1875 Work, Simon Boccanegra, Super Bowl. Pickup on South Street

I have been giving myself a good and hard talking to at becoming self indulgent regarding my work and my existence in general. I devoted a great part of the weekend to researching, reflecting and learning about the TV series Lost at the expense of many others things, although I became fully engaged and produced thoughtful work and found my own approach to understanding what had had happened in the past with some indication of what mysteries are to be resolved, and questions answered, over the next three months. In part, learning which characters will have a role in the final series, and which characters, to-date, will not, could prove an important clue.

Having written the above late on Monday evening I embarked on two hours of activity which required physical exertion, a bonus. My first decision is to proceed with boxing completed work and making sure I know, what was where, from that already boxed. Now of course I do not mean taking up fisticuffs to my work but placing it in small reinforced cardboard boxes retained from the move, which amazes me is over five years ago.

I will allocate one to two hours a day for this from tomorrow, Tuesday February 9th, 2010 dividing the time between boxing completed work already on display, or laying loose on the floor, to make room for new work to be placed in the space then available, and sorting out what is where in the two kinds of boxes being used.

There are two kinds of boxes. The first are display boxes in Black for creative work, Blue for events and Red for confidential. The second are those used for the move and which will hold lever arch files containing six to ten sets of completed work covering a theme or area of interest. These are functional and can be stacked within storage areas and I have settled on the small attic room with fitted wardrobe to one side and floor to ceiling shelving on the other for this. Organising this room ked to the overdue task of sorting old clothing, keeping some as part of the project to reveal my changes in weight and past choices and giving the remainder to charities. About once a fortnight since arriving a charity has left a collection bag at every house on the hill, almost as frequently as a leaflet advertising a meal delivery service. I have kept a record and todate 54 different firms have circulated their latest offers and menu and several provide updates on a regular basis. I decide to keep a record of the charities requesting clothing. I also have a supply of blankets and bedding which will be reviewed.

There was an ulterior motive behind the sort of everything on floor of my downstairs work room as three items had gone stray. Two have been recovered. A wireless mouse which I use for the lap attached to the TV. My original intention was to spend the latter part of this evening watching any Portillo Great British railways series programmes from his fourth journey. Alas I discover that all but one is left and this of an earlier series already covered, so that ends that. Is there a DVD set in the offing me thinks?

The second item is a small memory card of 64 MB which can hold 12 mins of film or between 100 and 300 photographs depending and their quality. The third, and so far, still to be found item, is the other chargeable battery for the camera. I use the camera to photograph completed work as well as to record places and experiences, and as the recording of work is boring I tend to do in batches while watching TV, so having two batteries has been useful, but not the end of the world if I cannot find the latter, but it irritates me as the loss occurred in one room at home. Its whereabouts remains a puzzle.

My preliminary sort out covering all three floors of the house led to another decision to junk decided to junk a pile of catalogues, travel brochures and such like where I like to keep the latest. This proved not straightforward, because I need to retain a cover, and some of the contents to form part of the work project in the development sets. If I die tomorrow or when the work is completed sufficiently to put on exhibition, should I choose to do so during my lifetime, the catalogues will indicate interest aspects of my personality and experience at this period of my life and therefore to throw out the catalogues without listing them would removed the attempted completeness of what I am doing. I am so resolved by undertaking this activity albeit late into the evening that I confident it will be carried through the days and weeks until Spring and early summer. Now to the rest of the weekend review

I have had three long days in succession. Saturday 6th February commenced with a reasonable start although the night before had been interrupted. The morning and early afternoon was devoted to work on Lost and cleaning the bathroom and kitchen in preparation for a service visit for the central heating system and the cooker on Monday. The bathroom got a deep clean and I remain pleased with the effort and outcome. The kitchen less so but the floor got a wash and the work surfaces well cleaned.

I had intended to leave earlier than I did for my evening out and decided not to visit the main supermarket for cooking oil and Wilkinson to see if they had restocked of Black display albums. Then on impulse I so put the oil back and went along Fredericke street which as street parking on one side and called in at an Asian store just before closing and purchased a small bottle of olive oil to use with the ready made up vegetable stir fry which I planned to use with some lamb chops for Sunday lunch. I then forgot some stir fry sauce so had to use a little ginger until calling in at the supermarket on Monday afternoon for postage stamps and salami. I used the rest of the stir fry to accompany pork chops for the evening meal on Monday with a packet of spicy oriental sauce to which I added some ginger. All this talk of food makes me hungry and I will have a bowl of Muesli cereal rather than salami slices in crackers. But then relented on opening the fridge for the milk!

As the area to the west of Fredericke Street and the river is being redeveloped with the former Plessey factory site cleared Fredericke is getting a face lift with some of the derelict shops being brought back to life although between a third and half the street is still to be brought back into use.

I arrived at the Heworth car park outside the metro and bus station around 5.15 pm, staying in the car to drink soup from a flask and salami rolls with mustard. I parked next to the ticket machine with required fee on the dashboard. I then saw not one, but two, ticket wardens coming over to check the windscreens of the few cars parked around me so I got out and was about to put the money in the machine when one of the two called out to say there was no charge if I was remaining sitting in the car. I explained I was having a meal before going to a theatre in Newcastle by the Metro. I completed the purchase of the ticket and placed on the dashboard. as it was not one those which you attach to the windscreen, and thought nothing more of it until return just before 10pm to be alerted by two of the taxi drivers in the nearby rank that I had been given a parking ticket. The £50 fine reduced to £25 if paid within 14 days was issued because a correct ticket was displayed. I had left the ticket upside down. I assume this was from a different warden as the fine notice was timed just before eight pm when the payment period ended. A complicated two stage appeal process is listed on one side of the ticket which I will follow.

