zine-it-yourself

Singers are Shamans

2012-02-12T07:22:00.000-08:00

(Draft text, to go in the pagan geordie yearbook, out at eastertime)

Apparently Whitney Houston died today. What is it that she offered to the world that made her significant? Not human perfection. Not a nice personality (I have no knowledge or interest in what her personality was like - corrupted by celebrity, I should imagine). And not quite as a producer of 'things of beauty' that we admire: not in my opinion anyway. I think she and every other singer, famous and (more importantly) not-famous, was a shaman: they serve as shamans, are looked to as shamans, have the good qualities of the shaman and are imperfect and unreliable as every shaman is.

When a human sings, it channels something that links us to a different plane. Even a 'cheesy' song strikes some connection with our heart, our innards, and takes our consciousness elsewhere (upwards, it feels to me). It affects our sense of mood, of time, of reality. Normally our active consciousness is busy filtering out these effects so that they are just felt as a dim background thing. But at particularly receptive moments - a first date, a rush of coffee, a distressed and sorry moment - the song is felt in its full power. Everyone experiences this, and I'd be interested in how you articulate it, but for me the language that describes it most accurately is the old buried-away language of magical experience, shamanic distortion, numinous escape from ego etc..

And this is what makes live gigs so powerful, when you are in the mood for paying close attention. It is why I often, despite my embarrassment, describe the experience of an amazing gig by dipping into the language of religious ritual or communion. It's also why I love drinking at gigs, and why I tend to get most affected by songs delivered during my 2nd pint - my optimum point of receptiveness. Drugs and music go together well - although it's a balancing act, as too much alcohol kills my alertness, and other drugs tend to send me off sideways into other experiences (of neurosis, daydreaming, introspection, fidgetiness etc..). Music and crowds also go well together, and effect a significant change upon what is going on in that experience - you may not agree that they are religious gatherings, but you must agree that there's something about communal sharing, of creating a shared moment, that makes the effects more powerful.

It's a very mundane image isn't it? A bloke holding a pint and watching a band he loves. But if you were to watch how his face and his stance change during the concert (maybe speed it up and add some spooky music), then you're watching someone engaged in a pagan magical seance. Change the outfit and it's a Siberian tribesman from the 5th century, with his community, focussing their combined attention and togetherness onto a performer who is not just performing to entertain, but who is acting as a channel for something bigger and weirder and beyond-human, beyond-reason: something that is making their world so much bigger, the mysteries of existence so much deeper, and their experience of life so much grander.

Never mind the details of different planes, the varying cosmologies and 'sciences' that different traditional cultures applied to this experience. Look them up if you like, but I personally find it hard to access the world they describe. I've maybe got some more study to do in that line. If I can find a parallel for the complexity of their descriptions, then it is in the lyrics that singers provide: they help guide our imagination and give meaning to the effect that the melody and tone and development and combination of sounds is doing to us. (Which is why a band like Oasis who uses utterly shit thick lyrics is so shit - they can do the same shamanic job, but they take us to a very thick and disappointing other plane.)

The most important conclusion that my thinking on this has led me to, is in the nature of what a shaman is. He or she is not a priest, who has learnt the doctrine of a church or tradition and then delivers it to us. So they are not teachers, they have no authority, they are not backed up by powers of violence and shaming, of excommunication or all that mumbo jumbo power-play that makes organised religion so evil. And they are also not angels. Their morality is no better. Their intelligence is no sharper. There is nothing that marks them out as better than us and they should NEVER be worshipped (hear that Michael Jackson fans?) Sometimes they are shit: they give shit, underwhelming performances or they get drunk and abusive or they need a good slap to put them back in their place. Traditionally, the shaman was not necessarily a well-liked figure. At times when she or he was not performing for the community, the shaman was often pretty pathetic: the weakest worker, the neediest scrounger, the manipulative git, the deformed or the socially awkward. Neither a warrior nor a chief, and not a monk or a nurse, either. But at important moments, they came into their own. They were needed and they were used and they exulted in that moment and they did their best to rise to the occasion and perform. Like a good band on a good day, who look up from their instruments and grin.

During the ritual, people did not put away their private thoughts, kneel in the mud and worship them. They'd be up to all sorts at the same time: taking intoxicants, flirting, zoning out or working through their own emotions. At every bacchanalian event there'll be some fuckers not paying attention and talking at the bar: it was doubtless the same back in Siberia. So I don't want to exaggerate or simplify what happens at gigs by confusing what the parallel means. But even at an occasion like, in my case, after a friend's wedding last night, when there is someone playing music and singing and there's barely half a room there and most of us are talking over it. Even then, there is something extra added by that live performance, and there is a trickling down of magic going around our brains, that changes how we see the world, adds colour to our drinking and our company, and makes existence glow that little bit more.

So let us raise our glasses to the singers and the people who make music in crowds. Let's abandon the churches and the washed-out brainwash ideologies of religion. And let's recognise that we can have our shamans and we can have our rituals, and when they die we can call them what they were. Gifted people who help channel something that raises the human beast above the groundlevel. Who allow us those experiences that remind us that everything is more than the description of it. That life is alive. That gods surround us, unquantifiable depths penetrate our souls, and we will NEVER truly have a fucking clue what is going on in this universe, but it's alright because we can look around the room and see our fellows with the same look on their face, in the same place, sharing the same spirit. And like the Siberian tribesfolk, we can howl and mosh and dance together in the knowledge that this is what is right, and fitting, and spiritually sincere.

Doodles of Grow Heathrow (post 3 of 3)

2012-02-04T15:11:00.000-08:00

If I don't write up and print ideas or experiences within a month, they tend to get left behind undone. Hence why I've made such a meal out of the Anarchist Pilgrimage to Siberia (about which, more soon).

In this case, I've not been able to get near a working scanner (the library's is kaput) and I have two new ideas and announcements queueing up, so this post is to finish my notes from Grow Heathrow.

The zines I posted.
(to the other participants, on a very poor quality photocopier)

My notebook, decorated with found advice from the abandoned garden centre next door.
(from whose pages these images all originate)

The birds I saw while I was there.

Sketches & raindrops.

Self portrait in my 'twat cap', as Viz calls it.
('A flat or country cap when worn by a scrote, pog or ne'er do well.')

The wordwalk pages.
(see previous post)

Wordwalk around Sipson.

2012-02-02T16:28:00.000-08:00

jump the gate
face the road
sound of M4 rushing
& birds, in the trees, singing as I leave them.

Left
police warning : thieves are targeting cradles

40
taxi
crow singing out of tune

hedge to my left pushes me to the road-side of the pavement

cloudy day
sparrow crosses the road
gaining height gaining views
holiday inn, mast, sand heaps
& the picturesque farm
flock of pigeons
2 planes as if stationary

reach the bridge : metal and rubber barrier

monkey graffiti
roar of traffic
yellow - 550 yards
blue - heathrow
green - holiday inn
sunbeams break through
gull pivots & pauses on the wind

black spot of a kestrel hovering
annoying rush-rush-rush of cars
the grey reverse of a motorway sign
distracted - excited by a flock of brown birds
& 4 ducks fly past
'b-dump' of the metal rubber line
faded fence graffiti - brown on brown

off the bridge
power-walker passes me
cheep-cheep,
great tit in the hedge
call + response to one over the road
2 crows in the stubble field
yellow cyclist
vans pass my right shoulder

gusty windy
M4 sound behind me now
the flock I saw is
dancing over my head
back + forth
a delight
racing pigeons behind are a different motion

low fat plane disappears
behind low fat buildings
leylandii hedging
cold wind on my neck
stop give way
private property keep out
london concrete
giant red barn
plane angled up at
a 23 degree trajectory
2 round concrete blocks

stop! I've found my brown flock resting in the thornbushes.
bigger than sparrows?
black + white fleck on the wing.
buff, paler chest, grey head.

brambles
carpark
lads training
me eating sweets
a big silver birch
cockney laughter around their van
little harlington playing fields
cafe on the green
sun comes out, strong

sant nirankari mandal :
its line of conifers jars
the sound of cars slowing to enter is gentle - a purr.
white arch to nowhere
figures hugging cups of tea
demonstrating a football kick

40
men arriving to play
cones on the field
double yellow lines
nettles + red berries
leafy green weeds

a songbird properly going for it on a psytrance tip in the field
spinning airport radar behind
remains of a 'no 3rd runway' sign, broken in half on its lamp-post
another, the same

a window on the playing field - men in blue bouncing
line of poplars, sports bags
black-headed gull
straight road
cracked tarmac pavement

planes appear ahead of me
slowly float SW
& over my right shoulder, past the singers
- yes! a skylark !
they slowly rise up + away
the 1st loud take-off reaches my ears.
where a dozen gulls walk
about the pitch, & the
small tractor is carting posts & nets about.

a man walks past blowing his nose & I cross the road to a footpath
public footpath
H68
gate swing
on my left, green smooth pitch
behind me, the rustle of the trees that line the other side the road I've walked.
ahead of me, engine noise, clouds, a gravel path & low hawthorn hedge

to my right, the stubble field of singers, in sun
yellow stalks above green

my brown flock of dancers
pass from pitch to field, singing all the while
short tails
a conversation ahead - man on a bench?
plastic bags & cans in the crop
I kneel to write

the bench person is properly head banging
?
a sign points left,
where 2 more are walking
field close
boltons lane
she sighs as I walk past
crazy right angle
left, then right
angle right
now following the man, his dog & 2 sons
turning back
she is headbanging again.

a few oaks
planted for the path

smoking kills
dr pepper

skeleton grimace
as the wind is in my face
sound of plastic flapping on a shed
... & a plane take-off ...
black shadow lines
dock skeletons
man with headphones
this footpath has brought so much litter into the field
grooved concrete, left turn
remains of rope swings on the tree
a park, juicy green

a choice at 2 wood benches
big + dry to sit upon
overflowing bins left,
I choose south, an arc.
yellow + blue lichen spots
on the odd pebbled path material

smoking kills
man in turban coughs politely
grey beard + trainers

my camera now works intermittently

I feel exposed - back windows watch the park
stands of small bare trees
M4 now equal volume to airport
except for sudden noisebursts
path is convex (domed)
with a bright green mossy crack along it - I like it!

birds here too, song + sunshine
then a powerburst of liftoff
dip my cap to protect my eyes
turn + see blue rich sky
thru a scrubby thicket with old tendrils

'what the fuck are YOU?'
- 2 squeaking kestrel-shaped birds
flew past right to left,
but with long tails!?
black against the sky

nice bark - pale + furrowed

tufty grass now - not manicured,
with bramble patches
& the path winds right
I'm still looked over by semis.
an info board with old maps
on it is spraypainted over- obscured

manicure again - now a round green with red dogwood bushes oddly set in a stone-circle-like arrangement of good wood benches
& the songbird singing a delight
above the hum of aircraft.

I recall how birds sing louder
if the background noise is high.
peaceful here, but for the engines.
back to graffiti'd creosoted fences
& bright xanthoria on the brickwork

memory card full
warning CCTV in operation
sound of a voice inside a suburban house is strangely intimate
loudest take-off yet
private no parking
I'd hate to live in this close
expensive cars
man sitting with the engine on - a rattly hum
up Boltons lane, a black & white cat moves like a milk-cow
maximum penalty £1000
sold
let by
weird stairs that go up between 2 front doors.
permit holders only
no loading at any time
pigeonshit pile on the smash-doored metal box
variegated ivy dangling
CATV
coughing man wearing a lanyard

a smell of gas, unpleasant
harvest morn & golden puffs in the window
I stop to write on walls
man in a grey T shirt on his mobile, smoking
sound of the water under the ductile stanton & staveley
odd roundabout

mondial way
bramble patch on the corner full of litter
that curious grey of municipal poles

doghurst avenue
vs
heathrow point
now open - starbucks
bramble tendril on the path
geography like a complex of forts, now.

axis house, staff carparks
aviation business continuity
zone ends
cars slowly curve around me
red post box curiously out of place - a tradititional model
GR post office
starbucks coffee now open
renaissance hotel

young woman in boots with a plastic bag
I fancy her without even watching her.
warning protected premises
chugga engine noise as trucks & buses wait at the lights
423
quality airport parking
2 cyclists sail west
look right
[look left]
look right
[look left]
pedestrians
wait
cross with care
wind rockets down bath road
& an incoming plane looks like it will use this as its landing strip
taxi at any time
more cyclists - must be a route.
thick privet hedge trimmed to thigh height
6 flags - Japan, South Korea
but I just still caught the burst of a songbird
gone now, under traffic

except buses
I take the left turn to terminals 1,2,3,4

danger 230 volts
no entry
maximum height 12' 6"
man adjusts his collar
bus advertises a diet
& switchover is coming

I get a bit disorientated by the take-offs
woman talks on her phone in a deep rolling accent
don't take it out on our staff
chewing gum circles on the small flagstones
S102
S102A
local only
give way
a gaggle of Indian men wait for their bus.

waiting out of the wind, the stench of gas or sewage
aha! texaco
by the park inn, the giant billboard holder & a pine tree & a round pansied flowerbed create a weird, heavy ambience

formerly the ramada hotel
lots of signs repeat
woodpigeon flaps off
daffodils on their way
rapide 40 slideout
nene road roundabout - 3 times now i've turned round to read it
signs for carparking confuse me
which direction now?
at any time
fences bar off the runways
& pay carparks too
the courtesy shuttle is bright yellow
danger of death

E E D E

police station looks abandoned
with its mirrored windows
funny blue paint colour
range rover
when lights flash do not enter tunnel
ER2

I wonder how much emirates paid to stick their plane sculpture on this roundabout
coaches & a constant stream of black taxis
spinning of the tower
deep hum of pre-take-off
really high lamppost
short stay
spaces
spaces
closed
spaces
use dipped head lights

I'm tense now - paranoia making me imagine police suspecting me - after all I am acting like someone casing out the place
a car beeped and I jumped.

uncanny entrance to the tunnel
weird shaped prong
no pedestrian access
please return to bus stop
& catch bus service for the central terminal area
a relief - I shall skip the viewing platform now.

main tunnel
emergency smoke
control panel
exhaust-blackened concrete
red painted pipes
SOS phone
JCDecaux advert
a bus called Samantha Lyndsey
tunnel road east
I reverse - no pavement
police station concealed access
sirens

warning hazchem
unexpected plaque about the triangulation of the British Isles, in grey outside the police station

colourful pansies in rectangular blocks
except business at Police Station
back to Nene Road roundabout
tummy rumbles
walk following my shadow now

5 T ZONE
& follow the sign for Sipson
I take a photo of the sign

& that smell of gas again
At the corner of the police station,
a plane tree is large with its pompoms & its patchy bark.
I'm feeling really suspect now,
like I'm being watched from the groundlevel windows of the police station.
Like I should get out of here now.
Imagining explaining my sketchpad under examination - cops unable to distinguish
the 3 magpies (pub)
Sipson A408
a flash of light
my dirty fingernails
traffic waiting, poised
a beep
a move-off,
like riders into open prairie
but with diesel engines
particulates and hiss
another siren - a first response landrover.
national express
I'm sick of facing park inn.

