i got there and the house was empty and dark

for they had all gone to hamilton just for fun

i got in a side door, it was unlocked

and played the piano in the dark

and you came home and made omelette while I played

and we ate it with the cabbage i had brought

two different flavours of ice cream

and then i tuned your guitar and we closed a door between us

the rainbow door

and played and sang to drown each other out

thank god for grace she is amazing

we have the same demons and

your talk restores my soul

* * *

it is sleeting outside

I shall be seen by no-one today

at least, not until I go out to play the piano later

with grace

and to church and to the pub

I shall stay in my room with the rest of the cabbage

and coffee

It Is No Longer Early Days

the streets are interconnecting and shrinking

and the dazzling is retreating

nestled in the many valleys like

snow

there are some residual daunts

missing the first five minutes

avoiding eye contact

and wandering in off the street

i went to see the candles

rows and rows of languages underneath the melody line

darkness

there was a cretin angel warming her hands at the blaze

a half-lit bronzed flickering flat blank face

diligently relighting the wicks as they drowned themselves in liquid wax

with a fearfully straw-like but long flint

in front of the khrusificksion

and the occaisional crazed caw from her friends in the back

surrounded by awe and latin and organ

i was sitting next to the woman with breathing difficulties

home up the hill

against the black rainwater

streaming down the footpath

jittery spatters of light pass under my feet as I pass the lamposts

rain to remove my makeup and shame

grace has found me as I am, she has a piano and she knows my secrets now

i have a job interview on friday.

The Early Days III

what seemed orange last night

is in fact pink in the daylight

but I still like it

i am not dying, it is just the

withdrawal effects

my neurochemistry is beginning to creep back

in trepidation, that i will just drive it mad again

it is right

I didn't know you were a knight, sir

but you lived down the coast from her

did you know

food is for the weak

and for the widow of zarephath, she

is staying until thursday

my shoes wore out so fast in those days

and my clothes and my IQ and my poetry

and the nightmares turned to eucharistic horror

Happiness Is

this teacup was from my grandmother years ago

i have rediscovered it

it has always been too nice to use

but i think i deserve it now

i grate ginger into the steeper and put clover honey in

and the lid keeps it all hot and it provides a coaster for when i take the steeper out....

The Early Days II (Present Participles)

i am breaking the numerology

this is the therty fourth post

becoming Lady Macbeth

waiting in the grey hallway

getting entangled with the pentecostals down the hill

making chopin for the pingpong, i made them play manically

singing a hymn to mary the virgin, too

my first

and we got drunk on the blood of christ afterwards

he must have been wasted at the time of death

my life is still charmed

though i am still debilitatingly honest

No Title And No Photograph

glory is exhausting, it's just as well i have a god to give it to, or i would explode. i wish to ditch my creativity in a bottomless pit and go deny my soul in a monastery forever.

creative burnout. sent the internet capacity over the edge with the millions of arts that i uploaded last week. removed batteries from camera so that i didn't have to snatch every piece of art that came my way. actually they fell out and rolled down a bank and even though i went back when i had time and foraged immensely through rotting undergrowth i did not find them.

i am blatantly wasting opportunity. i am depriving the world of myself. and it is fantastic. i am not an artist anymore. i am a human. i am not earning my place in this world. i am simply freeloading, overstaying, crashing the party.

why do we seek what is worthwhile?

why do we pursue good things?

why do we try to succeed?

to fulfil our potential? why?

it's like everyone believes in god these days or something

in other news, i found my leonard cohen cd which i had given up for lost long ago, because it was.

last time we saw you, you

looked so much older, your famous

blue raincoat was torn at the shoulder

i want a Famous Blue Raincoat.

