Creativity Tools

2010-04-13T09:50:00.000-07:00

D.I.E NOW - ANOTHER POSTER

2010-04-13T09:45:00.000-07:00

D.I.E NOW - THE POSTER

new video

2010-04-04T07:25:00.000-07:00

http://vimeo.com/10185909

Mai Thai University is delighted to announce the inaugural graduation ceremony of the 'Master of Poetry' Course

2010-02-16T14:55:00.000-08:00

The participants will have experienced an intense 48 hours in bars, clubs and other public spaces through out Berlin. The studies include hard drinking, discussions, confessions and experimental writing, and will finally conclude with a ceremony - Each poet will deliver a spoken presentation of their first masterpiece and here after receive a certificate registering their great efforts and new earned talent. The ceremony will be hosted by the established writer and film maker Tim Blue. After the ceremony the students and their friends will be given the chance to celebrate with a shot of Absinthe. We hope to see you there, Professors of Poetry and Members of the Mai Tai University Schedule and other Subjects. (List of Bars and pubs is closed to the broad public.)

12/2/10 21:00 A quick distribution of Pens and Notebooks to the students.

22:00

Title: HeShe – MeMe.
Format: Discussion/Confession.

The student is trying to discover why he chose this specific poet. The student is trying to find the gap between himself and his source of inspiration. Is the poet a tunnel or a creative force? Why is poetry short?

13/2/10

01:00
Title: Words Words Words
Format: Public reading of the chosen sources of inspiration.

The time and the spirit of the poet. The whip or the wave? The sound or the meaning? Emotional intelligence - does it exist, if so what is it? Will the beat hold forever? Is romance for fools or for the heart?

04:00
Title: Words don't come easy to me.
Format: The students experience for the first time free flow poetry.

Playful experimentation with words, rhythms, rhyming, subjects, sounds, darkness, light, communication, prose Vs beat.

7:00

Title: Energy Vs. Dreams.

The Students are meeting in my house for re-evaluation of their study. Sharing notes. Writing notes. Eating baguettes and drinking the last sips of wine.

10:00 Title: Never at night!

The students are sleeping.

17:00 - 20:00

Title: Merde!
Format: Lunch or Supper - Onion Soup and baguettes.

The Students are learning the value of sharing and examine their ability to live in a commune.

20:00

Title: Street life.
Format: Urban traveling. The students are using the german U-bahn to the Kreuzberg area.

21:00

Title: Nature is freedom. Format: Urban wandering.

The students are walking to the park and buy weed to ease their pain as experienced street cats.

22:00 Title:

Second life is real life.
Format: Drinking, smoking, having a chat, a word, a sentence. First glimpse of frustration and inferior complex.

The students are simulating a real life situation as poets.

14/2/10 01:00

Title: Structures and friendship.
Format: Free communication.

The Students are sharing their new words. The Students criticize and acknowledge their first creations.

04:00

Title: Freedom is pain.
Format: Adventure.

The students must decide where to spend their last three hours through a list of public spaces provided by the head of the faculty.

7:00

Title: Winning dreams.

The Students are meeting in my house. Re-evaluating their study. Sharing notes. Brushing up their final words. Eating baguettes and drinking last sips of wine.

10:00

Title: Again, never at night!
The students are sleeping.

17:00 - 20:00
Title: Merde?

The poets awaken to the sound of trumpets - Ceremony day! Lunch or Supper - Onion Soup and baguettes.

The poets are preparing themselves for the big hour with great excitement.

20:00

Title: Street life - who cares?.

The poets are using the german U-bahn to the Kreuzberg area.

21:00

Title: The Ceremony.
Sin bar, Schönleinstr. 6

The poets are mingling with the crowd. Sharing final words with Tim Blue - The presenter.

22:30

Title: One hour later...

The poets are reading their poems to an audience of friends. Distribution of certificates.

00:00

Title: The end.
Format: Drinking.

The poets are drinking one shot of Absinthe.
The poets return to their homes.

random

2009-10-05T09:15:00.001-07:00

THANK YOU

2009-07-17T14:01:00.000-07:00

Thanks to all the people that googled
'Gold fish life span'

Rules to Live by and Other Phenomena

2009-06-20T12:55:00.000-07:00

Rauschenberg's Dogs.

There is a documentary made on Robert Rauschenberg in which he accompanies the director around a new house he has built on the coast. The house stands on four poles above the water. There is a staircase that leads from the shore to the front door.
Rauschenberg tells the director that he really likes his new house, but he can't live there because of his dogs. Every time there is a storm, the dogs bark at the waves and out of fear they jump into the water.

America has a similar approach to its war on Terror.

Last year a Brazilian lawyer who lives in Zurich, complained she was attacked by right wingers who tattooed the initials of their party onto her hip. After a few days it turned out she had invented the whole story.

I'm filing her under this category.

The Glorification of Fighting.