2nd red man to wait for.
Even he looks pissed off!
A hat left on a post, I pick it up.
The first response is back - it must have gone the wrong way, heads west

A man sat on a fence - looks suspicious!
young woman in a ridiculously flower-printed car.

welcome to ncp heathrow airport parking
no parking
ivy

co-op signs at the garage,
pizza & pasta adverts
tempting familiarity for the motorist
red route clearway end
I'm back on the 222 route.
man holding his hat overtakes me.
red double lines become yellow

litter along the fence & hedge & ivy
just that few metres of distance, & having my back to it, has made me much more relaxed.
My ears now face away, so the noise already feels reduced
& I've been in this shop before - time for a samosa!
street cross
2 crows flying
sovereign food + wines.

the other end of doghurst lane
meerkats used for a car security poster
back on the road I know
curving round

grey car filth margin to the grass edge to the road.
fence treated wth anti climb paint
no wind
a small gathering of st.mark's flies under a leylandii - in January?!

parade of white lamp posts ahead of me.
& a glimpse of that great big barn

dead hanging baskets dangling

from a 'premises covered by cctv'

ugly white hotels's staircase shape

222 overtakes

patchwork of cloud then blue

overall darkening a little

lovely taste of grease & spice in my mouth

a cycle painted on the road in a green frame - but why? what message is it for?

outside lights ready too in the carpark

park inn parking tariff 1hr £2.00

permit holders

aircraft noise comes in stage left

sight of the holiday inn

sipson quarry

private property keep out

bridge over the motorway

cars parked in all available space

& below

I see paramedics, police,

I cross quickly because it's grim

luggage out,

ambulance, stretcher, woman

police discuss

a police dogs van turns in,

& I notice lots of police vehicles are parked here.

the sign for Sipson please drive slow,

& proper village people, carrying bags,

jogging, walking to the bus stop,

peace increases

profusion of orange berries

overhang the wall

garden sheds & loved gardens,

great variety of birds

easy pavement to walk on as I go on.

mon-sat 8am - 6.30pm

roses

plastic water bottle

smart old lady, blinks & looks away from me
bright white bark of a birch
big gust of wind, leaves flutter & rustle

cul de sacs
rusty manhole cover
red dogpoop bin
chitterfield gate
no loading at any time
I turn round at the library only sign (painted white on the floor)
& see a plane taking off above the road
chimes in someone's garden
2 black cabs parked in a drive
chimneys & air vents, campervan & bodged fence fixes

zone ends
I recognise some vehicles as airport-related.
1 weedy lawn.
Some more knackered fences
cherry trees
rust & cracked paint
smell of hot clean hair from someone's bathroom
a baby's cry from another
man + son waiting at next bus stop
- people use the bus a lot here.

slow cyclist passes - he has a B.A.A. luminescent on
222 pulls up alongside me,
man + son get on.
matching joggers

I step aside for a ginger boy on a scooter to pass
a bright painted gate blue + yellow
post office shut red shutters (it's sunday!)

parish noticeboards & a BT call box.
overtaken by couple with a pram & 2 boys.
another pram comes past the other way - wave of smart young mother's perfume.
curious bent alder tree chopped up a bit but still let to live by the pavement - glad twisting.
giant tree rustling above me at junction with hollycroft close - what is it?

It still holds its grey leaves.

Next, a mighty oak has lost its.
These are the best trees of the village.
Its elders.
Now the church,
with the curryhouse + 'hair by jackie'
I take a photo of myself in the round mirror

One of them big calm gaps in traffic as I cross over
man comes out of vineries close &
'good how are you' to the man
across the street as he gets in his car to go.
my suspicion of the sipson christian fellowship
a dropped suitcase tag on the floor
sound of swishing from the turbine
1 week old today!
electricity box danger of death
white cat prowls pathetically by the coop childcare building.
cars are arriving from over the bridge.
the bike workshop sign had fallen over in the wind - I right it.
The car's heading towards the modernity.
I notice 2 girls in the veg patch
& at the gates, I climb + jump back in.

Heathrow photo tales (post 1 of 3).

2012-01-23T07:23:00.001-08:00

Early this morning I returned from the Grow Heathrow 'artists residency' called Resistance is Beautiful. It was a fantastic week on a remarkable, beautiful and thought-provoking squatted site, with interesting, diverse and 'full-on respect' people, and I did various drawings and activities that I am writing up on paper now.

In the next post I will feature scans of my drawings, and the 3rd one will be a walk+write psychogeographical ramble I did yesterday.

There's talk of a shared tumblr being set up which is here, and in the meantime, here is a photo diary of my week down south :

I got the train down on Monday - passing Durham (above), & Ferrybridge (below)

Walking south from the nearest station, signs of resistance (literally) appear as you approach Sipson village, which will be ruined by the proposed 3rd runway for Heathrow airport, and is already suffering from the effects.

Having a bit of an explore of the area before I went on site, a flock of lapwings flew over my head (later in the week, I interrupted a meeting to shout 'lapwings!' when they passed again!)

One of the home-made houses on site (squatted land, previously used as a dumping ground, now being converted back into a growing site, green and fertile).

Tuesday, I went for a dusk walk to see the areas east and south of the site, that I had not yet walked through. The rather different aesthetics of transport infrastructure:

And the village of Sipson's location within it.

Next to the squatted site, which once was a vinery, full of glasshouses, there is a much more recently abandoned garden centre (ruined by the airport expansion). We explored, and it was a quite powerful experience, triggering ideas of band performance, videos etc.. On the day of our 'opening', we decided to stick to the area already being transformed, but if there's some derelict or waste land near you, I do recommend you explore it!

This here's Ruffian, one of the 'artists' on site. He likes to chew wood.

Postering for the exhibition/open day on Saturday.

The squatted site is extensive, with much of it reclaimed by nature - these 10-foot brambles are actually inside the old vinery greenhouses.

Ex-battery chickens on site - one died of natural causes while we were there.

Some of the paintings and thoughts-in-process we worked on during the week:

They were displayed in this greenhouse, which is the most restored and lived in (an insulated kitchen & lounge is through the door at the end). When Grow Heathrow moved on site it was all smashed up and full of trash. Bit by bit they restored the panes and made it liveable. It's a remarkable place now.

The residents installed a wind turbine on the Sunday, and by the end of the week were pleased to find it powering their batteries successfully.

Saturday's open day: Rose painted at the front entrance as she welcomed visitors. Note the car seats, remaining from when the previous landowners used to scrap cars on the (greenbelt) site.

Neighbours and friends eating pizzas made in the clay oven.

Conversations held in one of the old glasshouses of the 'back lands'.

The front gate.

Some guerrilla gardening in the village to end the day, as soundtracked by our on-site band.

Called the Dumpstarz, they created 2 songs during the week, and here did us one last performance as it got dark, getting the crowd to bang on every piece of bangable piece of trash they could find.

More to come!

Why I hate artists.

2012-01-06T11:08:00.000-08:00

Why I hate artists.

Today I visited the Turner Prize shit at the Baltic and was predictably underwhelmed into a highly annoyed attitude. But that's not what this post is about. (Everyone knows that that side of the Saatchi-Turner-YBA artworld is pathetic, and the outrage and headbanging about it is plenty well enough rehearsed already without me adding to it. Even shit careerist uninspired soul-dead 'artist' fakers think the Turner Award is pants, and it's so off the radar of most decent DIY folk that it can safely be ignored.)

No, what I want to write about is more why my friends who are artists are shit. Why decent well-meaning thoughtful artists are hateful. And a second disclaimer – this doesn't mean I don't like em, admire what they do, wanna be more like them etc.., it's just something that sits in me like an evil goblin and I want to let it out for a bit.

An artist can be amazing. An artist can produce beautiful or thought-provoking or interestingly disturbing or enjoyably fun work. Great stuff. Go for it.

Artists (plural) however are scum.

For a start, they are scum because they call themselves artists. What the hell is an artist? As a label of praise for somebody ('you are a real artist') it is clear and fine. As a name given retrospectively to someone who produced art you value, yeah that's probably alright too, so long as you can justify it. But as a category of work. As a self-appointed monicker. As a badge of status, a claim to inclusion in a certain subculture, a declaration of independence from the everyday run of mediocrity? No.

You are just as insipid, thoughtless and uinspired as me and my mum and my neighbour. Sometimes. Calling yourself an artist doesn't mean you haven't wasted the day pottering in your room. I waste a lot of time pottering in my room. I don't claim it is part of my art, even if in some way it is 'developing my practice'. It's different if you are working on a technique, training, working on some niggle or improving something. That is a great use of time, and I wish you more of it. But that's the 'craftsman' side of art that artists do not value. Artists are not into arts and crafts. Artists are into a funding stream in which they get to wear the hat of 'valued artist' who then, at their convenience, drop a few inspired twinkles of their artistic sense down to us and get paid 'artist rate'. They even have tax codes and advisors and careers networks to service them.

Put it this way: I know what a graffiti artist is. I think it is good that certain people get sufficiently recognised for their efforts and their abilities by fans of the form to be labelled as graffiti artists.

I know what a writer is, it's someone who's written something (interesting this one: it's past tense only. If you call yourself a writer and you haven't written anything then you're not, you're 'trying to write' or something equally humble). I know what a painter is, it's someone who paints. An etcher, a chainsaw artist, a photographer, these are all accurate labels for a certain type of activity, of gained skill and experience, and a useful description for the kind of thing that person can do. The artform is intrinsically linked to the tools used and the expertise and awareness of a skilled craftsman (& no it doesn't need to be 'useful').

Live art, conceptual art, experimental art.

You can be a live artist in my book if you've done live art that people reckon yeah, that was live art. Same for the others, and experimental is good, more experiment please.

But if a graffiti artist and a performance artist and a mixed media daubing&sculpting artist sit on a row of seats and recognise each other as 'artists' then something has shifted and has gone wrong. Unless those seats are at the jobcentre or in the doctor's and they are just recognising each other as people who do creative stuff, perhaps prioritise their art over cash and other things. That form of recognition is amazing. But I would say that quite often, if you found yourself sitting on that row of seats and you happened to find a way of having a deep conversation with your neighbours, you'd find everyone there has some outlet for creativity and an aesthetic or playful art of their own. Strangers I've met in cafes and the public library have shown me their poetry; explained what they're trying to learn with photoshop; and revealed to me aspects of the architecture of this city that they adore. Because people are artistic (there may be exceptions), and lots of us manage to gain the time and the confidence or bloody-mindedness to try and develop our inklings into something more, something we want to share.

Artists are scum because they think they are different than these people. Different than people. And I'm not talking outsider or naïve art either, nor the platitudes that 'everyone is an artist' which is so frequently followed by 'I myself, however, deserve to be funded to do MY art'.

Have you ever seen those adverts for an event, exhibition, a funded project, a 'residency' or some such, which is titled 'Call to Artists' or something similar? It is phrased in grand, inspiring terms: “this project is open to artists from the North East”, “suitable for young artists with an interest in”, “artists from Durham and Sunderland will be showing the work produced during”, “looking for an artist to take a lead role in”. Most issues of the Crack have an example, and I'm sure if you join the artists' newsletters and email networks you'll see far more of them than I do. But I doubt you've got more angered about them than I have. Because if there's one thing that's inspired me (in a bad way) to write this rant, it is these adverts and their casual use of the word 'artist' as if it's an OKAY term to use. And they are also a case where the nicer the project, the more inclusive the call to art, the more collaborative and down to earth they are, the more insulting I find them.

Let me explain what I mean by that: if I somehow stumble across some advert for a conference or exhibition in, say, Hamburg, aimed at “artists working in any field” but which is clearly exclusive, dripping with prestigiousness, then as a normal person I straight away realise oh that isn't for the likes of me. It's for people who've slimed their way into some inner circle of society that I not only despise, but am so far distant from I don't even recognise. My day-to-day blinkers take over and I don't even see it. They can all die for all I care – I genuinely wouldn't mind. The art ads that annoy me far more are the ones phrased more at my level. And by my I don't mean 'me a small aspiring artist'. I mean 'me a person who's interested in stuff'. When I see these and start thinking 'that sounds interesting' I suddenly get hit with this word 'artist' and I get the red mist. I have been known on more than a few occasions to get my pen out my pocket and cross out the word 'artist' to replace it with the word 'person'. Not 'artists', 'people'.

If only 'artists' are invited to join in with a cool, fun way of interacting at some public site (an example that comes to mind is a derelict house in Byker ripe for some temporary 'transformation/installation'), then only those who have chosen, internally, to consider themselves 'artists not people' will go. If you have not appropriated artist status for yourself, and you see that ad, then the use of the word artist is an insult and a fuck-off and you are not invited.

So do not invite artists to get involved. Invite people to get involved.

Those who are artists will progress their career by getting to know people who can send money, contacts, prestige and access their way. For some this is only a sideline to their main practice, or so they think. But if they are entirely outside the networking circles and gravy train of the art world, then they are either already rich, already hugely specialised & well regarded, or more likely failing and lost. So an essential element of being an artist is schmoozing, turning up to your friend's opening, saying the right things over drinks, and getting your name out there as someone who will take on that kind of commission, etc... This is a poisonous and often depressing part of the life, for which any individual artist need not take the blame. It's because we live in a fucked up capitalist, rich-say-what-goes world, that uses social mechanisms to weed out and train fresh talent to serve it. But what artists ARE to blame for, and do deserve the occasional globule of spit for, is treating this networking part of their social world as the PRIMARY or preferred or superior world. Parties in galleries are okay, maybe, live performance even better, but look around and is it the same narcissistic and vulpine faces? Has a partial clique become a full clique? If so, then you are once again raising a big fuck-you to the city you live in. And next day you'll tell yourself that this city owes you something back? What for? Being a prick? Be a prick by all means but don't then consider it JUSTIFIED because you're [wait for it], because you're an 'artist'.

Today I went through town with two artfiends from Middlesbrough, eagerly looking for what's going on. We visited 5 art galleries: venues which are windows onto the street, a place where artists (or people doing art) display and, hopefully, engage with the public.

