CosmiKnot

  A bunch of stuff (a work in useless progress)   All the books the ceramic hooks They’re all a bunch of stuff And decks of cards without these shards Are all a bunch of stuff When down below you sip your tea before the fire side The radiator’s got my back And laptop wires and shelves of books await my eyes’ attack The titles and the memories of memory itself Are stacked like figments of a dream That once described the self The desk its grungy patina A map of my endeavours The saucer’s eyes are on me now The skylight sending weather From vistas far and far beyond my tiny brains snow globe A festive trope for everyone and everyone’s bath robe Pockets full of mystery and nameless empty fluff Because the flames nuzzle your knees It’s all just a bunch of stuff   The boat is in the doldrums upon a glassy sea Expecting the horizon any day now One two three The poetry of Santa Will Satan’s wisdom be Once we have sailed over the line into a fantasy That we have all agreed is good...

English Magic – New Art Projects 18 July – 23 August 2015 English Magic is the title of the first show at Fred Mann’s New Art Projects gallery. Magic is about misdirection and there are so many threads invoked by the title that it is hard to know where to look. If Mann is a conjuring impresario then perhaps painting is where he doesn’t want us to look. English magic implies a form of stagecraft that works well as an analogy for painting. The difference being that when the trick works, painting, through triggering transcendence, actually is magic. The magic though, is not something the painter entirely controls or is even able to identify when it emerges. Instead, the artist must create each piece without second guessing its ability to cast a spell. The exhibition is described as four solo shows and visitors find these in a series of surprisingly airy basement rooms. Descending the stairs massed ranks of sideshow characters fill the room in a manner reminiscent of the Emperor’...

I am standing on the iron fire escape at the back of the 100 club, the rain gentley drizzling onto the neatly stacked pile of equipment I have made by the doors at the top. "I am so efficient" I somehow fail to think with any real conviction. The David Devant and His Spirit Wife Last Ever New Year's Eve concert has been a triumph but not in the tidily packaged way I had almost envisaged prior to performing. "We tore up the script" as they sometimes say in showbiz. Earlier that evening (sometime last year) I had booked a cab and told them to pick me up around the back at the end of Berner’s Place. A legendary load out. Somehow the 100 club feels like a visitor’s centre constructed over the scene of many a glorious battle. As the concert skittered towards pandemonium the black and white image of one Johnny Rotten on his knees by an alarmingly exposed pair of jugs of water on the very same stage popped into my head. It becalmed me and said yes this path to cha...