christmas

 i can't do better than tomten for xmas so i'm going to have a break now, likely until new year. should you fancy listening to nyarsklockan it'll be live on svt - guide to the words here. i'll be trying to sneak off to see it somehow, missing all the people i miss at this time of year, while dealing with the more traditional uk celebrations of drunks, police and fighting!

tomten - en vintersaga

 my favourite christmas film. everything swedish may be in the past for me now and my language atrophying by the day but, at this time of year, this and ring klocka ring at ny always leave me with a wet face! 

sonic youth

 if i'm listening to sonic youth always among the first tracks i'll look for. used to have this on a lovely limited edition vinyl from when it came out. a grand playalong but these days just feels like a perfect representation of going to work! lol 

sarah jarrett

from when i was very young i've always been twitchy about the notion of collage. i've never liked it. it always seemed to be too haphazard, too badly put together. not so with sarah jarrett. 

the storm watchers

to be honest i really just wanted to see the landscape and hear the accents. but a proper rarity this

alan moore interviews brian eno

 much of interest here. and some wild optimism.

and here's a bonus doco (pic quality not the best)

wilko johnson

 

ian dury and the blockheads

in the wake of wilko johnson's passing my yt feed has been throwing up some gems, including this. great for ian dury and wilko johnson obvs but what really caught my attention was the rhythm section. fabulous drumming (note - charley charles doesn't even have a wikipedia page!!!) but what i really love is norman watt-roy's bass. i started trying (and failing) to play along with him last year. love it

prononciation avec christophe

christophe's instagram channel is, without doubt, one of life's insta feed's great joys. but he's also got a youtube channel that has longer format videos. the singing tho? that's still there! 

bela tarr

 bela tarr's later work - bleak and beautiful 

as an addendum here's a doco! 

appetite for adventure

not that many years ago, but definitely pre the dawning of the nc500, i used to like a cycle on the then quiet roads of the north west. now that it's been changed into a traffic clogged dustbin/toilet, not so much. but you can go other ways. i like this at the very least for the use of paper maps. if it's been me i'd have done it on my own, not posted it online and likely stayed in one fo those expensive hotels at the end of a day thus guaranteeing clean sheets, soft beds and a hot shower. and no river crossings. not them. never again! lol 

* the grumpy me would add the following addendum. don't be tearing up plants for 'foraging'. leave them where they are, maybe learn their binomial and something about their habitat. take some responsibility or admit to yourself that, despite your 'adventure', you're no better than those people who leave dog shit bags in trees. or those who use the nc500 as a playground....

kelora

 these are known to me but i haven't listened to them in a while. loving the maturity of their sound in this

the wandle trail

in my brief stint as a londonist the wandle trail, esp the bit around morden hall park, was my regular stamping ground. obviously i was on the bike rather than walking but i'd really recommend a regular route, looking at the interesting spots, heading down the byways, looking at the plants etc. i'm not sure if i'll ever get back to do it again but i cherish my memories of it 

murmuration #3 species

 

surprised when this appeared in my feed today - didn't even know this was happening let alone so close! and more female sound recorders than i think i've ever seen in one place, which is pleasing. i've been ruined by swedish silence and the mystery that is the loos of all my sound files from there but i really need to start getting back out again!

easy spanish

 easy spanish is a great way of just listening to spanish people (with a wide variety of accents) actually speaking. there's spanish and english subtitles should you need them plus it's a good way of stepping away from that constant tense learning and looking at the way people actually speak! i tend to listen more to the podcast these days than watch the youtube channel but both are equally handy in their own ways 

improving swedish

not for beginners but, if you can follow along, andreas issa's channel is, i think, just about the best for content for swedish improvers. watch and learn! 

dylan eakin

 

i love watching someone really hitting their game. representation, hyperrealism are about as far away from what i do as it's possible to get but i love these pencil images from dylan eakin, not least for their sheer craft. would love to see one of these in the flesh

middlemarch

i got a beautiful folio society copy of middlemarch (it's the same one as in the vid) this week as part of a wee indulgence where i buy lovely reading copies of my favourite books to see me in my dotage. i'm on a classic literature discussion group and middlemarch has evinced a variety of views some number of which focus on the perceived difficulty of the text. i don't share this view though i can see why people might think that. as ever the internet has a video for that and here it is. there's a bunch of good essay writing on middlemarch (or, if you prefer, some funny writing on why people hate middlemarch) online and, in my opinion, it's a great jumping off point for some contextual reading - the reform act etc

patti smith

i read an interview with patti smith years ago where she described being asked by her son what her advice was about being a musician. get a job, she said, get a job. it's stayed with me for whatever reason and i've been grateful for that quote. i do have a job, fortunate enough for it to be a decent one where i can afford to pursue my artistic practise in any direction i want, pay for publication, pay for exhibition, buy all my own equipment/space, be beholden to no-one.

