Busy Fog

My flatmate gave me the heads up about Blind Light, the Antony Gormley exhibition that was open at the Southbank centre, along with the guide to the exhibition and the information that entry was half-price on Mondays. That was enough to get me interested. So, along I went last Monday evening.

I had been told what to expect: statues dotted around the skyline. I approached The Hayward, and saw one of them on the roof of a tall building. It was unnerving. He looked like he was about to jump. I was quite taken aback. Another city worker jumps to his death. But it was just a statue: he wasn't actually a he, and he wasn't going to jump, either.

And then I started spotting more. I headed up the stairs of the building, and completely missed the gallery entrance, but it made no difference, because I was spotting more and more statues. By the time I'd seen about four, all of which were looking at me, I was no longer worried that they were going to kill themselves: I was now feeling uneasy because I was worried they were actually going to kill me. Looking out into the distance, there were more. Snipers, no doubt. I felt very exposed. No no, they were just statues...

I found the gallery entrance, and was greeted with a sign I'd never seen before at an art exhibition: "Tickets are sold out. Due to the popularity of this exhibition, expect queues." It didn't make sense to me. I went in, and stumbled about the place a little before first realising where the box office was, and then where the queue for the box office actually ended. It didn't make much sense. I wasn't in a supermarket: I was in an art gallery: what was with the queue? I took out my little black book and scribbled some nonsense down to pass the time.

The sign had told the truth: there were no tickets left for that evening. After struggling with the concept of time a little, I finally worked out that I'd be able to return to the show on Sunday. I got my ticket. For Sunday, at 2pm.

Of course, 2pm was a terrible time to turn up on Sunday. I woke up on Sunday morning at about 6am, then spent the morning trying to think of things to do to make time pass more quickly. The weather was bleak, so hanging around outside wasn't appealing. Nonetheless, I ended up heading off to Waterloo and hanging around The Southbank for a bit, waiting for 2pm to arrive.

While there, I looked at the Coca-Cola bottle pop art that was on display. I wish I'd taken some notes, as I can't even remember what the exhibition was in aid of. There were some nice colours on display, though. Of course, the graffiti in the mini "skatepark" was far better. There are some amazing grafs down there: you should check them out. And I even saw some artists doing their thing. For the first time, I caught a whiff of the spraypaint they were using. It smelled like it would tear your lungs to pieces if you tried painting over any extended period of time. It's no wonder that some of the artists from the early 80s have a lot of health problems these days...

- - - - -

2pm finally came, and I wandered into the gallery for the main attraction of the day. The place was heaving. There was a monstruous construction called "Space Station" at the entrance. It was very impressive. But the queue for "Blind Light" was even more impressive. This queue must have been about 400m in length, and there was no way I was going to stand in it. "Blind Light" is a big fog-filled glass box. In Gormley's words: "It is very important for me that inside it you find the outside. Also you become the immersed figure in and endless ground, literally the subject of the work." It was a shame that I didn't get to experience the box, but I did enjoy looking at everyone wandering around, finding the walls. They looked like idiots. Thinking about it now, I should've asked them what it was like to be in there. Did they get the full effect, when it was absolutely full of people who had to pass through quickly? I thought about a book by Miguel de Unamuno, "Niebla" (Mist). I was tired, though, so my thoughts didn't get very far.


The gallery was packed: that much was true. Gormley had created an exhibition full of bodies, which in turn had attracted even more bodies. Wandering through "Allotment II" was a slightly stressful affair, akin to trying to get through a train station during peak times. In addition to the 300 life-size concrete boxes that served as abstract representations of actual people, there were at least 50 living, breathing human beings wandering around, knocking on the boxes, stroking the concrete, and discussing what they thought of it all. I personally didn't want to touch the statues, talk about them, or even look at them too closely: to me, they really were like people. I almost apologised when I bumped into one of them.

There was something very disturbing about the exhibition, and I wondered what the children there were thinking of it all. I came to "Critical Mass II": 5 cast iron statues suspended from the ceiling, as if they were being tortured. Very unsettling. The chair that was placed at the foot of the stairs, "where a guard or invigilator might sit" made it all even more unpleasant. The theme of torture continued with "Drawn", a room containing sculptures of the artist himself: "painfully forked caryatids cornered at different angles on the ceiling and the floor". In my tired state, I could sense the distress of the figures. Next door was another main attraction, but again, the queue was too long. I think it was another torture chamber. By now, I was very worn down by the number of people in the gallery. It almost felt like the whole gallery was a torture chamber.