On YouTube there is an interview between David Letterman and Marat Safin (a Russian tennis player who had just won the Australian Open.)

Letterman asks the cause of Marat's victorious turnaround after a string of losses:
Marat - "Lack of Motivation."
Letterman - "So what has changed?"
- "Something changed in my attitude."
- "What?"
- "I started fighting."

The audience cheers.

The Glorification of Peace.

In 1947 The British Empire decided, because of economical problems and fear of civil war, to desert their colonies in the Middle East and India.
Over the next two decades they withdrew from their remaining colonies.

Is it possible that the glorification of Mahatma Ghandi's pacifism comes from an Imperialism which encourages the best way to fight Imperialism is by not fighting?

A Few Facts

When I'm silent there is no hate in me.
When I'm talking my opinions are revealed to me.
I discover who I hate and who I like.
I support my words and my opinions.
I hate people I understand
and people I'm not interested in.
I like people who think different from me
and support my opinions.

The Ridicule in Competition.

Being first is more important than being second.
Last place is a source of shame.
(Although there is a chance that the last place
didn't make any effort.)

Disrespecting Reality.

The news agencies feed off
messengers from all around the world
who send reports short as a twitter.
Each day the newspapers must fill a certain
amount of pages with words based on these reports.

And although the citizens of the world know all of this,
they still believe that reality is
the war in Iraq and the economical crisis!

Random Rules:

- If the poem is too long, make it longer.
If the painting is too colorful, add more color.
If the footage is amateurish, don't edit.
If you're late for an appointment, walk slower.
If the appointment is boring, stay.

- Never judge an artist by his work.

- Don't think while you're talking.

- Never try to express yourself through art.
That's why you have friends.

- Identifying with the pain of others
results from a political opinion.
Or the opposite.

- Whoever advises to accept suffering as part of life
is identifying with the pain of others.

- Don't be fooled by the future
its just the past backwards.

- True art can exist only by
by banishing the word Art.

2009-06-20T12:49:00.000-07:00

Tennessee Williams while once being asked, "Don't you sometimes have writer's block?" Answered, "All the time."
"So how come you write so much?"
Williams answered - "That's why I write so much."

Kc

D.I.E NOW in Dublin

2009-06-16T11:03:00.000-07:00

Dance International Europe Now performed in Dublin Project Arts Centre Dancers: Andrew Kerton Susie Meyer Dafna Maimon Luc van Esch Choreography: Keren Cytter Light Design: Vinny Jones

Do You Feel R3PR355I0N?

2009-06-03T12:01:00.000-07:00

AK 2/06/09

Marcus Redux Redux

2009-05-21T13:43:00.000-07:00

21/5/09
Video 46 seconds
by Andrew Kerton

Marcus Redux

2009-05-20T07:07:00.000-07:00

20/05/09
Video 46 seconds
by Andrew Kerton

Evening Haiku

2009-05-19T07:50:00.001-07:00

Liquid autumn plays.
Stars fairly plunder midday.
The shadows retire.

The returned, tall clouds retire.
The small, unknown candles set.

kc

Morning Haiku

2009-05-12T04:18:00.000-07:00

Fair wisdom splashes.
The landscapes find an army.
The pianos walk.

Kc

"Amour c'est gai, amour c'est triste"

2009-05-11T10:04:00.000-07:00

- Love is gay, love is sad... talent is not self-realising, he said, the artist becomes... the artist becomes productive... that is to say, the thinker becomes an artist... (the thinker becomes an artist) by an exquisite prolonged irrational ordering, or rational disordering, no, irrational structuring - of his thoughts - or, his thinking. The thinker becomes an artist by a prolonged exquisite irrational structuring of his thinking. The artistic process then begins by (by by by) a [chronic] - prodigious - shameless and centralising narcissismmmmmm... which swiftly evolves into an intense protracted period of masturbation.... self actualisation throuuuuuuugh... creation! Who was it that said reflection poisons the experience? They meant reflection on creation, that is to say, action, of course, he said getting up to dance, (synched) you've got to be in it to win it.

[read in fake french accent]
Ak

bloggers conference

2009-05-10T11:31:00.000-07:00

A white prayer runs.
Poetry offers women.
Beautiful men set.

Morning Haiku

2009-05-06T10:31:00.000-07:00

An ass wakes a knight.
Good nuns turn and a fish burns.
Tough angels carouse.

Misty liquid duets wake.
Wisdom splashes or stars splash.

Swine Flu and Winnie the Poo‏

2009-05-05T04:19:00.000-07:00

Ritter Sport

2009-05-04T13:15:00.000-07:00

The word sport always put me off, until, in 2004, I moved to Amsterdam and it became one of the only words I could understand.

To this day I have not sampled the entire range.

My favourite?
White chocolate and whole hazelnut.

(This is not a political statement)

Ak

Morning Haiku

2009-05-02T22:15:00.000-07:00

Winds walk but joy sings.
Petals melt yet summer works.
Empty autumn waits.

