For instance
There is a soul in nature from which all myth originates and there is a soul in man that can be stolen when a photograph is taken.
Or so the myth goes.
There is a projection of ourselves into nature and there is a projection of ourselves into other people and there is a projection of ourselves into everything else that is left over.
And a photograph needs a projection. And there will be my projection.
It is a simulation, a reflection of a reality, perverted, obscuring the fact that it is not a reality; " it bears no relation to any reality whatever, it is its own pre simulacrum " 2. Jean Baudrillard (should of course he matter)
It is but a photograph, but it is in a position to be much more besides; the image can evoke a language and it is with this language that we make head nor tale. I take Grant Woods "American Gothic " and use this to provoke a language about my own picture-making, multiplying and redefining them according to an irresistible epidemic process, uncontrollable.
A tight lipped couple. A pairing.

A middle american icon transplanted to the edge of France and redefined in a postmodern act of pure dressing up. These are the people that have passed through my life during the months of the last seven years. They have all left their mark and they each have a different story that they make me tell.

There's something in the old bones yet, spat out noises from its little pratting beak, comes vicarious from amongst these mountain peaks. 5. Anotherman

And it is a strange thing how fancy works.
And it is a strange thing how repetition works.
I have makebelieve on my side.
The Pyrenees and some stable doors would provide the backdrop, the rest was down to whosoever happened to be in the neck of the woods. Grant would have been proud of it all. He used his sister and dentist to pose, I could use anyone from the visitor's book, (and still do).
Every scenario is born of successive experiences making up my hole, making up my past and laying down the foundation for a future. An ongoing reminisce as fuel for an eventual nostalgia and spunky mnemonic ingredient.
For Instance
The sun
has been beating down all day and there is the smell of wheat fields. You can hear the landscape. There are splinters and calluses in a woman's hands and the man's back aches from lesshardwork. He is the man I know that ties his furniture to the floor whenever he goes out to reap so that people won't steal it. He drills holes and then ties all and sundry to the floor with hemp that he grows. The rest he uses to weave hats or make liquor. He might well have some sort of phthisis.7.(wasting disease)
There is another person and this could be me complete with land camera and sun burn. A photographer, confabulator and dimwit.
Man: ....I'd like to sing now....(waits a mo and then.) o field of corn, field of clover, bird of broken wing dropped yonder... away birds away, away birds away, I' ll up wi' me clackers and knock ye down back' ards, away birds away...
I wish I was a little birdi' I ad wings and I could fly ...I'd fly away to my own true lover and in those arms I could die.......

He has been out making hay on top of the earth's belly and before this he shot down German planes with his rifle.It would appear that whilst waiting for the photographer to set up, this is all he can think of and indeed sing. He would stand like this until the cows came home. The woman standing next to him is deaf and does not seem to mind in the slightest that he sings the same song, roundlike over and over. She is more concerned about the splinters in her hands which keep catching on the cuffs of her frock.There is a presence to her despite the fact that initially I might be forgiven for thinking that she was away with the fairies or even a man. She is not his wife and they have simply been thrown together. She can feel his warmth and sense his age. She knows that he is mean with his household possessions, afraid that he might lose them. She does not like him and is ironic. They are both standing there almost spellbound.

Woman: ........
(says nothing but signs wanker with a limp hand, thumb and first finger touching, down by her side.)
He stops singing and looks down briefly to see what she was fiddling with. Her hand has stopped moving and he has missed the moment.
Eventually they are replaced.
For instance
To the left another woman stands with neatly parted hair and a tattoo of the Demoiselles d'Avignon as a work in progress underneath her pinny. When she was young she grew brambles and stinging nettles in her bedroom until they threatened to take over the family home, she then gave up to concentrate on her immediate past. She could be an Amish or Mennonite or on the set of the film Witness.

Anotherwoman: ... talk to me about type not mutant, genre not text, prose not gibberish, metaphor not logo, selection not combination, depth not surface, reading not eyesclosed, paranoia not schizophrenia, metaphysics not taking the piss, determinacy not hither and dither, a photograph and not soul stealing, form (conjunctive, closed) not antiform (disjunctive, open..........

There is a wonderful smirk on her face and she looks as though she might not even know what she is talking about. Not the foggiest idea.
But this time she steps forward and yells to camera in a high pitched pratty beak, all intelligent and understanding, angry at the postmodern and nostalgic for the modern. She has taken me by surprise.

On the soundtrack we can hear Pumpupthevolume.4. Maars.

Anotherwoman: talk to me about romanticism not paraphysics, symbolism not thingymajigs, purpose not play, design not chance, hierarchy not anarchy, mastery not knackered, thesis not antithesis, presence and not away with the fairies......

