative aspect of game design. The player makes their own environment and objectives. There's something uncanny about seeing our love of play and creativity distilled into a self-contained world.

Here are some games that have piqued my interest:

Proteus

A place where musical and 3D exploration meet.

At a Distance

A two-player game about solitude. Free to download.

Snowfield

You can play this one in your browser. It's developed by Singapore MIT students.

The word-forge and the world-forge: similarities between poetry and zen koans

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:58:00 +0000

I've become interested in Zen koans lately. Like poetry, they are a useful form for approaching an expression of things that are beyond words.

Koans are small and hard. They are crystalline in their difficulty. I find this interesting as an argument that is sometimes used against poetry (see the current disagreement between Geoffrey Hill and Carol Ann Duffy). My own feeling is that, like a koan, a poem should be a place where simplicity and complexity meet.

I admire koans for the tension that exists between this simplicity of language and the difficulty of the meaning. Koans point beyond language and existing concepts but can never quite connect with what they point to. A Zen buddhist might argue that there is no defined meaning to connect with, the koan points to a place which is beyond meaning. They are, I think, partly intended to stretch our minds so that we become comfortable with uncertainty: something we should be more used to by now.

Both artforms do their work at the frontier between language and reality. Poetry is a word-forge, a place where meaning is created; a koan's purpose is to dismantle concepts that obstruct our way of seeing. They have an opposite but equivalent way of reaching the fundamental. This is the struggle of language: it is most often used to superimpose meaning on the world, but the more accurate usage is always to allude.

If you're going to write about the infinite, it's best to be concise about it. You should try to knit everything together in a single knot. Don't worry, something will always be left untied. If you're writing in prose*, clean, simple language and bright, strong nouns are the way forward. Remember that the target is infinitely small and infinitely large. If you imitate the formless sprawl of your subject, you'll miss the mark many times and be far wide of it. A single near miss is better.

Here are a couple of koans I have thought about lately:

No Water, No Moon

When the nun Chiyono studied Zen under Bukko of Engaku she was unable to attain the fruits of meditation for a long time.

At last one moonlit night she was carrying water in an old pail bound with bamboo. The bamboo broke and the bottom fell out of the pail, and at that moment Chiyono was set free!

In commemoration, she wrote a poem:

In this way and that I tried to save the old pail
Since the bamboo strip was weakening and about to break
Until at last the bottom fell out.
No more water in the pail!
No more moon in the water!

The Moon Cannot Be Stolen

Ryokan, a Zen master, lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening a thief visited the hut only to discover there was nothing to steal.

Ryokan returned and caught him. "You have come a long way to visit me," he told the prowler, "and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift."

The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away.

Ryoken sat naked, watching the moon. "Poor fellow," he mused, "I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon."

from http://www.ashidakim.com/zenkoans/zenindex.html

Joshu Washes the Bowl

A monk told Joshu: `I have just entered the monastery. Please teach me.' Joshu asked: `Have you eaten your rice porridge?'
The monk replied: `I have eaten.'
Joshu said: `Then you had better wash your bowl.'
At that moment the monk was enlightened.
Mumon's Comment: Joshu is the man who opens his mouth and shows his heart. I doubt if this monk really saw Joshu's heart. I hope he did not mistake the bell for a pitcher.

It is too clear and so it is hard to see.
A dunce once searched for fire with a lighted lantern.
Had he known what fire was,
He could have cooked his rice much sooner.

from http://www.ibiblio.org/zen/cgi-bin/koan-index.pl

*Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves makes an admirable attempt of mimicking a limitless labyrinth underneath a suburban house. At one point, he shifts to a Zen-like tactic of negation to describe all the architectural styles that the labyrinth does not resemble.

Cat simulator

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 23:47:00 +0000

Didn't get much writing done tonight and Terry Cavanagh's Chat Chat is to blame, (aside from a few wedding preparations). The purpose of the game is to be a cat. That means exploring, sleeping, screeching, napping, catching mice and depositing them in a bloody mess on your owner's doorstep. As seasoned cat watchers we found this all too familiar.

