where the sidestreets meet together off the highstreets
under slanting shadows down the rear pipework of façades and blackened window
from so much higher up than could never concern us it’s frightening,
the morning after Hopper’s Nighthawks,
is closing down
the ones I try to get to when I find myself done in town
(right after the frustration of trying to get somewhere or the anxiety of trying to
get away from somewhere that always follows me) but never arrive at;
I make my various ways there, I know the routes
like the back of my hand
the ones with warped door stuck at the top or stuck at the bottom
(will the glass pane hold), with step onto lino once lemon and grey with hope
now one with the floorboards sagging under warren of backrooms (forgotten lifetimes
wormholes everywhere) to the pulp of paper and number for finding,
are closing down; I
should have patronised them more, I suppose;
`still haven’t found that second issue, that elusive fourth, and the stacks
just kept on sliding: lettering and universes pressing their skies and moons into my eyeball
but I couldn’t keep up with them, blinked too soon, have to get on,
things to do, places to be
it’s having a sale, clearing all stock; the sentinels stand impassive
to all find, impassive to all loss, hooded eyes on somefaraway beach;
for old times’ sake I pick some up, figures reaching stanceofopera out of panel,
maybe a sixth issue, maybe an intertextual fanzine, avoid the modern
too defined in detail, too static in marque,
and come away with stash held to heart, out
into the bustle busily in all direction, weak indication and giant message
I’ll work my way uphill by quiet sidestreet past high walls holding sycamores and
bay windows over the river home to catalogue my finds like a labyrinth and
plot their weave like a stanza
le mot just
the piquant phrase
the simple model rising magnificent
from cavalcades
of stoic tumbling
threads through like
weave which clothes me
presentable to the world …
but no one sees the
emperor’s clothes of
such fine thread it cannot
be seen, no wise child
to point and exclaim
the hang and drape
to put an end to all step –
“look, mummy, that man
is not an emperor!”
less than naked
I am seen right through
adrift of discourse
I step with stubborn countenance,
all the better to
stare myself into existence,
awkward and
hidden away in some attic
lest I lose [what I haven’t
got] self-contained in trembling
vanity, secretive in hope
of things to come, desparate
in tragedy that my grimy
portrait might be seen …
wander, wander
around the flowers, smell
their colour, breathe their
light and let the light rain
fall in shards of rainbow,
cleansing with love –
om ga – te ga – te pa – ra – ga – te pa – ra – sam – ga – te bo – dhi so – ha
retirement #3 when in Granada … visit the Alhambra, and visit the Generalife gardens … [if you have booked up to three months ahead]; on the walk up to the palaces are trees and shrubs which are plenty-watered by sprinklers, in the morning sun the sprays will often catch a rainbow at their edge; the bordered captions in the poem are comic-conjunctives, there is a beginning, middle and end being told here, folks; the mantra: thaya tha om gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi soha, is the mantra of Prajnaparamita, the Perfection of Wisdom; it can be somewhat semantically translated as “it’s like this: [everything is] gone, gone, completely gone, completely and perfectly gone with no loss, enlightened [dispersed, dispelled] all-right!”; but what’s ‘gone’: “the slings and arrows of outrageous romance” … of one’s self and the whole world positioned awkward to placate its mewling little story, as stolen by Joni Mitchell, who was talking too much at the time, from ‘Willy the Shake’;
the always-aslant encounter
of humans and street
making their lives
in the grounds they see
making their lives in the grounds they are given
constant encounter
as variable as the daily
for those who see
elliptical to the happenstance –
the skyline to the treeline
the glide to the cobble
the palm to the point
the both-step-aside to avoid each other’s path
and collide –
Hopper saw it
and Colan saw it and Strange had already
stepped into it
stepped through it stepped out again
moment
but now
his pupils are that much more round the trashcan tilted the better to see now the street
the face in the orb implied
that everything had changed and that
things
would never be the same again
I am psyched that the first trailer for the Doctor Strange film has just been released; I think this is going to see me lose my 56 year old jaded-cool; I am more excited about this than I was for the Batman movies, even though Batman is my character (oh, sorry, didn’t you know?), (in fact, I envisage Batman, ideally, as more akin to Doctor Strange, the character should be more mystical than he is generally presented); I am glad to see the trailer dealing with kaleidoscope-reality, this has a lot to go for it from the start; Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One is a genuinely creative piece of casting but I hope she is not as ‘explainey’ and active as this trailer suggests (or even as dynamic as she was Gabriel in ‘Constantine’, a female sage should have more devastating effect but with less of the door-slamming); (and talking of door-slamming: I was disappointed that the trailer starts of with the ubiquitous iron door slam portending dire catastrophe for gawp-eyed Humanity, I was hoping Doctor Strange, at least, would approach tale-telling differently, but I suppose superhero movies have hit their formula now, no one’s going to play with it with that much money going in … mind you, Stark’s humour, and the first Avenger’s humour were interesting innovations, I might hope for something innovative in Strange, not humour, so much, as power through deft and understatement, rather than grunt); the round loft-window gave me The Smile at the end; Cumberbatch has a Good Walk as he broaches realities, he has the right eyes to see-through fingers for the part as well; I once hoped that David Lynch might write and direct Doctor Strange … that would have been interestingly different and so right … it was not well-received (have a look in the comments section of https://longboxgraveyard.com/2012/11/28/76-superhero-greenlight-doctor-strange/) … actually, dab’n’abbit, here is my tender, but I’ll settle with what this film seems to promise:
Dr Strange operates in worlds which are ‘mystical’ in the sense that they function within natural laws and forces which are alternate to our own – they are worlds which we just don’t get and it would be better for us that we didn’t know about them so we can continue functioning ourselves. And yet Stephen Strange is of and from this world – he is all too human but has mastered the Mystic Arts. He therefore lives between the two worlds – the physical/political and the occult worlds – or rather he lives amid, at the same time. He is ‘strange’ because he bridges these two worlds, and this is the central pull of the character for me. In comics the ‘occult’ world was depicted fantastically (the floating-island footsteps of Ditko, the swirls of Colan) because it was a visual medium meant for younger audiences (growing up); but the occult world doesn’t so much ‘look’ strange (like a childishly re-arranged physical world), in fact it isn’t even a different world it is the same world ‘seen’ (and ‘heard’ and ‘felt’ and acted in) differently. What was equally attractive about Dr Strange (and under-used in the comics) was the depiction of the character in ordinary, recognisable surroundings but knowing he was actually operating in a world out of the space-time continuum. I would conceive that Strange’s ‘battles’ took place while he was strolling through a park, while walking on the street, in the blink of an Eye (herm). I once heard David Lynch talk about how he achieves perspectives in his work by ‘filming through the eye of a duck’ meaning that he doesn’t just film ‘lineally’ he films simultaneously/alternately – he shoots a scene/whole films which physically depict one narrative but which affectively show an alternate landscape in which they play out. What better ‘mise-en-scene’ist than David Lynch to depict the life of a character who has ‘mastered’ the arts of living bridged across two worlds-in-one? No need of CGI, no need of costumes, not even much need of action! I know, I know, not the ingredients for your standard superhero blockbuster money-maker. But they have been done and will continue to be done under their own momentum. Dr Strange has always been a peripheral character because he is so … strange. Perhaps this would be time to make a different take on the comics-to-film translation formula …
Anyhoo, I wrote a series of poems tracking Doctor Strange through a key set of issues written by Steve Englehart and drawn by Gene Colan; (Dr Strange #6-13 (Feb 1975-April 1976)); these issues are some of the best comics I have ever read; they were also seminal in shaping me to become the significantly un-noticeable writer I have become to this day; I posted them in 2012 and then re-posted them again in 2014 because I thought the film was immanent – it wasn’t; but, dammitall, I like these babies so I’m going to post them again, spread out until November 4th …
I’ve not been writing much during the last four months – the urge has dimished, I’ve been seeping in to studying Shantideva’s Bodhisattvacharyavatara, I am going through yet another spreadthin depression [which I’m not all that sure ever really goes away and I’m quite seriously considering is a screaming clue to me from the universe of how to get out, if only I would listen]; and then David Bowie released Blackstar; and then David Bowie died. Now I don’t know where we are (probably sic).
Then I received ‘Rebel Rebel’ through the post (and if you haven’t encountered ‘Pushing Ahead of the Dame‘ on good ole WordPress yet you are missing some real good writing here) and re-listened to ‘Blackstar’ again and again … I think it’s all coming back.
I’ve been writing ‘poeviews‘ of pieces of music and painting and comics which tweak my keening for quite some while now. Bowie was one of those muse (again, definitely this time, sic). My muses has been deserting me recently, now one of it has died in order to show me that muse never die, that depression is not overcome but to become en-light-ened.
I have a new project: I will challenge myself to write a poeview of each of Bowie’s pieces of music (I’m not sure, 400-600, I don’t care, I might write more than one for some), both the liked and the discomfortabled, both the ‘got’ and the ‘puzzlers’, both the 50+ years and the 80s; and Tin Machine. Even at his crappest it was still David Bowie being, there was still some gleam and sparkle in there somewhere. And I will do it chronologically following Chris O’Leary’s book and blog and I will publish them as they settle (which might not happen so chronologically).
he had already warped through negative space of horizontal
he’d plumbed the vertical of realisation to the depth
there was a take-over
it’s not right but ‘we
were getting killed’
“Jack1, who’s in charge?” “You are!” ‘POW!’
… POW!? ‘How do you like that one between the eyes!’
‘life takes hold …
takes you where
you don’t expect
to go’
so the warp and the plumbing
came in very useful in the end
1Jack Liebowitz, Publisher of DC Comics in the mid 1960s, gave Infantino the job of Art Director of the whole line of comics, then Editorial Director and eventually Publisher; in time he returned to his artwork once the management shifted gear to business …