At this she unbuttons her pinny and pulls out a breast by tugging at her nipple, it stretches all rouged and erect.
On the soundtrack we can hear the dulcet plastic tones of an advertisement for an expensive perfume.

Anotherwoman:... tell me about creation not letting it all hang out , millwall not subuteo, robin reliant not vauxhall calibra, hollywood not the pepys estate, john betjeman and not barry badblood...........cure me of this malarkey.

Consider me standing with the apparatus in hand waiting to catch that moment.She was then up and away. Next to her another man looked feeble with pitchfork in clenched fist. It was now his turn to speak.

Anotherman: ..People comeandgo nowadays all passing through in a rush rush, their cars have lights on in the day time like they can't wait for night time... and they even pull the chains to their outhouses before they've had a chance to unload.....Up with the trousers fore it's even landed I bet nowonder.. all play and no purpose.
Stinging peaking flies and wildalive insect things as inyour face as them technological bits, all clicking and pointing and now look what you've done...she's up and gone and left me.

She comes back into frame and nods in agreement but has obviously not been listening to him. We cut to a low angle and see the garters that hold up his socks, aswell as the man's pants that she is wearing under her pinny for protection and titillation.
Connections and Reveals. 2. Russel Hoban.(Ridley Walker). Snippets of information found as labels in the costumes or engraved on the shaft of the farming utensils.
Hopeful collector and recollectors.
On the soundtrack; track four, entitled British meadow landscape with distant larks from CD number eight in the series. It can be looped and will be played for a very long time.
For instance another couple stand staring bog eyed and ready.

Anotherwoman: Time way back when people had the knowing..then they got clever ...now they've lost the cleverness and they're looking to finding the knowing again..
(she turns vehemently to the man, stiff, next to her and almost takes her eye out on the pitchfork. She is blind so none of it really matters?)

Anotherman: Deciding whether a given population constitutes a species can be difficult in part because there is no single accepted definition of the term.
(he looks straight at camera, hardly moving, alert and fresh from mathematics)
What I can tell you though is that the process of linking genetic variations to disease is being vastly simplified by machines.

They are both led away to continue their life together. He at the university and she elsewhere.
Next up.
This woman could be a cadaver and she has been stood next to her husband and she has had her eyes sewn open with little tucks.They have travelled a very long way to have their portrait taken and the journey has nearly killed him and the journey has killed her. She is cold and although she can no longer speak there is the echo of her last words hanging in the air and they are completely outofcharacter, (which we can only guess at). And she sings them to a child that she never had etc. etc.

Anotherwoman: Tree bel ai n'de maze, si aoudh heron.
Des awl Rune aph ter de phare mer soif,
Chicot taffetas tel swit de carvin naif.
Didyer heffer see such a thingin your lyfe, fess tree blind mice.

Symbol cluttered lines with an horrific tale from a desperate life.Wife.
She is my dear beloved lady of dolour. 3. The Councy Castle Manuscript.
She continues:

Heroique Garonne de moules berry bouche, Moules berry bouche moules berry bouche,
Heroique Garonne de moules berry bouche, on accole danes ferocity mawning.............
Dis six the way i wash isclothes, wash isclothes wash isclothes,
dis six the way i wash isclothes on accole danes ferocity morning.
Dis six der way igave up my lyfe gave up my lyfe gave up my life
This is the way i gave up my life on a cold and frosty morning.
Theirs was a tragic story and the music makes you feel sick. It is swirling and dolby stereo and heavily orchestrated.
And so to the youngsters.
For instance
They are my reminisce, connection and my reveal. From a time when stories are true.
Beneath the dressing up malarcky this couple are all party fours, Bernie the bolt, the Onedian Line and FS1ees.
She is wearing an halter neck top and sucks iced gems. Her legs are tight in wet look pop socks that fit into patentplastic shoes. She wishes that she was as beautiful as Lyndsey de Paul but tall. His cow horned bike leans against the stable door, a golden labrador dog called Honey or Goldie sits panting next to it and there is the oily silhouette of a bicycle chain on his brush denim loons.
They touch his duckbill shoes. And they are both new to each others bodies. He is keen to get his fingers wet and provided the flies on her high waisters do not break she is happy to let him play with her breasts for hours. They are lost in each other. She is another woman for the meantime and he is going to pretend that he is another man.
On the soundtrack we hear If living is without you. 8.Nielson.

Anotherwoman: Christ this clobber is killing me.

Her patchouli scent seems to negate the smell of pig shit and goose droppings. No pubic hair and looks could kill.

Anotherman: Move a step closer. I don't want you to be six foot over there I want you to be six foot over here.