i'm not even a big patti smith fan but i've picked up her books here and there along the way. i just like the patti smithness of patti smith, her willingness to do, to be who she is.

i'm really grateful for it, this freedom. when i look back to when i was younger i see a time when i was preoccupied with notions of success. i've been pretty fortunate with that too, altho i never made any money! that said, i hate all that so i don't miss it. being able to encourage others tho, that's a blessing. and all we can hope for.

here's another video, just for all those angsty types worried about their legacy. when you're dead you're dead and you're going to be forgotten. be more concerned with your day, right now! 

yoann bourgeois

 one of my time vampire habits is trampoline videos. i'd so love to be able to do that but i think these days it would take me about a nanosecond to get a severe musculoskeletal injury! and then there's yoann bourgeois....

clearly tho, he's not just about the trampoline. here's something else, which strikes me how little dance i have on here. i need to address that....

anosmia

i don't have a sense of smell so here's a video about it. it's not great but there are definitely things in this

that i recognise. i can't lie, there are times, mostly at work when no sense of smell is a great advantage

if something's really stinky while others flee i can usually feel it in my eyes!

my sense of smell isn't totally absent but it's so truncated that if it pings i usually have to ask someone what i'm smelling. what this video doesn't address is the lack of language for smell. equally tho if you can pin someone down who will try to describe smell to you it is like drifiting off into some sort of poetry.

i am not like some of these people who lost their smell suddenly. i have no memories of smell, no means of dreaming about it, what i don't love is the routine dismissal of its lack, as if smell is somehow a minor scent. or people who think it's funny. i would like to be able to have a conversation with a dog or some other scent based animal to hear what their world feels like!

which is my way of saying stop a moment and, quite literally, smell the roses. i had a recent eye scare where there was a possibility of losing vision in one eye. i didn't love it but in the mean time i'm loving depth perception. it's the small things! lol 

    

chomsky and foucault have a conversation

imagine two philosophers on tv these days. imagine having different points of view and being able to discuss them. changed days! (plus dutch and french practice!) 

terry riley

i've a long association with the young gods but had assumed they'd just become too old or retired, but no, here they are giving terry riley's in c a go (subtitles for englush speakers). it's lovely to see musicians at their stage of life being so enthusiastic, still trying new things. riley was a huge influence on me, first for dance music but latterly as a means to interpret found sound and spoken word (and, for various reasons, saw the end of my involvement in poetry as a direct result). it may be you don't like this version - it doesn't matter because there is always another one. plus, and this video really captures this, with relatively accessible technology you can make your own! you can find the sheet music here.

french tenses

i'm going to start posting a bit more about language, in part to give me wee reminders on my own language journey, but also useful stuff along the way. so, for starters, here's this, a basic intro for french tenses. obvs, for english speakers but, both for me and in my experience, our grammar knowledge is so dire that keeping it simple is almost a prerequisite. plus, for adult learners, diagrams and pictures are a superhandy means to learning.

again, it's not the whole story, but if you're getting stuck, drawing a line and using post its, whether it's tenses, sentence structure (i'm looking at you swedish!) or whatever, it's a good tool.

the sutton hoo helmet

now this is interesting! as is loads of stuff on this channel. that said, while i spent a load of time in the british museum in my london days i got more and more uncomfortable with the sheer amount of stuff that had arrived there in likely dubious circumstances, if not by the standards of the time, certainly by ours. it's nice to have the sutton hoo helmet in england. it comes from there. imagine if it was somewhere else. make copies, make films and send everything else back where it came from!

olafur arnalds

 it's nice to see which words i recognise as well as those i completely don't! lol 

søren solkær

 

i have a vague memory of seeing murmurations as a kid. now there's not enough birds left for them to be something i'd expect to see. maybe that's part of what makes søren solkær's images so arresting

sam lee & elizabeth fraser

 missed this first time round. what a rare treat to see elizabeth fraser singing again 

more fabric chat

 i was out at the weekend at one of my favourite bars, where i hadn't been for ages, where they made a big fuss of us because we hadn't been out for ages, which was great. what did we talk about? life in the cocktail lane? no. sourcing tweeds? yes, but not not the main event. surprisingly, and most pleasingly, we got into it around recent events in the company patagonia, the use of petrochemicals in outdoor clothing manufacture and what can be done about it. great chat! and in a scottish bar! and, as if my phone was listening, today this..... 

