FoolishPeople

Scars.

Painful to watch, and (further) evidence of our species' pillaging of our own planet, yet still hypnotic and wonderful.

Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto's "1945-1998" is an animated map showing the 2,053 nuclear explosions that took place around the world during the 20th century.

iamamiwhoami

I couldn't tell you how I stumbled across this project, doubtless through one of the many winding wormholes I seem to fall down between the hours of daylight.

iamamiwhoami is an electronic music project, featuring Jonna Lee as lead singer and a collection of unknown producers. Their videos are something of a pure joy to watch.

One could make all sorts of the usual female, alt-singer comparisons here - but I'm going to resist given that this is the first new project that has had such a positive impact on me for months.

Enjoy

Looking Glass

Occasionally in life you'll stumble across a being who puts everything in perspective. A looking glass in perfect focus.

If you're particularly blessed, it'll happen every few years. For those of you with fortune similar to mine (verging on obsolete) you might just be able wish on it hard enough to manifest it. 

For me, these beings appear when they're most needed; when I'm at my lowest ebb. Just about to give up control of my life, sit back and become the oxygen-stealing, sack of wasted potential I'm expected to be by what commonly passes as society. I'm trying to be careful here, not to sound too much like a foolish girl with a misguided crush for my soul has grown gnarled and hardy in recent years so as not to allow such things to happen. So, for the sake of a little clarity; your looking glass wont always appear in a form you'd be happy to fuck. Though, for the cost of a little extra gnostic(j)ism, they just might.

I detest the use of the word 'Familiar' in this context. Such a lackluster title to give something that's showing you your path, your way through the mire to who you could be, to essentially an Eden of you're own making. Familiar.  'Oh, yes, I thought your face was familiar' or 'That smell is familiar, I must of stood in some shite' are perfectly acceptable uses of the word 'Familiar'. 'I would never have created my own little paradise on earth without my familiar' isn't. 

Looking glasses inspire. Not through preaching, but by creeping under your flesh and opening you up so fully you're flushed through with their lucidity and purity.  An elysian soul-douche, if you will.

Sometimes they're temporary. Most of mine have been. Trick is, I think, to garner everything they're prepared to gift you, suck it up, miss them when they leave, but always grow.

British Summertime.

British summertime. The perplexing and enchanting period in which this little island shows both it's oldest charms and it's sweatiest ball sacks to the world.

Geographically the size of a walnut in comparison to others, Britain has swaggered it's way through centuries of colonial greed and crushing industrialisation like a petulant bully. It exhibits all the stereotypical traits associated with the Naploean Complex like an undersized, horny peacock; attaching itself to authority figures and manipulating itself into positions of control and leadership. Lets face it, our country, on the world stage, has small man syndrome.

The true heart of this land has gradually been forgotten, steadily covered in layers of politics, excess and ignorance clogging up our souls like fat in our arteries.  We've replaced our heritage with a population of us brought up around the legacy and lore of this old country without even an idea about what it represents. One such moron was I.

Vast swathes of my childhood summers were spent drinking cider, listening to folk bands and watching maypole dances. Did I have any inclination of what lay beneath these age old traditions? No. I was too busy getting drunk and taking the piss for that.

I'm not suggesting we all don our bells and and ribbons (there are a great many more wand-waiving, yellow-toothed, weekend-pagans than is strictly necessary here already) what might be fun though, is to put down your frappacino, just for a sec, and explore what this land used to be before it's gone for good.

Your Turn.

When asked to write and post a piece that sums up Dark Nights of the Soul my initial reaction was 'kiss my arse, absolutely no fucking way in hell'. Gradually, I began to entertain the idea - 'I'd be writing for days and fucking days', then as I finally began to persuade myself it morphed again into 'Oh fuckit, I'll just do it and if it gets me in the shit I'll just hide'.

Dark Nights began as a bland old self-promotional tool well over a year and a half ago, at a time when I was still Producer and John was physically at breaking point after Ruined Steel. We had a meeting with Chris Goode (the then creative director of Camden People's Theatre), in in which he advised we make regular small appearances in galleries and the like to up FP's local profile. The brief was to create something small-scale and simple to showcase FP for larger works in the future.

What came next certainly did not fit that remit, far from it. It's been, creatively, FP's biggest undertaking and I'm having difficulties putting together an account of it that won’t bore the objective peruser to tears with in-depth analysis of the matrix of infinitesimal synchronicities that make this working so powerful as a piece of undeniably awesome artistry.

So, what follows below are some words that fell out of my head onto the page, three hours or so pre-show, on the 8th December 2006, the night of the last cycle.

'I'm listening to the same melodies, in the same stark and void-like, bitterly cold room as I did precisely 13 months ago. There are few familiar faces but nevertheless the same inevitable characters that re-occur in every cast and crew structure; the actors stretching and exercising their voices or tending to one another's needs like a travelling circus family. Some confident, some nervous and all with nothing but the next three hours running through their mind, over and over again.

Sitting amongst the rich, the poor, the sane, the insane, the giving and the not-so-giving lends itself to a wide sense of apprehension when considering the necessity of a cohesive unit of artists during a performance.  But throughout this anthology, if one thing has been made irredeemably clear it's that these shows would still have ran without any cast at all, without the screams of the many trampled emotions that lay in it’s wake and without the flesh and blood of the first kiss.

