AM I ANTIPHOTOGRAPH?

It is my belief that the digital age is having a dire effect on our ability to produce good written descriptions.  I know, through experience, how difficult it is to achieve good descriptive writing (it’s very hard work).  It is much easier to do a quick sketch, and absolute child’s play to click the button on a camera.

I love photographs.  They are genuine memory capsules and fundamentally important to our personal, local, national and global histories, but I cannot disguise my dismay at how descriptively poor modern writing is becoming.  Creative writing should not something which is limited to someones school days.  We seem to be losing the richness of our vast language to instant gratification.  It’s lazy.  We don’t have to describe things in our correspondence.  We just attach photos. 

So that is the main reason I do not pepper Facebook or this blog with photos.  I will add in the occasional one or two, but will more often put image rich passages into my journal, prose and poetry, to help y’all keep ya imaginations working.

No, I am not anti-photograph, but I am very pro descriptive writing.  So when you’re snapping your shots, think about how you would have described it if you lived in pre-industrial days.  And why not attach those descriptions to your photos?  It would create a depth and richness that a photograph on its own can’t.

spring, at last!

First warm thermals
the crows acrobat on
rising by the towers and terraces
as terminal buds grow, secrets hidden inside
(overfolded leaves)

thick perfume blossom
on the dusky pavement…
headily surging energy
of people concentrated
sun-pools weekend distilled…

Southern aspect daffodils
in winter crust windowbox,
yellow – sodium yellow –
cheerful momentary memory bank.

Tanked tilted axis spinning
bicycles shorts
and eighties reprise
city haze to afternoon
as osmosis anti gravities
tonnages

sex sells

Poetry puns
on taxi cabs
buses hydraulically
music making voices footfalls
market baselines
as leaf formation unabated
pre-programmed,
stag beetle larvae
chomping
on warming, rotting, woodpile.

Circle gusty squall
with plastic decomposing
this evolving, non-stop
City Song,
this warming, inspirational
hope.

Shorter colder windows
are passing quickly by.

Fractal lattice branches
are calligraphy
with messages of
structure
and order.

My city spring,
has me in wonderment.

I Have another handle!

and it’s Pinocchio! I wonder if any of you can work out why!

My first outburst on BBC’s Peston’s Picks 2009

Haven’t commented on here for ages, and I’m not here to talk about China taking over the world.  That’s for another time.  There a few things I have to say to put forward my baby economic model.  I’ve been quiet for too long so now let me diatribe!

With regards to price discovery, I think my handle (noinvisiblehand) describes my thinking very clearly.  I am slowly, but with determination, trying to blend together government agencies, traders, investors, treasuries, banks, producers, consumers, the environment and supply and demand to show that a price is guided by circumstance and human judgement (or lack thereof) to reach a logical equilibrium, NOT guided by a mysterious invisible hand which is a fundamnetally flawed and outdated concept, which gives economists a bad reputation.

The Keynesian Neo-Classical model is a dead fish, and it’s smelling rotten.  Now is the time for brave new thinking which accepts that this current recession is an oppurtunity for us to slow the inevitable downfall of humankind.

There needs to be a balance found between reward and consequence.  Perhaps consequence can be the new buzzword for the profit motive which is the driving force for every boom and bust we’ve ever known.  I’m not saying that profit needs to be eratdicated, for free enterprise does create efficient new technologies.  The ecological and social consequences of the profit motive need to be better appreciated.  The more co-operative the global economy becomes (global localism), the better for society.  WE do, after all, want to see our descendents inheret a liveable world!  Profit for sustainable development is what I hope for.

Although I reject almost all of Keynesian thinking as I train myself up, I do find the concept of global currency fascinating.  The current poor state of the developed world’s balance of payment accounts has a lot to do with the freeze of the global finacial markets, but is hardly mentioned.  If  BOP accounts around the world were more evenly balanced, trade would become both freer and fairer, without too much political interference.

The rich poor divide will always be a fact of life.  But reality of expectation is something which needs to be taught to everyone from a young age.  Stupendous, obscene wealth as well as credit addiction, need to be relegated to the history books. Social and environmental responsibilty should be the new badges of honour, the post-post modern way of becoming famous, of becoming a politician.