i don't go out much these days and it's true that much of my remaining waterproofs can't be considered environmentally friendly but one of my favourite bits of gear is an old cotton based cagoule style outer shell type, that's 70+ years old, that i inherited from my dad. i wouldn't wear it in the rain now, nbut it'll still take wax if i wanted to, but it's still one of the best bits of kit for wind that i own - look after your gear and it'll look after you!

the french dispatch

 i don't watch a lot of films these days it's true. there's loads of reasons for this but, worse, i realised the other day when i was watching the french dispatch, i don't have anyone left to talk about films with.  step up youtube! what a joy to find this in my algorithm

kraftwerk

 this is just an outstanding video re the kraftwerk album man-machine. not just for gear nerds, there's some lovely bits of music theory stuffed in there. but most of all it's just joyous and a great encouragement to really listen, and muck about with your keyboard! 

sofi thanhauser

at last i appear to be on the mend but still keeping myself diverted with podcastery! on from monday's guardian vid and the subsequent post on circular design, i found myself, again, listening to garmology via well dressed dad, but this time with sofi thanhauser talking about her book worn - a people's history of clothing. 

so far, so fascinating. i'm unconvinced with the (to me) reductive nature of all the identity shenanigans whirling about at the moment which (to me) seem like an inevitable product of late capitalism rather than any move to actual equality. thanhauser upends all of this by looking at objects rather people and the processes by which they arrive, and in doing so achieves the neat trick of an intersectionality (sic! lol) between capital, colonialism, exploitation, forced labour, climate, identity etc.

and again, i'm really grateful, again, for my brief island childhood and the appreciation it gave me for not wasting anything, being able to fix things and knowing where they came from.

circular design

i'm still sick, just not as sick, and well enough to appreciate both just how long my not as young as it used to be body shakes off its troubles but just how deep set was my assumption that i lived in a society with access to health care. those concerns being set i was interested (as i'm fit enough for making, more or less) in the following podcast via garmology about the notion of circular design.

it throws up some interesting issues. moths for one! but, for me, along with all the stuff about sustainability, like the healthcare above, just how grounded in capitalism and consumption, everyday decisions are. it's not so very long ago i realised that not everyone had the advantage that i did as an island child of being able to sew, darn, stitch, repair, knit and crochet. but also, having had a textile business, as the podcast points out, these very simple things, for a community at that time, have now become a pastime of access and privilege*. 

further, that question i'm unfailingly asked about my visual art - why don't i sell it? because i don't want to. because i want to share it, the means of making it, the joy of doing. and also, because i got off that wheel of selling/exhibiting/publishing i really started enjoying my practice again. then, the interactions i've had since have been so lovely - not arty types, nor poetryland - where i can gift my work, or better yet, show someone how to do it themselves. and music! art/literature collaboration always seemed like such an effort, so much talking and so much ego, but music, despite my awfulness, brought an instant kinship, a communication of play.

and all because i wasn't feeling that well! it's a bit of a listen it's true (and i'm not going to lie, i've been reading a fair bit of montaigne recently) but it's an interesting entry point into the question of how to live.

*a case in point. watching bernadette banner the other day and thinking i could fair give a go to making a waistcoat for myself when it struck me just how much such an endeavour would cost, even assuming i got it right first time - reasonably likely but not guaranteed. currently i have scissors and pins and that's about it (not forgetting i actually have space to work!). no thread, no button stash, no measuring stuff, no chalk, no sewing machine! and that's before buying cloth. if you can't get into clothes making consider joinery. i'm not a complete idiot when it comes to working with wood but currently, given the cost of materials, project work is just prohibitive

trevor noah

trevor noah. what to say? this seems pretty accurate when it comes to the state of day to day britain. is there a backlash? if there is the new public order act will sort that right out. or it would if we had enough prisons. when i was in sweden quite some number of the refugees there wanted to get out and come to the uk, such a good place to make business they said. never, i said, anywhere else but there. and that was before the current shenanigans. of course now sweden is trying to catch up madly.

amazing how, in a representative democracy, no matter what the political colour, just how little our democracy represents its people

hania rani

and because i'm not doing any music, analogue or electronic, nor doing any recording (tho i think this is in large part because somehow in my last big move i lost a huge chunk of  that i have no explanation for and which i remain quite traumatised about) - here's hania rani for your sunday.

samantha muir

 

i'm sitting listening to this loveliness from samantha muir and i'm reminded that i'm supposed to be moving into the time of year when i'm picking up my musical instruments again, something that, so far, ghas been complicated by the fact i'm just too busy with either language or making stuff to have done anything so far. time enough tho and, so far as music goes. i'm put in mind of this story, attributed to kurt vonnegut, about the importance of just doing

When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of ‘getting to know you’ questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.

And he went wow. That’s amazing! And I said, ‘Oh no, but I’m not any good at any of them.’

And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: ‘I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.’