The Baltic, set in a scenic spot where Gateshead used to be. Ignoring the Turner shit, there were 2 big floors of big art. Both relied on projected film as the main medium. One was a bloke pissing about dressed as a baby at Burning Man festival in Nevada. Nothing wrong with that, it's what people Do at the Burning Man festival in Nevada, but what did he as 'artist' contribute? Funding for himself and his mate to do the festival thing, and then to share what they got up to with the public, leading to huge prestige for which future funding and future prestige will come piling. The gravy train. All profit accumulates to the artist. The better floor was about the bureaucracy and waiting involved in visas etc.. in Pakistan. A fine video, quite beautiful to watch the waiting people's faces, thankyou for making it. But even here, in the GOOD example, it is the people in the film, the set-up accessed by the artist, the scene revealed by the film, that is the really interesting thing and beautiful/challenging etc.. So I hope the artist does not now present herself as 'the artist' who 'owns' that footage, and that effect, because she was only one participant, the one directing the camera and the one receiving the pay and the prestige. She, and you Mr Artist, had better not forget that the art does not belong to her, it's just her edit of it that's gaining the bucks. Payment received for effort put in, fair enough - like a photographer selling his shot of the Tyne Bridge, it's his craft at photography (and photoshop) and his effort at framing it and flogging it that gets paid for. But it's nothing more 'special' than that.

The Side Gallery. Perhaps my favourite gallery in the toon, being the fuddy duddy old man that, increasingly, I am. Amazing historic photos of Afghanistan plus recent ones that suffered a little by comparison, except for the truly wonderful richly-photographed display of the anti-Soviet uprising, as displayed in a museum over there. It's worth popping in just to see that exhibit. The best part of the recent photographer's work was actually the film in which he explained what it was like being over there. I keep denying to myself that this horrific human and environmental disaster is being forced through year on year in Afghanistan, so I am grateful to the old leftiness of the Side for reminding me of it. But while it wouldn't have been possible without the photos, in terms of impact, for me the issues won out over the form.

The New Bridge studios / gallery / waste of space. This has been there for ages now. It is full of young hip and happening 'artists'. It is in a fantastic public location, directly opposite the public library in the centre of town with giant glass streetlevel walls. And every time but one that I have walked past, it has presented another of those giant 'fuck-yous' to the public walking past. There is more of a public service delivered to the city by the average mobile phone shop than has been delivered by this waste of space. I'm sure it's all very fine for the people who use it, no doubt developing marvellous things and hanging out with such funky fellows. But the ground floor has, aside from one party, one gig, and one short-run exhibition, presented to the non-artist world nothing but empty, white or building-work style rooms. This offers a daily argument for why arts funding should be cut (which I am not, incidentally, an advocate of). Have I missed something? Admittedly I'm only in the city every single week of my life, so perhaps there's been surprise 'come join in', 'ooh look at this' things that I've missed, but I think not. If you know of more that goes on there, then you are probably an artist, and wonderful an individual as you may be, your kind needs to get a grip.

VANE – we just went in for a laugh really. An A4 blu-tacked piece of paper said VANE on the outside of the building. Upstairs there were a few more A4 blu-tacked pieces of paper, and empty rooms, some of which were locked, for variety. And it's another massively expensive city centre space.

We went for a coffee in the Laing. A nicer room for chatting than your average coffee shop, and we loved the room full of schoolchildren's responses to Mervyn Peake. A very suitable provincial gallery for its location, that makes all the right efforts to be accessible. Two thumbs up for the Laing, but I am not my mum and dad and I do want something a bit more involving and challenging in the city. Something a bit more DIY. And right now I cannot find it except on the street (literally), often through interactions with strangers at bus stops and on the walk back from town.

Shall I go on? Perhaps this is long enough to exasperate you as much as me.

Summary:

If a child tells you 'you're an artist' you are allowed to smile and feel happy.

If you see an advert in which “artists” are invited to contribute to some group exhibition or event, and you don't feel excluded, you are probably a bit of a knob.

You can be less of a knob by doing creative stuff with normal people.

Footnote 1: Pictures taken from the Laing, various schoolchildren's responses to the Mervyn Peake exhibition.

Footnote 2: I am doing my first so-called 'artists residency' this month (albeit unpaid and on a squatted piece of land down Heathrow way), and put in my first ever application for funds as an 'artist' back in Autumn, so the issue of naming people as artists has become more prominent for me.

Diary sketch of the Luddite walk

2012-01-03T06:36:00.001-08:00

Winter Solstice : Interviews with three people who mark it.

2012-01-02T06:03:00.000-08:00

These 3 interview responses explain why 3 people in Newcastle celebrate solstice.

I really like them so I thought I would share them now, rather than wait for them to appear in the zine that will be coming out in Spring. (The zine aims to explore the meaning of the pagan year - I don't have a name for it yet).

The first person:

What did you do on winter solstice this year?

Me and some friends created our own ritual day. We firstly gathered some evergreenery from the nearby woods and came back and made an altar emblazoned with candles, the greenery and lovely damp twigs covered in lichens and mosses that were revealed by the falling of the leaves and that jumped out at us in all their bright green finery. We all like dancing so put on a bit of music and danced around together, then we did some hindu chanting then got the tarot cards out and shared our present moment issues and future hopes. Then as it finally got dark we each had a candle set before us and I invited us to share something about the year, or any gifts the dark had given us, each spoke in turn then snuffed their candle out until we were enveloped in the glorious dark. Then after a time I lit the main candle again to herald the (slow) return of the light. We then shared what we hoped and dreamed this light might bring and anointed our heads with glittery scented water to symbolise spring and sunshine! Then we drank a fair bit of alcohol and ate a massive dinner.

What influenced or inspired you to mark solstice in this way?

Ceremony and ritual can help to simplify and relax in the midst of the complexity and hubbub of our electronically infested lives. I have an ever deepening connection to nature which is my inspiration and to readily mark the turning of the year is clarifying and helpful. For example it is darker and I do feel sleepier so why fight it? Winter always ushers in a sense of interiority and reflectiveness. It is imperative for me to honour this deep and natural link rather than gloss it over with internet use and buying stuff. And also I LOVE the dark and yearn for it in our orange light polluted world so I guess this is a potent celebration for me. As there is no clear tradition as such to follow that is unified or has wider community endorsement we have a lot of freedom to create which rituals we want and pull from whichever cultures we want, so the ritual was essentially a mish mash of elements that basically was tailored to suit us.

3. Why celebrate the solstice/what makes this particular time of the year worth marking?

As said because it is at a clear turning point of the year when it's darkest...because the darkness is deliciously special and healing and needs to be honoured...rituals and gatherings are nurturing especially in this cold weather when people get all snotty and a bit mopey, it helps clarify, gives direction, meaning, a sense of, “this comes with winter, I am not alone”, rather than the isolation of, “I am a manic depressive”. Helps people reach out and share, rather than close off and mope. Also, the solstice is like the real christmas to me and that is where my heart is, though i love meeting up with my family and sharing the usual presents and eating etc too.

The second person:

What did you do on winter solstice this year?

Each year at the time of Solstice I am working up at Kielder Water with friends, and each year we have some kind of fire ritual. This year, our work had actually finished on the day before the longest night, so some people had had to go, but 3 of us stayed up especially, and the other 2 got their partners up so we were 5 people in total. We had candles in jars and went walking through the dark wood to a quiet spot where you can get down to the lake on a slipway. There was quite a wind and we had trouble keeping the candles going, but it was a magical sight following the bobbing jar along the path, and it was only once we'd climbed fences and reached the slipway that the last candle failed. Then it was just the darkness, a glowstick, and, for a little while, Susan spinning her fire poi. The others wrote down some things they wished to leave behind, and burnt them. And they shared things they wished to keep and see flourish in the new year. I went into the lake in the dark up to my knees, and that was as much as I could stand! Then we cleared up some smashed glass and took the dark walk back to our cabin to eat chestnuts!

2. What influenced or inspired you to mark solstice in this way?

I personally like to mark the four solar points of the year (solstice and equinox), and also the cross quarter days (beltane etc..), to retain my connection with the seasons and the planet's other life-forms, and also to enable me to have a moment of pause and reflection. The winter solstice is the point that is easiest for me to do this, because I am always in the same place with sympathetic friends, so the night-time ritual lets me remember what I was doing last year, and it helps me realise that this is the darkest moment, and it is emotionally strengthening to be able to share this time with people. Over the last 7 years we have burnt straw bales; jumped over fires; hung burning things from trees; pushed out a little wooden boat aflame onto the waters and watched it bob out beyond visible distance; and last year with the strong ice I was able to build a fire directly above the lake and walk around it making my commitments and working through my thoughts. So we've kind of made up our rituals as we've gone along, and what we do varies each year according to who is there.

I don't know exactly where the different ideas come from, but the two most important elements are to me the fire (as a kind of sympathetic magic- it is the fire of the sun that we wish to return to bring us summer, so we call it back with an earthly fire), and the marking of the changeover (until now, the light has been reducing, and this moment is the fullest extent of the dark: it is very important to me to recognise this, to realise it, and a ritual is a helpful way to support and fix this realisation and recognition in my mind). I also have to be outside when the clock strikes 12, but that's just habit! – to see and feel the sky and the weather.

3. Why celebrate the solstice/what makes this particular time of the year worth marking?

One thing about solstice for me is to realise and remember why humans get so superstitious – whatever our scientific and unthinking expectations (that of course summer will return and of course the year is cyclical ), this is a moment of awe and thinking “shit! What if the sun never came back? Please come back!” It reminds you that we are entirely dependent upon a wider nature, that our survival and all these edifices we build are founded upon a hope. Hope that the planet will keep supporting us, with sun, heat, fertility, life. In my opinion this hope is the deepest root of religious thoughts. And during the past, the vast majority of the time that we humans (and other animals) were on the planet, this was the time to realise that not everyone was going to make it to next year – is there enough food in store, enough animals, enough health, will our shelter hold us together and is our community strong enough that even though some of us won't make it, our group will survive till summer? So it's a pretty serious, grave moment too. And so perhaps it's an honouring of our ancestors to continue to mark it. A way to step out of the day-to-day headlong rush of this and that, and to connect with those ancients, to connect with time itself!

The Third Person:

What did you do on winter solstice this year?

Started by making my way to cow hill with my son where we met a a couple of friends, their daughter and my brother. We had a very small bonfire and watched the sunrise. We sang and chanted some sun songs, some of us danced and once the sun was up we sat around the fire as it burned down and had hot chocolate/coffee/herbal tea. I said a bit about winter solstice, my son explained about how it was the shortest day and we all talked about our plans for the year to come. We heard the siren of a fire engine and joked that it was for us. about 20mins later three firefighters trekked up the hill, water backpacks and all, closely tailed by two out of breath police officers. The fire was nearly out by this point, but we were told to stand back whilst they put it out with the hose pipe (children excited as allowed a turn). Somebody had reported us, so five adults and two 4yr olds warranted this 5 man rapid response unit. It was a beautiful morning and the officials soon buggered off so we finished our hot drinks and went on our way.

My son and I went home to be with Joe (partner/father) and had a lovely solstice breakfast and a house ablaze with fairy lights. We exchanged gifts and spent the next few hours playing and making sweets for the evening party.

The evening was the party that my family has held for the last 9 years or so. We have family and friends around at my mother's house. Many people bring something to eat - at least there is always a good meal provided. We have a ritual that follows more or less the same course each year. This year I was master of the ceremony so to speak, and lead us through blowing out our candles in turn as we let go of something from the year past. We were then left in darkness apart from the large candle burning in the middle of the circle - I said a few words about letting go and also about light always remaining, dawn coming - we sat quietly and then went round one by one and lit our individual candles from the centrepiece and spoke aloud a hope for the year to come. Once the room was again ablaze with lights we burst into a hearty round of 'deck the halls'. After this small homemade gifts were distributed and appreciated and people chatted and appreciated each other's company - some of us only see each other once a year at the solstice party and it is always a lovely evening.

What influenced or inspired you to mark solstice in this way?

The evening solstice party has been family tradition for the last decade and aims to do something different from the usual commercial christmas rubbish. The ritual can feel quite meaningful and I enjoy the conscious time I spend reflecting on the year gone and to come. The Sunrise was a new thing for us this year and I loved it! Love fires, singing with friends, watching the sky. I love to feel connected to the environment and to the people around me, and times like the winter solstice can help me by providing a focus.

Why celebrate the solstice/what makes this particular time of the year worth marking?

See above! And I would add, winter solstice is, for me, a time of hope. Midwinter, and the lengthening of days that follows is a vivid representation of rebirth and renewal. I find the solstice dates to be a more meaningful measure of time, years passed, than the new year of dec 31st/jan 1st. Love to party then too though! Find wintertime an important time for celebration and socialising, and winter solstice is for me a very special time of year.

"A Toast to the Luddite Martyrs" - Spen Valley Tracing

2011-12-30T13:27:00.001-08:00

On the 28th of December I met up with a guy I'd not met before called Richard Holland, who is running the Luddite Bicentenary website and trying to organise commemorative events with various local, radical, literary & academic groups.

It was a great winter's day, which began with a visit to the site where a statue to the Luddites will be erected soon:

Next we walked down to the landmarks associated with one of the gits of the time, Hammond Roberson:

Hammond Roberson is buried in the Tory Anglican church he had built with his own money. He was one of the anti-Luddite establishment figures, who interrogated the dying after their attempt on Cartwright's Mill at Rawfolds. It was believed he tortured them rather than let their wounds be treated.

Roberson's church stands out on its hill, as does his house above the poorer housing of the area. It felt symbolic that we walked past a jobcentre to get from one to the other.

Over the railway too, which was not yet built in 1811, and by 2011 has been 'unbuilt' by others who think only of money, and nothing for the social fabric.

Then onto the footsteps of the good guys:

The Shears pub, well-known Luddite haunt. With a great Yorkshire chippy over the road. From there we walked down the hillside to the Spen river where Rawfolds Mill used to stand:

This was our route.

The Mill burnt down a few years after the Luddite attack, but the Millowner's name still adorns the street on the industrial estate where it stood.

Next, to Hartshead church, where the Bronte sisters' dad used to preach (after Roberson), and where Luddites who died from their injuries in the Rawfolds attach were (legend tells us) secretly buried at night, just near the entrance:

In affectionate remembrance of the Luddite Martyrs, whose bodies may well be interred here:

We then drove down to the Three Nuns pub (by Kirklees Nunnery, where Robin Hood is reputed to be buried).

Near there, the Dumb Steeple marked the spot where hundreds of Luddites gathered on the night of 11th April with weapons and determination to attempt their biggest target yet. This was the area where they had already prevented new gear being installed, where the devastating effects of machinisation would be felt most cruelly, and where the biggest target yet to be attempted was to be found. Men came from all over, gathered here, and marched on Rawfolds Mill. We came to salute them!