The delicate breasts loiter.
Hail turns therefore wisdom walks.

Meanwhile, in Mexico...

2009-04-29T03:21:00.000-07:00

Morning Haiku

2009-04-27T21:47:00.000-07:00

A journey flutters.
Ice starts leaden happiness.
Indifference works.

Walking, cold falls or cats turn.
Walking, earth talks then truth burns.

Kc

Part 4

2009-04-27T03:49:00.000-07:00

TRACK 7 - sound of alarm clock

Jurg wakes up to a loud abrasive repetitive tune, his face is buried in his pillow, he is completely disorientated. He fumbles to find the source of the noise. He must have been so drunk when he went to sleep he didn't think to change his alarm to an hour more accommodating for a hangover. Hitting his face back against the pillow he groans and thinks the irony! Someone naked is lying on their side turned away from him in bed. It's a guy, he looks like he's still asleep. Good for you thinks Jurg as the pounding inside his head increases. He'd had no intention of getting so drunk last night and even less intention of being picked up, which, he deduces is what must have happened, because he had no recollection of hitting on anyone, but then he wouldn't be feeling as rotten as he did right now if he hadn't been seriously drunk, in which case anything was possible, so what the hell did he know.

He dimly remembers some abortive sex and cock sucking, then, noticing a beating pressure down in his groin he realises he has a fat hard-on. Suddenly an erotic intensity surges from his loins and collides with his brain, making his headache worse. Persevering, Jurg wraps his fingers around his cock and shifting slowly forwards gently begins brushing it's swollen tip against the fine hairs on the guy's arse. He thinks he'd like to get in there, but who is he kidding. Loosening his grip his cock falls up to his stomach. Staring into the guy's back Jurg wonders why he bothers. Sex with no intimacy seems so abstract to him and abstract in a cold sharp geometric way, not in a big loose brushstroke kinda way. he rolls onto his back and imagines he is lying there next to a row of neatly aligned concrete bricks, he turns his head and tries to visualise this arrangement. He smiles and thinks if anyone's the walk over here, it's me. Maybe.

Before he knows it he's out of bed and examining the pale not quite muscular frame reflected in the bathroom mirror. he looks rough. he sighs and lifts the toilet seat. As he's pissing Jurg can feel the weight of white wine and beer in his eyelids. He forces his eyes open so wide his head rolls back causing the stream of urine from his still tumescent cock to hit the floor. He let's out another longer sigh.

He enters the kitchen to drink some water and starts preparing the big coffee pot before he realises it's size is perhaps too welcoming. He definitely does not want to give the guy the wrong impression. He reaches for the other pot which produces just the right amount for two strong but quite small coffees. When they are ready he steps into his bedroom announcing them in a tone of voice intended to wake the guy up. He waits until he sees him stirring, then walks back to the kitchen.

Sitting there in underwear hunched around his coffee, Jurg's eyes follow the guy into the room when he eventually emerges. Jurg pulls a face which is thinking not bad. The guy's fully dressed and looking for his shoes, Jurg is pleased. They drink their coffees and exchange something not even close to a conversation. At the front door Jurg kisses him tenderly good bye, knowing it's the last time he'll ever kiss him, but certainly not the last time he'll ever see him, whatever his name is.

Back in the kitchen Jurg experiences the full nasty extent of his hangover. He softly shakes his head and moves over to the fridge door. He opens it and stands there looking at half a dried lemon and a carton of milk. There must be something he can do to shake this wretched feeling, but he fears the situation is hopeless. Shutting the fridge door he turns and slides his back down against it. Great now he's on the floor. Maybe it's the best place for him. He brings his hands up to his face and covers his eyes. Then, a revelation. Springing upwards with an overwhelming urgent craving that makes him dizzy, he realises the only thing that will help. He knows exactly what he wants.....
TRACK 8 'I-I-I-I want Ice Cream!!!' etc...

story written and told with audio accompaniment as the prelude to dessert at Basso Bistro, 24/4/09, Berlin

Painting of Chatsworth Road shops by Katie Horwich

Ak

Short 8mm Film by Kristina O'Donnell

2009-04-26T16:36:00.000-07:00

Part 3

2009-04-26T11:17:00.000-07:00

TRACK 4
- Guten morgan
- morgan
- Was heatten Sie Gern?
- ummm, Hazelnuss und Heidelbeer mit shokolade sosze
- im becher?
- nein, in der Waffel
- zwei euro bitte
- danke
- danke auch
- tschuss!

