December 22nd

an ugly red smear

two wary shadows unfurl

spill black in the air

Two crows skulking over crushed roadkill, staking each other out, floating at each other in a non-violent contest. The sky was grey, the rain was falling. I didn’t get to see who won, who broke first. I drove on. Little dramas of nature are all around us. We (sometimes) only get a tiny window into them, it allows us to apply our own comprehension and fiction. It might have had nothing to do with what I’ve written of course, but it just goes to show, what does “truth” actually mean? I guess historians ask themselves this question, or I hope they do. I wont debate it, as I’m not clever enough to philosophise!

November 12th

 

an eye blinks turquoise

from the fisherman’s drag net

the dancing satyr

I went to the Bronze exhibition at the Royal Academy. I’ve been to a lot of the big hitting exhibitions this year and Bronze is right up there. There were so many pieces covering 6000 years of history, unsettling old pagan pieces, pre-classical from northern Europe, of unknown function, all the way to the modern day where Bourgeois (one of her wonderful spiders seemingly skids across a wall), Moore and Matisse amongst others, were represented. The exhibition paid respect to both Asian and African artefacts too, the Nigerian pieces were astonishingly beautiful.

Perseus and Medusa (a copy of Cellini’s original) was also imposing, him holding aloft her serpent head, with serpents seemingly also spilling from her headless neck as he stands triumphant over her fallen corpse.

But my favourite piece, was the first piece, which get’s a room of its own as you enter the exhibition. The Dancing Satyr, a Greek classical piece pulled from a fisherman’s net off the coast of Sicily, fairly recently (1998). He’s incomplete, the leg he balanced on, both arms, part of the head and his tail are all missing, but this does not diminish him. The powerful realism really struck me, the definition of the muscles in movement of something beyond human, the detail in the face and hair. It was quite astonishing really.

It’s a great exhibition. Well worth going to!

Photo from the Royal Academy Website

November 10th

spark frazzled old dust

the beast labours underground

through plague pits and sin

 

What do the tube tunnels cut through? What sinister secrets does London have buried under her?

November 5th

 

broken necked clothmen

paraded, stuffed with paper

tonight they will die

murder bonfires made

pushed in prams, propped on trollies

penny for the Guy

As a kid I thought it kind of sinister that other kids made effigies of a man who was to be executed through fire. Dragging him through the streets asking for money, his disturbing strawman bloated body, stuffed with paper and old cloth, filling out a pair of grubby old discarded trousers and threadbare jumper. He didn’t have hands and feet, just stumps tied with string, to stop his innards from spilling outwards. His head was a sackcloth bag, with a crude face painted on. It was fairly hideous. And he was normally smiling, you wouldn’t expect a condemned man to be smiling. This was a man we were going to plant on top of a bonfire and burn to death. Smiling would be last thing he’d be doing. We pushed this abomination along on an old trolley or in a pram. “Penny for the guy” kids used to shout. “Here’s a shilling, now fuck off and get that evil looking thing away from me!”. I never made one myself, but sometimes I used to tag along with some of the other kids in north London, I never kept the money for myself as it wasn’t my Guy, I was just grateful to be part of this disturbing ritual.

Now that this tradition has all but disappeared, I kind of miss it, it’s an interesting part of social history. Barbaric if thought of in isolation, but in historical context, fascinating. I want to burn effigies of people on a bonfire

As for fireworks, I’ve never been fussed about them. I read too much into them. The nihilism of their pointless lives extinguished so soon! Also I associate fireworks with feeling sad. When you’re a kid, you want what other kids have and so I wanted fireworks too, but I never asked for them. Our family were hard working, working all hours. Fireworks (like bicycles – I’ve never learnt to ride or ever owned a bike) would have been considered a frivolity, an unnecessary expense. I don’t begrudge my parents this, I knew they worked hard, saved and scrimped, so I never demanded anything of them which might be considered a luxury, but that didn’t stop me feeling sad. So on November the 5th I used to sit in the dark and look out of the first floor back window and try to catch glimpses of other people’s displays. If there was nothing in the terraced back gardens, I’d look to the skyline and try to catch the explosions of distant rockets bursting, note the colours, the greens, reds, blues, brilliant whites, the mortars pop pop popping into the air and exploding. For those really far away displays I’d hold my breath in expectation, the silent burst of light, then a moment later hear the boom or crackle. I’d be excited by the magic of science, the speed of light and the speed of sound, the sync ever so slightly out. And then I’d go to bed. The next day some of the kids at school would marvel at the displays they’d been to, but a lot of kids were like me, they watched the fireworks from their windows too.