And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could ‘win’ at them.

bernadette banner (and friends) rate costume design

 

  

i'm aware i've posted bernadette banner before but this is such a good episode it bears watching (i will admit i got to it via her vid on making a dress to suit a victorian mob boss woman - on the grounds i don't know how to do any of that stuff - super worth a watch) not least because it's her doing her thing but because she's got youtube pals along for some of the specifics. 

it's true i don't watch much tv or movies at all now - whoever's responsible for the scripts, i'm looking at you - but i will watch something for incidental detail. i love a chinese or korean or chinese historical costume drama. chinese for the general sumptuousness and korean because i just like the clothes but i'd be the first to admit i know next to nothing about either. valuable links below her vid.

as for the european stuff, aside from period lace that's super hard to get/eye wateringly expensive i'm a bit disappointed, if not surprised, by the lack of accuracy. i appreciate a bit of dramatic license but given how much goes on with hema, re-enactment, medieval weeks etc etc it does feel like the ball gets dropped rather too often.

justin hawkins on barbie girl

 

i can't lie - there was a time back in the nineties when i tormented my daughter with my great love for barbie girl. here's justin hawkins breaking it down. i never liked the darkness but i find i quite like to listen to him blethering on, esp when i'm cooking. there's something, for me, very english about him, that i like in a podcast.

i can only be grateful i wasn't working in a kitchen during the summers when these were popular. but, obvs, this post wouldn't be complete without either gunther or the camp behemoth that is my all time favourite from that era

* yes, more videos. i'm still sick, what can i tell you?

bam's way tries inktober

 

    

came across this after seeing a video challenge on bill making stuff. i like bam's choice of pencil, clear lines and i covet that light. most of all tho i like him taking on a daft challenge. i'm doing a lot of this lately. in between the being ill i'm just after reaching the varnishing stage of a picture i really don't like. that said, the person who wants it really likes it so what do i know! same thing with bam here - he wasn't super happy with some of the images but finished. and others he liked that he may work up later. the moral of the story - work is work! 


*many moons ago i had a colleague who was being really sniffy about her son's miniature painting. i'm not the best you'll see at this but i did used to do it for money and everything i know about washed i learned from miniatures. so i loved the bit with bill and his light source. if it's not 'art' enough for you , take a look at yourself! lol

making a teapot

 

  

i'm absolutely rubbish making anything out of clay. here's what happens if you practice

jo stephen

my favourite landscape/botanical photogrpaher of the moment is jo stephen. she's remarkably candid about her technique and gear on her blog but, at the same time, it's her eye that makes the difference. she's got a calendar out for xmas if that's your thing.

 

albert camus writes a letter

i'm sick and while i'm trying to console myself with a book about montaigne i really only have energy to watch videos on youtube. and while i'm not averse to cats it's letters live that has my attention. a dying, if not dead, form (no emails are not the same), i think it's been ten years at least since i got my last actual letter and i can't remember when i last wrote one. this then, from albert camus to his former teacher

*this by way of a shout out to those teachers for whom it's not just a job and manage somehow to realise, likely without knowing, that it's in the little moments, that their influence will last a lifetime. you are beyond compare.

and now a cat video. you know you want it! lol 

life on the rocks

 

many, many moons ago when i was a wee student i went to the bass rock to study gannets, unaware then i think, the ground had been thoroughly prepared for us years before. great wee film about an environment now properly vanished. a tragedy unfolded across the whole of my life.

tlingit myths

 

it shouldn't be any big surprise that i like a corvid based story so i was happy to come across these tlingit myths on public domain. but, while they're a nice read, the sense of the story misses what it actually sounded like, which is, of course, why we have the internet. i know virtually nothing about the pre colonial languages of the americas, aside from a brief flirtation with navajo and quechua years ago, but i love to hear something that sounds so different from what i'm used

sean layh

i don't normally go a bundle on detailed representational works but instagram keeps throwing up the goods. in this case sean layh, who details the process of the above on his instagram account and the results are, for me, astonishing. there's not a bunch of stuff on his personal account but he's worth the look and a search on insta as his technique is just beautiful and the images suffused with an old school sensibility that just invites attention. check him out!

