Sunday, May 25, 2008









My father, Pamiganino's Self Portrait, Nick Owen's work.... John Ashbery:

"Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror" ... and other manner of Mannerists








The New Art






Beautiful Green Clean Lovely New Zealand










What is the matter with the matter?






"Joy! A great woman..."




Jack's Motors





The "endless book"










The cover of my 1965 edition of "1984"






In the growing and licentious gloom


The beauty - the ambiguous power and joy of destruction - the endless entropy, the,the,the ...











The EYES sing

In Glenn Innes.






NZ Artist 'Robinson'





The homeless silent man's dog just where he gardens for the church.
He puts ribbons his dog. His dog is a kind dog. He loves the dog.



Unbearable




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23 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is that dilapidated run down house with the graffiti and the beautiful views available for a squat? Moved in just now and have invited all the animals in the neighbourhood to join me...happy house warming...

Richard said...

It was an abandoned house just opposite to the road that goes up Mt Wellington or Maungarei - I took shots of it - then one day we found it had been also burnt down - I got close ups not long before the Security closed it right off.

On one level of course it is sad and not good...so I am recording what is going on here in NZ particularly Panmure-Mt Wellington (there is irony also of course as this was the site of Pa and also has great history as does so much of the land in NZ - that of Maori and the Pakeha etc (see Reading the Maps )- the grafitti - the vandalism and also the violence etc (there have been a lot of murders and rapes around here and a suicide attempt off Mt Maungarei - a guy trued to kill himself by driving off the edge - he killed his daughter - so joy and sadness - tragedy reality and hope? - we have to continue) - and a part of me thinks - well at least in Remuera they are civilised -this is done by mostly Polynesians or others (either unemployed or on low pay - but certainly of the much vaunted "working class" - the question is why? -

The other is the ongoing social and existential or ontological question of it all... (there is also perhaps some pure Husserlian and Heideggerian phenomenology at work here) (and a dash of Nietzsche!) and of course it is also a recording what "is" in so far as it can be what it is - "nature" in fact. (As defined)

But also it links to many aspects of what I am doing here - it's good idea to click on the images some of the shots are great - briefly though: life "fights" against destruction and so on... on one level the destruction has its own aesthetic and fascination; on another level it is awful (people lived in that house once) and so on... one of the images shows the Turkish guy who lives near me... he hates Chinese for example! ..but he is else interesting... centres everything in Anatolia and reads strange books in Anatolian about "Mu" and other interesting mysteries - and he raves about Attaturk etc....another image shows a fence on Jellicoe road that has or was hit by a car/truck (boy racer?)
and also there is an image of "rage incident" (the eternal triangle was the cause) and a young man smashed the glass of vehicle that is followed by an image of another smashed window and so on...art via my father's self portrait and that of the great Mannerist artist Parmigianino's (in a convex mirror) and also an abstract by Nick Owens (deceased now) and a work my myself and an artist called Robinson and so on contrast also some "new" Maori art influenced by modernity...all very involved......links perhaps to John Ashbery of "Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror" (he won the Pulitzer with that book) and thus "ash" and so on....all th is perhaps offers hope (or an alternative) and contrasts or it is inextricably linked to it all...

"Chiming" with the "dark" images are the leaves (the fall of course - what else!) and change and entropy and so on...the drawing in colour I did...

My grandson is the personal aspect and represents possible hope and learning and play and growth and joy - contra the holocaust (or war and destruction in general); this section started with that theme...

Themes - images and texts are repeated as in music - say as in Wagner with his leitmotifs - or as in Bach or Reich or-who knows NZ composers - but there is also Bill Direen and The Dead C

Bill is very interested in what I am doing here.

Being an "artist" is very lonely BTW ... in way you are also - perhaps we all are...so you will know...

There some satire but much of what I see is of course very beautiful -the trees (trees fascinate me) the gardens and so on...also women!! There are BTW many positives here
of people of many ethnicities and kinds - and I talk to many on Maungarei and also at the Panmure lagoon or anywhere......there is also a Maori art gallery /work place not far from where I took these pictures (in the Panmure shopping centre) so positive things happening to and by Maori and other (young) Polynesians, the kids who destroyed the house are kind of "lost"...

But there is also the side of me that enjoyed watching 9/11...the fascination with destruction that we all have...

As Patrick White wrote in 'The Tree of Man'

"Destruction is always more convincing than construction..

Anonymous said...

Was entropy a theme of Pynchon? Vaguely recall something about systems running inefficiently....9/11 looked like implosion...have viewed most of your links...there are many things I miss from home...one realisation is that the ethnic inequalities in Nz are minimal, on a global scale it is the anglo who is an endangered minority...

Richard said...