So, I sum up this little diatribe by saying that this is what I envisage:
capitalist co-operative sustainable low debt development led by a polical party called The Conservative Left!

Golly what a jolly fuss over Gollywogs

Thought I’d be a little bit topical here.

Last week, Carol Thatcher (daughter of Maggie, the lady who, with Ronnie, started the deregulation of opur banks) said in the green room of ‘The One Show’ (a dinner time topical sofa show on BBC 1) that someone was a gollywog.  She very promptly got the sack which has generated a huge furore, easpecially as the BBC’s big earners, Jonthon Ross and Jeremy Clarkson can sa more or leass anything and get off with just a rap on the knuckles or, at the most, a three mont suspension.  A huge roundswell of support is surging up for Carol, who I quite like as he seems self deprecating but very incisive.

Then, later last week, in Windsor Palace’s sovenier shop, gollywog dools had to be withdrawn from sale with huge fuss.  I am sure that this political correctness wuld make Enid Blyton blush.

On Thursday, Jon bumped into an old friend of his in King’s Cross, and as is his way they went for a couple(!) of beers at our local pub, McGlynns.  I joined them later, and met Jess (a really hard-nosed but affectionate woman who Jon has known for 16 years).  She invited us round to her place for tuna and beetroot salad, which I ate gamely, seeing as I still carry my childhood aversion to both this foods.  On display in her living room cabinet was a very jolly looking gollywog.  Seeing as she s of mixed ancestry, it made me smile.  Gollywogs may be a part of our racist cultural history, bt I douibt they will ever be used as hae figures in racist literature.  Political corrctness really should not bling us to silliness, mistakes, slips of the tongue, and humour.

The Fox’s Den, deserted.

I wrote this with my redbubble friend, michaelalchemy.  My first collaboration in years!

 

The fox’s den, deserted
the scent is followed
by a widow, half dead
standing on her head
the landlord, sad, indebted
speech became whetted
by the crisis now revealed:
let us all be healed
they chant through the fog
they disavow the demagogue—
the evictor, from Rome
off the throne will lose its home
washing down the Tigris
wedged between Isis and Osiris
to the widow, sins purged
renewal encouraged
fox-snout to human nose
from the thorn grows a rose
full circle! seagull above
scavenger and journeyed dove
aluminium sign: For sale.

LATE JANUARY RUNNING INTO FEBRUARY

What a month!  Up and down, up and down!  I contemplated jumping off Westminster Bridge when I was so down in the middle of the month (it was only a contemplation, I wouldn’t ever do something like that).  I wrote a small novel called the MP-3 way which blew my socks off with its twists and turns.  I battled to sleep and did my back in too (sitting for an hour causes me so much pain that standing up is pure torture).

But there’s a positive side to it all… I did something I never thought I’d ever do!  In fact, I swore I never would! But after being invited, I had no choice but I sign up to facebook and now I’m in touch with my older brother Paul and my sister Claire.  With time I’m going to get to know my nieces and nephews.

Also In January — Jon (the most special man I’ve ever met) moved into a flat on the 17th floor in Hackney.  He calls it his penthut.  The view of this incredible metropolis called London is awe inspiring, and I have done some pretty cool descriptive writing while watching the days unfold from this lofty height.  It’s a great relief for Jon to have a place where his neighbors don’t cause him so much stress, and I know great things are going to happen for both of us.

The bird still contemplates me suspiciously.  That’s his perogative, but I think he knows that I’m a one hundred percent nutter. 

The snow that fell was something special.  I built a snowman with a wonky face (I told Jon it was modelled on him) and felt snowflakes melting against my cheeks.  That London stopped working was no surprise.  London can only cope with average weather.  Anything out of her natural range knocks her all out of equilibrium.  There’s nothing at all Thomas the Steam engine about the underground system. 

January’s favourite song (both Jon and I agree) definitely, Lilly Allen ‘The Fear.’

Buzzwords on the news:  Austerity. Protectionism.

Well, it looks as if the seventies are coming into the digital age.  It really will all be very interesting!