 

ana mendieta - death of an artist

 

away back in the day i was interested in body art, as it may've been know then, and i'm reasonably certain that's when i first came across ana mendieta. it's possible i saw her work or read something about her earlier as i was living in new york just after her death.

so i was pretty interested to listen to death of an artist, pushkin's series about her death, which is ongoing just now. truth be told i've not enjoyed it overmuch. even when i was there, the art world, that heady sphere so breathlessly referenced again and again by host helen molesworth, was nothing to do with, or for, the likes of me, indeed, as she makes clear the role of the museum is to make people like me aware of what we should and shouldn't like. until the 'art world' has a disagreement with itself and suddenly the hangers on and the proles are expected to take a side. an implicit binary, if you will.

which is kind of the problem with this show. if you're familiar with 'the art world' then molesworth's observations need no reiteration. curious too that, and despite that very familiar trope of american podcasts where the presenter has a massive need to talk about themselves, in a show that's predicated upon silence, molesworth is coy, so far, about the particulars of her own exit from her curatorial role.

which is likely me being picky. what's more frustrating is an apparent basic lack of understanding of how her own justice system works. and this (and another silence) layered upon an almost complete avoidance of the nature of capitalism, esp as it applies to art, museums etc. her history is selective at best, there's all the usual double standards - mendieta is a 'refugee', at least she is when her privileged cuban existence is upended but she leverages that privilege to get herself back into the corridors of power. then there's the incidental music, the american racism of which i could rant about for a whole post on its own.

but that said, while it's worth ignoring almost everything that's said about ana mendieta in the podcast, and going and looking at her work and finding out for yourself, it's actually a decent listen. yes. i found great tranches of it annoying, not least molesworth herself but the questions it's asking, about gendered power overtly, then not so much about power itself, capital, and about privilege are absolutely worth asking. and then there's the stuff that she doesn't do - like asking why we should bother with this gilded class in the first place, why we should bother with galleries or museums (give all that stolen stuff back!), why we're so fixated on the past and the establishment of canons instead of dealing with stuff that's happening right now.

and then the guerilla girls. i knew nothing about them and they deserve a podcast all by themselves. so it was worth it just for that.

sculpt a head

winter's coming and there's surely better things to be doing than watching tv, cat videos etc etc. me, i got a bunch of clay recently that's utterly unsuitable for what i wanted it for so i'm looking for wee projects i can try out new things with (lots of wee projects - it's a big lump of clay!). i've never done any sort of realist three dimensional work before so i'm going to give this a go. i have little doubt this guy is making it look easier than it is! lol

sound design in batman

this is a great wee vid about sound design in the last batman film and really captures the skill and craft of the sound design team. that said while there was lots to admire on the technical side, the film itself, for me at least, won't have me rushing back to watch it 

minnesota starvation experiment

 

it's no secret i like a podcast, esp when i'm in the house working. the latest one i've come across is malcolm gladwell's three parter on the minnesota starvation experiment as part of his revisionist history podcast. it's great to hear the actual voices of the test subjects. equally it's a wee sliver of insight into that period in america, what was acceptable and what wasn't. a fascinating listen

men and hunger, written by the guinea pigs, and mentioned above can be seen here and is well worth a browse

milk clarification

it's a fact of life that i've become too old and i do too much exercise to do anything in the way of drinking anymore and my cocktail lab is packed away and hardly ever used. that said, as autumn comes in apace it's that time of year when i tend to think about cooking generally and drink making in particular, milk clarification is finnicky, time consuming and tricky to get right. but if you've time and patience (and the right equipment) it's a great way to spend an afternoon 

*scottish people - just drink the booze. you know you want to

rings of power - chladni figures

it looks pretty that rings of power, and it has nice costumes. the racism, not so much. better than wasting your fridays waiting for another turgid episode to thump into your amazon account, watch this first and do some maths. this is what the internet was supposed to be for!

*i could've done a (much) longer post on the racism that underpins rings of power. in summary, wearying fanboys, tokenistic casting, public school elves, leprechauns and groundskeeper willie mining jews. you can fill in the gaps....

gilberto gil and iza

 

augustus jansson

came across these brilliant designs for ink vis the ever reliable public domain review. for me, who loves a drawing ink, i immediately thought of michael peters' designs for winsor and newton

 

islands

 all islands of my acquaintance. katie k here in arran, where i've not been in years but, given how good the roads look i should surely go back

then barry godin gives it some beans up to my old stamping ground in the western isles and back down to the lovely (though very tourist blighted) island of mull. great trip

*i would point out that my time for camping and sleeping in bothies is long past. if i'm to indulge in such pastimes these days it involves prearranged pickups, hot showers, good food and comfy beds. i apologise for nothing! lol

roberta boffo

i'm loving the work of roberta boffo. clearly there's some of her stuff that has much in common with some of mine but she does it with a brush! absolutely have a look at her instagram to watch her technique!