Ultimately we are all part of the cosmic mix! Probably we are "endangered" but I continue to exist for now...

Yes in "The Crying of Lot 49" entropy is big - he also mixes things such as technology and "the noir novel or film (noir?)" Revenge Comedy and so on - great book.

I started to read "Sons and Loveers by D. H. Lawrence BTW (there was quote from Huxley;s "The Olive Tree" in a book about war I read so I read that and I saw an essay also by Huxley about Lawrence - with whom was quite a good friend. Thus I divagated onto "Sons and Lovers" - so far very great stuff...

His poetry is very great -we studied his one The Snake at high School... Matt gave me a volume of his poetry once.

Regards

Anonymous said...

The fulcrum of the european entent, churchill wrote in the 1920s of his fears on the russian white national defeat by the bolshieviks and its relation to judaism with trotsky and marx. In a pre nazi carve up of poland the great powers reveal the land grab which ascends upon all regional conflicts... the nature of the beast... bluchers prussians at waterloo...stalins communists at berlin...expediency for churchill but necessary 20 years later...and for collins in ireland a republican pact with america...all around cant u see the dragons breath...

Anonymous said...

The compromise for neutrality is the crown in the 6 of ulster and america has its foot in europe.... without the crown the waitangi treaty is obsolete and its terms vulnerable...activists tread careful that you may invite entropy into your cause as vampires dont seek other vampires they feed on living blood...

Anonymous said...

The criteria for all black tours of south africa up to the 80s 'you can play us after we choose your team' There the vampire becomes the dragon...

Anonymous said...

The importance of joyce is the life given to the local dialect, accent and dialogue, there is the nationalism... look at the place names of the indigneous...his magnitude lies where the language begins to break down, defragment and become isolated from the rest of the universe and thus he uncovers the flaws in the political activism...where ever it is applied...entropy again...

Anonymous said...

Chaucer and his canterbury tales conjure english nationalism...

Anonymous said...

And the tale was unfinished...the illusion of democracy...a greek philosophy, an ideal but a reality not then or now...in political terms there are republics with monarchies or military juntas or state bodies...democracy you machiviellian tragedy...you evasive woman...you coy virgin...democracy you licentious whore

Anonymous said...

Language poets break down all meaning and strive to sleep with democracy...the pillow talk bleeds all structure and the orgasm cries to the progeny...whats left is the mumble and the ramblings of the vagrant striving for food as he talks to the statute of david in the garden of the church where he was buried a thousand years ago...

Anonymous said...

The revelation and dissemblence of the nobody..'i think therefore i am a dinosaur'. Democracy spread your pillars and lets enter your chamber...there is a gift here...ready to be opened...

Anonymous said...

The blood falls from the altar

Richard said...

That's what I liked about what Huxley liked or one aspect Huxley admired in Lawrence (a friend) was that he liked things such as the Etruscan civilisation as there were no ruins or evidence of fixed abode per se - in other words he believed in, loved, flux - we cant have too much) - taken loosely this is phenomenology (a convenient word; a shell to hide in - possibly meaningless in some ways -very abstract ideas implied - but interesting ) ; and your "poetic" philosophising and musing some what captures some of my own doubts and realisations of uncertainties and the folding reality of ambiguity - Churchill being perhaps a "butcher" but less so maybe than Kitchener and also perhaps "necessary" although Gallipoli a mess I feel, bloody and red and surreal as cardboard Caesar-men who bestrid the world in a colossal mockery of time ...but certainly perhaps needed in WW2 ... Hitler and others including the Terrorist Stalin seemingly like Genghis Kan a fascinating and perhaps a sad but necessary ("necessary murder" {Auden in "Spain" - he changed the wording even before Owrwell's objection)) because possibly proleptically an inevitable aspect of human history - a part of what we actually are - in Ireland the huge injustices done by the British and the collaborators - de Valera (or his deputies?) mucking up under pressure from (liberal but also "thunder guns") Lloyd Goerge was it? - threatening to attack with all guns if he didn't sign but signing away Northern Ireland)) Joyce, fascinated by words and sounds, ("the sad sunken cunt of the world", "the snot green sea", "Boys, see that pier - it's a disappointed bridge"! (I puzzled over that one it has about 4 meanings hidden in it - probably more - Finnegans Wake on the way!);, "Stately plump Buck Mulligan stately intoned: "Introibo altare deo" (a mockery - deliberate...,

...and Joyce, whose name means Joy; hiding in Europe scared of dogs and thunder, influenced by Giordorno Bruno and Vico as Yeats and Ross was - hiding inside his genius and so on, creating Bloom who becomes Boom!, then the Polyphemus (the Citizen) throws the biscuit tin as Bloom Odysseus escapes the blinded hater - still Irish to the bone but mocking his own country with the bitter but comic intensity of those who know it and hate it and deeply love it...