Finally to Huddersfield, with this the pub that Luddites would drink, and at which Mellor was given his alibi by various people. But the 'justices' did not believe them, and had him killed in York.

We also explored some of the yards where the cloth workers used to work, and the barracks where 1000 soldiers were imposed upon the town. The Luddite movement did not fail : it was outgunned, outnumbered, outresourced, overpowered by the forces of capital and state.

There were no local history books available in Huddersfield to remember its Luddite history, but I found some on my dad's shelves, and that night I was inspired enough to look up the references to the movement in Charlotte Bronte's work:

No General but Ludd means the poor any good.

letters continue to rock!

2011-12-16T05:14:00.001-08:00

I have had a rather rubbish December, very lazy with most days a sleep in, and a serious lack of direction. But i declare this mid-December slump over as of today! The snow's landed in Newcastle and the birds have come in off the moor (there's a crow sat in front of me now, perched above a chimney which I bet is blowing nice warm air up its bum feathers).

One thing which I cannot rate enough is the relief I've got from writing picture letters, and from receiving lovely post. It seems that every SINGLE day, I've had some fanzine or letter or bundle of something lovely sent to me. Here's one of the CD listings from Sarah Mixtapes which arrived yesterday:

As I've mentioned in a previous post, for me the use of pictures has let me get far more personal and into my thoughts than I would manage in a words-only letter. It'd be a bit much to pour your heart out to someone as if they're your teenage diary, but if it's arranged around pics, it's externalised in a more removed, comfortable way. And it's let me vent my angst.

So today I feel more alert than I have on other days, and I'm getting busy sending out zines and diaries to people, tidying my desk and getting ready for a more active engagement with the world than I managed in December.

And no matter how little I've 'achieved', I've at least spent time contemplating my days - a luxury that not everyone manages.

Pagan Survey Project

2011-12-15T14:57:00.000-08:00

As people who know me may have noticed,
I have a lot of opinions,
not all of which I seek to generalise to the whole population.

Some of these are to do with the earth
and the meaning of existence
and how we're connected to things beyond our self.

Not the kind of opinions you can coerce other people into sharing,
so I will certainly do no ramming down of throats.

But after a mind-refreshing bath
(see previous post about free-ness)
I have an idea of how I'd like to do a zine project about it.

It will be linked to this city and its environs,
it will be structured according to the seasons,
and it will be out by Beltane / Mayday.

I already have a few pieces written,
of some of my thoughts and adventures,
but this post here is to announce:

I am going to dip my toe back
into the old practise of asking other people
what they think, and feel, and do.

So don't be surprised if you get an email from me,
and don't panic that I'm getting all religious on your ass.

Light-hearted and downbeat answers are fine,
and they will be to questions about how you
like to celebrate, or have sometimes done something
at certain times of the year.

That's kinda it
Let's share some things.

Who do you talk to about love?

2011-12-06T09:08:00.001-08:00

I'd be interested to know. If you haven't someone, then it becomes a rather taboo subject.

I don't mean necessarily declarations of overwhelming love or the classic image of a girly heart-to-heart drowing in tissues and wine and all that shit. But there is a powerful part of our imaginations, our experiences, emotions and hopes and maybes and what-does-it-means that I'm labelling here as the things of love. Old loves and flirtations and possibles and alternatives and probably nots included. How do you share those personal thoughts or fancies without it going all heavy and weird.

Well I found a solution which I found really satisfying last week - I put it into some illustrated letters (of which the pics here are excerpts).

And it HAS seemed to have worked for me in exercising & exorcising some things, and I hope I don't weird out the people who I wittered on about it to. There's something so satisfying and relieving about putting pen to paper and writing - or in my case slowly doodling with words thrown in - about something on your mind, which you aren't yet sure how to express. By expressing something in-the-moment onto paper, you've removed that anxiety or uncertainty or whatever it was - the itch, maybe. And by being a letter - a thing shared - you avoid this becoming a lonely and an isolating experience. So thanks to the two recipients of my latest involved, self-obsessed and ultimately rather vague and indefinite ramblings. You helped me think some heart things through.

And a letter is a place where, as well as playing with statements and sentences (which itself is I think the main source of relief), you face yourself and your experiences and remember. So I remembered times from a year or so back, remembered how I felt then, and how I felt the morning before, and how I'm feeling now - something you're not always conscious of until you've written about it and you realise if the words and the pace and the definitiveness of what you've written sit well. Often there's a second stream of self-consciousness that follows on that which goes onto paper, and which you don't need to share with the letter-receiver, but you wouldn't encounter if you hadn't written to them. I am the better for that too.

Finally for this blog post, evidence from pete hindle that even short illustrated letters are FUCKING COOL. Like this postcard, which I hope he doesn't mind me transmitting to the web servers of california or wherever blogspot gets its servers hosted from:

Write postcards, people. If you're not sure who to send them to, send them to ME!

Last call for Opinionated Geordie Monsters Number 5!

2011-11-28T03:15:00.001-08:00

Deadline for Geordie Monsters reviewing local bands, national bands touring locally, drunks singing in the pub, or the sound of the voices in your head, is December 1st!

Anyone can draw a monster, and everyone gains something from live music, so get out your pencils, give your auntie a felt-tip, and let rip with some opinion of what that band sounded like & how it made you feel. Was it a good-looking audience, did they smell fresh, were you happy to be in their company, or did you feel nauseous and that your soul was draining out through your feet? Tell us, share it, be an opinionated geordie monster!

- Email your review to oldglen at gmail.com or post to 42 Curtis road, NE4 9BH

I am now tweeting, one-per-week-day, Opinionated Geordie Monster Reviews from the past year (thanks to Andy Waugh for the suggestion). So follow @mrmrduckett if you want to see what you've missed on paper.

And here's an update of the bands so far reviewed by geordie monsters, adding to the list begun here:

Issue 3

That Fucking Tank
Scragfight
Witches' Revenge
Lani Singers
Roma Dance Troupe
The Levellers
The Wonderstuff
No Fit State
Milky Wimpshake
The Gospel According to Jonathan Lee
Z'ev
Silo Portem
Please
Beards
Design a Wave
Plug
John Maus
The Turing Test
John playing fiddle
Sea of Bees
John Grant
Sarabeth Tucek
Sufjan Stevens
D.M.Stith
Low
Sleeping Dog
Gordon McIntryre
Withered hand
Nev Clay
The Folk Trail
Toyger
Polarsets
Motion Tourist
Tomahawks for Targets
Lanterns on the Lake
The Mountain Goats

Issue 4

'Some dude with some toys'
Newcastle Community Green Festival
Ben Howard
The Travelling Band
Ovingham Goose Fair
Winter North Atlantic
Emily Portman
Rae
Brass band on the Carlisle-Newcastle train
Sea of Bees
Simpleswan
Skylark Song
Jamie Ball, North Terrace acoustic night
Irish Folk Session, Cumberland Arms
Beauty Pageant
Richmond Fontaine
Caves
ONSIND
Sundials
Fathoms
Josef van Wissem
Richard Dawson
Hapsburg Braganza
Blackbeard's Tea Party
Unwelcome Guests
The 255s
Milky Wimpshake
Tide of Iron
Young Liar
Jessica Lamb
Redesfest
Shonen Knife
Pale Man Made
Silver Fox
The Low Anthem
Here Comes Good Sailing
Galtres Festival (Eureka Machines, Littlmores, The Fear. The Summits)
Willy Mason

A rant about freeness : what the Bath does to me part 1.

2011-11-21T05:08:00.000-08:00

The Bath:

Last night, having got back from Kielder Water and a weekend in the outdoors, I had a bath and my mind raced. I don't think it's that bathtime gives me NEW thoughts, but it can give me a rocketing new perspective on my old ones. If I could type in the bath then you might've got a 5000 word essay about my thoughts, my self-justifications, my prejudices and why I think I am what I am and why that is right. So maybe it's better that I don't type in the bath, and the sediment I'm left with now is just a fraction of what I've thought - but it's glorious because it gives me two things that I often feel malnourished for: a sparkling clear refreshedness, and confidence/backbone/certainty. So there are 3 things that, after a good sleep like now, I feel like ranting about on a regular basis. I'm gonna rant about the first one now - free-ness - and the other two on another day, probably after another bath and another good sleep (the topics are 'why I hate artists', and 'howcome I'm so shit with money').

The Thanks:

After my last blog post, which was declaredly in a bad mood, I had a few very supportive and very kind responses, on email and even by phone. This was a happy surprise for a few reasons - our phone and internet have only just been fixed so the sound of the phone ringing is one of them, but also it's a fillip to know people read your thoughts on a blog, that they care enough to respond, and that it's people who you personally have a lot of respect for, and are much better at certain things than you are. But nonetheless, I'm gonna disagree a bit with these friends, and beyond them with 'the way that things are done', and possibly with 'how I'm gonna do things in future'. Because I am actually quite proud of the way that I've been doing things, and I have got stuff out of it that is incomparable, that is life-affirming, that I recommend, and that is probably linked to 'why I hate artists' and 'howcome I am so shit with money'.

I print my zines and things and I give them out for free.

When I was in regular work 2 years ago - regularly and reasonably paid but psychologically wearing and wearying - I worked out that I was paying £200 a month for zines and similar things (including trainfares down to fairs, postage, printing & wotnot). Having moved out of regular work, I found it hard to stop paying out on these things, so I squandered some of the money passed down by my family, to continue printing my doodles and thoughts and giving them away. I now realise I won't manage to repay this money, so the repercussions of my urges have hit home. And when I've mentioned to those near me that I'm now a bit lost and worried about money, they've given me sod-all sympathy and just don't get why I would have squandered that money. This has made me feel like I'm surrounded by less like-minded people than I used to know, and on low days it makes me think 'what have I got to show for my life', 'where is my house, my kids, my career and my cult record label?' And it makes me think, too, more bitterly, that if people really don't get the thing - that they don't share an understanding of the joy and subversive magic that I've been living off - then what makes them different from my mortgage-taxman-nuclear family-apolitical-topgear watching old schoolfriends (who I also love, by the way, but who are wrong)? Why did I branch off from the socially mandated route of life to hang out at punk gigs, sleep out on hillsides and get my teeth chipped by riot police? Are we alternative types just less successful bankers?

The glorious answer No:

To that last fatuous question we all say no together, hurrah! But why? I don't know your reasons, but I know some of mine. I don't sit, going through my productions, my creations and my voluntary efforts, thinking 'what price can i sell these for?' I don't make friends with people because they can further my career. That poison is absent from my motivations, and so I have preserved the ability to smell it in others - avoiding such people makes the air smell cleaner. I volunteer where I will be with other people on an equal basis, an equal relationship: where together we'll work out some kind of interaction and social happening that is begun from an honest, non-profit-driven, not out-for-ourselves basis. I feel human when I am there. Sometimes bored, sometimes unclear (not gonna pretend that we're ubermensch at the star and shadow), but at home. In the home that we evolved animals should be in. A little beginning of the anarchist future. It may dissipate every day, but it's constantly beginning again all around.

I also work for pay, and hang out with people who are busy converting people's good ideas into brands they can sell, and I know that we can also find nourishing relationships in that capitalist world. But deepdown we all know there's shit going on and we are just surviving in an evil structure. When I work for free, when the door is open, or when I approach somebody in a coffeeshop to tell them something that they find funny and a relief, then i am not just surviving, but I am living. And I need these moments to keep me going. I think we need these moments to remind us that we not living in Metropolis or Thatcher's dark dream, that we are not trapped in our class, that money and education have not stratified us into our correct places in this all-controlled world. We live in a green & blue rock powered by the sun, with more going on spontaneously and autonomously than any fucker will ever know, and when we do things freely, and when we connect with each other through these things, then we have shown that there is more to life than what the bosses and the fascist future-planners can control. We make our world.

Model Two:

If model one is 'make something to sell', then in zine terms, and in the DIY scene, it involves time paying out (for stalls, ads, promotions) in order to make more money later. It involves you sitting at a stall hoping to sell what's in front of you. It involves a lot of time talking about product, promoting your wares, raising its profile and so on.

Model two is what I prefer to do:

- time paying out to get nothing back in monetary terms, but to open up a possibility of an email or comment or piece of post given voluntarily, out of another's good spirit, at a moment of their choosing, not yours. This possibility adds a magic tingle to my life - an unknown other being may, if they choose, reach out to connect with me at some point in the future. This increased possibility could not be paid for and it is what makes my Newcastle feel so special to me. Unpredictable, effusive, from people I simply do not know, with different backgrounds, soundtracks, home settings and eyes - thank you so much to all those of you who have got back to me over the years. In fact thank you to those who didn't as well (why should you?) - I really appreciate that you saw the zine, and so my life brushed past yours. I wonder what you thought of it, but I don't claim it.

- if I sit at a stall, it is because I want to be there. Not because it a place I might make money out of. I don't see new people as potential customers. I see them as unknown possibilities. We might draw together, we might exchange something, we may if we choose to, pay for something. But we are there because of other reasons than the desire to profit out of each other. Thank god!

- when I talk, even if it is about something I have made or drawn, it is because I am interested in it. My conversation can follow my impulses, which can be influenced by anything they want to be. I do not have to steer it towards 'and that's why this is better than that other person's thing', or 'give me money', or 'do you have connections I can exploit', or 'lie, manipulate, rip-off'.

Newspapers are adverts:

The newspapers make money from murders, from scaring their readers that terrorists are coming, that a new disease is probably right now being spread by immigrants. I think this is a misrepresentation of the world, and so I believe that newspapers are full of lies. They cannot avoid it, because they want to sell copy. They want people to pick up theirs instead of the competitors. They increase their profit by showing more tits, more blood, scaring more people, exaggerating violence and denying all the real richness of life. What horrible fuckers they really are.

Free zines, compiled from my diary or from my superfluous opinion, left out on a pub shelf. Well, they may be shit. They can be boring, irrelevant, hard to read, embarrassing. Such failings are things I can live with and get past. I put effort in to avoid them. But I do not have to if I don't want to. And when I pick up another person's free zine, if it is not primarily to promote a venue or an arts funding stream (yes, crack & narc, that is you lot, value you though i do), then I gain something BEYOND the constraints that we so much have to live through. Thankyou also to all those who have written because they CARE about something (with their own minds - I don't include evangelist promotions, because they are generally made by zombies, sorry). Write because you have an idea you feel like writing down. Draw because the pen makes an interesting line across the page. Tell people you found something really cool. Don't try and sell it - it's probably not even yours to sell. Play with materials, join others to share stories, go to a gig because jeezus christ it's good to see people produce noises in front of you, in a crowd of other people alive right now today, and if you leave disappointed, do some introspection and share it. Finally, I would say, don't just share it with people sitting at a computer. Share it with the city you live in. Make it so that somebody who goes into the cafe can look up from their goddamn phone and see, inbetween the advert-flyers, some odd thing made by a stranger. Let them be intrigued and let their mind have some blessed relief from the constant determination of words to make them buy. Don't live in the goddamn 'creative industries' but remember who the fuck you are and just ADMIT we're all creative : then share something of that singularity - who you are, where you live, what you see, how you feel about it...