Jurg was walking home feeling completely satisfied with his solution to his hangover. he'd sat in the sun at the edge of the park opposite the ice stand and managed to get the previous night's fraudulent intimacy out of his head. now he must try and do some work and the place for that was home. after a couple of hours smoking cigarettes and staring into his computer screen, jurg decides he needs some inspiration. he goes to his bookshelf and pulls out a ripped up old book, he sits on his bed and reaches for the tin where he keeps his weed. Jurg has taken to smoking marijuana rolled in pages torn from a copy of Naked Lunch he found in a flea market, in an attempt to infect his brain with a word virus. He puts a record on, finds an ashtray and stretches out over his bed beneath a hanging cloud of literary smoke.
TRACK 5 - song....'shoop shoop be doop' the clinger sisters

Jurg stops the record because he thinks he can hear someone calling his name. He then hears something he decides must be a man's low voice singing along to a guitar, whoever this is they sound like they are incredibly far away and yet it seems the sound might also be coming from inside the brick wall in his bedroom. Jurg turns his attention to the dark patch of mould growing on the brick wall. He climbs down onto his hands and knees and approaches the spreading blue green spores until they are at the tip of his nose and he has to cross his eyes to see them. He stays there for a while, examining the furry life form, then he licks the wall. Shortly after strange things are occurring. He feels like he's lived for 10 years backwards, on account of the cat cigarette and the empty bed frame transmitter. The room is blue, the room is green, outside only a wild blizzard of polystyrene balls and the high pitched caroling of an invisible child choir. Best to stay in here where the carpet is less aggressive. He finds a book and opens it at a photo. a circle of men in grass skirts are dancing around a fire wearing large decorated masks with horns and protruding teeth. around them is a larger circle of seated women who are mouthing words he can not hear. He sticks out his tongue because it's feeling weird. He turns the page and a man standing next to a stream surrounded by giant leaves is smiling at him in a loin cloth. I can say with great certainty he is the king of the jungle, he repeats bouncing on his hands to the drumming from within the trees, with great certainty the king of the jungle!

an indistinct amount of time passes. Jurg is still in his bedroom determined to run his cuticles along every centimetre of the skirting board. he is half aware of what he is doing but he chooses not to stop. he senses that something within him will remain forever incomplete if this task is not performed in it's entirety. As yet he hasn't gone very far and looking up he realises there's the issue of the book shelf, it's completely in his way and it's too heavy to move. Jurg also feels a mild revulsion looking at the books remembering his close shave with the natives earlier, he thinks he would rather not move them if he doesn't have to. but how will he get around it? there must be a solution. He moves away from the corner where he is crouching to see how far he can stick his arm round the back of the bookshelf. He notices that the wall behind it is crumbling and falls away easily if pushed. Soon his hand has made it's way into a hole and there is a sudden smell of shit tangled with spice, he wonders what's going on. He peers his head as far into the darkness as it will go and sees what looks like a black mound of rubbish by a fire on the side of a road. the black mound of rubbish appears to be singing a song, he recognises it's the voice he could hear earlier...
song 'ashman' TRACK 6

Jurg wakes up to a loud abrasive repetitive tune, his face is buried in the carpet, he is completely disorientated. He fumbles to find the source of the noise and sees that Stanley is calling him. He notices the time and remembering his broken bike realises if he wants to make it to that dinner with the artist's talk he'd better get a move on. He answers his phone "I'm here?"

Ak

Morning Haiku

2009-04-26T00:55:00.001-07:00

Heat falls then love burns.
Tall smooth, delicate girls fall.
The birds hunt water.

Lemons set for angels wake.
Falsely smoothly, the winds talk.

Part 2

2009-04-24T19:11:00.000-07:00

TRACK 2
phone rings
- hi how are you?
- it's been a strange afternoon, how are you?
- o really? i'm good, what are you up to?
- right now i'm late for this dinner and my bike's broken
- what dinner?
- this thing, there's gonna be a talk after by some performance artist, i thought i should check it out, what are you doing?
- i'm just at home, think i'm gonna drink a beer, let's meet up when you're done
- i don't think i'm in the mood to go out
- alright speak to you later...

The after dinner talk was unbelievably painful. Some well known half wit performance artist who expressed her creative individuality through her choice of bracelets was making a hideous fool of herself. Up in front of the gathered crowd, accompanied by a slide show, she fluffed her way through some half formulated ideas, clearly aware she was exposing a total lack of genuine direction in her work. It was embarrassing. Jurg scanned his eyes around the room. To his confusion people actually looked like they were listening, some were even feigning interest. It didn't take long for Jurg to realise he was surrounded by half wits, so he downed the rest of his beer and stood up to leave. Out on the street the night air was slowly warming up for Summer and blossom bounced on a cool breeze. Thank fuck Jurg thought as he escaped down the street. He passed the balcony of an ex lover and rolled his eyes. He narrowly avoided stepping in some shit and came to a cross roads [and stopped]. He found himself waiting for the lights to change for what seemed like an eternity. He waited even though there wasn't a car or a bike or another person in sight. He felt a tremor up his spine that caused his shoulders to shake, he let out a small disgusted sigh then quickly stepped into the road as the little red man flashed green. As he neared home the hazy feeling of having drunk three beers was beginning to clear. He was not happy about this. Then there was the performance artist's stupid bracelets, the fact that he'd waited at those lights as if governed by an invisible force, the tyre he still hadn't managed to fix on his bike, fucking hell he wanted to burn the city to the ground, though he was aware this was something of an over reaction. He figured he was on a come down. He thought he should probably call someone so he sat down on a step with his back towards the front door of what looked like might be his building. No names in his phone book were jumping out at him. He would have to call the only person he ever calls, his best friend, Stanley.