N.Z. my country I would die for??

Die for a rag and some letters?

[Boom!! Tama Iti shooting the NZ Rag! Booooooooooooooom!!!!]

Boom or bloom again!??

Not sure...parents English never been to England...remote...You - Scotland and Ireland and Kiwiland... the song continues ... Yeats meeting Joyce in Dublin but puzzled by him - quite different men - Joyce not telling the Old Master he knew all his poems by heart...Pound discovering Joyce...

Me saying once I couldn't be bothered typing up my poems - Jack Ross recalling well like Joyce and feeding this (failing of mine?) this into a (or one part of a) poem of his in Brief:

"A thousand pounded years" - very clever - a great line...

Jack the NZ James Joyce? - except he didn't live most of his life in penury and cadging off his brother etc! And his petty bourgeois father an alcoholic who refused to work as he felt mere workers were beneath
him as he had once owned property etc or had had a "better position" - he (James J) one himself virtually (drinking every day till he died of an ulcerated duodenum and always having eye ops and so on ... but Jack very erudite (if "evil" - [joke]) and talented like Joyce...

writing - strange - all of us

tertius - staying in state of mystery - not known! Nothing being known!

Anonymous said...

Commenting on the 'search' for democratic values in all fields...the cant. tales...eliots wasteland...parsivals quest...malory...milton...dante... the search and the redemptions...timeless literature going beyond words...

Anonymous said...

Speaking of mysteries read some wild theories about shakespeare being a construct of various authors including marlowe... also conjecture surrounds the early death of edgar allan poe the father of the modern crime novel...

Anonymous said...

I wasnt aware of anything about joyces' background... your insights give me the drive to write 'in' poetry...I can recall reading that blake never travelled away from his village (can u confirm?)...was astounded that his imaginations 'travelled as if thru space' to me.

Anonymous said...

Comments on Britain n ire brought me to churchill and his greatness in poltical terms as he had his faults (gallipoli) but was in a horrendous situation between degaul n the free french, the russians and the americans who bled britain dry in the first half of the 20th cent.

Anonymous said...

With the complexities of america they are the 'devil you know not the devil you dont' I know that is simplistic, but my readings about america from the 1950s to watergate seem to suggest that the nation is a series of military, economic monopolies (see the federal reserve act) and doesnt act like a state democracy (modern france more so)

Anonymous said...

Finally reading about the occult the 'great beast' Alaester Crowley,(english leader of demonic church i think?) is reported to have advised churchill on the occult symbolism that the german nazis were obsessed with,the power of the swastika(eastern symbol of infinity..not 100% sure of its meaning)could only be defeated by the reverse v sign.....the front v sign came about by english archers showing the sign originally with the thumb to the french around agincourt times circa 1415 after the french passed laws to cut off those three fingers if archers were captured during war ha!

Anonymous said...

That was the reference to chaucer and his tales being a national inspiration to england at a time when france dominated the state n church. And lastly to refer to the only english pope adrian iv who was installed by the powerful plantagenent king henry 2and his french wife eleanor of aquataine(parents of richard the lionheart)...very much around the crusader days when knightly orders were growing in influence( knights templar..forerunners of the freemasons) Pope adrian issued a papal bull giving england or henry dominion over the unruly heathen irish arter the irish king of leinster summoned an army of english mercenaries to quell the rest of country

Anonymous said...

The king of england ruled eng,wales,irelan,n half of france but not scotland(later on) thus the saying get away 'scot free' Chaucer came along at a time when england needed to assert its own identity free from france and thru its language....and this we see in other countries thats why the local literature in your own work should not be underestimated as being uniquely 'kiwi' or 'maori' is something i hope we never lose ,dont stop writing in whatever form it takes...will give you a break for now. RT NZ POET adieu old friend...

Richard said...

teertius - thanks will mull over what you have here - spent the weekend at my addiction -you guessed it - chess tournament!! -i did quite well in the A grade - 3 out of 6 maybe could or should (those old might haves or could haves!) have won most of my other games even the last round putting me about third.

Quickly- Chaucer -yes -important to the development of England and English lit. (contra say French as was used by may of the upper clsses in his day (he also as he was at Court a lot) - he wrote in iambic pentameter -and rhyming couplets - but in English)...

Joyce massively important to Ireland and the people of the world - perhaps not a "Marxist (he only dabbled)...but his work does have a differentness (strangely despite his "complexity" or "difficulty") he is deeply accessible to the "real world and to people... - a totally new feel not found still in much other literature (but this doesn't abrogate other writers... Joyce stands apart because of and despite his intense realism and his "working classness" that Maps wants to coopt hin too much in my view but he has a (some) point(s) ...hmmm more anon..........