I have now included an Flash portfolio of my photography in a page link which can be found running along the top of this blog.
I have tried to display a broad range of subjects, techniques, and styles. There are landscapes and lizards, police and warplanes, bowling alleys and burkas. There is even a cow who is trying to sneak in the door to steal my curry. She didn’t get a crumb.
My friend Jack and I walked around the river Thames last Sunday. The greyness of London at this time of year soaks through your pores. Last Winter I wrote a piece of music, called ‘The White Sky’. With all that anaesthetic blankness overhead, Summer can feel as distant as a house you you moved out of years ago.
I have written before about the South Bank, and how much I love its blend of expansive modernist architecture, ragged but lovely humanity, and the timeless industry of the River. Its faded and renovated squalor embodies the grandeur and the humanity of the capital. When I was young, my parents used to take me to see Bach’s St Matthew Passion at the Royal Festival Hall every year. Even back then, I felt how strong the character of the South Bank was: this thriving concentration of artistic output in the midst of urban dereliction (it used to be a lot seedier twenty years ago, believe me). Nowadays, I like to meet up with friends there. There is always something interesting (and free) to stumble upon such as a musical performance in the RFH lobby or a photo exhibit in the National Theatre balconies. It is the quality and the abundance of this sort of thing where you really see the advantage of living The Big Smoke.
So we wandered round the Thames. We met a girl on (what used to be called) the Hungerford footbridge who was trying to sell dream-catchers. She was somewhat furtive about the fact she wanted to money for them. Jack fancied her. I have no idea what a dream-catcher is.
At the foot of the bridge we went straight in for a free hug (were they the same troop as at Glastonbury?), watched the skateboarders, and discussed Joanna Newsom. A girl was down on the beach beneath the Oxo tower, combing for something or other.
Then Jack mugged a child, and we had a look at some more stuff, and parted company.
With some more time to kill I headed back onto the bridge by Embankment for the second time that day. It was getting dark and I was tired so I stopped to listen to a morbid yet persistent steel-drummer. The West Indian clangs sat weirdly with the gloom, but it was a nice way to take in the end of the day over the Thames, since I was cold and tired.
Looking across to St Pauls, the Barbican, and the Natwest Tower made me think about the persistent grind of London. Working and surviving in this city can really feel draining although people do not often like to admit it. Actually, come to think of it, sometimes it’s all we talk about, perhaps because it is something we all share. The city looks awesome of a Winter dusk. Shelley wrote of the eponymous mountain in his poem ‘Mont Blanc’:
Power dwells apart in its tranquillity,
Remote, serene, and inaccessible
The lines could have been written for those fortress casinos in the square mile. If good old Percy Bysshe were writing today, he might well write about the city instead of Mont Blanc, and he could have picked a worse spot than the Hungerford bridge to reflect man’s relation to the vast and awful power down the river.
I looked over to the terrace on the South Bank where the free-huggers had been. The crowds had mostly gone home. It gets cold down there when the sun goes. I noticed there was an arc of people performing. The double amputee at the end of the bridge was still begging after hours in the bitter evening, poor sod.
I approached the horseshoe of singers by the river bank. There were a few people stopped to listen despite the cold so I took a seat on a bench. Close up you could see that they were a dozen or so young ladies probably around the age of twenty. I realised they were American immediately when they started to sing. Not from their accents. Everyone sings in American accents. The clue was in their quality and understanding of performance, of which Americans are the masters. They are just better than everyone else at entertainment. It’s like when you see Russian ballet dancers, Italian drivers, Australian cricketers, Spanish Flamenco dancers, British football hooligans, French pickets, or German nudists: as far and wide as you travel, when you see one there is something inside you which clicks and thinks: ‘They’re taking it to a whole different level. Shit, that comes from the source.’
The girls (a troupe from Princeton Universty NJ called The Tigressions) were singing a capella standards, and their own arrangements of modern pop hits. Rich harmonies, perfect tuning, packaged with all that American charm. Perfect to warm the proverbial cockles. Here is a link to some of their music - I recall them singing an arrangement of ‘Happy Ending’ by Mika. It was surprising to hear something so luscious and personable amidst all the cold riverside concrete. Singing just for the joy of singing. No pretensions to fame and stardom, that bane of true music. Just a group of young ladies on holiday in a ridiculously grey city, enjoying singing with each other.
There were others who were enjoying this spontaneous performance as well. I noted a slightly gruff looking cyclist who seemed absorbed by the music. He sat there intently, taking it all in, clutching his bike frame. Also there was a little girl who went right up to the singers and stood right in front of them. She was young and uninhibited, bathing in the overlapping vocal lines.
I hope the young ladies from New Jersey enjoyed their vacation in London. At least they looked like they were having fun, despite the gloom. It is indeed cool that they were able to contribute to and even become part of the life of the South Bank in their visit. I was grateful, at least.
I have been busy working on this portrait of my friend Mr JRampling.
I have a few people lined up to paint but, as I have said before, if you would like to me to do your portrait then just email me or the like.
Its all in the gallant heroes of tungsten doing battle like knights of yore…
…the eye-popping razzmatazz …
…and of course the very British audiences
I read an article on the BBC today on the plusses and the minuses of the Copenhagen summit. To summarise the article:
Plus points:
Everyone got together and talked about climate change, with climate change firmly on the agenda. All the countries attended and, clearly, climate change was the centre of debate.
Minus points:
No-one agreed to do anything about climate change.
The nature of the article really reflected COP15: it is inconsequential filler.
If campaigners were right in describing Copenhagen as ‘our last chance’, then we are in a lot of trouble. It is not even clear if the Copenhagen accord is even UN sanctioned. All that is certain is that no-one is legally bound to do anything set out therein. It looks like a political deus ex machina, a shabby artifice so that politicians can go home saying they got something done.