October 27th

A foundling token

pressed into her grubby palm

mother’s shame, renamed

I went to the Foundling Museum in Bloomsbury. It’s somewhere I’ve never been before and covers the history of the building, which was London’s first home for abandoned children and the first public art gallery. It was also inspirational for Dickens in some of his works.

One of the most moving parts of the collection was the foundling tokens. Mothers would pin a little token to their child’s clothing, thus if they were able at some stage in the future to reclaim their child, they would use this token to identify the child that was brought in. As the child was given a new name upon entry into the hospital, this was the administrative method they used for identification. The children were not allowed to see or keep their tokens, in case it gave them some clue in later life to their identity. A photo of some of the tokens.

With the child would come a letter of petition, frequently illiterate, the mothers would ask a friend to write them a letter, requesting the hospital take on their child. Poverty, rape, abandonment, the death of a husband and the lack of work led to this desperate act by many mothers. Transcripts of some of their tragic letters are also on display.

There was also a letter from a mother who had married a farmer and found her feet, coming out of poverty, she wanted her child back. The tragedy was her child had died years before. The register shows that many children died, despite the care of the hospital, diseases were still rife. Many though did leave the hospital to employment to become maids or apprentices, or joining the armed forces. Some even became rich and contributed as a benefactor to the hospital in later life, never forgetting the experience that built them.

The art is also impressive, there are prints and painting by Hogarth. Hogarth was a social satirist and pulled no punches in his depictions of poverty stricken London.

The Enraged Musician (shared via Wikipedia) is below, showing the gentleman unable to practice his music due to the din from the people in the street below. The woman on the left is bare breasted, pregnant, holding her child, a little boy is peeing and various street vendors sell their wares.

More famously, a print of Gin Lane is also on display, it actually depicts the Bloomsbury area of London. Note the old man and the dog sharing a bone, the Gin shattered mother dropping her baby, the poor selling whatever they own to the pawnbrokers, the burial in the distance and the man dying in the gutter, his faithful hound by his side. Hogarth works are so detailed and rewarding when given time. This page on the British Museum website gives more info.

The accompanying Hogarth poem for this work is as follows:

Gin, cursed Fiend, with Fury fraught,

Makes human Race a Prey.

It enters by a deadly Draught

And steals our Life away.

Virtue and Truth, driv'n to Despair

Its Rage compells to fly,

But cherishes with hellish Care

Theft, Murder, Perjury.

Damned Cup! that on the Vitals preys

That liquid Fire contains,

Which Madness to the heart conveys,

And rolls it thro' the Veins.

I could write so much more, but I’ll just leave this post to say it’s well worth visiting.

October 18th

 

granite admiral

lion guards shrapnel punctured

black bronze vigilant

I was at a customer location and from the meeting room I could clearly see Nelson’s Column. Not the ground level, not his four bronze lions, bomb damaged in the second world war, just the jagged outline of the London skyline with his upright stance in the midst of it.

London is a wonderful place, dunked in history, rich areas shunted up against poor, culture, religion, music, art. Despite the abundance of traffic, people and noise, I can disappear there. I can find some peace in knowing I am a speck of dust, unseen, wandering, watching, thinking. I’m not so naive to suppose that others share my experience, I can go home, to D, to be loved and to love.

I know that for some, London can bring sadness, an aching loneliness, that despite all of the faces, some of whom you know will like you, even love you, you will never see them again. Just a split second of eye contact, on the escalator, in the throng of commuters, in the rush of the city. Time.

October 13th

 

When the moor succumbs

to bitter progress, they’ll dig

and find the bog man

 

I’ve not been entirely happy with my Haikus of late. I went for a run and lo and behold, some inspiration. Running is thinking time. I wrote a poem about the mind cleansing solitude, the creativity to be garnered from a run, away from all that distracting technology which clogs our lives, how it touches something ancient, something physical, brings us closer to the animals were are.