However, I was glad for the company when it came to the final room of my tour: "Matrices and Expansions". This room was full of elaborate constructions of stainless steel tubes, pieces which were "so open in structure as to become almost drawings in space". Bodies were there to be seen, it was just a matter of seeing them. Some little girls were running around excitedly, pointing out to their mum what they'd just seen. It was clear that they were seeing bodies far quicker than any of the adults (I actually failed to see much, even after the girls had pointed out the shapes). And it was really enjoyable to see people under the age of ten finding an art gallery wildly exciting.


As for the piece involving all those statues dotted around London, "Event Horizon"... When you went out into one of the "viewing galleries" you really realised that you were the one being viewed. "The conceit in all this is that in observing the works dispersed over the city these viewers will discover that they are the centre of a concentrated field of silent witnesses - they will realise that they are surrounded by art that is looking at them." I do quite like that idea, and I think that "Event Horizon" was a very good piece.

In all fairness, though, the exhibition was ruined for me simply by the huge number of visitors there. I spent only 40 minutes looking around before deciding that I just couldn't enjoy it properly. I didn't enjoy myself half as much as I had at the Fridfinnsson exhibition the previous weekend, although I did take some thoughts home with me. I headed off home, and then on to while away the afternoon with Jimmy G...

- - - - -

James showed me a great comedy show, "Look Around You". I was met with a great complement to the exhibition that I'd just seen: a sketch about geodermic granititus, or "cobbles": a medical condition whereby the sufferer gradually turns into a pile of rubble. I found this idea, when considered alongside the figures in Gormley's "Allotment II", to be incredibly funny.


Gormley's deadly serious piece, Allotment II (above) was just reduced to nonsense by the work created years earlier by the writers of Look Around You (the pic below isn't actually from the show).


Talk about putting a fresh perspective on the exhibition.

Other reviews about Gormley's exhibition can be found by the dozen if you look around. But there's no real point in reading them, as the exhibition has now closed.

But you'll certainly be interested to hear that Dr Lavender has a Myspace page. Unfortunately, he died from cobbles, but you can add him to your friends list anyway! http://www.myspace.com/dr_lavender

Things to do in South West London when you're single

The day made little sense to me. I left the gym early because I felt very faint, then went home and made sure I had a full breakfast. Ever tried scrambled tofu? It's a good vegan alternative to scrambled eggs. Scramble it up with some herbs and pepper and put it on that bagel! I think it's a damn worthy alternative, even if it may seem a little strange.

And I hit my bed after breakfast. I felt utterly muddled. No sleep, though: just a strange drift through an hour, and a lot of moaning and groaning. It was Sunday, and I knew what I wanted to do, but I couldn't work out a way to do it. I wished desperately for things to be different, as if lying there and conjuring vivid images could actually bring my dreams into reality.

Nothing made much sense when I got up again. I stumbled around the flat wondering why I was feeling so out of it.

I did some things, but then I realised that I wasn't doing enough. The day was threatening to pass me by. I needed a plan, but no plan seemed suitable. There was no point in watching a film, as nothing was making any sense. There was no possibility of reading, for exactly the same reason. And nobody was picking up their phone. A good job, mind, as I didn't really know what I was going to say, or why I was phoning them.

I remembered my plan from a couple of weeks ago: there was an exhibition I needed to visit, and it wasn't too far away.

I put some stuff in my bag and headed off. I then decided that I should eat lunch, so I stopped heading off and put my bag down. I ate lunch, then headed off again, to jump on the District Line and head for South Kensington...

- - - - -

The Serpentine gallery is a lovely little building in Hyde Park. The only problem with it is that it's free, which means you risk getting trapped in a gallery with a load of bored children who are only there because their parents are being selfish. Fortunately, even though I saw some kids leaving and entering the building, I couldn't actually find them in the gallery. Maybe I was just imagining it all.

I made a note in my little black book: "Dreams and imagination invading reality." Once again. But experiencing such an invasion is always fun...

The exhibition was by Hreinn Fridfinnsson, an Icelandic artist. And all I'd seen of his work before going there was a cardboard box with a pink interior.


This particular box was giving one of the attendants something to do, because people kept walking into it. It's called "Floorpiece". To alert other visitors that the box was there, and a part of the show, I stood and stared at it for a while. "Allocate your sentiment, and stick it in a box."

There are quite a few reviews of the exhibition out there, although the artist doesn't seem to have made it into Wikipedia yet... A shame, as I want to know more about his little avant-garde group, SÚM, that was mentioned at the entrance to the exhibition. All I know is what I read there: that the group was started in Reykjavik in 1965.