In the same vein, I could draw up the ‘Hammersmith Accord’ whereby my Christmas tree and I agree to cut emissions from my neighbour’s cat by 20% by teatime on boxing day. I don’t really have to though, which is fortunate because I would not know how to begin measuring feline emissions, let alone censuring a Christmas tree for failing to comply with Hammersmith.
Countries can only do as much as the most reluctant nation will agree to. In terms of climate change politics, this country is, of course, China. Now China is looking to continue it is rapid expansion into economic superiority. This is all but a foregone conclusion. No other major players (okay, that should just say ‘the USA’) are going to restrict their economies if China won’t. But you’d think, at some point, the global community will have to realize that averting extreme climate change is more in its own interest than anything else.
But here lies the rub. If you went to Beijing and showed the powers of the People’s Republic a big scary picture of rising sea levels they would probably respond: “Flooding? Oh yes we already did that.” The Three Gorges Dam. What does a country that has created the most epic dam on earth, consuming whole towns and displacing over a million people in the process care about natural disasters? They are too busy rustling them up themselves.
Well, beside the ecological disaster of the Three Gorges Dam, invading and occupying Tibet, and testing nuclear weapons on its ethnic minorities, there is a lot to be said for China, and I don’t mean that insincerely. Hey, they are going to own us all before long, so I will have to delete this blog post before that anyway.
But if we are going to persuade the Chinese to put environmental responsibility up their to do list, we are going to need a better understanding of their culture. And if that’s not inconsequential filler, I don’t know what is.
A portrait in oils of Caterina Davison, who is a pal of mine from my uni days in Bristol.
I already painted her (now) husband Rog How a few years back, so now I have the pair. It’s always good to have the pair, according to David Dickinson off of Bargain Hunt.
Cat has a stunning line in bespoke designer jewellery for which she is currently gaining all sorts of plaudits, which is well worth checking out. Apparently she destroyed some very expensive lasers coming up with her designs, which is always a good sign.
I am looking to expand my portfolio of portraits, and am on the lookout for subjects to come and sit for me. So if you are interested, I can offer a comfy seat, excellent tea and fine banter…
Dirty women in a can.
Snappy Snaps have finally stumbled upon the secret of all marketing. A stupid dog in a hat. Nice one, you photographic specialists, you.
Argggh. It’s all so wrong
Walking along the streets of Soho of a Wednesday night after a sterling Lebanese dinner, I was reminded of the depiction of Greenwich Village in Kubrick’s ‘Eyes Wide Shut’. The main streets (Greek, Frith, Dean, and Wardour) which stretch away from Old Compton Street like tines on a fork, are festooned with sultry lights of myriad colours.Curiously, Soho is a lot less cluttered than I remember it being a decade ago. The Village in ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ was filmed largely on a soundstage (although partly on location in London including Soho strangely…) and perhaps this is what makes me make the link between the two locations. There is something stage-like about the restless avenues – as though the pavement has been set for the playing out of bizarre dramas. Every shopfront offers a different sideshow for your delectation.
I have always been struck by the strange adjacence of Soho’s opulent refinement and its meretricious abandon. You can look into a dazzling eatery, marvel at the fortune of its guzzling patrons. Then you notice that, but a metre away, the neighbouring establishment is a simple yet ominous door with a hand-written sign advertising: “model – young, curvy, and sexy” followed by an arrow pointing towards a rickety set of stairs leading down to the underworld. I imagine the girl at the end of the tunnel is being falsely advertised. It’s going to be “old, staunch, and angry”.
Anyway, we were strolling down the glittering streets last night, enjoying the wafts of espresso and the champagne cackles from the bars when we noticed this cool shop which was still peddling its wares at 9:30. Its walls were dressed with antlers, clothes for aspiring nu-rave bands, and rakish interior-designers, whoever the fuck that might include. Coincidentally, they had a replica of the penis-statue from Kubrick’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’: a nice touch by the proprietors.
As I walked in, I was aware that I was about to judge the shop by the music it was playing. Unfair, but inevitable. I was taken aback by how avant-garde the choice was. Dispersed chuckling and snappy interjections from a digitized male voice. I was about to aske the sales-assistent about his eclectic music-taste when I realized that he was busy chatting to his mate on Skype, which was being piped over the shop’s loudspeakers. Close thing.
Things took a pleasant if absurd turn when we were having a natter with the shopkeep. He brought his skype-mate into the conversation, who seemed to have some detailed knowledge about a certain pair of shoes we were perusing [we were actually sniffing it, because apparently it smelled sweet like a My Little Pony]. I could not tell if the man on the other end of the computer was bullshitting, though, because he was clearly very stoned.
Over the miracle of ip video telephony, he proceeded to show off his latest discovery – a perfume dispensed by an aerosol which stained you bright blue for about ten seconds, then faded to invisible. At that point I wondered if I had become stoned. Somehow. Maybe it was sniffing the shoes. He stood there spraying himself temporarily bright blue all over. I remarked that he must smell incredibly powerful. He said that some people pass out because they get so carried away with the spraying.
Anyway, I would reccomend Kokon To Zai on Dean Street for its thrilling shoes and conversation.
After more strolling, party-location scouting, and bumping into a friend of mine wearily awaiting an exceptional hamburger in Garlic and Shots, we caught the tube home.
I used to love Soho, then I grew sick of it, then I feared it, then I liked it again, now I love it again. Like Kubrick’s vision of Greenwich, it is a dreamlike place of weird frolics and fantasies, tingling incitements to the id. A fine place to sleepwalk.