Some refutable opinions of mine:

An economic view is wrong not because there are flaws in the mechanics and the maths. An economic view is wrong because it is not where life begins, and it is not where the meaning of life will be found, and it is not where we learn and grow and give credit to all those poor old slushy dead organisms who put so much effort into evolving into us. Don't live like you're always after the main deal, don't give up because no one understands you.

Make an artefact, leave it somewhere. Post it to your old schoolfriends. Paste it to the postbox. Print it. Put it next to mine somewhere in Newcastle. I'll be honoured to have your company. And both of us will know that we've been a part of something broader than this same old shit. And even though the day goes past and you (I) have nothing in the bank or necessarily even in our hands to show for it, we know that today we reached out beyond our bedroom and tried to let our imagination touch reality. That story, that image we liked, that memory of the night before - it is SUCH a shame to keep them in. Draw them (won't be perfect), write them (won't sound right), attach them to the city (somebody will rip em down tomorrow). It means living in the present, and even though it doesn't build up a legacy, or accumulate things to claim as your individual private property, it has given to the commons, and it has made this city's cultural(?) life that much richer and more diverse. So I know all the above is pretty easy to ridicule as juvenile self-righteous hyperbole. But I was thinking it anyway. Like I write my diary anyway. And it can be lonely to think and read such things later, and realise no-one ever knew, or ever connected with these things I thought, wrote.

By printing pages of my diary and turning my sketches into free zines, I have gained so much (unquantifiable, unsellable, unmarketable) reward. I would not have encountered this if I had put a pricetag on every thing I print, or drew only what I thought would sell, or rewrote my thoughts to fit in with what the consumer normally likes. So apologies if my voice, ego, idiosyncracies might grate. But when I read yours, I will recognise something of my own existence in them and I shall love you for your honesty. So make free zines.

Inspirations for the rant:

Alex "think that everyone is very respectful but a little bemused by your amazing dedication to giving your work away free!"

Pete on the phone: "you're sowing so much seed but hardly any of it hits the right places to be valued"

Music helping me rant: Grace Petrie

Poster from my teens, still on my wardrobe door, and still my aspiration:

Earlier this month I wrote a related rant on 'we make zines' about why I make things on paper, not on the web:

"Pritt stick, scissors, pens and laying things out on a table is a far more satisfying way to do it, and it matches how I think - I feel at peace when I work that way. Whereas whatever I do on a computer is clunky and dependent on other machines/gadgets/online timings and ways of working. I can only use digital tools when I know (by the hands-on process, above) what I want. So yes a digital photo with the contrast exagerrated, a print-out of some text from a word document, will then get pritt-sticked on somewhere. Sometimes pictures will get scanned. But no, no publisher, photoshop or other intelligent digital process. A good example is the 'wor diary' i do with 3 dozen other people up here, which the printers (I know) would much prefer to be a digital file so it can talk to their machine in a language it understands and not have to go thru their human eyes and fingers, but instead I send them a wodge of variably sized prittstick-heavy papers. Images at http://wordiary.org I s'pose even a photocopier is digital really, though...

The web doesn't really exist. Talking to somebody at a computer is not talking to a person. Things picked up in a pub, from a bus seat, at a friend's house are actual real parts of our world. We are not evolved to sit all day staring and tapping with 2% of our muscles and coordination engaged. It's unavoidable, I know, for work and communication and everything now, but breaking out of this little rut that we've collectively chosen to imprison ourselves in is good. The more overbearing computer drudgery is, the more valuable are the things that help us break out of it. Zines help you do that, especially free ones left in public. I think it's like the case with postcards too - postcards have travelled, emails have not. And any fuckers out there who only advertise their events on facebook, they are missing the beauty and contribution and opportunity that hand-making a poster and sticking it up in a public place gives to society. Our images should be on the walls, they should not be reserved for profiteering adverts and psych-manipulation."

Malta Zine 2 - yikes, could it be my last?

2011-11-16T09:55:00.000-08:00

Feel the drama - I'm skint (& in a bad mood today) and doubting whether I should keep pushing my life onto other people with mass printed free zines. So as I write a post-dated cheque for Malta Zine 2 I'm telling myself "DON'T give it away for free, Mike, at least get money back for it." So it's a quid if you want it, and if not it will also be a store to reappear on stalls and suchlike for years to come. But not left on buses or in pubs this time. Not a world-shattering break, you might think, but for me, free is a part of my philosophy of life and it's a resentment-feeling that I'm left with as I think "no, pound each". (Fellow Raptorcampers will of course get them free).

If you want one, come to the Canny Comic Con on Saturday 10th December at Newcastle Central Library. Many great things will await you there (plus it's free and never happened in Newcastle before and will be a lot of fun, h'ra).

But dammit it makes you feel pleasure to give things away. It makes you feel like you're as bad as them scumsucking ad execs if you try and sell what you do...

5 new zines and plans

2011-11-09T06:54:00.000-08:00

1. Super Street was made with year 9 kids and other interesting people at 'A School' on Westgate Road as part of the Wunderbar Festival, on 2nd November. Haz invited me to join their afternoon lesson on making clothes and making a zine about super heroes, so I ended up spending the whole day there and we did some cool collaborative stuff. The collaborative stories in particular - about what adventures the residents of Super Street got up to - were laugh out loud funny. I printed 20 off on the photocopier at work and gave each participant their own copy the next day, hooray!

2. I also printed - after de-prioritising it for other things - my diary comic of my time at the Galtres Festival in North Yorkshire, which I went to just before Malta. I sent copies to people I met there. [picture also to follow]

3. And as I wait for Malta Zine 2 to come back from the printers, and promote Wor Diary round and about, I'm re-kicking-up-the-bum the coffee shops drawing project that I started in Spring. You are invited to join me in one of the coffee shops of Newcastle to drink some coffee and doodle. It's as simple as that, but my hope is that when all these doodles are stuck next to each other in a zine, they'll provide some kind of portrait of this city. I'm working weekends from now, so I should have midweek times to suit you!

4. The Duckett & Hay 3-panel cartoon is now, after a hiccup when we weren't consider student enough, a regular slot in the Courier. But if my writing partner considers his slide into unprintable filth, this may not last the whole academic year - we shall see!

5. After working the Christmas season at Kielder, I may disappear for a bit. I am spending too much time in the city and it's costly. I think a month or so spent mostly out in Tynedale might help me finally get my anarchist pilgrimage written up, and help me work through some unhappinesses : breaking a rhythm can sometimes help us find a new freedom. If the gods will it to be so.

Wor Diary 2012

2011-10-27T04:29:00.000-07:00

Is made, hurrah! And launched, this weekend! At the Star and Shadow cinema, both Saturday and Sunday as part of the Wor Story celebration of people's history.

Available for £4 from that event, and afterwards from a few other places, most likely the Star & Shadow Cinema (Byker), Travelling Man Comics Shop (Grainger St), and Active Distribution (London), as well as at local DIY & upward-aiming events (such as the Dance for Peace & Solidarity at the Cluny on 9th December).

Drawing the Cinema

2011-10-25T16:02:00.000-07:00

I organised two events this October to link with the Big Draw. Neither was BRILLIANTLY organised, but nonetheless they had moments of great fun and some cool stuff got drawn, in a collaborative style. Here are some pics from the event in the Star & Shadow on 16th October.

Watching in hope from a distance

2011-10-01T13:49:00.000-07:00

Now away from Malta, I've been checking the Raptorcamp updates here to see what is shot, what makes it through safely, and so on.

Today I checked and saw that lesser spotted eagles have appeared on the islanda again. The ones that stopped over when I was there were killed within moments of being spotted. So tomorrow I fear I will check and see these ones are no longer alive. But I offer up my deepfelt wishes that this time they beat the history and the odds and survive. And we will see.

Maltazine 2 : Images

2011-09-25T11:06:00.000-07:00

I travelled by ferry and train and train and ferry from Newcastle to Malta.

I arrived in Valletta a day before Raptorcamp began.

I drew landmarks each time we went out in teams to look for the birds being shot.

I decided to have an adventure, and left Birdlife for the night to go sleep rough, and greet the first sun of the equinox.

The south temple at Mnajdra is perfectly aligned with the sun at equinox, and also at solstice. I was privileged to see it beam over the hill, through the temple's entrance and to the altar.

But the experience was ruined by arseholes like this one shooting in and around the temple complexes.

Malta Zine 2

2011-09-24T10:43:00.000-07:00

In a few hours I shall be returning from Malta, where I have taken part in Raptorcamp - an international volunteering effort to help Birdlife Malta stop migratory birds get shot indiscriminately as they try and pass from Northern Europe to Africa.

I wasn't sure at first if I would make a diary zine like last time, in part because I like to shirk the effort, and also because I wasn't quite sure what angle or story it would really tell. Malta Zine 1 worked, to the degree that it did work, in that it was my first attempt at recording the situation in Malta, so there's a directness and a freshness to my experiences, mostly written (as usual) on the spot, without post-editing. It also had the trip to Gozo and the excitement and sense of achievement that we were getting there - the first time that police enforcement was actually cracking down and pissing off the hunting fraternity, who up till that point felt unassailable on the island.

This time around, I wasn't quite sure where to look: my personal diary? the work of Birdlife Malta? the characters of the volunteers who went there? So I started out by just drawing pictures of clear landmarks, and not particularly trying to make an actual diary account. The first few days I was excitably sociable and didn't give much time to the introspection that usually results in me writing the more coherent stuff. I was really, REALLY glad, to meet characters I had met before, and not so long ago. All ages, a range of nationalities, several of whom I had crushes on, several of whom had brought their husbands/sons/travel partners etc.. So I just doodled the odd tower or chapel.

But I got a lot of love back for the first zine I made - tears even appeared in the eyes of one older man as he said 'that was YOU! that was YOU!' And you can't ignore that kind of thing. I felt really relaxed in the group and I started happily sharing sketches (which I usually don't do), and so I started filling in the gaps to tell a basic, summarised diary account of the camp. This was stage two.

Then I was getting a bit emotionally involved, and without going into details, the usual confusions and doubts that appear when you really like someone but aren't sure exactly what it means or how it might transpire, they unsettled me. I felt a bit more useless on the teams (not having bird knowledge, not catching the bastards in the act), and hit an energy low and lost confidence. This led to me getting a little less connected to the life of the camp and I started to wonder what I was doing the zine for again.

So I decided on an adventure - details in the zine, but it involved sleeping rough and ancient pagan architecture. And the camp supported me - they listened with interest to my harebrained childish whims; they dropped me off and picked me up. I felt welcomed in the fold, and that was good. And perhaps my emotional confusions and attachments of the mid-way lull were not so random after all. So I'm leaving on a high again, and Malta Zine 2 will be on its way to the printers before September is out. It will be free to participants, and a dozen or so extra packaged together with the remaining Malta Zine 1's for anybody interested at future stalls and events.

Malta Zine Two

2011-09-08T04:57:00.001-07:00

I'm off today to Amsterdam, then tomorrow to Brussels and Paris, then overnight to Livorno, from where I'll get a ferry all the way down Italy, past Sicily to Malta, where I'll be taking part in Raptorcamp. It will be similar to the anti hunting camp I joined in with in April (and wrote up as Malta zine 1), and a Malta zine 2 is very likely, although now I've been once, it's a bit like 'the pressure's off' so I may not record quite so much. Info about this here.

In the meantime, I'm starting a 3panel comic in the Courier (Newcastle University's student paper):

Last attempt at a festival.

2011-08-25T14:55:00.000-07:00

First the train was late and I had to miss the Hebcelt festival on the Isle of Lewis. About THAT one I was gutted.
I had to miss Rolling Hills, tickets bought, because old school friends came to visit. That was okay.
Redefest got rained off half way through. But I still had a good day.
Beacons was flooded and cancelled as we were just setting off, and 'Leave me here' cancelled too. That was more dramatic. I got drunk.

Tomorrow morning I'm giving it one last shot, to the Vale of York and then to the North York Moors, (so long as wages appear in my bank tonight, that is). It's like flipping a coin and it landing on tails 5 times, still hoping for 'heads'.

Then the next Opinionated Geordie Monsters comes out - so much for it being the festival edition, ay.

Something to Remember

2011-08-14T10:27:00.000-07:00

After the first announcements of the riots, and asking what had caused it (the BBC wasn't saying at the time, but word was out that it was another street execution by police - the lesson here is when there's unrest in Britain, don't trust the BBC to report it accurately), I didn't pay them much attention. In a grand strategic sense, a battle between consumerism and the state has no heroes for me to root for. Just victims to empathise with.

But since then we've had days of escalatingly bare-faced cheek and an almost psychotic hypocrisy from the professional commentators, media spokesmen and politicians. Scumbags the lot of them, and all so privileged and safe that they thought their looting & their 'criminality' was beyond challenge. So I will remember that injustice, remind myself that it's only the weak and dispossessed who suffer, and also that it's only them who are available to be punished. I quote:

Gerald Kaufman (£43,564 expenses including 4 grapefruit bowls at £540) says 'I condemn the naked greed of these criminals and their taking advantage of their pampered and privileged opportunities ..'

David Wilshire (£160,532 expenses including £100k on a flat 15 miles from his main home)says 'My honourable friend has hit the nail on the head. This is not about ideology, it's sheer naked greed...'

John Healey (£84,562 expenses including £6,194 for renovating his kitchen ) says 'We should understand a little less and condemn a little more,Mr Speaker; only tough action against these feral youths will do...'

Tim Godwin (acting head of Met Police after resignation of Sir Paul Stephenson due to corruption probes and in command during Mark Duggan’s shooting by police officers) criticises ‘the criminality and wanton violence’ involved in the riots.

David Cameron (one time member of the Bullingdon Club Oxford University, alongside Boris Johnson and George Osborne, notorious for its members' destructive binges and drunken vandalism of resturants, churches, bars and other establishmets within the Oxford area) condems the 'pure criminality' of the rioters while agreeing that those who destroy "loot and pillage their own community" should no longer be allowed to live in social housing’.

Boris Johnson (one time member of the 'socially exclusive' Bullingdon Club Oxford University, alongside David Cameron and George Osborne, notorious for its members' wealth, priviledge and gratuitous drunken destructive behaviour) ascribes 'An excessive sense of entitlement" to those who looted.