 

satellites

 this just made me smile! 

do the work

 'if you want something you've never had before you have to do something you've never done before'. lots of good stuff in this.

woodworking

i can't lie, watching this is akin to a magic show for me. true my lack of woodworking skills is routed deep in childhood shenanigans but i can offset that anxiety by just admiring the craftmanship on view here! 

jembaa groove

 

julia margaret cameron

 

i particularly like julia margaret cameron's picture of sir john herschel (and it's as good a place as any to start getting an insight into that particular milieu) so i was really interested to read this essay in the public domain review. it's no surprise that the doings of a wealthy englishwoman in the 19th century were funded by, to our eyes, some pretty exploitative business practices but the writer manages to let the reader amke up their own mind about that, rather than the leaden, uninspiring virtual signalling that characterises so much of this type of writing these days.

do the writer's somehow imagine that their posturing somehow removes them from the fact that the very things they're complaining about were part of the process that got them where they are? so yes, julia margaret cameron's pictures are great to look at. but before we start judging we should consider ourselves, who sit with our phones, our computers, our blogs, the most privileged, wealthy generation ever to walk the planet, and what we're doing with that privilege

tenses

this is a great watch not just for the tense dense language that is spanish but for a lark around with grammar generally (there's subtitles!). also, for my generation onwards, a chance to see just how hamstrung we are without a proper grammar education. bad teaching? definitely an element? the ideology of 'making learning fun'? almost certainly. it's almost like a succession of governments, in their commitment to cutting language, arts and music were attacking the population - compare and contrast the educational priorities in private education!

i've long been an advocate of music and activity for children. my young relatives were all functionally bilingual by age 11. if your kids (or you) can't do simple grammar, like identifying a verb, subject or object, it's time to get that grammar book out! lol

akalé wubé

 

more on notebooks

clearly i love a notebook. i love a notebook in direct inverse proportion to finding myself living in an anglophone country full of monolingual anglophones. but all is not lost. i'm not a massive fan of social media (despite this blog!) but i do like the proliferation of non anglophone material all over the internet. happy days then to be able to listen to not-english any time i choose. unfortunately, due to the parlous state of my languages, it's not always easy hence back to the notebook. 

it's nice to tune your ear and, in the beginning, listen along with english subtitles. but it's not really helpful. better to listen while you have your target language subtitles on. but don't skip over that vocabulary you don't recognise. jot it down in your notebook and come back to it later.

and don't make it hard for yourself. for me it's the televisual equivalent of teletubbies in the likes of dutch or italian but i get to combine watching cycling content with language learning with the likes of gcn - in spanish, french or german if i so choose. super handy 

the longest night

 having done large chunks of this route when i was younger there's no chance i'd do it now. and especially in winter! i have serious workshop envy at the beginning. 

and this also, because only women cyclists can really talk about the issues regarding women's cycling. obvs weight is an issue across the whole world of cycling but having just seen emma norsgaard describe herself as a 'chubby little sprinter' in the new movistar doco (when she weighs about as much as my finger nail) it was an interesting coincidence to come across this

shinobu hashimoto

 ...makes a pot. one can only imagine the horrors were i to try this! but a beautifully serene capture of a piece of making. 

the hudson river school - thomas cole and frederic church

 

i hope it's apparent i do like a podcast and the bowery boys history podcast, as much as i've listened to it so far, has all the qualities i like. this episode deals with the early days of the hudson river school, specifically in the form of thomas cole and frederic church. it's great on the detaila and there's a wealth of information on the webpage. absolutely check it out.

*i'd also highly recommend their episode on the black ton explosion. it's a mark of their respect for their audience that they leave you to make some obvious conclusions but it's a fascinating look at a niche but significant piece of new yourk histroy

cook!

 it's a cooking day for me. i'm going to be making a variant on this garbanzo stew. i don't eat meat products so no egg thickener for me! (that bread looks unpleasant also - make your own!) 

i'm also going to be making some goodness from will yeung. likely starting with this! some of yeung's videos have pretty specific imgredients but you can always switch in from something else you've got lingering in the fridge. failing that just choose something simpler! and definitely make some of the basics he does, like chili oil, it's just good for your state of mind. and tasty! 

ludovico einaudi

 i'm packing up my visual arts gear now that autumn's arrived and getting back into music (and, god help me, writing!) which, this year, means i'll be practicing a lot of einaudi. he makes it look easy but if you're a rubbish piano player like me, it really isn't (and doing it on guitar is even worse! lol). but lovely, soothing and just what i feel like doing of an autumnal afternoon. 

arvo part

 work music..... 

diego luna

 

diego luna - lad! this is a great wee list of things. the fact that it includes pens, pencils and notebooks will always be a winner for me. plus, and kudos to gq, it's great to hear him getting to speak spanish. not because he can't speak english but, as mexican and puerto rican spanish was the spanish i started learning with it's great to listen to someone i can actually comprehend!

and the knife thing....