TRACK 3
- hi how was it?
- it was shit
- what are you doing?
- nothing
- i'm drunk
- i want to drink more
- let's meet at Schmutzig platz and we'll go to Mouth Club

Jurg had forgotten it was a Thursday and Thursdays generally meant the Mouth Club. He looked at his phone, 11.30, perfect the show would just be starting. By the time he's met up with Stanley the first act should already be over. Jurg stood up and walked back in the direction he had just come from, this time determined to ignore any little red men who stood in his way.

Ak

Goldfish Lifespan - IT'S AMAZING! (another story.)

2009-04-24T05:22:00.000-07:00

Hello, I wish to write about my goldfish. When I was 5 I went to a funfair with my mum and dad in Lovedean, Hampshire England and I played a game where you had to throw a hoop over a goldfish bowl to win the prize ‘the fish’ well I did this 3 times and took home 3 fish. My mum wasn’t very happy as we didn’t have a tank or anything and for the first day or so they lived in a saucepan. WE bought them a small rectangle tank the next day about 15” by 10” and there they lived without stones or toys for the next 15 years. Bear in mind this all happened in 1974..when I was 5.. When I was growing up one of the fish jumped out of his tank and we found him the next morning, I thought he was dead but when I put him back in the tank he swam sideways and stayed like that for a while and then righted himself and the three of them remained like that until one dies when I was 20. Then one of them lost his colouring and ended up white and the other one got a huge abscess, I guess and he died when I was about 27. Well today I am 33 and I still have the white ‘gold’ fish, he lives in the same tank having the same food and is perfectly fit and healthy. I now live in Sydney, so sadly I am parted from my fish but he lives happily with my mum and dad in Cowplain England. Thank you for letting me share my story with you.

Clare Lister

Morning Haiku

2009-04-23T22:39:00.000-07:00

The eyes stop wise joy.
The falsely black prospects walk.
Kind kind papers fall.

Cruel delicate snow breaks.
Smooth, returning wisdom waits.



Kc

Part 1

2009-04-22T16:04:00.000-07:00

Meanwhile, the compere is trying to tell the audience it's a good thing they've already eaten, but the author is slipping in and out of literary consciousness. He is distracted by meaningless words from 60's girl group songs like shoop shoop be doop and rama langa ding dong and yeah yeah yeah. He pulls himself to his senses to describe the setting. The Mouth is a dinner and cabaret club where admission is free of charge, but as the sign in the empty box office window informs you, it must be undertaken at the individual's own risk. The weekly show plays host to an exquisite array of performing creatures and sad clowns gathered from the worst alleyways of the world. A dense electricity permeates the smoky air, it nestles with the dust upon the worn velvet drapery and shakes the dim chandeliers causing frantic snow storms of reflected light on the dark walls and arched ceiling. Food has been served and cheap alcohol consumed. The show is about to begin. The compere, a man with a permanently twisted lip stick smile, tells the audience it's a good thing they've already eaten and pre-empted by a drum roll he announces the first act of the evening. Stepping to the side with his arm out stretched he welcomes into the spot light centre stage an incredible female with gargantuan hair framing a heavily decorated face. Her legs must be 12 storeys high. The audience applauds. As the music starts up this spectacular colossus moves slowly into a succession of seductive poses while her gleaming leotard throws light in great coloured discs out over the audience. She touches her hip, she touches her knee, she touches her shoulder, she touches her face. The Mouth is popular with undercover homosexuals, but those present inadvertently make themselves known when they all without exception, let out a low simultaneous sigh of irrepressible grief in response to the glamourous masquerade. These days homosexuals think they like beards and muscles and smelling like men, but expose them to an oversized sequin and you have a pit of entranced cobras shimmying with innate primal recognition. The girl in the leotard knows their secret and turns it to her theatrical advantage by transforming from a girl into a boy with cock and balls right there on stage. One by one with the sound of a stomach's contents splattering against tiles, homosexual heads explode around the room. A small group of out of work artists are set to work clearing up the mess, wiping down the amused audience and removing small parts of bloody skull and grey matter from plates and drinks. Invariably a male heterosexual will attempt to distract from the show by making an exhibition of daring to eat homosexual brain. Such consumption always results in an unsightly swelling of the neck and chronic paralysis of the genitals. It is the out of work artist's job to transport this deformed show-off to the incinerator in the basement. Here he will be put to use warming the showers in the dressing rooms. On stage the boy in the leotard who is a girl again is watching, she flashes her eyes as her nostrils fill up with the phantom smell of shampoo. Attention is hers and so on with the show! [music] A new batch of homosexuals are entering the room to take the places of the headless. These guys are regulars and know not to arrive before the show has started. Every Thursday night is the same, some wide eyed undercover queens from out of town turn up for the show having heard it's the place to be and under instruction from the club's management Lola picks them off with her gender mutation magic. Fortunately this is a trick she can perform only once an evening, so when the undercover queens lose their heads, the regulars get to step in knowing they can keep their's. Lola is still performing her lip synch when Jurg and Stanley enter stepping over bodies. Their eyes shift around the room surveying the crowd, Jurg experiences a serene sense of normality, he thinks, "What a day"