Nick Clegg (guilty of two acts of arson at the age of sixteen for which he was given community service) stressed a need for an end to 'the needless ... destruction ... the priority ... to punish criminals involved'

Ursula Nevin (mother of two from Manchester), reportedly slept through the riots and did not participate in any way. The 24-year-old wailed in the dock as she was sent to prison for five months by a district judge. It is alleged she accepted a pair of 'looted' shorts from a friend.

Alcohol consumed

2011-08-11T16:29:00.000-07:00

With Beacobs cancelled, I have instead [produced my 'alcohol and that' two pager : ee folloowing post: [ shit i am drunbk as iu try and write this, long live abcchus#]

Morning after notes: Beacobs = Beacons, near Skipton. abcchus = Bacchus. And yes I did vomit. And also I have no memory of writing the above, nor uploading the pictures.

And here are the scans of the pages produced in the scientific experiment:

My festivals have been cancelled.

2011-08-11T16:23:00.000-07:00

The festival that I was going to work at this weekend has been cancelled because the river burst its banks. See here. And so my much-prepared fanzine workshop must now wait till next weeek.

But last weekend's workshop at Redefest went rather well, I think, and produced a very nice, & coherent, collaborative fanzine.

The front cover was done by Sam Redding:

& here's how he imagined the festival if it kept raining as much as it did:

The zine was one half collaborative typewritten story, and one half monster reviews of the music. I got it printed today:

Old booklets found.

2011-08-07T10:11:00.000-07:00

I've been half-arsedly sorting through my room this summer, and amongst the boxfinds are these booklets I never sent (along with a half dozen letters). Now seeing them I love the memories they conjure up, and will send them. Sharing diary/zine things IS a wonderful experience.

Drawing the Cinema - proposal

2011-07-26T12:14:00.000-07:00

The Big Draw takes place throughout the month of October. It aims to get people drawing. I like drawing. So I have a plan that is as follows.

Venue: the Star and Shadow Cinema

Date: Saturday 15th October, noon till 6.

Before the event: cinema and storytelling and gig-goers are all encouraged to doodle and draw things at the venue's events in October leading up to the 15th. These are collected to add to the ultimate fanzine.

Cinema Room: using the projector to cast doodles and live drawing onto the screen.

3pm Drawing the Cinema game: clips from a well-known film are projected. The audience races to scratch out what they see. We then compare notes and the collective output is 'anthologised' into the fanzine.

Bar Room: if they are game, the Paper Jam Collective co-ordinate a drop-in comics workshop on the theme of cinema.

2pm Going to the Movies game: sitting in a big circle round the table, we all begin with a blank strip of paper. To a strict deadline, we draw a page. The bell goes and we pass our page to the left. The next person continues the story and we see what comic tales result.

Dark Room: If they are game, FilmBee (or maybe Blank Sam) run a drawing and developing activity where negatives are scratched or messed with or doodled on to create interestingly textual doodles.

Toilet Room: (prospectively) Toilet Graffiti Wall - a canvas is created inside one of the toilet cubicles, and those naughty permanent markers are brought into play to create filth, angst and mistaken beauty onto the wall. To be kept up for only a limited period.

Office Room: the selected results of all these activities are photocopied to create a collaborative fanzine. Due to the slow speed of our photocopier, this will not be ready during the 'public' part of the day, but participants can leave a stamped envelope to get their copy posted out to them.

Plan for an Irresponsible Use of Alcohol

2011-07-22T07:36:00.001-07:00

Hi, especially to the paperjimjams,

There are plans afoot for a new local comics anthology on the theme of 'alcohol'.

After careful consideration, and overruling the objections of my liver (seconded by the kidneys), I have decided my contribution to this will combine the drinking of drambuie with the write&drawing about it.

I have had some marvellous adventures with drambuie (stonehenge! elderly ladies!) and this will make up the first part of the piece. The second part will probably have gone downhill a bit and it will be a bit experimental to see what comes out on paper.

If you would like to somehow, to some degree, combine your drinking experience with mine, let me know. I shall probably choose an evening of this coming week for the experiment, and the last panel won't be drawn till the whole bottle of juice has gone through my system and out by one of the exits. I'd choose an earlier stage in the evening if I were you.

love Mike

The call-out for 'Alcohol ... and that':

The Paper Jam Comics Collective hasn’t done an anthology in a while.
People have all kinds of exciting projects of their own going on, but we all forgot to keep it real and bust out some team awesomeness in a new ...And That. So, to remedy that, we’re going to ruddy do one!

Having done: miscellaneous, Halloween, ‘You will have to wait’, Robots, children’s comics, Art and History, what’s next? Well, after some discussion, the consensus has fallen on ‘Alcohol’. The fact that the decision was made in a pub had nothing to do with this.

So submissions are open! Usual criteria apply: it’s open to anyone who’s a Paper Jammer (i.e. been to a few meetings at some point), you can do one or two pages, and team ups are allowed and encouraged (in which case you can combine page allocations if you want to do
something a bit longer).

We’re looking to go a bit old-school on this one after the large format extravaganzas we’ve had recently, so it’ll be A5 black and white (well, greyscale), with the cover either b&w too or maybe colour depending on how the Collective finances are looking.

Content: it would be quite a nice linking factor if everyone’s stories could be based on a particular type of alcoholic beverage, so aim for that (but don’t worry too much about it, or what anyone else is doing, we could easily have ‘Gin’ and ‘More Gin’ for example!) Interpret the
theme however you like, keep it vaguely clean (usual Paper Jam tone: a bit of rudeness is permissible but nothing too extreme), and come up with something great.

Reviews from Spring

2011-07-20T16:04:00.001-07:00

I've got a few mentions here and there over the last 6 months. It's interesting to think of yourself in the terms only of people summarising you.

1. Here's from the peg powler exhibition zine back in february:

"Avid supporter of 'paper culture'" ay, yeah I'll go with that.

2. And the footprint zine had me down as producing something 'gorgeous' : I go weak at the knees.

3. Matthew at the 365 zines a year blog reviewed another one of mine, which I won't link to cos it's the personal one that I wasn't publicising around Newcastle. But I will, ahem, quote:
"it could be that with the new year Mike has attempted to concentrate more on the positive things in his life instead of dwelling on the negative. " Not so sure my housemates would agree about that ...

4. And Giz of 'Cheap Toys' wrote up about our chats at this year's London Zine Symposium: [image to be found and stuck in here, guv'nor]

5. Found another, from Autumn, a zine that partly I inspired, which is perhaps the best feeling:

Ah, festival time!

2011-07-13T15:54:00.001-07:00

Finishing some work, I've just rejigged my plans back to 'fuck it why not' and so tomorrow I hope to arrive at Inverness a bit before midnight, and then to Lewis for the Hebcelt festival. It got me looking through my photos for one I really remember & love & cringe at for my full-on pantomime 'alternative youth' look.

I couldn't find that photo, but I did find these, from the glorious hairy days of the nineties. It's still how I think I look from the inside ...

So here's hoping for a bit more of the old me this summer: fluoro beads & sweat, the Levellers, army boots left untied, Devonshire dogs, carnivals and drunkenness.

Summer Festivals

2011-06-29T07:59:00.000-07:00

For those of us staying in the UK, a decent summer is a summer with festivals in it.

So spending the Glastonbury weekend in the house, not even making it to Sedbergh, my imagination panicked at being left indoors when the sun was shining outside, so I did a trawl of festivals and here's my rough itinerary, in case it might match yours. Work, of course, might mean any and all of these may get cancelled, but here's sucking my thumb and holding it up to the wind:

JUNE: meetings, going on strike from my nonexistant job, & camping at Lindisfarne.

JULY
This weekend - sister + nephew visit plus
FRI 1 Winter North Atlantic (gig, Durham)
SAT 2 Klenegan at the Sage
SUN 3 Josie Long & 'bad art' with the peg powler duo (gig, Eaglescliffe)
7th Sea of Bees (gig, Newcastle)
SAT 9th Durham Miners Gala
11th-13th Forest Schools, Riding Mill
14-17 Volunteering at festival on the Isle of Lewis. (Possibly not realistic.)
18-22 possible long distance walk with ex-Mongolian friends
SAT 23, Scotswood Garden Open Day. Alwinton Choral Concert, Cheviots
29-31 Indietracks Festival, Midlands, or Rolling Hills festival, Melrose?

AUGUST
6th Redesfest: drawing/fanzine workshop
7-11 Billingham Folklore Festival
12-14 Beacons Festival, nr.Skipton, fanzine workshop.
20-26 Whitby Folk Festival
26-28 Sunday Galtres Fest, nr.Crayke/York, volunteering.
28 eve - Willy Mason (gig) Band room, North York Moors

SEPTEMBER - would love to start with the End of the Road festival in dorset, purely for the bands, but the money factor should mean i don't go - plus what am I thinking of, spending a festival totaly on my own anyway?
Then 9th Sept off to Malta for Raptorcamp.

Some invitations to contribute, this summer.

2011-06-23T10:24:00.000-07:00

For the next Opinionated Geordie Monsters, I'd like to get a range of festivals covered. ('Covered'? I just mean mentioned from a monsterly direction, really.)

You're the kind of person who could draw a page for Wor Diary 2012: see the guidelines here.

And a simpler ad for wor diary, in case it's new to you:

Bothy EP

2011-06-22T04:56:00.001-07:00

In-between my first bothy zine and the next one, I occasionally go to bothies. So I may collect my notes of these visits into a 'bothy EP' - like a filler between albums, y'know!

Here are the pics of this week's visit to Haughton Green with my friend Birke.

Queen's Crags
(feel like a site of worship - natural libation bowls in the rock & a great sense of place. Queen = Goddess? & higher than the nearby Kings Crags)

The Hoodies of Housesteads.
(Probably my favourite local gods.)

Haughton Green bothy notes.

Queen's Crags.

Housesteads : one of the hoodies.
(because it was drawn so badly first time - the one on the left)

Our route.

Green Fest Story Full Pages

2011-06-06T17:32:00.000-07:00

Hi, here are the full scanned pages for the typewritten collaborative Green Festival story. Hopefully. Digital technology is all going wrong for me this week, maybe in revenge for my analogue recidivism. (just checked: that IS a real word).

Click on the images a couple of times to get them to a readable size.

Green Festival Collaborative Story.

2011-06-06T06:18:00.000-07:00

This year at the Green Festival I took down 2 typewriters (& lots of free strawberry plants), and invited everyone walking past to have a go and make some kind of collaborative story / experience / stream of consciousness. It was great fun, when it wasn't raining, and the resulting 16-page document is posted here.

[This post will follow the same format as the last - snippets followed by the full pages. This is because, lacking now not only a digital camera but also a working laptop, the post is fulfilling the 2nd function of a safe storage place for these pages (in case anyone involved wants to see em). now's you know].

The opening line (page 2):

3: (worth clicking on to see the young boy's thoughts in faint - one thing I cannot reproduce digitally is the impression of inkless lines)

page 4:

5:

6:

7:

8 (my favourite page):

9:

10:

11:

12:

13:

14:

and page 16, finishing the record:

Joining the Folktrail

2011-05-26T01:34:00.000-07:00

A group of folk musicians are walking from Lands End to John O'Groats, playing sessions in the evenings and recording the songs that local singers and musicians bring to them. They're called the 'folk trail'. I joined them for a couple of days as they went through what I consider as my patch, and as usual I drew a comic-diary.

First, I missed my stop on the train and ended up having to walk on the A69 in the dark.

I go to Once Brewed to meet them:

Having driven their van to Bellingham, I choose to meet them on Shitlington Crags (because it's funny):

I visit the place where the Rede joins the North Tyne:

There's a monster review of their gig in Bellingham (& Byrness too):

Next day, I walk with the group, breaking off only to visit Padon Hill:

After the second gig, I walk down the road to stay with friends:

Below are the pages, which can be zoomed in on - if you want to - by clicking on them.

Malta Zine Ready, Monsters deadline approaching

2011-05-16T04:54:00.000-07:00

150 copies of the Malta zine are due in the post tomorrow from the long-suffering footprinters of Leeds. It's free if you'd like a copy - I'll be posting it out then to the people who've left me addresses.
Some representative pages:

And then it's almost time for the third issue of 'Opinionated Geordie Monsters'!

You have 2 weeks to get a picture of a monster reviewing a local band in to me - please! I've missed so many great gigs this last month, I want to live them vicariously thru your review.

Libraries close at Easter.

2011-04-22T10:48:00.000-07:00

I am so disconnected from the working week. How was I to know it was Easter? Seems like every other morning to me.

Anyhow, it means I haven't q.finished my Malta zine, (plus I seem to have lost one page from it at the London Zine Symposium, doh!). But it will rise soon, when the stone of library-reopening-hours rolls away from the getting-round-to-it tomb, (kindly sponsored by the Joseph of Arimathea corporation).

I flew into London in the early hours and was pretty tired thru the symposium, which was packed! It was my first time doing a stall there, sharing with the fragrant peg powler duo, and I was heavily flogging my 10p miss marple zine, (although re-reading it, it wasn't very well done - hey ho, that's what no sleep and doing your symposium zine on the morning of the symposium does for you). I think actually I won't do a stall again for a while - I prefer the perambulatory experience! And selling is something I don't really enjoy, even for 10p. So the Malta zine, for example, will be sent for free to people who took part in some of the same experiences that it describes, and to people who signed up to the 'i'd like one' list at the symposium.

Mini comics day was wonderful, and gets a write up here which I don't need to reproduce. First time I've seen kids and adults making comics on a totally equal basis, and me messing up the photocopying of them on an equally equal basis. Plus Susan printed her first zine there at the start and the canny little library was open and cinema volunteers were joining in so it felt like a proper zine factory, yay!

Also someone kindly notified me they used a picture from the blog for an article here.

The sun is out and my seedlings are slowly growing. I don't have a job but I do plan to start drinking wine now Lent is (kind've) over.

Love,

Malta zine begins!

2011-04-08T02:23:00.000-07:00

My next zine will be all about the nature! Especially the birds passing over Malta - I'm going to write an illustrated diary for the week I shall spend there, as part of Birdlife Malta's SPRINGWATCH programme. This aims to help migrating birds get past the island safely as they head up to us from Africa. Men with guns and shitty politicians kill them, and this year looks like being a depressing year, but we'll see.

Thinking ahead to the Maltese week, and realising that I wouldn't have very much time there to actually draw a zine, I started early! So below are a few scans that will be pages in this zine, which come from my week before Malta, up here in the beautiful north east. So it's Lindisfarne last weekend, and Twice Brewed at Hadrian's Wall during the week.