He throws down the fork and takes off the baseball cap. He is hot for her and she for him. Just up the track is a field and later they will throw off their clothes in abandon and she will conceive for the first time. Or so they tell me.

enter this divine world Flashes neonlike on the screen for an instant and then:
pictures are the trickery
and words
are the mimicry
of
all the mess that surrounds me
fight for space

to tell me i am from here
and not
elsewhere
i am alive with the happiness and misery

Another man wears the suit and tells of a time when you could throw stones at a bird tethered by its hind leg on shrove Tuesday. He glares through horn rimmed spectacles and is at once an uglydog.e hUnderneath the jacket he wears a barbour, he is all heuty teuty cityspeak, somewhat anachronistic but confident with a house in the country and oldey woldey manner. He letches at the camera and brags of his conquests and self importance. His wife is a few steps behind with oiled hairs flat to the head, she supposedly adores him.
On the soundtrack we can hear the desperate screams of a desperate woman as a husband beats her.

Anotherman: ....After that I took her to My house where I was exceedingly free in dallying with her, and she not unfree to take it and after that done, to sleep, which I did not do very well because my wife, having a stopping in her nose, snored the like of which I never did hear her do before. Waking this morning out of my sleep on a sudden, I did with my walking stick hit my wife a great blow over her face and nose, which waked her with pain. At which I was sorry with all my heart as I most usually am.. And to sleep again pulling the winciette up tight around me.
(and when pushed on his general well being or happiness, despite his wealth and volvo estate)
In short, I see no content or satisfaction anywhere in any one sort of people throughout this land. They are a blithering mess, all wanton dissatisfaction and destruction.

A sad and all too familiar tale of marital nightmare. Standing up tall and adjusting her pearls atop the housecoat, the woman, who has clearly stood by her man through thick and thin and nursing a swollen face speaks up.

Anotherwoman: ... If it weren't for you, you brute, then I'd never have ended up in this godforsaken valley. You took my love and smeared it all over your face and once it was finisheddriedup and my hips had come out of their sockets you went yonder and spread your seeds elsewhere. Crettin."

She has entered into the spirit of things.
She winces as she uses the words but is safe in front of the camera.
For the timebeing.
The squire, buster and rightgeezer of a husband is keen to get the clothes off and deliver the side effects for such an outburst.
On the soundtrack the screams of a woman in distress grow louder and the photographer recognises them.The stench in this evil place.
There are graveyards in remote corners that tell of a life and a death, nothing in between save for something that can only be imagined. This she does.
She still pre occupies me.
Language helps the land camera operator dream better than image, but this is his image and it is helping the words flow.We pan out wide to a

Reveal.
The destruction of the past is one of the most characteristic and eerie phenomena of the late 20th century. Most young men and women at the century's end grow up in a sort of permanent present lacking any organic relation to the public past of the times they live in. 12.Eric Hobsbawm.

Connection.
Consciousness and the way in which human beings think about fundamental questions of right and wrong, the activities they find satisfying, their beliefs about the gods even the way in which they perceive the world, has changed fundamentally over time. 5.F.Fukuyaman.(The End of History and the last man.)

For instance
A wide angle.
Her looks confuse her age, but she is not tall and tries to stand on a box and no end of dialectic will mend her withered arm and twisted leg. Most of her memory seems to run things backwards and she will always start with the end.
This makes it a lot easier to remember. She wishes that the hole in the stable door was a church and that she was standing outside with her husband. Justmarried.
On the soundtrack we hear distant laments. Tears streaming down her face she breaks into a diatribe.

Anotherwoman: ... like the rose around the briar.... I can then die.... I can run ten full circles around the mulberry bush with the twine around my neck.... I can search for some twine.... I can stand here newly married trying to summon up a smile for the guests..... I cannot marry the man that I love.

This man has just one nipple and a testicle on the same side.He has spent many an evening in the meeting house showing them off and trying to woo the widow that is now standing next to him.
He was once intune with people come specialspeak come unispeak come ruletheworldspeak. He is now a shadow of the man that he used to be, he does not hold himself up straight, his wrists are weak and the rake is weighing heavy. He could have been a politic, paterfamilias, hegoat, butch and tuftything.
On the soundtrack we can hear the din of a primeminister's question time, alive with the bellows of malcontents.

Anotherman: (confused and relentless)...here I can stand........ friends come visiting..... come tormenting full of wormcans, saying; we like to get away from it all and....... the twit gone drank .. no cyclelanes, buslane chocblock farely fullup and beep beeping hooting pull over I'm coming through... this old dog gives out his all.... this my pessimism no accident no not atall.. science turning against me in turd shape explosivebang.... free market comes spreading money globalwide.... people have worth come treat them badly and less than that comes angrything... don't live up to this worth come shame... do well comes pride with patontheback........ what they want is what they know..don't knowit and they can't want for it.. big eatitup right... comes drinking it from a trough like an animal...

