This picture is hung up in the corner of my bedroom and has been there for ages. Collecting dust and it's wooden frame warping into the shape of a square crisp. It's no longer flat but wobbly. But was looking at it the other day... after a few years of ignoring it... and it made me realize that the majority of my output is pretty good, but at it's best when it is sinister and genuine... when it taps past my British aura of satire and gets to the root of all screaming.
When I was at art college I didn't care about whether anyone thought I was pretentious. Now I do. I think this is an error. Calling someone pretensious is a lazy analysis.
These days I don't get to the root of all screaming. These days I am making pretty patterns.
Why I don't need mindfulness.
I went into the charity shop yesterday and saw an Eyedoll on the shelf. I haven't seen one of those since 1987... during the last cataclysm... I remembered all the trouble the Eyedoll caused back then. I was only 6 years old at the time and was very blue behind the collar. People told me I was "corpse-like" in my capacities for comprehension. I was cold and unaware of the Eyedoll's powers. So I took the Eyedoll into my possession. The consequences make me scream inside even to this day.
So when I saw the Eyedoll in the charity shop yesterday, a pure chill went through me as it stared right at me with it's singular ocular orb... I think I sent chills through the Eyedoll too... and soon after I sent a wave of fire through the doll.
The only way to neutralize the area was to burn down the charity shop. I didn't want humanity to enter the fifth stage of cataclysm.
Not just yet. Only on my terms.
2.9 ---------------------------------- 3.9
Oh look at these pictures which depict the end of the world.... the only thing left standing is a franchise. I suppose this means I am satirical and clever now in a way that the normal will understand. Like Banksey.
4.9 ----------------------------------- 6.9
Terrence Senior was in his back garden again. It was a very small garden with a very large hot tub. The hot tub was incredibly domineering over such a small space but Terrence didn't care. He was 56 years old and really loved to submerge his large flabby body in the heated water and play with his gigantic rubber duck.
His one eyed 19 year old son, Terrence Junior, poked his head out of the window. "Thanks for the invitation!" his son shouted sarcastically... flapping his webbed fish fingered hands angrily at his father. Junior also loved the hot tub. He would have liked to be have been invited to play.
Terrence Senior stuck his middle finger up at his son. Then carried on sloshing about in the water. Cuddling his giant rubber duck in a severe stranglehold.
Terrance Junior turned on the disco lights in his bedroom and danced to whatever was on Smooth FM. Holding his hands out as if he was holding a girlfriend... Total Eclipse of the Heart came on and Terrence Junior started to cry... and he moved into a position in which to twist his imaginary girlfriend into a strangehold. He wished that she was a giant rubber duck.
Time elapses. The falling of leafs and schemes both leave unclean. Tainted with regret and shame. When you rot away like the leafs you will regrow and reform. Becoming something that is even more stinking. You are trapped in your atoms. There is no reason to belief that the pain will end with the combined structure of your molecules. There is little chance of release or oblivion.
9.9 ---------------------------------- 10.9
Updated my facebook profile picture and banner to look dystopian. The photo of me with the cup of tea was taken in Electric. The most ugly and stupid bar in the whole of Chorlton. Everything is composed with squares and the people in there look as if their heads have been squashed into the same cube shapes that surround them. The bar staff put napkins under your drinks. Wasting paper. Terrible people in a terrible place. I hope they read this but they probably won't.
11.9 ---------------------- 13.9
The creature had been travelling through the wastelands for more years than her calendar could count. Her journey had been perilous, frightening and painful. She had recently lost her legs when abducted by an outlaw gang of mutants... they'd been sheared off from her body just for sake of sadistic pleasure. So she now wheeled herself across the broken world on a wheelchair.
Her already malformed body was twisted and broken. But she was still happy. She believed in the power of Oneness with the ultimate spirit. And now, her journey was at an end. On the horizon it could see the temple city of Duddha.... Who would converge all the souls on this dead tooth of a world into Ultimate Togetherness and Love. She truly believed that everything was one, and that the holy books were right and that there was no hierarchy and God and beast were the same. All the years of pain and suffering would end and everyone would all be accepted in the holy city. And there it was. Standing magnificently and gold and opulent on the horizon. Not far now. Her lifetime of suffering all meant something.
She rolled up to the gates on her wheelchair, the two gold masked and silken robed attendants looked down at the creature. One of them spoke in a calm and detached but ultimately kind voice.
"Give us all your precious stones and we will assess whether you are allowed entry."