& don't forget mini comics day at the star and shadow tomorrow! 11 - 5pm, free!

How my camera died.

2011-04-04T08:24:00.000-07:00

Here are the photos that my camera took, after the break:

And here are the photos of the lead up to the break:

So I think these pictures tell the story adequately.

PS: no more photos.

'History' exhibition and launch on Grainger St.

2011-03-21T08:26:00.000-07:00

Today was the official launch of the latest Paper Jam Anthology, 'History ... and that', with music and drinks to celebrate the exhibition at 'Made in Newcastle' on Grainger St.

I contributed a map of Thomas Spence's North East in the exhibition. It features 3 quite unnecessary birds and continues my Spence obsession.

Other Paper Jam members contributed some often quite wonderful things to the exhibition. More info here.
All in all, today was a good day for drawing in Grainger town.

List of bands reviewed by monsters so far.

2011-03-16T06:16:00.000-07:00

OK, some of the reviews are little more than a couple of words, but there's quite an impressive list of monster reviews stacking up.

Incidentally, a reprint with the various mistakes, mis-ordering, unnecessary fillers & repeats taken out of issue 2 will be available from tomorrow for a nominal fee from Travelling Man & Made-in-Newcastle.

Issue 1, October - December 2010
Diane Cluck
Tom James Scott/Richard Dawson/Hapsburg Braganza
Let's Buy Happiness
Bellini
Paul Metzger x 2/Hapsburg Braganza/Phil Tyler
Tim & other people
Spyridoula
Dieter Moebius
Daniel vs the World/ONSIND/Casual Terrorist
No Fit State/Chronicity/NWKS/ONSIND
Casiotone for the Painfully Alonex 2/Withered Hand x 2/John Egdell
Els Pets
Arockalypse Now
No Fit State/Cowtown/Milky Wimpshake
Titus Andronicus

Issue 2, December 2010 - February 2011
Maybe Myrtle Turtle
Spokes/Vinyle Jacket/Holy Mammoth/Young Liar/Withered Hand/O'Messy Life
John Egdell/Richard Dawson/Jimmy Parkins/Marc Oliver
Hugh Sillitoe
Child Abuse/Divorce/Tide of Iron/Khunnt
Smoke Fairies/Johnny Kearney & Lucy Farrell/Sea of Bees
The Wilders/Kentucky Cowtippers
Peter Stampfel & Jeffrey Lewis
Ben McVinnie
Steve Wynne, Danny Wilson & Martin Stephenson
The Go! Team
Everything Everything/Magnetic Man/Crystal Castles
O.P.E.N.
The Hold Steady/Wintersleep
British Sea Power
Grandfather Birds/Lake Poets/Prison Library
Bonestorm/Tide of Iron/GWC/Rip it Up
Billy Brewster
Sea of Bees x 2
Goblin
Unknown Musicians
That Happy Busker on Northumberland Street
Efterklang
Little Comets
Benjamin Francis Leftwich, Morris Ford & the Sorry Kisses
Daniel vs the World
Ben Watson/Honest Thief/Is Shepherd
Mogwai/The Twilight Sad

Upcoming Spring things: Mini Comics Day, Malta & the London Zine Symposium

2011-03-09T12:37:00.000-08:00

I will be part of this year's annual Springwatch in Malta. It's not watching when moles wake up like the TV one, but trying to do something to stop the wholesale indiscriminate shooting of any feathered creature passing up from Africa. It's all a bit of a messed up complex situation with the law, but in my opinion all migrants from Africa should be made welcome, and especially the good looking ones with spoon-shaped beaks and the ones that can hover in the air. I will be drawing a journal/zine thing as usual for the week I'll be there.

I would like to stay for longer, indeed join it up with other visits in the area - but instead I'm coming back early for the very exciting London Zine Symposium on 17th April. For those who know me, I've raved about the Zine Symposium before - it was the highlight of at least one year (I think 2009), that opened me up to so many unique and wonderful voices, genuinely expanding my world.

This year I'll be sharing a stall with the very lovely Peg Powler people of Teesside. It'll make a very refreshing change to be in a little north east gang and not just gangly old me shuffling about and muttering words like 'Newcastle', 'stotties', 'the proper North sea' & 'bothies' to people for whom these are rare and exotic concepts.

As always for DIY events I go to, I will produce a zine especially. It's possible the Malta one will be ready to go too, but my pre-planned offering will be a little more like the 'newcastle zine review' I did a little over a year back. I will keep it small and short (& therefore cheap!), but I intend to list EVERY SINGLE NORTH EAST ZINE THAT HAS EVER BEEN MADE, and include a single line describing it. I will fail heroically in this task, as you never really know what zines are out there. I hear about more than I see, and the ones I hear about are only a fraction of what we north east humans make. But it will be a pleasure to go through my zine box, and it will give me the opportunity to announce my collection of north east zines as the 'INSERT GRAND TITLE HERE Zine Library'. However, unlike the Canny Little Library, this is a reference library. In fact I guess I'd best call it an archive really, cos you need to know me to get to see it. But I care about this here zine culture and I think elements of it should survive into posterity, and be kept safe and shared.

Mention of the Canny Little Library reminds me: the day I leave for Malta is Mini Comics Day and I hope to have joined together the Canny Little Library with the Paper Jam Comics Collective to host an event at the Star & Shadow Cinema (Newcastle is the only place in the UK taking part!) The only spanner in the works is me leaving during the event, but they are two lovely local papery institutions that I'm proud to be linked to, and I intend to get the Paper Jammers to join the International Cartoonists' Conspiracy which is co-ordinating the day.

Before their involvement with International Mini Comics Day, Paper Jam are also presenting an exhibition at 'Made-in-Newcastle' on Grainger St. In part this is to launch the 'History ... and that' Anthology which we did, but it's also just to celebrate the art we do, and to be a part of the warm and loveable 'Made-in-Newcastle' shop.

So diaries out! To confirm:

March 19-26, Paper Jam exhibition at 'Made in Newcastle'
9th April, Mini Comics Day, noon till 5, Star & Shadow Cinema
9th-17th April, Springwatch Malta
17th April, London Zine Symposium

Opinionated Geordie Monsters issue 2 is out!

2011-03-04T02:29:00.000-08:00

At a massive 40 pages, the free quarterly fanzine for monsters who live in Newcastle and love music is out now!

Pick it up in the usual venues, see what you think of the other monsters' opinions, and next time you see a band, draw your monstrous thoughts and email or post them to me. This is an open, collaborative fanzine, so let your opinions out-number my own!

Next printing deadline is 1st June!
Copies with the mistakes corrected and printed carefully will also be available for a small price in Travelling Man Comics Shop & Made in Newcastle, next week. (Both shops are on Grainger St).

Decent places in Newcastle where I will leave a few free copies today include:

CENTRAL NEWCASTLE:
RPM record shop
Head of Steam pub & music venue
Scrumpy Willow cafe
Details art shop
Newcastle University Fine Art building
Lit & Phil Library

OUSEBURN VALLEY:
Star & Shadow Cinema
Tanners Arms
Cluny
Cumberland Arms
Free Trade
the Tyne pub

They may also appear in the Heaton cafe's, and at various gigs over the next few weeks.
For money reasons I won't be posting any out to people this time, unless you post me something first!

Wonky Pictures of Newcastle

2011-02-13T06:03:00.000-08:00

I haven't yet strung these together into any kind of narrative, but I am nonetheless enjoying drawing simple pictures of Newcastle shops, roofs etc.. from the toon's various coffee-houses.

Peg Powler

2011-02-02T15:40:00.000-08:00

Peg Powler is a face of the Tees river spirit. It is also the name used by Rebecca Little & AJ Garrett for the excellent DIY paper-based creativity that they promote on Teesside. I travelled back down to the beloved Tees on Saturday for selfish reasons: cos they've included some of my diary comic entries in their latest 'Words' exhibition at Stockton ARC.

I never got round to making the quiz that I'd meant to go with my diary, but I liked how they displayed it : it's nice to see your badly drawn thoughts in frames! And I included my original notebook diary hung on a string there so you can read through my diary as it actually is.

Being a diary, there are various personal episodes and thoughts covered in the pages. Some of them involve my ex girlfriend, which I hadn't shown her. So as it turned out, she accompanied me down to Teesside on this occasion, and read about some of mythoughts of our break-up in my diary ...

Picture Letters this week.

2011-02-02T15:10:00.000-08:00

I am making an effort to draw picture-filled letters this week, with replies to some lovely people so far sent off to Teesside, Cambridge, and Buryatia (Siberia). They are to people I miss, people who I think are ace, and people who I will enjoy having a papery relationship with. I have been thinking a lot today about how many of my best friends are books; about how the friend I speak most to is a piece of paper; and about how this is actually okay.

There are many other things I SHOULD be doing. Mostly on computer and online. But after the day is done, it is good to put away the electronic things and find a piece of paper to talk to.

Monsters are go!

2011-01-24T04:38:00.000-08:00

Don't forget to draw a monster when you see a gig!

I've had my first submissions for the next monster zine (very good, very good), and have been getting a bit overcomplicated in my cut n paste attempts at monsters myself. Deadline in about a month!

New zine, not for Newcastle

2011-01-17T13:50:00.000-08:00

Here are a few pics of a new zine I've done for the Brighton Zine Fest.

It won't be available in Newcastle, because it's a bit too personal.

It can be easier to share your feelings with strangers, sometimes, hence the title.

I was going to do a stall, but today I've decided not to: I'll have a better day walking around talking to people. And chasing the bus named after Peter Kropotkin.

Second Bothy Zine waiting for ...

2011-01-15T11:30:00.000-08:00

... the weather to be lovely.

So I doubt I'll get started for a couple of months yet.

Today, for example, the forecast says: "Heavy overnight rain will clear by dawn. Otherwise, no more than a few drizzly showers. Very wet/saturated conditions underfoot Moffat area and Cheviots, with stream/river levels very high."

(My planned route involves lots of trudging around moorland streams in the Moffat area, and my 'pre' plan is to do the top bit of the Pennine Way down the Cheviots from Kirk Yetholm.)

So I'm sticking to train routes for now, and will be using these to go to the Brighton Zine Fest on 19th-20th February. I've got a zine made, ready for printing especially for the Zine Fest. But it's a bit personal to show around Newcastle, so the intention is for only strange southerners to read it.

bethan took my pilgrimage sampler zines on tour

2011-01-13T15:40:00.000-08:00

Zines to Lyon in 2010, to Mars by 2012!

Zines in 2010

2011-01-09T08:31:00.000-08:00

The very first post of this blog was a list of the zines I had done, & I've updated it since with new ones or ones I've remembered. Here is an update : the zines I made in 2010.

January 2010
Newcastle Zine Review, 2nd edition A6 portrait & chunky printed (though made in 2009)

January? 2010
Hybrids: A5 cut-ups of star & shadow programmes as part of attempted series of 'crafty creative sessions' at the cinema (which did not continue).

February 2010
Anarchist New York A5 landscape, colour cover, 150 copies. A mistake with stapling meant the reader had to take out the staples and rebind it - instructions given.

February 2010
Self-guided Zine Trail around the Star & Shadow (I think it's fallen apart by now)

March 2010
Mail Art Session at Star & Shadow, a low-key thing, cut n pasting onto postcards.

Spring 2010
A present for Elodie
Foldout minizine in many languages for Elodie Applejack.

April 2010
Washington Arts Centre Zine Trail, for P.R.E.S.S. small publishers' event.

April 2010
30 Minute Zine Challenge at DIY Aye!

June 2010
Beach Zine, 150 copies, A6 with colour middlepages, about a week walking up the Northumberland Coast

Summer 2010
Contributions to 'Art ... and that' anthology by Paper Jam Comics Collective, also to 'History ... and that' anthology and upcoming 'Music ... and that' CD/comic.

August 2010
Trail Zine, A5 20 copies, one page drawn by each participant on the Great Baikal Trail camp of August 18-30. Mix of English & Russian language, printed in Ulan Ude.

October 2010
My Anarchist Pilgrimage: Sampler, A5, 150 copies, for distribution at London Anarchist Bookfair: the full version is my main project of 2011.

October 2010
Mongolian Cartoon Diary, A6 landscape, 60 copies, pretty straightforward print of my cartoon diary from 2 weeks in September.

October 2010
Love Letter from Helsinki, A6, 24 pages, 24 copies, done as part of 24 hour comic day in October.

November 2010
Gaelic Language Cut-ups. 7 copies, in envelope. 30p. Done for Footprint Zine Fair in Leeds University Student Union.

November 2010
Collaborative Comics on the theme of 'tea', workshop at the Footprint Zine Fair.

November 2010
Opinionated Geordie Monsters Review the Local Band Scene (1), A5, participatory and a quarterly from now on. 125 printed so far.

December 2010
Wor History Calendar, A3, colour cover, inner pages printed with our own photocopier. 50 copies, all sold for £2. Cut n pasted from previous wor diaries.

January 2011
'Fellow Drawer' Invite to draw about the city with me, foldout minizine in envelope.

New Year, New Collaborations

2011-01-05T15:00:00.001-08:00

Here are a few cut-ups I've done already for the next 'Opinionated Geordie Monsters Review the Local Band Scene' zine. I'm hoping for lots of unknown people collaborating, and some friendly faces too.

I've reprinted 20 more of the first edition, too (on coloured paper!) to leave out around Newcastle tomorrow.

And I also have hopes of doing a more left-field, more experimental but very Newcastle focussed collaboration, too: although you won't be able to read it, here is my invitation. If you draw comics (or something like that) and live in Newcastle, you will receive a real one soon when you see me.

Also Haz says she's going to post me something every day this year. I didn't ask her how long she's going to keep it up, but me and my postman say thanks.

I'm also meaning to do something for Teesside, too, seeing as it's the current zine capital of the North East.

And also, stuff you're doing, I want to know.

Wor History Calendar ready

2010-12-17T05:00:00.000-08:00

ANNOUNCEMENT! (yay):

I've printed 50 copies of a calendar cut n pasted from old wor diaries.
It's strictly one for the participants and the fans, to remind them to get involved for next year.
It only cost £2 to make, so it only costs £2 to get (unless it needs posting).

Public Availability:
5 copies have been left in the travelling man comics shop on grainger st (at £3 cos their small press stand automatically adds 33%)
5 copies have been left in the new 'Made in Newcastle' shop, also on Grainger st, next to Greggs, which opens tomorrow.
5 copies also left in the Star & Shadow.

The rest have already been claimed by fans and participants of Wor Diary.