National Not Novel Writing Month

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 18:19:00 +0000

I've done a bit more on the novel today. In the initial writing phase I was hoping to get as much done in as short a time as possible and signed up to National Novel Writing Month in October. Call it cheating but I'd decided, in order to capitalise on my enthusiasm, to get a head start before November began, especially as I had a few weekends away in November. I wrote intensively and ended up feeling knackered. When November rolled around I switched into poetry mode and didn't write a single word of prose during NaNoWriMo, picking it back up in December just to be awkward.

Now my feeling is that a little and often is the way to go. It gives things the time they need to develop naturally. Even so, I can see a few distractions on the horizon: other projects, various computer games, reading and a busy social calendar. But that's fine; distractions are the fun part of life.

Words and wisdom

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 19:16:00 +0000

After a run I spent the morning reading Seneca: On the Shortness of Life, Consolation to Helvia and On Tranquility of Mind. I played some guitar in the afternoon and came up with the verse and chorus of a song that could work for Distant Signal. I'll pick it up tomorrow and see if there's anything there.

Something led me from Seneca to Edward Conze's translation of 'The Diamond Sutra', where I found this:

"Wisdom will use terms always in such a way that the original meaning is revealed. And men were wise long before they became clever. This linguistic correlate of Jung's collective unconscious is surely worthy of greater attention than it usually receives."

He goes on to quote I.A. Richards, Meaning of Meaning:

" No one who has used a dictionary - for other than orthographic reasons - can have escaped the shock of discovering how very far ahead of us our words are. How subtly they already record distinctions towards which our minds are still groping. If we could read this reflection of our minds aright, we might learn nearly as much about ourselves as we shall ever wish to know."

This is one of the reasons why poetry can have such an effect on us: it links words by their submerged part.

A rethink

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:01:00 +0000

I'm going to refocus this blog to concentrate more explicitly on the projects I'm currently involved in. The blog should benefit from a narrative arc as things progress.

I'm 30,000 words into the first draft of a novel.
I'm roughly halfway through writing a book of poetry.
I'm getting ready to get back in the studio with Distant Signal.
I'm sitting on a bunch of recordings that will eventually make up the next Uffmoor Woods Music Club album.
I've got a stack of books to read.

I'll still post about places, art and ideas that interest me whilst trying to be a bit more open about what I'm doing.

Double rainbow on an industrial estate

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:30:00 +0000

Goldfish!

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 14:04:00 +0000

New Year's Day Walk - Kingsclere to Watership Down

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 20:54:00 +0000

On New Year's Day, four of us went on a character building circular walk from Kingsclere to Watership Down and back again. It was around five miles in total through sheer walls of gnashing rain. All in all, a great day!

The TV mast!

New Year's Day Walk Pt. II

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 20:20:00 +0000

New Year's Day Walk Pt. III

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 20:00:00 +0000

And after all that, the pub was closed.

Metropolitan Museum of Art continued...

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 22:26:00 +0000

Georges de la Tor, The Penitent Magdalen. For a better picture, go to the Met's site: http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/110001283

"She is shown with a mirror, symbol of vanity; a skull, emblem of mortality; and a candle, that may stand for spiritual enlightenment. The style of La Tour, a native of the duchy of Lorraine in eastern France, is much indebted to Caravaggesque painting. The contrast of candlelight and shadow, the pure geometry of form, and the meditative mood characterize the pictures for which he is chiefly famous."

These photos were taken before the camera battery went. Click on one of the images to scroll through them all at full size.

David's The Death of Socrates. I didn't take this one. Socrates talks of the immortality of the soul, but his companions are too distraught to listen. "Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius. Pay it. Do not forget."

What does the lamp burning on the tall table signify? Also, note the manacles discarded on the floor. Is the pale light we see cast upon the scene that light cast by the observer, we who witness the event?

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Harvesters.

El Greco, The Adoration of the Shepherds. The donkey is said to undercut the beautiful abstraction of the scene.

Huge frieze of the Buddha and his disciples.

Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara of the Lion's Roar

Buddha, probably Amitabha.

Avalokiteshvara in Water Moon Form.

Standing Bodhisattva Maitreya, the Buddha of the Future.

The Great Departure and the Temptation of the Buddha.