Whatever, Frindfinnsson's work was very thought-provoking and engaging indeed, and the exhibition was very enjoyable. You'd see the label for one of the pieces, and then ask yourself where the devil the actual piece was. Like "Beauty Marks". You read the description and discover that it's made of velvet. But you have to hunt around to find it. Eventually, you might notice a "beauty spot" at the bottom of the pillar, on the other side to the description. There's no way you would have spotted that if it hadn't been for the label. Later in the exhibition, you come across the sign again: "Beauty Marks". But where's the beauty spot this time? I never found it. Was it just a hoax? Maybe beauty spots aren't actually beautiful anyway. Maybe mole-free faces are more appealing.

So there was an element of symmetry to the exhibition. Before coming across the second "Beauty Marks", I came across the second "Pair": a shoe in front of a mirror. It was on the opposite side of the gallery to the first "Pair". Coming across the second pair really did trip me out slightly. Mirrors, when arranged correctly, can really unnerve people, as you know: "los espejos y la cópula son abominables, porque multiplican el número de los hombres."

These weren't the only mirrors, though: "Jar" and "Jars" also used mirrors to create virtual works. The attendant who was watching over the room containing these pieces was thoroughly enjoying himself. Having seen how two glass jars had been positioned to create a column of glass jars that stretched into the infinity of a virtual universe, the attendant was crouching there, trying to find a way to get his hand inside that other world too.

The jars didn't interest me as much as the inside-out house. According to the accompanying text, "The house harbors the whole world except itself". Here was a house, the inside of which was on the outside. So the whole world was, in a way, inside the house. The idea still has me smiling.

- - - - -

The art I saw certainly took me somewhere else. I was in a total daze for the rest of the day. Nodding off on the tube home, I found myself again questioning the whole concept of reality and chronology. I looked out of the window and thought back to the times when I'd seen the same route. Three times. And each time, I had no real idea what I was doing or where I was going. I couldn't even have told you for sure if the route even existed, to be honest. I was so tired that I didn't know if I existed either. Everything seemed so unreal.

I got home and nothing made sense. In the end, I left the flat once more and went for a long walk up the hill and around The Common. My feet hurt, and I was happy that I was finally feeling something other than confusion. I scrubbed, polished and soothed my feet and went to bed, and wondered what had happened that weekend.

I will go back to see that exhibition again, though. It was very very good.

3 books I've read recently

Beloved (Toni Morrison)

My flatmate from Sicily bought me this as a leaving present, as it was one of her favourite books. She was forever raving on about how good it was: so good, in fact, that she messed up one of her final year literature papers because she was enjoying herself too much writing about Beloved, and she lost track of time completely. My dear ex-flatmate is by no means the only one to promote Toni Morrison, though. Ms Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994. So, she came highly recommended.

I started the book when it was given to me all those years ago, but I wasn't grabbed by it, and I gave up after about chapter two. But it would be rude not to read a book that was given to me as a gift, and stupid not to read one that's so critically acclaimed (if only so that I can add a further two cents to any discussion about critically acclaimed literature I might come across...), so I picked it up off my bookcase, and gave it another chance.

Once again, it failed to grab me, but I decided to keep on at it in case I eventually got into the groove. At two hundred pages in (and the book is just over three hundred pages), I still couldn't understand what the big deal was. In one of those beautifully ironic moments, I headed up to Wimbledon Common one evening and jotted down my thoughts on why I didn't particularly like the book.

Perhaps [her style is] too human for my tastes - not metaphysical enough, even though the story seems to be about a supernatural being.

After finishing my mini critique, I embarked on the final hundred or so pages. And, boy, did the girl shift gears! Yes, the final third of the novel proved to be quite something! You should never speak too soon...

It's a book I can appreciate, but I can't say I'll be rushing to read any more of Toni Morrison's work. Even though it will doubtless be recommended to me by many more people.

- - - - -

I've just leafed through my little black book to see if I wrote any quotes from the novel that I liked. I didn't find any, so here's a quote that's totally unrelated to everything I've just said:

The world is going to have a heart attact, or the economy is at least. Look at how, year after year, things get more stressed. We're constantly pushing things to a new level.

I wrote that on July 14. Just over a week later, the economy certainly did have a heart attack of sorts: $1.3 trillion was wiped off the global equity markets.

- - - -

The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)

Also while in Sicily, I was given a bookmark publicising The Alchemist with the purchase of some books. I kept this bookmark, as it was rather pretty, and I must've seen it on most days of last year, as I used it as a bookmark at work. I quite liked the quotes on the bookmark, even though they were a touch twee.