Today I considered what it would be like if I were lost on the moor, sunk into the peat, only to be discovered hundreds of years into the future preserved like one of those bog men. What could they deduce about me? Would they work out I was more than just a stupid jogger who broke his ankle and sunk into the mire? Probably not and to be honest they wouldn’t need to, as they’d be right!

There is an 8-haiku (5-7-5) version of this work on my main blog as it is more of a narrative poem. The abridged version single Haiku version is here.

October 4th

 

the railway arches

scrubbed of their coal blackened past

the dead builders craft

Every time I visit St Pancras station, I notice something new, whether I’m inside or out, there is always some detail, a little embellishment. I wish I took a photo, but I was in a rush so I can’t share it with you, on my next visit though, then yes.

Today I saw how beautifully clean the arches were, which now house cafes and shops. Also, some Victorian mosaics, restored and gleaming, high up near the new glass roof.

The work put in to make St Pancras so modern, yet sympathetic to the age in which it was built, is to be applauded.

I felt kind of sad, as I guess that many people died making such a magnificent structure back in the day, then my mind wanders, who remembers people like this? Their families did I’m sure, but are they commemorated in any way? Or is their memory lost to time.

August 4th

smog choked chestnut trees

blurred in the grainy drizzle

shelter tiny hearts

wretched bird song stirs

toothless smiles from old grey cowls

pausing to listen

I went to Tate Britain yesterday, to check out the Another London exhibition of photography from 1930-1980. I loved the social history of it, familiar yet wholly unfamiliar through the passage of time, fashion, bomb damage and new architecture. And all the more interesting because the esteemed photographers on show were foreign visitors to London, hence they took photos of what they found interesting. Perhaps things that locals might have considered mundane.

A silly irrational part of me though what a wonderful stroke of luck it would be if I saw one of my parents in some old photo, of course I didn’t, but there was something intimate to me about the whole exhibition.

As a Londoner it felt personal to me, I walked round it with a slight smile, or a sad sense of something lost, when an old memory was revived by an image. London can be cruel and ugly, but also beautiful and inspiring. It is one of my favourite places on Earth.

So, two Haiku’s today, in honour of old London and old photographs. All photo credits to Tate website and Another London Exhibition. Associated exhibition book linked here by Helen Delaney.

June 4th

Automaton schemes

thoughts born in brass gears turning

metal regicide

Don’t worry, I haven’t invented a Blade Runner style android with the sole purpose of murdering the Royal Family on this diamond jubilee weekend. Rather, I speak of a fantastic hoax, a clever folly of the 18th and 19th centuries, The Mechanical Turk. A chess playing automaton, which fooled the great and the good for several decades.

Secreting a top class chess player, the Turk appeared to be able to play a marvellous game, but also displayed flourishes of temper or humour, depending on the mood and imagination of his controller.

He must’ve captivated and terrified his audiences. And although many suspected something fishy, he wasn’t exposed for several decades.

How did I find out about all this? I watched Horrible Histories for the first time of course. Brilliant TV! Educational and very funny. It also taught me Napoleon (incidentally one of the Turk’s defeated celebrity opponents, along with Benjamin Franklin and Catherine the Great) had piles. A haemorrhoid factoid.

With a bit of googling I found a couple of very interesting articles. This one (linked here - from which I also credit the pic I use of the inner machinations of The Turk) discusses the links between Chess, Sentiency, Consciousness and Artificial Intelligence. Chess is often an entry level bridge into the testing the intelligence of computers. Although the Turk was a hoax, it must’ve provided fuel to the imaginations of early pioneers in computing. What if you could build a machine which could play a decent game of Chess? Chess has set strict rules, but also allows for some level of creativity which goes a little way beyond the ability to compute several million combinations of moves ahead (which is basically what modern chess computers can do, taking the fun away from the important ability to learn and improve).

The article discusses the great Alan Turing and his paper 'Digital computers applied to games' (seemingly incorrectly labelled “Chess” on the website). He talked of a computers ability to learn, from mistakes, from previous games, to become better through it’s own experience, much like an infant learning through life experience.

I quote (from the web article, which quotes Turing’s paper – available in original form on the Turing Archive).

When one is asked, “Could one make a machine to play chess?” there are several possible meanings which might be given to the words. Here are a few–

a) Could one make a machine which would obey the rules of chess, i.e. one which would play random legal moves, or which could tell one whether a given move is a legal one?