Detail showing Mara's daughters arriving to tempt the Buddha.

Gupta, Gandharvan and Nepalese sculptures in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 20:45:00 +0000

Dancing Celestial, early 12th Century. For a clearer photo and to find out more, go here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/1655170459/ - (L.1993.88.2)

I had the astounding good luck to be in New York visiting my friend Dan. Many cool bars, cafés and eateries were visited and we spent a lot of time beating the sidewalks as well as improving my ropey Call of Duty skills.

MOMA was great but, for me, the best museum visit was a day spent in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Here are some of the many highlights. Unfortunately, the camera ran out of power so I had to take these with my phone. But, luckily, I have managed to track some of the items down and provide external links. It's worth clicking through to them - they're incredibly beautiful.

Krishna Killing the Horse Demon, Keshi. Vishnu, as Krishna, forces his elbow into the demon's throat. For a better image, please go here: http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/60005466?rpp=20&pg=1&ft=krishna%2c+keshi&pos=1

Nagaraja and Nagini, The Serpent King and his consort.

Vishnu as Para Vasudeva-Narayana. This form of Vishnu has four faces, representing different aspects of the god as the creator of the universe. A grinning demon with a vertical third eye appears on the back of the mandala behind his head.

To see the listing on the Met's website, go here: http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/60005470

Yoga Narasimha, Vishnu's Man-Lion Incarnation. For a clearer image and explanation, visit the Met's website: http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/60006237

Shiva embracing his consort, Uma. For a clearer image, go here: http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/60006235

Standing Parvati, Shiva's consort. For a clearer image, go here: http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/60006316

Shiva seated with Uma. From the Met's website:

"Shiva (Maheshvara) is shown together with his wife Uma (Parvati) in an image of great tenderness and grace, seated in royal ease on an elliptical lotus platform. The pairing of the divine lovers is understood as a metaphor for the dissolution of the illusion of duality that veils the true nature of the universe. This is one of the most finely executed large-scale Umamaheshvara images known from Nepal."

Go here for a higher quality image: http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/60006348

Living the Highline

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 23:04:00 +0000

Screwdriver-drinking solidarity.

Poker madness '11

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 20:08:00 +0000

Maurice's 60th

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 19:20:00 +0000

I'm catching up on uploading some photos. Back in October, we had a great time visiting Fermanagh with Maurice in celebration of his 60th birthday.

An intricate Beleek mirror.

Two-headed Janus stone in a cemetery.

Horsemen

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 12:58:00 +0000

I'm currently working on a new instrumental project to involve some of the greatest guitarists in Halesowen. You can check it out at horsemenband.com. Expect an album sometime in 2012, together with a new Uffmoor release.

Poems for Christmas CD

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 19:57:00 +0000

If you’re looking for a festive stocking filler or something to listen to while you’re basting, why not treat yourself to the Live Canon Poems for Christmas CD?

One of my poems, ‘Water memory’, appears on the CD alongside:

Anne Bronte, John Milton, HD, Glyn Maxwell, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Doreen Hinchliffe, Christina Rossetti, Thomas Hardy, John Donne, George Herbert, John Clare, Robert Southey, William Barnes, George Meredith, Mathilde Blinde, William Wordsworth, Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Gerald Massey, Phoebe Cary, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lewis Carroll, Clement C Moore, Robert Louis Stevenson, Aubrey de Vere.

All read by professional actors.

Available from http://www.groovycart.co.uk/cart.php?c=2949&p=61320

Bonfire on Sennen Beach

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 11:39:00 +0000

The monolith from 2001 arrives in the office, by the watercooler

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 10:33:00 +0000

'Use Camera With Swamp' on iTunes and Spotify

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 17:25:00 +0000

You can now feast your ears on early Uffmoor Woods Music Club material via iTunes and Spotify. These recordings feature myself on guitars, vocals and keys, Pablo Diablo on bass and backing vox, Enthusiastic Dave on Drums and the AP on lead guitar on 'Under the stage'.

Here's the tracklist:

In the Basement!
Under the Stage
Belcher Island Debutantes
Farewell Master Kiwi (Don't Call Off the Wolves)

Brand new material is on the way: watch this space, as they say.