Smashing Bird

Tags

black& white portraiture, Elton John photography collection, Tate Modern

or face cracking the mirror!

Photo by Candia

Coffee?

Tags

baobab, Bedouin, Bentley, Beuys, Bourbon biscuits, felt suit, Freudian slip, Gertrude Jekyll, Gold Blend adverts, National Trust, Piper Cherokee, rehydration techniques, St Exupery, Tate Modern, The Little Prince, Timex

Would you like to come in for coffee?  Virginia asked Snod, just before

jumping out of the driver’s seat of his car and handing him his own

keys.

He really needed to get home to work on some feedback documents,

but, since he had not had such an invitation in over thirty years, he

said: What the heck! to himself.  Emm, well, yes, why not?  Just a quick

one.

Virginia gave him an odd look, but led the way nevertheless.

Lay on, Macduff, he joked, to hide his slight unease.

Oh, I thought it was ‘Lead on..’  She rummaged around in the bottom of

her handbag for her keys.  Then she blushed.  She didn’t want him to

think that was a Freudian slip.  Coffee was such an embarrassing

invitation nowadays. When she invited someone in for coffee, she

meant just that.

It was all the fault of that series of Gold Blend adverts in the 80s.

Some men in the past had been rather surprised when she had

shown them the door after one drink.  Not even a biscuit.

Snod sank into Virginia’s comfortable sofa and looked round the room

while she filled the kettle.  Interesting old fireplace.  He had almost said

‘foreplace‘.  Why was that?

There were some photos of children- presumably her nieces and

nephews.  There was a faded wedding picture.  He would have liked to

go over and take a closer look, but Virginia came in and put two coasters

down on the coffee table.  She moved a large Gertrude Jekyll Gardens

book.

She returned with two National Trust mugs.  They featured Wyvern Mote.

So, she must have visited on some occasion.  He’d ask her about that later.

Sorry, no Bourbon biscuits, she apologised.

He was strangely touched that she had remembered his predilection.

Eh, how long have you been here?  he asked, sipping his drink.  He’d

have preferred tea, but no matter.

We bought it in 1987, she said.  It’s too big for me on my own, but useful

when the family come over.  And, of course, I love the garden.  William

loved the outbuilding.  He kept his old Bentley in there. He was away a lot,

so, he decided that he didn’t need a house on his own. We bought this place

together as a joint investment.

William? Snod looked faintly puzzled.

My elder brother, she replied, going over to the mantle-piece and taking

down the wedding photo.  Sadly they got divorced. He died of pancreatic

cancer in the 90s.

The groom looked very like Virginia.  Good-looking bride too.

I’m sorry, said Snod most sincerely, but oddly glad that William hadn’t been

her husband.  After an awkward pause, he continued.  And do you have any

other siblings?

Well, my sister who lives in New Zealand.  She tries to come over every

few years so that I can see the children.  That’s when this house comes

into its own.  And, of course, I love the garden.

I see.  Snod noticed that she still hadn’t mentioned a man in her past.

He picked up a little book before placing his mug down on the coaster.

The Little Prince, he smiled.  It was one of his favourites.  Augusta had

given it to him one Christmas when he was nine.

Yes, Arnaud gave it to me.  He was a pilot.  He crashed his Piper

Cherokee when we had just been married a year or so.  Some Bedouin found

him, but even their rehydration techniques failed.

So, now the tragedy was out.

Yes, what St- Exupery says is true: one characteristic can recall your

love and pain.  The colour of wheat evokes his hair.  He was only twenty

nine when he died.  I suppose that I have been widowed almost as long

as he was alive.

I rate this house because of the garden.  I don’t care about its financial

value.  When I smell the roses that we planted together, my heart fills

with sweet pain, if that makes sense. There’s no point in allowing the

bitter experiences to destroy you.  You have to feel the pain and

embrace life.

Snod remembered that Exupery had said one must root out the seeds

of the baobab.  They must be destroyed immediately or they would take

hold.  He decided to remove one little seed of resentment against Diana

and her lack of amatory interest.  Here, on the other hand, was a woman

who would recognise a drawing of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant

and wouldn’t, in a matter-of-fact way, put it down to being a side elevation

of a hat. Here was a potential soul mate who did not talk about golf, bridge

or politics.  She understood primeval forests, stars and she might appreciate

a sunset.

But the mythology of her life was striking him very powerfully.  A husband who

had parallels to St-Exupery and even that artist chap whose work he didn’t

make much of- Joseph Beuys, wasn’t it?  That awful school trip to Tate Modern

with the disappearing Boothroyd-Smythe!

Hadn’t Beuys come down in a desert too?  Or had he made the whole thing up?

Maybe Boothroyd-Smythe had his particular facility for mendacity encouraged by

contact with the work of such modern cultural role models?

