Bluish and the jelly-sea

The old man thought:

The jelly-sea sure is hard to swim out of. Its sticky and cold, the worst of combinations. A towels not gonna help when you finally emerge from the surface of the jelly-sea, you will only make the towel sticky, jelly is difficult to clean away. It don’t matter about the flavour of the jelly, could be strawberry or could be lime – it's still green either way. You better wish that a sea made from jelly is just a sticky sticky dream, and that when you wake the kettle hasn’t even boiled yet, let alone has the jelly had time to get set. Cos it don’t even take a sea to let the jelly get you, you can drown in a bowlful as well.  Just like drowning in a puddle, if you’re always face down, you’re doomed no matter which what is where. And you could eat your way out of the jelly-sea, only that’ll make you sick as a dog. And you could try talking, kind pleasant words but they’ll stick in your throat so to speak. Yes the more that you struggle, the more you’ll be fixed, encased in the jelly-sea. Yes all you can do, is think your way out, and what you’ll think is ‘ well….’ And ‘at least this ain’t blancmange.’ 

anonymous manifesting.

This small plain white book: 'Manifesto', I bought from the BookArtBookShop over near Old Street when I first came flat hunting in London, being drawn to its plainness and whiteness (now smudged with ink and make-up), I was more than interested and I remain so!

Chapterless, it hurries (in first person) through thoughts in the head of a human-hating, self-marginalised, self-conscious man who reveals his identity only through the pseudonym 'dedrabbit' featured in an e-mail and website offered to us on the inside of the back cover. Through Manifesto's pages he gets drunk, dwells on the stupidity of Western life, is sickened by his own futile existence, and wanders endlessly through his native USA, and Europe. 

I think, if it had been five pages long, it would have been just as affecting. It has no conventional narrative to speak of and feels authentic rather than try-hard in all its unconventionality. Saying that, part of its impact lies in its repetitions, its stirring up of the same agitations, its repetition of imagery - imagery that is simplistically beautiful (geese flew in the night under the moon) but that is transformed into dull, meaningless crap when placed next to sentences like 'a lonely human being shot itself in the head'. Many of its sentences are flat, lifeless statements. Some are grim. Just as many contain the far flung, romantic words of a dreamer. It is contradictory, and it sits headstrong on a blurred line between everything. It is a blunt but beautiful and melancholy tangle of disjointedness.  It jolts and skips like a faulty video cassette player everywhere between the authors fourteen, and thirty-something year old selves, but never settles, is unsettled, in fact confused. And, through unadorned statements, it illustrates, rather existentially, that there is no difference in any of it. There are archetypal fluctuations between hope and despair, and while the former is rarer, the despair is a kind of dead, dispassionate one, rather than a raging, manic-depressive desperation. In my opinion there is a leaning towards an acceptance of his own detachment.

I don't even feel like I can begin to discuss the viral element of this book, and the tensions surrounding its anonymity, because actually, I don't care about that part enough. The red A4 leaflet folded up inside of the book is to me, rather than an indication of an underground cult relating to this book (which has been suggested), just an extension of the book, in its style a kind of mission statement for the angst of Manifesto. Unlike others, I haven't been getting wound up at the prospect of the author actually being alive and out there, or a revolution beginning (though that would be cool!) because, I don't think it matters, the book is just as (if not more) interesting if he doesn't exist, if it was written by a dog or a woman or something. In the leaflet, the fragmented sentences extracted from the book, read like poetry, and the layout is inventive, but I think that, in some ways the leaflet undermines the book. The list of influences, and the 'Manifesto is..' parts are nice in theory and I think the chaotic mass list bombardment works, but although many of the bands, films and books are incredible ones, the sum of the works noted is kind of reminiscent of some kind of myspace interests list. I guess, though, these are his cure.

Obviously, a story of loneliness, boredom, depression, drug and drink addiction and alienation has been told a thousand and one times, which is inescapable, but in its execution, this is less worn-out . For a start, it doesn't glamourise things. This book acknowledges its self-absorbedness, its unashamed sad nostalgia, and its own pitiful state. It knows its own ugliness and that these problems are rooted in boredom and the routine expectations of a privileged upbringing.. there is no trauma, there is no definite catalyst, there are no fireworks. 

While it often references drug culture and mentions the author/protagonists anarchic and drunken, rebel acquaintances, it in no way suggests that this is a manifesto for that kind of lifestyle, but rather the manifesto of despondency. That is another reason why I think its a shame that the Punk-ness is pushed so much in the leaflet, because the actual book transcends Punk-ness in a lot of ways.  A review that I read, suggests that this book could be the subject of a Masters thesis on its 'brutal, simplistic delivery', that it could be comparable to Hemingway, yet it would also be fair to say that it is merely 'the ranting of an spoiled, angry Man-child'. I agree, it could be seen as either, but that is part of the appeal for me.

deer

everything everybody said was a lie, and there ARE deer in the park. I am happy.

day-of-the-dead dress.

I once knew a Mexican person.

Mexican things in my new neighbourhood Mexican store in Hackney, and engraved onto my brain: heavy wooly, woven, dark things, embroidered and crocheted  things to the floor, things made of straw,

hot habenero things, dead things, paper cut out things, bright gold Mexican marigold things, pinto bean things, chilli chocolate things, deep purple colada morada ingredient things. Brilliant things.

Photographs: day of the dead, embroidered flowers, frida kahlo, new dress, mexican marigolds.

Enormous and normal faces in the sitting place.

1, 2.

3.

running (slowly). imagine it darker.

I went jogging in Victoria Park, at night, for the first time. The best part was running joyously through the blackest quarter to this ,  being distantly frightened in the back of my head of an old drunk moving in a shadow.

Zine

my zine

features a story about words, a letter ex-change between ex-friends, 

various photographs, scanned animals, and excerpts from projects.

e-mail rebecca.anne.george@hotmail.com to request a copy (it won't be scruffy and battered like this one), and, visit:

http://becamemoonless.blogspot.com/ 

baldessari magnet poetry

The first profound offering from our fridge poetry, more coming soon.