hand talk

 

this is interesting. esp as i have an interest in sign language, particularly as its been used to support chomsky's notions of universal grammar, and yet this is all new to me. just another example of how something that's interesting and useful is erased from common knowledge. but, on a mkore positive note, how the internet can counteract such things

kit sebastian

when i worked in the kitchen the music of choice was the worst imaginable playlist of popular summer hits, repeated endlessly, without let up. i would respond with this sort of thing to which my beloved chef lady would respond - istvan (my kitchen name), stop please.... 

and then we'd be back to the likes of this. i'm not going to lie, i know all the words, can sing along and have an enduring soft spot for it.... 

gabor mate

when i'm working, esp on a long, repetitive project like these days, some sort of long podcast is a good way to keep my mind ticking over. in my paid work one of my big drivers at the moment is manifesting kindness (i'm not going to lie, it's a struggle!) so having a listen to gabor mate is handy

the queen's suite

i could say lots but i shan't. so this.... 

wu chi tsung

 

cyanotype is something i haven't really done but wu chi tsung has taken the paper and run with it. i'd love to see what these looked like irl. he does more tha  these tho as you can see on his website

america's first panda

 

quite how the first panda arrived in america is a quirky and complex tale. i recommend the kettle is put on and you settle with a cup of tea...

the memory palace do a good podcast, accompanied by a good range of links but for a full fat read, as well as an insight to the long ago world of pre ww2 china this full fat read is ideal

tony sarg

 

i love me a good hoax story from back in the day and the nantucket sea serpent hoax fits the bill on a number of levels. this article from the public domain review is worth it for that alone, but also for the backstory about tony sarg who feels like one of those figures, not unlike kay nielson, whose influence is instantly recognisable when you're aware of it, but who should be far better known. 

victoria ford

 

i do a lot of my daily looking at art on instagram and in doing so came across the work of victoria ford. she doesn't have a website, doesn't have images splashed across the net but does have an instagram page via which you can access her etsy shop. i'm not a stranger to linocut but this is breathtaking stuff, despite my normal aversion to representational art, and the care and love that's gone into them, for me, radiates out of all the images.

as, at last, some of the looted stuff we have in out museums, makes its way back to where it came from (a ppost for another day) i wonder again why it is we'd rather look at the work of dead artists, hoarded by those with more money than we can imagine, than look at the work of people actually working today.

medieval hospitals

 

came across this gem from medievalists the other day. as care systems lurch into crisis in the uk it's worth a read and considering where the notions of hospitals and what they were for, came from

african philosophy

 

there's a bunch of people from all over africa at my work at the moment so i'm having a delightful, if slightly bewildering time, dipping my toe in to the world of african linguistics. which is great but almost impossible to do so and not realise there's a dearth of information about any of it (step up the usual culprits!)

by happy coincidence then, step up zera yacob et al and the world of african philosophy. i'd read some african literary criticism and that was relatively recent, but that's about all, but this was all new information for me. as ever, to live in a polarised world robs us all!

aphex twin

everything i don't like on on music doco format vid but, nevertheless, as a reminder to listen to aphex twin, it hits the mark. the music, for sure, is not for everyone and (heresy) the quality can be patchy but i still love it on its day and aphex twin's attitude to production was and is a major influence for me in terms of creativity (and i'm waaaay more twitchy about selling things! lol)

 

*i think pretty much everything he's ever recorded is online. a good way to spend a rainy afternoon!

motivating for reading

 not my favourite podcast but a regular listen when i'm in the gym. some solid advice here, esp the bit about reading something every day 

heilung

new music from heilung is always something to get excited about (even if i heard about this via the guardian, the cultural equivalent of heat death) and it appears this time they've thrown their historical net a bit wider than previous

away from the british press the ever enthusiastic charismatic voice does a lovely reaction video 

vegvisir, futhorc and the like

 not so very long ago i had a conversation the vegvisir and its appearance as a tattoo. this video is useful - don't know the guy but he seems to be well thought of 

kirstie behrens

 

i first came across kirstie behrens' work at the watermill in aberfeldy so it was great to come across again (and more of it!) in pittenweem. her prints seem to encompass places and pieces of landscape i'm very familiar with yet capture something of the intangibles that keep me going back

alan faulds

 another artist i came across recently was alan faulds. i've been looking at his work around lower largo for years but knew nothing about who it was or what it was about. what a joy then to get to visit his garden and see a bunch of his work in situ. it reminded me very much of little sparta which, for me, is never going to be a bad thing!

reinhard behrens

 

also fabulous this week was coming across reinhard behrens who, for some bizarre reason, was unknown to me prior. the scope of what he's about with naboland is just breathtaking. but that's not to mention it's very specific quirkiness, detail and humour. a privilege to see!