The six cycles of Dark Nights of the Soul have been ones of metamorphosis for everyone involved both voluntarily and involuntarily and has likewise fed from the energies of these changes to create a snowball effect of such velocity you had no choice but to hold on as tight as you and pray for the ride to stop, now it has.

The future is, most certainly, perpetually changed for those touched by this wave of invention.  I, for one, have learnt more of the human disease than I ever thought I would, could and perhaps more than I ever wanted to.'

What remains to be seen is how these nuances of discovered skill are applied, post Dark Nights of the Soul, to the planet and society it was created to effect positive change upon.

I hope you were all listening very carefully during the cycles, because now - it's your turn.

I couldn't resist.

Radiation

By general consensus I seem to really fucking suck lately. In the past week I've managed to upset and/or offend most people close to me, insult a recently deceased genius' memory accidentally (thus causing more upset and offence), shout at a cripple in a public area (thus being cautioned for disturbing the peace), I've been dribbled on by a Hep B looking fucking hippy and accused one of the worlds best loved children’s charities of laundering money. I really must remember to shut the fuck up when I’m in a bad mood.

However, as much as I feel  society’s pressure to beat myself up about this, if the truth be told I really don't care, the apple rotted a long time ago - after I lost for good that which was closest to me and gained that which I cannot distance myself from.

A multitude of apathy is borne by my broad shoulders as if it where a cross to bear, and yet this is when I seem to pull it together and shake off the bumbling idiot clambering to get out of me. Thus, I have now decided that, actually, living in a world gone frankly – fucking insane, gives one certain autonomous grace to make your own choice about what you should be giving a fuck about and what you shouldn’t. For example;

‘I should be giving a fuck that a Russian spy was actually assassinated by radioactive poison administered using nanotechnology in a restaurant next door to where I’ll be dining tomorrow evening.’

‘I shouldn’t be giving a fuck about upsetting the pretentious sector of society still bound by archaic ethics.’

‘I should give a fuck billions of animals are routinely tortured to satisfy our putrid need to shovel genetically modified rotting corpse into our faces.’

‘I shouldn’t give a fuck that yelling at a cripple is deemed inappropriate, or indeed using the term ‘cripple’ – it’s a whole fucking lot better than ‘flid’ – I’d never use that word.’

You can see a pattern emerging can’t you?

The Journey of the Non- Creative Creative.

The Non-Creative Creatives path is a difficult one. We are assumed to be not much more artistically capable than Jeffrey Archer because we are found to be lacking in the ability to wallow in the attention of strangers.  Our need, however, to showboat an over inflated sense of self-worth is much less than most traditional artists which creates this perpetuating cycle of 'can't be arsed', 'can be arsed', 'can't be arsed' and finally 'can be arsed...ish'.

It's a special breed of human being unweighted by the impulse to convince everyone who will listen that they are indeed worthy of fame, glory and recognition. Instead they just sit back, comfortable in their position, smug almost, and watch the tryers perfect new ways in which to bore the living fuck out of all stupid enough to nod and smile in the right places and not just say at the first opportunity 'Excuse me I believe I can hear Lassie outside woofing a message that little Jimmy has fallen down the quarry well - so really must dash, sweetie'.

Using myself as an example, I have over run my life with artists to such a point in the past I needed a detox.

Seriously, forget the blights of sugar, nicotine and alcohol on your system - they've got nothing on ego, careful conversation management and PSSTSS (Post Stage School Traumatic Stress Syndrome). Common side effects of over exposure to the above-mentioned qualities include excessively dry damaged and fragile skin (basically feels like your face has been sand blasted with tiny beads of arrogance), intense migraines and the unstoppable urge to gauge out the eyes of the 'very next muthafucking wanker with the audacity to tell me that I have bad anger management skills!! I wouldn’t need anger motherfucking management skills if you'd all fuck off and grow just one ounce of fucking humility between you'.

*NB Please bear in mind that this list is by no means exhaustive, any additions you'd like published here can be added to the comments section below.

So, six months away and I'm feeling remarkably refreshed, all things considered.

Now it's just a case of navigating my way through the media industry avoiding these types of lobal leeches and steering around other assorted muppets to seek the true forces in art today and try to bring them here, to FoolishPeople for your reading pleasure.

One such ray of light is Stella Damiana, author of Sex Spells; The Magical Path to Erotic Bliss, there'll be an interview up here at the beginning part of next week.

Much love, botox and air kisses to you all.

RIP My Girl.

Throw it away, the luminesent glow of your parked will haunts you. Deliver the fate you dream of when you wake and when you sleep it will all become clear, because I'm not me anymore. Because she's going to be gone.

What Women Want

A study conducted by top academics has revealed that the kind of assets a woman finds attractive in a man can differ depending on where she is in her menstrual cycle.

For example: If she is ovulating, she is attracted to men with rugged and masculine features.

However, if she is menstruating, or menopausal, she tends to prefer a man with scissors lodged in his temple.

Further studies in this area have been cancelled.

I've had an OK weekend, not bad by any standards. Met old friends, new friends, not yet friends and a whole world of possibility.

Possibility is good. For a long time it's felt as though it had all disappeared into a big black vacuum along with my sanity and my other black and red sock.

I have three, possibly four, interviews lined up for fp.com with some really special people So if you know me, please, for all that is good and holy, email and hassle the fuck out of me to pull my finger out of my arse and get on with them.

Oh and also a public apology to John Harrigan; I yield, I yield, Two Ton Boa are very good and by no means as shoddy as your usual taste in bands.