i have no poetry

only song lyrics

i am stealing other people's art

and plastering it on the walls of my soul

because i have forgotten why i exist

leonard's golden droning is making me sleeepy

and you treated my woman

to a flake of your life

and when she came back

she was nobody's wife

i met a knight, though i didn't know he was a knight. he was just a random old artist in a random studio that i wandered into from the street and he painted like my grandmother used to. i was talking about art and error and that i had total respect for watercolours as they are as unforgiving as hell and he showed me where he had once made a mistake and then changed it, and it was not noticeable. he was the mayor of wellington for 7 years, and an architect, thus the perfect watercolours of buildings. he was always warm and encouraged me to visit regularly, and gave me a small print of a view of wellington from not far from my house. i was so honoured. he wants to see my paintings. but i bought food instead of paint again this week, and i want to do a new wellington one to show him. do you know michael fowler? that's sir michael fowler to you....

i bought food. i have never had a full larder, not like this. i tend to buy small amounts of food at a time. perhaps having less food choice is easier. certainly having too many choices destroys my ability to know what i want to eat. ALL OF IT. i am a communist. please make my decisions for me and tell me what to do.

thank you for the trouble you took

from her eyes

i thought that it was there for good

so i never tried

i made this amazing pork chow mein. it was flavoured mostly with Mi Goreng noodle sachets. grating ginger root and chopping garlic was so good for my soul. the silverbeet and brocolli and carrot were also important.

i made ginger and honey tea from its raw ingredients. i find it very fulfilling.

i made these amazing afghan biscuits. actually, they had wholegrain oats instead of cornflakes. does that make them anzafghans? what made them incredible though was that i put one m&m on the top where one normally puts a walnut. walnuts are too healthy though, and colourless and m and m's have pure saturated discriminate colours.

i think karlyn may be coming over for coffee tomorrow....

the dice, the dice

the dice

i bought these rubbers today

they are making me happy

indeed

and all you want to do with dice

is THROW them

and then they

bounce

all

over

the world

and get lost

how to draw (The Neuroscience Of Art)

For this task, you will find that the right side of your brain is most useful. This side is all about novelty and initial processing. With respect to images it is about the shape of things and what they actually look like.

Unfortunately the left hemisphere (which is often misleadingly overemphasized as 'dominant' and 'the language side') does tend to take over on tasks like this; It deals more with known information and labels, and tends to think it has it all sussed and knows what is going on.

It will categorize the subject matter and tell you how it ought to look. You will end up with a clichéd image that will probably be factually right but essentially wrong; have the right components in the wrong ratios.

In the case of drawing, this is not useful; you need to be able to draw what you actually see, (or in the case of abstract art, the individual elements, gestures, and impressions that your visual system perceives) and not what your brain secretly thinks it is supposed to see.

To solve this, you can either focus on drawing the negative space around the subject matter (for example, the spaces BETWEEN the fingers) or you can distort the image so that it is no longer processed as a particular category by turning it upside down, or by taking a photo and using drastic and wanton photoshop to make it unrecognizable but for the basic structure.

Another problem with the visual processing systems is that they adapt to an unchanging stimulus. Leep firing the same wiring in the brain and it will start to ignore it after a while. Stare at an image on an easel for a while and it will lose it's salience.

The solution here is to turn the painting itself upside down, gaze at its reflection in a mirror, or to take a photo, and shrink/enlarge it.

Previously invisible mistakes* will emerge and glare at you -- do not lose heart!!!

Also, I tend to have three or four paintings going at once, and go from one to the other every few minutes. It reduces the perceptual blindness.

Of course, art is not about copying; That is far better acheived with a camera. It is also good for the drawer to have an artistic-not-autistic eye that can decide what details to leave out, and which to emphasize or even distort.

Now I just have to figure out how to play music with the right side of the brain....

* Of course, because there are no rules in art (is that not its definition?), there are no mistakes. There is, however, such a thing as a painting where you can see what the artist was trying-to-do. It can either be fixed, or the quality within the image that failed can be violently but obviously obliterated. This is fun.

Bibliography

http://www.drawright.com/bookA.htm

http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/159/9/1615