jill macleod

i was out the other day and came across jill macleod and a bunch of her work. they're so different from anything i would've even thought of doing, her use of colour and geometry was so bold - i was blown away!

catrin finch and seckou keita

 if you only listen to one kora/harp duet today.... 

miriam cahn

 miriam cahn being passionate, transgressive and just generally thought provoking. this video isn't one you're likely going to want to be watching at work. that fact is one her points in the video. i was also struck (inasmuch as i watch any tv these days) about just how rare it is to see an older woman afforded even the opportunity to hold forth like this let alone being alowed to do so.

plus (and i should state i've seen a number of births, an experience i found transcendental and life changing) given just how much male gaze/naked chick art there is how come there's so little about the act of birth itself?

anyway, check this out. louisiana channel well worth a browse also.

historically accurate fantasy clothing

someone who can set out the parameters of their argument first. if this woman was my daughter i would dance a jig! i would massively recommend watching her videos where she redraws the covers of historical romances with period accurate clothing. be warned tho, if you go down this path it can ruin your tv and  movie watching!

while i'm at it, i noticed in the comments someone telling a story about re-enactors who couldn't make black dye in northern europe and thus speculated that the night watch must have had access to black sheep. which, while he may have a point, neglects the fact that northern europe really did have black dye. check out some trials here - i've made ink in a not dissimilar manner. it wasn't nice. perhaps i should've looked up the first ever dyeing book - so niche it doesn't even have a wikipedia page!

akan proverbs

a while back i learned a bit of twi off the back of working with a colleague from ghana. there's a bunch more people from africa at work now and, for various reasons, i thought it'd be a laugh if i could surprise them by actually saying hello in a language from back home. and in doing so i find many things i don't know!

currently igbo is a stone i stub my toe on, shona is lovely, and zambia, i find, is a place to get linguistically lost in. but, until recently, no twi speakers. but off the back of that i found this gem (and from that the realm of the proverb battle, but that's a whole other thing!)

*i wasn't going to but i'll mention in passing that another part of the reason i started doing this was the staggering amounts of racism i'm seeing at work now, all of which seems to have been somehow normalised. and that upon a historical bed of racism. with regard to african linguistics try ordering some books and see how far you get. very saddening.

do it yourself - anthotypes, cyanotypes etc

 i've been mucking about with anthotypes and the like this summer but, now we're into august, and today my sunny cycle appears anything but, i'm aware that the days of being able to put plates outside and developing an image in a couple of hours, are running out quickly.

the solution - a lightbox! you could buy one for quite some amount of money. or you could just make one. like this. easy!

lesley richmond

 i'm not superconvinced that i'm overly into these but the more i look at them the more i find myself beguiled. fearsome amounts of attention to detail by lesley richmond

sibil la ensemble

 

this is outstandingly lovely

catalina vicens

 

not like anything else!

charlotte greenwood

 

i know a bit about some of the processes but i have zero idea how charlotte greenwood produces these!

charles bukowski

i found myself getting irked the other day by coming across, again, bukowski described as the laureate of lowlife. i never really found hin so when i was younger - i liked a drink, had rubbish jobs, (still) love a day out at the horses - but i never considered myself a lowlife. and this before i started liking bukowski, a poetic 'i' seeming so excoriatingly honest compared to just about everyone else i knew in poetryland. and likewise, as i got older, i don't know anyone else who captures disappointment and loss quite so well. happy days then to discover these readings

predictably enough there's plenty in the comments that toher people shouldn't be reading, that their accent is wrong, that it doesn't sound 'lowlife' enough! one of these days i'd like to take a bunch of his later poems and have them read by older women, just to hear what that sounds like. you'd think it was a simple idea but poetry types don't like that sort of thing, not one bit.

all of which lead me to this guy and some hard spanish practice! 

hong-yi zhuang

 i'm feeling the love for hong-yi zhuang right now

Zhuang Hong Yi Solo Show at HOFA Gallery from HOFA Gallery (House of Fine Art) on Vimeo.

botanical plaster casting

i've been changing my practice of late and, to keep myself motivated with longer term projects, i've been trying my hand at other things that i might not have done before (see the wire trees) but have thought about on and off for, in some cases, years. botanical plaster casting is a case in point. this is an excellent video showing the process 

more wire trees

 

after last week's wire trees video here's another one. the amount of wire is bigger - i do favour sectioning and then twisting the trunk - but be aware that this is hard on the hands and, if you're using coloured wire like this if you use pliers you'll break the coating and, potentially, break the wire. i like the foliage technique in this. it's quicker than using pliers (and see above) and makes pleasing foliage.

again, it's all in spanish. i think it would be pretty easy to follow even if you don't speak spanish so give it a go. if it's your first tree you may not want to use quite as much wire and definitely don't go for coloured wire!