She explained to them that she had nothing but had travelled her entire life to get here. Following the instructions in the Holy Book which she had believed in diligently.
"Go away." said the attendant. "Perhaps in your next life you will be more deserving, and you will have more precious stones. Only then can you bask in the gentle love of our temple. You are undeserving and you crawl on metal wheels. You are not fully formed. You are a wheeled insect full of pain and hate. Go. Now."
The creature turned round in her wheelchair, tears running down her scarred and mottled face. She left the holy city of her dreams behind her. She rolled back into the hostile wasteland. The gang of mutants who cut off her legs walked past her and dumped a pile of precious stones next to the attendant.
"We have repented our brutal life of mutilation, killing and rape and wish to enter your city and seek the holy forgiveness of your wonderful guru and to attain oneness with the universe... our Big Bang Mother." Said the leader.
"Please come in." said the attendant. "Thank you for the precious stones. Duddha will see you at once."
14.9 -------------------------- 15.9
It was still there. The mobile phone shop where Carlo met his wife. Somehow it had survived the explosions that had levelled London 20 years ago. The day that government was over turned and each human worked for themselves under their own laws.
A tear rolled down Carlo's gnarled cheek and he wiped it away with his one fingered ruin of a hand.
Suddenly the door of the shop opened... and out stepped two teenage toughs. Covered in nose rings, swastikas and hair dye.
"Hey granddad." one of them said to Carlo. "My name is Captain What Are You Doing Here and this is my best mate Corporal Hold Still Whilst We Kill You."
Carlo tried to run but they were both already upon him. Captain What Are You Doing Here rugby tackled Carlo to the floor and started to repeatedly punch him in the face. Then he held Carlo down whilst Mister Hold Still Whilst We Kill You poured gasoline all over him.
"You can't outrun the New World Disorder old man." laughed Mister Hold Still Whilst We Kill You.
Carlo knew it was the end but he had had enough... there was nothing more that could be done to him. At least he had seen the mobile phone shop one last time. If only things had been different and that a society could have been ethically maintained wherein he and has wife were still happy looking at their phones and enjoying consumerism.
All Carlo wished for, as fire erupted all over his body, was to go shopping for shoes.
16.9 ---------------------------------- 17.9
No longer in fear of the singularity ending of the year I have now updated my yearly planner in advance so i can plan further into the future. All in the name of my cult of the future moment. When it comes to New Years Eve everyone else will be anxious or unprepared for 2016... but I'll already be three months ahead of all of you.
Look at the photos to see how I have done this and then use that as a guideline in how to extend your Machiavellian scheming beyond the constraints of calenders. Also it involves cutting something in half which is always good fun.
In the year 2086 children will go into Doncaster Museum and see all my half year fragments framed in long strips... relics of a commercial, ambition fueled generation.
"This is how you fail at life children. This is what happens if you don't breathe in... then out... in... then out. Remember that mindlessness leads you nowhere. This is not the way to enjoy your existence. Be mindful. The present moment. Even when you are getting a root canal. Ommmmmmm."
I went to my old house share to collect the big rolls of paper that I used to create my installation back in 2011. http://garth-simmons.blogspot.de/2011/07/distorted-interior-barriers-exhibition.html . This installation was the reason I started this blog in the first place. There was so much paper left over. Have been asked to put some up in someone's hallway. See below for results.
18.9 ----------------- 20.9
Ta da.
21.9 ----------------- 22.9
Started a new picture. I've not actually made much effort with it as of yet just coming up with some kind of landscapey composition... it looks a bit french in terms of the tower. But once I collage over the guidelines it will likely look completely different. I wonder when I will get around to doing it? Summoning up not only the enthusiasm but the inspiration. How many unsold canvases can I have lying around? This is why I am making it landscapey. In the vague hope it will be understood by the general public who like things that their heads can grasp onto. So then I can actually sell it and fast track all my schemes and plans. Living in the future is like being stuck in a blocked funnel of accumulating hope.
Some photos taken in the tram station.
25.9 -------------------- 27.9
Some photos taken in the graveyard. It is all about turning up contrast and saturation to the maximum.
Listened to a 3 part documentary about the Medici and the Renaissance artists... found it all very interesting.
So in the spirit of classical art my facebook profile picture is now updated into something very tasteful, opulent and not at all tacky
Exhibition in London at the Paste Table Gallery ... I spent the weekend in Doncaster and got back on the Sunday. Mildly rejuvenated but still feeling fuggy mentally. Though the smoke should merge into something interesting. It usually does.