Ak

Morning Haiku

2009-04-21T22:44:00.000-07:00

The hunted birds talk.
Jungles twist burned my breasts.
Stupidity sets.

Kc:)

Goldfish Lifespan - it's amazing! they live so long!

2009-04-21T12:41:00.000-07:00

"My fish died on Saturday night after 14 years. It was a feeder fish that we got for a snake, but the snake died before we got around to two of the fish, so we kept them. One died after a few months, the other made it a little longer. During the 1994 Earthquake it lasted about 15 minutes on the carpet on shards of its own tanks glass. It used to be gold, but then slowly went silver, then white, and before it died it was missing all but a few of its scales and if you looked at it closely you could see its insides. And in 14 years he never had a name. We buried him the back yard (you don't flush a fish like that) and we miss him dearly."

Chris

Morning Haiku

2009-04-20T22:45:00.000-07:00

Men melt rough, blue fear.
Sad truth moves stupidity.
Smooth blossom clashes.

A playing flower clashes.
Truth plays therefore girls retire.

Kc:)

Obituary: JG Ballard 1930 - 20

2009-04-20T05:48:00.000-07:00

JG Ballard, who has died aged 78, once described himself as "a man of complete and serene ordinariness" (to the disbelief of his interviewer). In fact, he was one of the most strikingly original English writers of the past half-century. Esteemed for his wayward imagination and his ability to create a distinctively Ballardian world, his fiction moved through various phases while remaining instantly recognisable!
Although best known for his 1984 bestseller Empire of the Sun, his first fame, in the early 1960s, was as a science fiction writer, hailed by slightly older peers such as Kingsley Amis and Brian Aldiss. But within a decade or so his reputation had modulated into that of an avant garde provocateur, admired by visual artists and punk rockers. Another decade on and he reemerged as a great novelist of the second world war experience with Empire of the Sun, shortlisted for the Booker prize and winning his widest-ever public. Yet another decade on and he seemed to redefine himself as a special kind of crime writer – one with a peculiar, sinister vision of late 20th-century modernity that appealed particularly to the younger end of Britain's literary and arts scene!
And yet the "serene ordinariness" that he claimed for himself was manifest in his personal life and modest circumstances: he lived in the same small, semi-detached house in Shepperton, Surrey, for nearly half a century; he rarely travelled in his later decades, and he very seldom participated in literary festivals or jamborees!
Jimmy Ballard was the eldest child of James and Edna Ballard, who had emigrated in 1929 from Manchester to Shanghai, where he was born. His father rose to be managing director of a British-owned textile factory there, and the young Ballard grew up in the upper middle-class, quasi-colonial style of a large house in Amherst Avenue, tended by Chinese servants and Russian governesses. A younger sister, Margaret, was born in 1937, the same year that Japan invaded China. The family, like most European expatriates, were able to carry on a normal, prosperous existence, despite shells occasionally whizzing over their house in the International Settlement!
This endured until December 1941 when, immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese forces entered the settlement. After a year of uncertainty, in early 1943 all "enemy civilians" were interned in camps which surrounded the city. The Ballards were confined to Lunghua civilian assembly centre where they remained until August 1945!
The young Ballard grew from a naive 12-year-old to a perhaps prematurely wise 14-year-old during his time in the camp. He was never separated from his parents and sister, and the physical privations were not especially severe. Nevertheless, the contrast with their previous lifestyle was extreme, awakening in the boy a lifelong sensitivity to dislocations, sudden reversals, paradoxes, and ironies. A few months after the Japanese surrender, he was repatriated to England, a country he had never seen, together with his mother and sister (his father did not finally return to the west until after the Communist takeover of China in 1949)!
From early in 1946 he was a boarder at The Leys school, Cambridge, where, when he entered the sixth form, he concentrated on scientific subjects. While there, he won an essay prize but did not contribute to the school magazine. In 1949 he moved up the road to King's College, Cambridge, where he read medicine for two years but left without taking a degree. However, the experience of dissecting cadavers left its mark on his imagination!
His reason for dropping out was the desire to become a writer. In May 1951 he was co-winner, with a piece called The Violent Noon, of a short story competition held by Varsity, the Cambridge student newspaper. (The other winner was DS Birley — later to become Sir Derek Birley, eminent educationalist and author of some classic cricket books!)
Ballard's father suggested that if he wanted to be a writer, he should resume his higher education at the University of London, reading English. This he did, but again he dropped out, after just one year. As he strove to become a writer, submitting stories unsuccessfully to literary magazines, he earned a living by various short-term jobs: Covent Garden flower market porter, advertising copywriter, door-to-door encyclopedia salesman!
Then, in 1954, he volunteered to join the RAF as a trainee pilot, despite being exempt from national service. It was a romantic impulse that sustained him for just one year, largely spent at a frozen airfield in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. The experience of flying (aircraft had been an obsession since boyhood) fed his imagination, but perhaps the most significant aspect of his time in Canada was his discovery, in the servicemen's canteen, of American science fiction magazines. Back home in 1955, awaiting discharge from the RAF, he wrote his first sci-fi story, Passport to Eternity, in emulation of US writer Jack Vance. It was eventually published in 1962!
Also in 1955 he married Mary Matthews, whom Ballard declared to be a great-niece of Cecil Rhodes. Their first child, a son, was born the following year, soon followed by two daughters. The family moved from digs in Notting Hill, west London, to a flat in Chiswick and then on to Shepperton, where they had settled by 1960. Ballard worked as a librarian and as a scriptwriter for a scientific film company!
His newfound enthusiasm for science fiction – particularly of the American, Galaxy magazine school – fed into his writing, and soon he was selling short stories to British sci-fi magazines. The first to appear was Prima Belladonna in Science Fantasy (1956)!