Indeed, the ideas behind the story are hardly new, and the story isn't told in a particularly new way either. But it is nonetheless quite a lovely story. It's rather philosophical: the healthy dose of positive mysticism that the book offers is clearly the secret of the book's success. And it's very short, too. I've read plenty of books that explore the same ideas, but I did still very much enjoy this one.

Our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand.

Of course, the above quote could be found re-worded in countless other books that deal with the perennial philosophy. But I don't think I'll ever tire of that kind of thing, because I too am an otherworldly mystic.

- - - - -

Well, maybe I too can understand the language of the world, and maybe I was in tune with something deeper when I came up with my little observation of the world economy. I guess my third eye was open at the time...

- - - - -

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Hunter S Thompson)

This was another book I'd started but not got into. I might even have borrowed it from the library twice, but I never read much. The beginning of the film entertained me greatly, but I don't think I've ever seen the whole film either. Maybe that's because I was always so bombed that I always either ended up sleeping through the film or losing all concentration after the part where the attorney's listening to White Rabbit in the bathtub?!

Whatever, I saw the book on Jimmy's bookshelf on Saturday night, and I grabbed it, knowing full well that I'd absolutely love it. I started it last night, and finished it this evening. Absolutely blinding. The pace is unbelievable, and the story is hilarious.

- - - - -

What did The Alchemist say? You've got to follow the omens? I pulled Fear and Loathing off the bookshelf when I could barely speak or keep my eyes open, and I absolutely loved that book, so maybe that's an omen?

Shit, I'm getting in touch with a friend and going on a ludicrous drugs bender...

Sí, tampoco los muertos retoñan, desgraciadamente..

I remember the evening last year when I bought the Burial album, and I put it on when I went to bed, and I just couldn't believe that somebody had recorded sounds quite like the ones I was hearing. The album seemed suspended, I didn't know where it began or where it ended, I didn't know when I was awake or when I was asleep.

When I got up the next morning, the world was drizzly, but I felt comfortable, with that melancholy, introvert, curious yet unimpressed interest in life and everything that was going on, the sensation that everything was utterly absurd. I had the perfect album for the life I was living. Drizzly South London beats in a drizzly South London town. I headed in to Croydon, lost among sounds of ghosts from the past... It was like this kid had just dug up all the graves, only to throw dirt back over them again. Those drums, those vocals, and that mood he was capturing. How could it be done?

That was the day that things changed.



And now he's come back with some more beats, and it's all coming back to me again. The rain is with us once more, the drizzle has come back to accompany the beats, as once more I find myself stepping out and wandering around town, lost in a world of mystery and emotion...

Burial is just bloody amazing.

I discovered EL-B and garage at the same time. I heard his Brandy remix, then “Buck n Bury” and “Passage of time” - and I hadn’t even heard “Stone Cold” yet, though I’d heard of Groove Chronicles on something else I didn’t like. Then I heard “Stone Cold” and I was just like “fuck…”

And, yeah, El-B is totally ill too, and blatantly the grandfather of everything that's great about the London Underground.

- - - - -

The only thing that I know of that compares to this kind of stuff is the work of Juan Rulfo.

Pete's rock and roll Sunday

What a sensible day I've had... Check out what I've done with myself:

- Got up just after 6
- Put a load of washing on
- Went for a swim
- Had breakfast for the first time in weeks. Yummy.
- Went to Sainsbury's
- Cleaned the fridge
- Bought a blender, chopping boards, a sabatier knife, and wooden spoons
- Made lunch (I got to use the stuff I bought)
- Washed the dishes
- Put on another load of washing
- Did some brainwork
- Ironed my shirts
- Went to the park to identify trees

I think I need a drug habit or something. This sort of sensible Sunday is just not on. I reckon if I had a garden, I'd have probably done some gardening too.

- - - - -

Still, the tunes I bought yesterday are very exciting indeed.

hilvanando el hilo de la vida

The first colleague I talked to today said to me: “Pete, you seem totally out of it these days!” And I was slightly taken aback by the comment, because I’ve been feeling as sharp as a samurai sword this week. Mind you, I have been far out, lost in a world of thought that’s located far far away from wherever my body may find itself. Such dislocation is what permits me to leave my body in a trance-like state on the running machine, with no mind in control to say: “Stop, I think you need to save the energy for something else”.

But this afternoon, I realized that my colleague had been right. I suddenly noticed I was pretty much floating, and I thought back to this morning. What madness. All sorts of things had been flying around my head. I was full of randomness.


* * * * * earlier today * * * * *

"I used to think
As birds take wing
They sing through life
So why can’t we?"