He gets down on to all fours and squeals like a pig etc
Flabbergasted, she looks at this man that she does not love.He looks back with his one nipple and his one testicle and is confused by the outburst.
Madonna and Lady Dianna similar, she is another woman that stands pensive ikon and dream inciter.For the first time he notices that she is twisted and withered.

Reveal
Of the different types of regimes that have emerged in the course of human history, from monarchies and aristocracies, to religious theocracies, to the fascist and communist dictatorships of this century, the only form of government that has survived intact to the end of the twentieth century has been liberal democracy.6.F.Fukuyama (from the Powersthatbe).

Connection
and again in flashing neon, a procession of words above the stable door: In a story form about a dull woman but a sensational invitation to make a baby siginifiers they told me as if they were important left side right side inside outside waist coat pocket that my grandmother bought me when she left spain the melange is hotch potchal and complicated and so he turned took obscurity with open arms spangly glitterati fay limp wristed classfull and bold brave like a man from the past climbing and burrowing and fighting and decoding and explaining and the woman looked on until tea time waiting for a comeuppance two pennies of worthiness to rub together they have been patient we are all satisfied by some chronological experience a developing narrative with the occassional lateral dallying drug induced or never and a photograph equals the image of the shetland pony by louis daguerre and a woman attempting sexual intercourse all dressed up in velvet curtains doric columns and potted plants convenience institutionalised tax systems machines selling junk food and junk art to feed them deprived of sweets and national gallery guilt frames its whats served on the plate in the canteen that matters fool that he is in this age of digital morphcreating so we have little playfilm thingy

And suddenly I am told (knewallalong) that the world is the moving image just waiting for a narrative. But there is more and the neon chugs to a conclusion:

Is
nothing sacred but the eye
ofthebeholder

Anotherman and Anotherwoman (In unison): shut the fuck up Collector and Reporterdistorter.

Meanwhile on the soundtrack there is a delayed echo (Tajmahal), repeating what has been told adinfinitummmm. etc.

This is another man that bodes the predicament. His shirt has no collar and he rolls his own cigarettes. We cut to a close up of his hands and they are stained by paint. He lets forth an almighty rant. A very devil of a racket.

Anotherman: Let me bend my folding knees and bite myself until it is what it is. Let me hack away at my walls until it becomes. Those amongst us; misfits and malcontents, unhinged enough to provide insight; a priest in his hidey hole, a fairground attraction, tell me something. How did we get to this?
Are we not left with a slump in reality? What format to use? Don't confound me with this natural science. Thus spoke this anotherman.

The man then starts to whittle away at his pitch fork all a dither. Wherever he has been for the most of his life he has left a drawing in the form of a map underneath the bed on which he has laid his head. Everytime he wakes from sleep he has to spend longer and longer on the drawing as it gets bigger. But if you wanted to you could follow his nights back to a very beginning. He also leaves objects in the strangest of places.He can be seen wearing the denim dungarees.
On the soundtrack we can hear a pianist busy at work making amends.
Doubt is a postmodern state of mind and state of states, certainty crumbles at the mere hint of debate and like the the biggestcleverfella is never there when you need it. It also trips you up and gives you blisters.Whatamess.
Reveal
Notions of relative, philosophical, empirical or worse still ultimate TRUTH are evidence of obscene neurosis, severe psychotic disturbance or intellectual perversion in the view of much contemporary theoretical commentary. 9.E.Andrew Lyndseed

Connection
Artist and Object Maker as irrelevant anachronism . Unrealistic activity and no meaning in modern life. Moving swiftly on there is however a demand: achieving the right balance between altruism, forgiveness and treachery seems to be the key to victory and hence success.

My Grandmouther: and i've never trusted the recollector, the assimilator or the regurgitator, better the CONFABULATOR.

The land camera operator keeps abreast of the various people that are passing through. He is wishy washy relativist.
They dress up in this grubby garb which has become telltale and sometimes sourpuss. They are miles away from america but it is a game that they are playing which is not from over there. It is Elvis for the day.
They explain what how they felt, they keep me happy and I, keeper record.
I am no story teller I am a typer and I am entertained by this touching act. It has been going on for a long time now.
Gone.
But a suit still hangs in a Pyrenean loft, the eyes still look out onto a world in which the pitch fork stands propped against the stable door.
The picture tells of the people that have passed through.
CUT

 

 

N.B.ECHOLALIA is a mental disease which makes people immediately repeat things that 'well' people around them say;cooperation is evolution defection and rejection, discrimination and incorporation.So choose to delude yourself or