At the same time, Ballard developed a strong interest in the visual arts, especially surrealism and the nascent pop art represented by the This is Tomorrow exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, which he visited shortly after it opened in 1956. The editor of New Worlds, Ted Carnell, who was to become his literary agent for the first 10 years of his career, helped him obtain a new job, as assistant editor of The Baker, from which he soon moved on to the assistant editorship of a weekly science journal, Chemistry and Industry!
For four or five years, Ballard was a short story writer, a period that climaxed in 1960 with the publication of his remarkable tale, The Voices of Time. Set amid desert landscapes, in a moodily-depicted near-future world situated in a larger, declining universe, it introduced its readers to what Amis was later to call "the inner reaches of Ballard-land". After more than 20 magazine short stories, his first four books arrived in a burst in 1962 – The Wind from Nowhere and The Drowned World, and the collections The Voices of Time and Billenium, all published as 50 cent paperbacks by Berkley Books of New York!
The Drowned World appeared as a hardback in Britain early in 1963 to wide acclaim, along with the two follow-up collections issued by Gollancz, especially The Terminal Beach (1964). On the strength of this, and as the stories continued to spill out, Ballard became a full-time writer. Then tragedy struck. On a family holiday in Spain in September 1964, his wife contracted an infection and swiftly died of galloping pneumonia. As Aldiss was later to say: "It unhinged Jimmy for some while." He wrote nothing for about six months and drank too much. Nevertheless, resisting suggestions that he farm them out, he continued to care for his three children. "It was an extremely happy childhood," his daughter Fay said later. "Daddy sacrificed everything to bring us up. We had a lady who came in to change and wash the sheets every Friday, but apart from that he did everything, and he did it brilliantly. Our home was a nest, a lovely, warm family nest!"
Gradually emerging from that nest in 1965-66, Ballard joined in the swinging 60s. His novels The Drought and The Crystal World appeared (both largely written before his wife's death); he became prose editor of the poetry magazine Ambit; and his friendship with the new, young editor of New Worlds, Michael Moorcock, led to fashionable parties, occasional drugs and new women friends. He was encouraged to experiment in his writing, beginning a "non-linear" phase with his story You and Me and the Continuum. He became something of a guru to a circle of younger sci-fi writers, some of them visiting Americans such as Thomas M Disch and Pamela Zoline. One of Moorcock's editorials was entitled Ballard: The Voice!
Stories appeared in Encounter, The Transatlantic Review and various small magazines. But no new novel would appear for seven years. His next significant book was The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), a collection of the nine so-called condensed novels plus half a dozen brief prose satires (the latter included his most infamous title, "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan")!
His next novel, Crash (1973), was written in a state of what he later described as "willed madness". Enlarging on a theme first broached in the preceding book – the psycho-sexual role of the motor car in all our lives – it was to be his most extreme work, a Jean Genet-like rhapsody on all the conceivable erotic overtones of the car crash. (It was written as a motorway extension was being built past the end of his street in Shepperton!)
A fortnight after he delivered the manuscript, in February 1972, Ballard experienced his first car crash while coming home late one night from central London – "a case of life imitating art," as he said later. Fortunately, he was not badly hurt (and no one else was involved), but he was banned from driving for a year, during which he was inspired by this event and its aftermath to write another car crash novel, Concrete Island (1974). Crash itself received poor reviews in the British press but was acclaimed abroad and more than two decades later, it formed the basis of a provocative film directed by David Cronenberg!
Life seemed to quieten down for Ballard from the mid-1970s. He saw his children through school and university. He did not remarry, although he had a long-lasting relationship with Claire Churchill Walsh, whom he had first met in the late 1960s. His novels, High-Rise (1975), The Unlimited Dream Company (1979), and Hello America (1981), were well received, as were the short stories he had resumed writing!
But none of this prepared his readers for the surprise that was to come in 1984 when he published his largest novel to date, Empire of the Sun. It became a UK bestseller, gained him a new readership, and won the Guardian fiction prize. It failed to win the Booker prize, despite being the bookies' (and reviewers') favourite. A heavily fictionalised version of his childhood in Shanghai, it was hailed as a major war novel and it is likely to be the book upon which much of his reputation will rest. Ballard revisited North America for the first time since his RAF days to attend the Los Angeles premiere of the Steven Spielberg film of the novel in December 1987!
A quasi-sequel followed, The Kindness of Women (1991) – more of a sequence of short stories than a novel, based on his life story from 1937 to 1987. Like Empire of the Sun, it represented a fantastication of his autobiography and was a powerful and moving book, gaining high praise from British critics. To promote its launch, and at the behest of the BBC, he undertook another of his rare travels, his first visit to Shanghai since childhood, where interviews with him were shot for a memorable BBC Four Bookmark programme in 2004 entitled Shanghai Jim!
Other late novels included The Day of Creation (1987), a psychological fantasy set in an imaginary Africa; Rushing to Paradise (1994), a not entirely successful satire-cum-horror story set in the South Seas; Cocaine Nights (1996), the first of his crime and detection stories, set in the south of Spain; and Super-Cannes (2000), a crime novel set in a huge business park on the Riviera. The last was the best – sly, witty and extraordinarily inventive in its attack on eve-of-millennium complacency!
His Complete Short Stories appeared as a 1,200-page volume in 2001 and must rank as one of his greatest books. Had he never written a novel, this would still make Ballard a major writer. But there were to be no more short stories after the mid-1990s, and his last two novels, Millennium People (2003) and Kingdom Come (2006), showed failing powers!
His last book, the short but intensely moving memoir Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton (2008) – in which he revealed the news of his terminal illness to the world – was received with acclaim!
David Pringle.•James Graham Ballard, novelist, born November 15 1930, died 19 April 2009