This morning I have been unable to work: I can’t keep my eyes from the rain outside. It’s quite spectacular. The rain always fills me with an urge to do I don’t know what: just as quickly as the rain hits the ground, my consciousness becomes awash with far-flung ideas and inspirations. Generally, I am possessed with the urge to sing in Italian, though I don’t know which song to sing. This morning, the rain took me back in time, and I felt the urge to send a message in Portuguese. While in Lisbon all those years ago, we witnessed some of the most insane downpours Portugal had ever seen. The dainty little town seemed like it was going to be washed away – I was almost expecting it to vanish like a chalk painting on a pavement. You know, like what happens in Mary Poppins, after they've sung supercalifragilisticexpialidocious at the races...


Heavy rain and thunder is the weather at its most passionate. It’s something to behold. “Pioggia” certainly does sound as wet as today looks.

But it’s dark. It’s so very dark. Como pode o céu estar escuro como se fosse noite? It’s the end of July. A guy from work is getting married. Just like the rhyme:

“Mary said ‘Aye’ with a twinkle in her eye
And they both got married at the end of July”

Even though the end of July should be wonderfully sunny and pleasant, I like this weather. When the rain stops and the sky clears, the sun will return. We're getting truly bipolar weather at the moment, and bipolar weather feeds creativity.

* * * * * fin * * * * *


I headed to the toilet for a quick snooze. I really did float away. And when I came out, the sun was shining very brightly indeed. I read what I wrote this morning: I had been right. I surprised even myself.

All you need are wacky ideas.

"Room to rent: would suit holistic therapist"

I picked up my pizza and was walking home, when I walked passed a sign that struck me as being slightly humorous:

"Room to rent: would suit holistic therapist"

It took me a while to work that one out.

Anyway, let's go back in time a little. Back to before I picked the pizza up...

- - - - -

I was in the pizza joint, waiting for my dinner. I was starving and I started drifting off...

I found myself at the pizza joint in Palermo that was just down the road from where I lived. Glory days! A pizza joint about 30 seconds from my front door! I thought about how, here in Wimbledon, I phone up to order, and they say: "yes mate, 15 minutes!" and it ends up taking them 25 minutes, while in Palermo I'd just rock on in there and order, and I'd have something delicious within 7 minutes at most.

I used to pass the time with my little black book. It was a different little black book to the one I have now, of course, but it was still a little black book. The happy fat man asked me one day:

- Ma stai sempre scrivendo... Che scrivi?
- Ehi, scrivo molte cose... Scrivo su di te, caro amico!
- Scrivi su di me? Come mai?
- Perché sei l'amore della mia vita!
- Ma che c'entra l'amore?!?!
- Tu sei l'uomo chi mi fa tante belle pizze, allora tu devi essere l'amore della mia vita!
- Bah!

And he turned and continued with his pizza making. What a happy fat man. And there was I, a terribly unhappy thin boy, capable of being cheered up only by eating pizza every evening, scribbling inconsequential words down in my little black book to pass the time.

I really did eat pizza every evening out there. I rotated the pizzerias, so that they didn't get suspicious of my behaviour. There was another one, my second favourite, a little bit further from my flat. Real good. Another happy fat man cooked the pizza - he was the original happy fat man out there. It was the way he'd say to me: "origano?" as if it were something truly dirty and forbidden. And I'd get excited. But not quite as excited as I'd get if I said "pepperoncino!" They served the most amazing delicata there - the cherry tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella were to die for... He used to give me a knowing smile as he boxed up the pizza, as if to say: "This is the closest to magic you'll ever get." I'll never forget the day he pulled out the pizza and I just said "BUONA!" and he looked very proud indeed. He was all: "Allora, ti piace la pizza?!"

Happy fat man number three was the least happy of them all. I never formed any sort of relationship with him, or his pizza, the base of which was terribly tough. You really would hurt your fingers trying to cut it. He wasn't even happy. Just a fat man. No stories to tell here.

Of course, then there was the happy fat girl. She had a smile to die for. She was like a playful little cat. She really was a happy girl, but I didn't rate her pizza much either. This girl would cook the pizzas when their resident happy fat man was away (he was the happy ugly fat man, and he rarely said a word). You've never seen tits like hers - I mean, I don't think I have, anyway. They were quite possibly the biggest on the island, which is saying something. Her name? Giusy! Yes, that's pronounced "juicy." When she told me that, I almost laughed out loud. Maybe I did. I often felt bad for not going there very often, because she was always happy to see my flatmates and me if any of us ever passed her by.

I can't remember the names of any of these pizza joints, which makes me slightly sad. Of course, for the restaurant where "l'amore della mia vita" worked, I translated the menu. They rewarded me with a free pizza. One day, I shall return...