The only thing Snod could relate to had been Beuys’ felt suit and he wouldn’t

have minded getting a tailor to run up a similar one for himself.  Apparently it

had been a symbol of social isolation and imprisonment.  But maybe he, Augustus

Snodbury, no longer needed such a layer of protection from the world- not if

Virginia..

He looked at his Timex.  Gosh, is that the time?  I’d better be going.  Thanks

for the coffee.

He shook her hand and as she opened the door to let him exit, she leaned

forward and kissed him very gently on the cheek.

Sleep tight, Gus, dear, she whispered.

He turned back and, before he could stop himself, they were locked in a

passionate embrace, indulging in what Boothroyd-Smythe et al would have

termed a snogging session.

Snod had snogged after thirty odd snog-free years.  He had forgotten how

good it was.  Mehercule!  So this was what was meant by coming in for

coffee.  It beat filling in feedback forms no end.

 

 

 

 

I thought Munchkins were something else.

Tags

Edvard Munch, husband, Keith Chegwin, Millennium Bridge, Munch, Tate Modern, Turner Prize

Yesterday the Husband and I had an earlyish start for the metropolis and a brisk walk from London Bridge to Tate Modern, heading for lunch in the restaurant.

We were seated on the Shard side.  Is this tower complete?  Maybe it is meant to end in a poppering pear, split seed pod effect.  There are cranes and a vast building project behind the gallery.  At least we weren’t on the riverside, spectacular skyline or not.  On a previous occasion I was privy to a bird’s eye view of a dead body being fished out of The Thames by a boat-hook, though no one else seemed to notice.

Munch would have, I thought, as we forked out £15 each, stifling a silent scream, in order to view the exhibition The Modern Eye.

Come to think of it, I could have painted a modern version of the iconic painting by placing the figure on The Millennium Bridge.  Bit late for this year’s Turner Prize, though. Must copyright the idea.

Yes, what it is to be an angst-ridden artist.

Apparently Munch’s bohemian friend, Jaeger, used to publish parodies of the Commandments, such as:

Thou shalt write thy life.

Well, dear Hans, I have obeyed your injunction in this very blog.  Could it be an art form?  Candia’s face is slowly emerging from the chiaroscuro in the manner of early Munch woodcuts, but without the self-mutilating gouges, one hopes.

Candia also offers a range of revelations from casual glimpses to defiantly heroic poses.

(Leaflet text by Simon Bolitho)

She devours pretentiousness, including her own, with the ravenous appetite of a vampire and refers to herself in the third person. Her re-workings of raw emotional pain are endless.

Munch regarded his paintings as his children, in the same way that Candia labours-or should I revert to the first person? – in the way that I (oh, the vulnerability of stark honesty) labour to bring to the birth these very posts, with their unusual perspectives and exaggerations. (Even I am becoming confused over personae.)

I too catch my figures in chance poses, or portray them in motion, stepping towards the reader in cinematic fashion.  Like Spartacus Chetwynd, I could animate them through my own carnival troup, or would I merely become a latter day odd man out presenter, such as Keith Chegwin, alias Cheggers?  No Turner Prize possibility in that case.

In my blog I attempt to recreate the Kammerspiele Theatre, just as Munch did in his naturalistic designs for the set of Ibsen’s Ghosts.  This shared style is adapted to the investigation of psychological intensity.

Am I suffering from delusional grandeur?  Do not answer that.

The constrained length of my average posting is brilliantly suited to the claustrophobic effects which Munch endeavoured to create.  He saw the stage as an enclosed room with one missing wall, which enabled voyeurs to peer inside.  The other three walls entrap the actors.

In the same way, in a few paragraphs, I display the foibles and follies of my fellow-Munchkins and prevent the reader from escaping.

In Death of a Bohemian, 1925-6, Munch shows his friend, Jaeger, surrounded by hallucinatory figures and the films record street scenes, traffic, friends and even his own image, just as I attempt to do, even down to a shared  idiosyncratic jerkiness of vision and haphazard chronology.

Munch lived in relative seclusion, but followed current affairs through the media and he created a body of work which responded to local, national and international events, just as I do.  But would he have discovered humour in current re-workings of his paintings which show a bald Mo Farah screaming on the bridge?  You see, Candia can allow such variations and indeed delights in them.

Like his self-portrait in The Night Wanderer, I find myself, or Candia does, in a similar position-ie/ condemned to spend the hours of darkness as a gaunt insomniac, enduring hours of anguish in order to produce art for the masses. I will make a Gratende Kvinne out of my weeping.  And will the public be grateful?  No, like gannets- nay, fulmars- they are inclined to project my carefully pre-digested pap back into my face, like vicious chicks punishing the lonely alpiniste of the world’s cultural sea stacks.

Yet, like Munch, I will comment on the very throes we endure for art’s sake:

I don’t want to die suddenly or without knowing it.  I want to have that last experience too.

And more, much more than that, we will share every last minute with you.