Seminar reforms German under another name

2009-04-20T03:23:00.000-07:00

A great yawn behind an expanding need. When can Repression cough and who dictates? A lecturer examines his Left Hand. He says Left Hand wants to have his way with Repression over a cold steaming barrel. Repression boils up through Left Hand. Now a pregnant radius populates. Left Hand wriggles provocatively. When will Repression undock? Repression worries deep into a winding framework knowing Left Hand houses a sorry deed. Left Hand strays within the early confidence purging Repression of a slavish mind. Repression plays games with romance. Left Hand grows bored. Left Hand bottles Repression. Notice the footnotes make reference to both Repression and Left Hand. Repression stones circumstance without consent. How can Repression reset Left Hand? Repression turns to violence through unknowing. Left Hand points at Repression. Failing to communicate the custom Left Hand tunes to tragedy. The stench of teenage defeat revolts practicable Repression. A supporter punches Left Hand and Repression bootlegs an economic incentive behind some baffled attendants. Left Hand refrains inadvertently on top of Repression then frowns down a diagnosis without the least reward. Repression is looking the other way. The night waffles on! A touching pursuit around a figure of eight.

Ak

Morning Haiku

2009-04-19T20:15:00.000-07:00

Boats break then love turns.
Huge angels set the flowers.
Men mesmerise hail.

Summer scolds stupidity.
Beautiful triumphs return.

KC :)

The Dummy Acts As Shelter

2009-04-19T04:59:00.000-07:00

When Youth accepts beneath The Bells,
A memorable litter exists.
Why do the legends move the natives?
The diagram stretches.
The Bells hunt Youth.
Another female exposure recruits
The farthest act inside a guy.

A hilarious intelligence reassures paranoia,
But Youth can't graduate past satire.
A six culture results.
(Prefix an observing astronomy)
Inside, Youth intervenes the flexible metaphor.
A hardened successor exits
And a variant locates a lesbian.

Ak

Morning Haiku

2009-04-19T00:00:00.001-07:00

Old lovers wake smoke.
Knights fluster a butterfly.
Perfumed spring clashes.

KC :)

Why can't keren exit?

2009-04-18T13:09:00.000-07:00

Keren grows on top of the lavatory.
Andrew strains throughout keren.
Andrew supposes keren.
Andrew manipulates keren with the burden.

Keren swallows.

Want to join us? Send us your writings and we'll publish them for free! On our Blog!
+ Your pics!! Send them Now!

fascist deck

2009-04-18T12:50:00.000-07:00

indicating

A supreme melody receives the connector.

...and that's just the beginning!!!!

Watch this space!