Deadlines in 2011 (taken from the calendar):

First Meeting for 2012 Wor Diary is April 1st in the Spital House pub, 7pm.
We hope to add a feature to the website by which you can choose a week to draw - the deadline for these bagsied weeks would be September 1st
On September 2nd the remaining weeks are distributed and on Saturday September 3rd we'd have a collective drawing/cut-n-pasting session for those who like the company.
Wor Diary 2012 will be available from 23rd October 2011.

How's that for forward thinking, eh?

Anti Digital December

2010-12-06T06:25:00.000-08:00

Hi,

I found I was spending too much free time on the internet, instead of staring into space.
So I have got rid of my laptop for the month and therefore will not be updating this blog so much.

There are, however, various papery projects that I am making happen:

1. The First Edition of 'Opinionated Geordie Monsters' is out. 20 pages, 7 contributors, and hopefully about to start a life of its own!
And while I could only afford to do a run of 90 copies, it seems that there is a major dearth of decent gigs in Newcastle this month anyway so I can't give that many out ( there are a FEW good gigs, but they're sold out or when I'm out in Northumberland).

2. Wor History Calendar.

I got a bug and had to clear the house out so my first start on this stalled. But I will do it for Christmas, and rather than doing it really thoroughly and distributing it to the geordie public, it will just be for the most keen fans of wor diary, to help tide them over till the next one which we will start next year, to be ready for 2012. If you don't know wor diary, it's a participatory radical local history project whose website is being resurrected.

3. Cartoon Diaries.

Spending a lot of the last month snotting out green goo in bed, I have at least written a few diaryesque comics that may end up making sense as a zine in their own right. They're a bit melancholy, so would fit a winter theme.

Post 3 of 3: Opinionated Geordie Monsters!

2010-11-22T06:55:00.001-08:00

Opinionated Geordie Monsters Review the Local Band Scene

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: 28TH NOVEMBER

COMING OUT: 30TH NOVEMBER

This fanzine is going to be a quarterly for Newcastle upon Tyne.

So far I have 4 pages submitted by other people (4 monsters, 4 reviews), and lots by me. My hope is that, over the next year, this fanzine will become a familiar and loved feature of the local band scene, in which not just my thoughts but the thoughts of all sorts of people are converted into the drawing of a monster saying something about a local gig.

It's not big, it's not clever. It's easy to contribute a monster review, so send one to me at oldglen@gmail.com

Post 2 of 3 - the Footprint Zine Fair

2010-11-22T06:17:00.001-08:00

Last weekend, Leeds University Student Union, I did my first ever solo zine stall, yay! It was the first time I've ever asked for money for my zines, but it was a very loose thing and I still gave most of mine away.

I fashioned a stand out of a biscuit box, and borrowed my house's radiator hangers to help make my stall.

I made a series of 3 cut-out comics from a gaelic language guide (highlands & islands, not Ireland) , on the themes of drinking, women, and work and enveloped them up.

I was happy to be REPRESENTING Newcastle and the North East, with Mayday and Classwar Classix pamphlets from County Durham (sold a few, gave more away); anarcha-feminist zines advertised from Newcastle (several people copied down the details and I feel good that I've helped spread that); small press comics from Newcastle and Teesside, borrowed from the Paper Jam Comics Collective; William Pilgrim's latest and a few spares that I found left over, which people had sent me for DIYAye 2010 (Lather Rinse Repeat; ).

I also gave out some of the out of date mars bars that my housemate liberated from a skip, and had my collection of North East zines available for any real fans. Interestingly, I met a lot of people who at one point had been in Teesside and I learnt a lot about the shit that went down there in the late '90s, and how the DIY scene has recently re-emerged with a smile and youthly beauty, yay! I also realised I have NO zines from Sunderland. Durham, check, Ashington, check, Sunderland, no. Am I missing out?

(I did an interview for Dissident radio which is here, in which for some reason I totally misrepresent the guy who started the Wor Diary project, as if he was incapable and trapped in his house, when he so isn't. Beware mouths running away with themselves! Other than that I don't mind what i said, oh, except I also gave a way-too-low estimate of the costs of printing wor diary it's at least twice as much.)

I had some great conversations with other people at the fair, swapped contacts, got offers, got a load of zine and comic swaps, and then I did a comic drawing workshop.

8 of us drew a page each around the theme of 'making tea' and then passed our page to our left, giggled at what we saw and tried to do a follow-on page. Some of the random results are below, each page done in less than 5 minutes! Great fun.

Here's a page from one:

This one was called "Copper Tea is Theft":

This one went down a politicised surrealist avenue:

This one featured the adventures of Grannny Smedley:

This one featured the hero, "Random Dude":

And finally:

Post 1 of 3! - the clearout

2010-11-22T05:29:00.001-08:00

Since my return from Siberia, I have spent a lot of time sorting through the piles of things boxed up and forgotten in bags in my room, attic, etc...

I have tried to get rid of all my spare old zines in order to clear a space in which to do new ones (and especially the anarchist pilgrimage mega-zine). Still my two bedroom tables are covered in drifts of paper but I WILL clear them this week, I WILL! The Footprint zine fair in Leeds was great and it let me give out, sell & swap lots of zines. Since returning from there, I have established that I have SEVEN copies of each of the following seven zines:

secret anarchist history of newcastle (spring 2008)
examzine (summer 2008)
george zine (2008?)
bothy zine (autumn 2009)
Roman philosophers (early 2010?)
beach zine (summer 2010)
mongolian cartoon diary (autumn 2010)

I also have dozens more of the bothy and anarchist history zine, but these are not intended for zine swaps and stalls. Instead, they will continue to be left out in the spaces which they refer to: bothies and newcastle. (Incidentally, I am glad it is these 2 that will persist, because they are the most 'weighty' of my contributions in the last 2 years, most of which are pretty frivolous!)

Also I had 8 copies of george zine left, but serendipitously Matt came round and said he'd lost his copy and did I have any spare. So good, down to the magic number 7.
I have a few extra exam and roman philosophers zines, which will continue to refill the free zine boxes (1 is permanent on the bar of the Star & Shadow Cinema, no.2 is roaming and comes with me to gigs, where I leave it in a well-lit spot for punters to go 'oh, free zines!')

So what about these SEVEN? Well, today I am wrapping them up into bundles, and I will be sticking a price on them. Not to make any money, but to ensure that they only go to someone who's new to them and keen to see them. So I hope they will remain with me for at least a year, and then at some stall in the future or some encounter with someone perhaps newer to zines, I will flog them for £3.50. I just made up that price, 50p a zine, sounds alright to me.

I reckon this blog post is about the most boring I have ever and will ever make, but it is somehow satisfying to put into words where I am at with this side of my life. I have got really a bit over the top at zines in the last year or two, and loved it, really loved it. But it means I've got loads of oddities and leftovers and I've got a bit lost in what I've done, so it helps clear up your mind if you clear up the debris around you. I'm also very happy that zines of mine have gone off to exhibitions and libraries in Denmark, Australia, New York and Germany. And Alnwick this week! Through my unbalanced enthusiasm, quite a few people have encountered zines for the first time through me, especially amongst bothy-users and people who go out in the evenings in Newcastle. If I stop now and find a new hobby, like stamps, I will still have done a little bit for zine culture and so today I'm feeling quite happy about that. Coz making zines is a beautifully pointless thing to do. People occasionally suggest I should do stuff 'properly', get funding or try and make cash out of it. But I've been doing it for the opposite reason: because I love doing stuff amateurishly without planning, without corrections, when my heart is urging me to do it; and because fanzines are about fandom, about enthusiasm, NOT about career-building or commercialism. It's this other side of life that I want to be part of. Love, outpouring, messy experimentalism, temporary collaborations, not knowing how things are going to turn out, all that 'lifestyle anarchism' stuff!

And if in future I return to look at this zine blog of mine, finding it all dusty and a part of the past, remember this Mr.Mike:

- in Wainhope bothy last month, during the 'any other business' part of the meeting, when you piped up and said "I did a zine about..." and the whole room turned round and said "It's YOU!" and gave such love and appreciation for it.

Opinionated Geordie Monsters Review the Local Band Scene

2010-10-28T10:03:00.000-07:00

These are the posters for a new fanzine which I hope other people will contribute to.
Suitable for all ages and levels of artistic ability!

And here is an early example:

75th post: 2 new zines ready

2010-10-19T12:51:00.000-07:00

24 copies of the 24 page 24 hour comic diary thing i did in Helsinki. Just musing about myself and coffee and home, mostly. Unthought-through but illustrated.

60 copies of the Mongolian Cartoon Diary, again drawn while travelling and without planning, so you get exactly what the title describes.

Both A6, both free in the post (to the UK) if you email me with an address to post to.

Another blog.

2010-10-17T11:18:00.000-07:00

Hi,

I am making most of my book collection available to users of the 'canny little library' (housed in the star & shadow cinema & open from 3 till 6 each Sunday).

I have opened a new blog, purely to list (by pictures) the available books.
There will be posts for each section I have books available in:

Philosophy
Anarchism
History
Politics
Global Struggles
Gender
Environment

Home to Newcastle.

2010-10-14T15:57:00.000-07:00

Today I happily got off the ferry from Amsterdam, found myself locked out of the house (of course) and drew a few things.

Tomorrow I hope to pick up 2 packages from the Royal Mail, that I sent to myself and which include the Mongolia comic.

I then hope to print the Mongolia comic (40 copies) and the 24 hour comic from Helsinki (24 copies). I found the town different but the same. Spectrum copyshop has closed down (as has my favourite bargain bookshop and the 'made in newcastle' DIY craft place), but I found the new one, Mailboxes on Clayton st. As these pictures also tell, I spent a happy time re-embracing this city that I love and reading the comics that people have produced since I was gone.

My 24 hour comic result = at best a draw.

2010-10-04T09:51:00.000-07:00

Hi,

Including the cover, I managed 23 pages in 24 hours, most of which were spent walking around the streets looking for stuff, and sleeping. So the actual drawing took place in coffee houses and pizza restaurants. I don't know if the results can really be called a comic, it's just reflections and my usual diary, with a couple of self portraits and pictures of Helsinki. I'll print it anyway, I LIKE my diaries, but it's really just an attempt and next year I will try and do a proper plotted thingamajig. As it is, I have a strong idea for a fiction-as-opposed-to-diary comic, which is basically political/historical porn. I hope I will make this happen when I return home, in 10 days.

I will stick a few pictures of the comic-zine here when & if I find a usb slot.
And it is odd to be writing a blog entry from the middle of the Baltic sea, but this Finland to Sweden ferry has an internet terminal. How odd.

Starting a 24 hour comic in Finland!

2010-10-03T03:32:00.000-07:00

Hi, I have just realised that i have missed 24 hour comic day, and I wish I'd been with the paper jam crew back in Newcastle. But unless I got a plane up to Lapland I think I've just missed the local Finnish versions of it.

SO - with 2 minutes left of this internet station to declare it, I do declare that I will do my own 24 hour comic, starting from approximately one hour's time (after I've found a hostel and dumped my bag and got out a pad and pens.
I have no idea what it will be like, but it will be from Helsinki, and a day late but with the Newcastle crew in spirit!

love
Mike

Cartoon Diary of Mongolia

2010-09-12T20:44:00.000-07:00

Having come, for no great compelling reason, down into Mongolia, I have been writing my travel diary as a comic. I will probably produce this as a small run zine when I get back to the UK.

Here are most of the pages so far, all drawn on the move in the gaps when the minibus broke down / we stopped for lunch / there was 20 minutes with nowt to do. So as usual not professional or planned out, and not even in this case about anything in particular, but definitely fun to draw and fun to share with people (if you start drawing a cartoon, it isn't long before a shadow appears at your shoulder).

I'm in Mongolia for another few days so I'll probably pad it out with a bit more before posting the sketchpad back home (seen in the first picture being read by Travis, again).

Trail Zine

2010-09-02T03:43:00.000-07:00

I am currently in Siberia.

Staying in a group of 16 Russians and others on the shores of Lake Baikal, I persuaded everyone to make a collaborative zine - we all contributed a page. Today I printed it today in Ulan Ude, which I'm rather proud of considering how bloody long just the WORD for photocopying is in Russian, let alone the waits at counters. But actually it worked out fine, and I got a lot of love sent back to me through the pages of the zine.

These pictures are of Travis reading my 'beach zine' [to come] which I gave out as an example, and of some of the zines with our blind dog. For some of my pages for the zine, see the anarchist pilgrimage blog.

Off to Siberia

2010-07-26T12:21:00.001-07:00

This blog will go quiet now as I start my anarchist pilgrimage to Siberia.
I have already drawn the first couple of things for the zine that will ensue.

Zombies in Fenham

2010-07-10T10:49:00.001-07:00

See Project Z for details...

Some good zine karma

2010-07-03T04:57:00.001-07:00

I got back from school yesterday to find some great little bits of zine karma. The kind of thing that comes uninvited, on a day you don't expect, and makes you feel great inside. So I will continue handing out my beach zines to people on the street, and leaving little piles of them in my favourite newcastle pubs.

First, I had an anonymous envelope through the door, with a lovely A6 zine about a mexican wrestler, presumably linked to the vamos festival (mexican wrestling at the star and shadow next week!)

Second, I had an email from a chap I'd handed a zine to in the street. I have a tradition now, for when a zinejob has just been printed and is delivered to the door, of leaving at least a symbolic one or two on a bus seat, at a bus shelter, in a phone box, and of handing at least one out to a stranger in the street.

We were sat in Tilley's and I was looking for a likely someone to give one to. A leggy blonde with 2 rucksacks kept walking past but I didn't dare choose her cos she would think it was a come-on. But then Haz and a strangerboy walked past and "there you go" / "thanks".
So he emailed back and informed me of this lovely little initiative, that work currently stops me attending, and which I should therefore bunk off to join along with. Do pop along if you're free.

So my own zine karma is in pretty good nick still, with zines recently posted, uninvited, to North Yorkshire & America.
My own 'DIY culture' is a bit shoddy though, as I seem to be worse and worse at organising anything with other people. So next weekend's crafty session at the star and shadow needs a proper think / I need to get my arse in gear getting my submission in for the 'History and that' anthology / I need to go to Middlesbrough and support AJ's fantastic events.

The Anarchist Pilgrimage is become definite.

2010-06-28T12:11:00.001-07:00

I got paid today and have spent almost 500 pounds on visas and tickets - my first big one is booked on the route below for 4th august. So if you're interested in this project, see my other blog - it's where my energies will be gradually transferred until, from 25th July, I will be on the rails, crossing europe and doodling as I go.

2 days travel on one train, all the way through two countries including one of Europe's last dictatorships, in a cabin with 2 strangers.

More Spence!

2010-06-25T12:53:00.001-07:00

My head is still filled with Spence, so here's another doodly cartoon I did to one of Keith Armstrong's poems.