(b) Could one make a machine which would solve chess problems, e.g. tell one whether, in a given position, white has a forced mate in three?

(c) Could one make a machine which would play a reasonably good game of chess, i.e. which, confronted with an ordinary (that is, not particularly unusual) chess position, would after two or three minutes of calculation, indicate a passably good legal move?

(d) Could one make a machine to play chess, and to improve its play, game by game, profiting from its experience?

To these we may add two further questions, unconnected with chess, which are likely to be on the tip of the reader’s tongue.

e) Could one make a machine which would answer questions put to it, in such a way that it would not be possible to distinguish its answers from those of a man?

f) Could one make a machine which would have feelings like you and I do? (Alan Turing “Chess”)

End of quote… Back again. e) and f) are the most fascinating and take a real jump from just playing Chess. e) describes the Turing Test. Can you have a conversation with a machine and not realise you are talking to a machine? (I’ve distilled this description down to a basic level, but there are plenty of online resources if you want to read more). This Turing Test was loosely employed when Blade Runners were interrogating potential replicants in Philip K Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”, later turned into the film Blade Runner of course.

But f) describes feelings, can this ever be possible for a machine or computer?… Turing considered issues and concepts way beyond the technology available to him, this is from a man who was active more than 50 years ago. It’s teasing and evocative and a theme often employed in Science Fiction, you often see these powerful robots or androids, sensitive and emotionally fragile characters, “born” as adults, endowed with emotion and feeling their way into the world and interacting with these horrible flawed humans with all their needy selfish ways. Poor android bastards. At least give them a chance before exposing them to humans! No wonder they end up killing everyone in these stories!

What’s even more intriguing, to me anyway, is that Turing designed a Chess algorithm. There wasn’t a computer powerful enough for him to programme this algorithm into, but what he was able to do was play a game against a friend where he employed his algorithm, it probably took hours. He lost, but the game was a decent one, a good show. You can follow the first ever “computer vs human” chess game, blow by blow here!

April 18th

Cinders wind scattered
weeping woman wails for child
lost in the rubble

We went to an evening private view of the Picasso and Modern British Art exhibition at Tate Britain. There was a lot to take in, very interesting how Picasso influenced and overlapped with so many British artists. The piece of art that I’ve focused on however is called Dream and Lie of Franco (1937), it’s a print which he produced to make money for the Republican cause during the Spanish Civil War. Franco himself is depicted as an inhuman beast, a monster terrorising the innocent populace. The weeping woman theme was something Picasso kept visiting during this tragic period in Spanish history. It seems so sad in this work. 

(image from metropolitan museum of art website)

March 29th

White horses gallop

Leaping over the coral

Unremitting wave

 

Was looking at one of my birthday presents today, a book from Debbie about Hokusai’s great wave. It’s a wood block (cherry wood) print from the Japanese Edo period (approx 1829- 33) of (as you would expect) a great wave. It’s caught at its apex and it looks like it will crash down onto the insignificant boats below it. Mount Fuji looks tiny in the background, giving the impression that the boatmen are far from shore and are facing a likely death.

It truly is a testament to the raw strength and power of nature. The British Museum has chosen it as one of their 100 objects from their radio series “A history of the world in 100 objects”, number 93 in fact. I’ve got them all downloaded on my iphone as podcasts (free). Well worth a listen. The podcast itself gives some Art History background to the image, talking of Japan’s insularity at the time the image was made, giving some sense of allegory about the image and Japan’s place in the world.

Looking at the print literally however, I’ve always had a healthy respect, I’d go so far to say, a fear, of the sea. I don’t like being out of my depth. I’m not a great swimmer. The ancient fear of being smote (smited?) by a sea god still lingers somewhere in my psyche. I wouldn’t take the sea for granted.

But, being by the sea, the smell of salt, soft sand underfoot, seafood, the sound of gulls, the persistent lapping of the waves, there’s no better place to be for me. It’s fair to say that I do like to be beside the seaside.

 

January 28th

 

Vanquished enemy,

Trophy prised from dead fingers,

Jade, Gold, Agate, Blood.

 

On my other blog, I wrote about the Wallace Collection. A photo I took, of an old dagger, seemed to tell a story. A story I’ve made up, and although improbable, not inconceivable either.