The purpose of my visit to Newcastle was to see a relay of the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, production of Simone Boccanegra with the internationally renowned tenor, Placido Domingo, in the title role, using his baritone registers, and with James Morris playing his Nemesis.

I must admit that I did not enjoy the evening. It was exceptionally hot in a packed auditorium so I quickly became tired and had to fight dozing off. The seats in Classics stall are not as comfortable as those in the Circle and do have full backs and head rests and have no space between seats or pairs of seats so one has to take care not to take the space of neighbours. None of this would have mattered if the work had been entertaining with memorable songs and a visual spectacle in support.

The sets and clothes are sumptuous, richly textured and designed in reds and browns, and the scenery used to create the palace reception room for the Doge and the courtiers, is amazing, because of its size, and the impressive decorated ceiling. The singing of the principals - two baritones, a tenor and a soprano, was brilliant and the emotional performance of Domingo extraordinary and exceptional. The music is powerful and there are moments of passion and tenderness but not one memorable tune. The performers all spoke of their enthusiasm for the Opera and I can see why it is the choice of singers and musicians and I can say I have attended a live performance of an opera with Placido Domingo, but it is not an opera I would wish to pay good money to see, although I will view a production on the Met Player at sometime, although there are others I wish to experience beforehand.

The plot is complicated. Boccanegra is a young upstart who has fathered a child with the daughter of the Doge, played by James Morris and who he wishes to marry but whose father has locked her away and regards Boccanegra with enmity.
The Doge has become unpopular with the courtiers and the people and two of the courtiers plot to remove him and place the popular hero Boccanegra in his place believing he will be able to become the power behind the throne, however over time Boccanegra becomes his own man.

Early on Boccanegra’s lover dies before they can marry and her father pleads to be able to bring up his grand daughter, Boccanegra refuses and the girl is brought up away from Boccanegra and hidden from her grandfather thus increasing his hatred for the usurper.

The first act is described as the prologue with an interval after thirty minutes of thirty minutes because of the need for the main characters to age by twenty five years and the major change of set required from outside to inside the Palace. The next act described as the first lasts for an hour with a short interval mid way, followed by the second long interval of 30 mins. I made my way up the stairs to the second floor for the gents and then to the third to the bar for a glass of Merlot while watching the scene change projected on the wall with the running down time clock, leaving when there were two minutes to go and getting into my seat with only 20 seconds to spare.

During the first interval Placido and Morris joked about the difficulty of pretending they were young men and this is achieved through a dark haired wig and make up. He and James Morris have been playing rivals and enemies for thirty five years!

The story develops that Boccanegra’s daughter brought up separately had in fact been brought up by the former Doge under his assumed name of Grimaldi away from Genoa, but this fact is unknown to both father and grandfather. Moreover the former Doge, the daughters fiancée and Paulo Albiani a goldsmith and the courtier who had brought Boccanegra to power are all involved in a complicated plot to bring him down with Gabriele Adorno, the finance, one of two assassins. The complication is that having been reunited with her father, Paolo suggests to Gabriele that she had been abducted and seduced by the Doge.

There is then a period which unfortunately from my viewpoint Gabriele reveals himself to be a chauvinistic pig as well as an assassin. He demands to know if the Doge has taken his fiancée by force or seduction, proclaiming that if this is so, he will having nothing more to do with her. This should have wrung alarm bells with the young woman and abandoned the rat. Instead she reveals herself as cunning and manipulative attempting to achieve the best of best worlds by finding a way to maintain both relationships and bring the two men together. The problem is that Paulo has poisoned the drink of the Doge which produces a long painful death with stretches almost throughout the last act. Paolo gets his just deserts and Adorno and Boccanegra are reconciled to the extent that the couple are able to marry with his blessing and Boccanegra insists that Adorno is appointed the next Doge at his death. Moreover the former Doge Jacopo Fiasco who has reappeared in Genoa is also brought to a new understanding and is entrusted in ensuring that Boccanegra wishes for his son in law are respected and brought to fruition. The brilliance of Placido Domingo is that he able to make the story, and his role, believable.

The highlight of the weekend was however Super bowl XLIV in which the New Orleans Saints, attending the contest for the first time and as champions of the National Football League, defeated the American Football League Champions, the Indianapolis Colts by 31 points to 17, having come from a 10.0 lead at the end of the first quarter. I had not intended to watch the event live which meant staying up until 3am but I shared the view of the majority of people in the USA, outside of Indie fans who wanted New Orleans to win for three very different reasons. The foremost is that the city, the state of Louisiana and the south east oft he UDA is still recovery from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. The second reason is that the Saints have only recently become a good team had never been to a superbowl and were regarded as the underdogs and now a great team and the third that the owner of the Colts transported them overnight from Baltimore to the new prestige Lucas oil stadium which is to hold the Superbowl in 2012 with the 2013 event to be held in New Orleans at the very stadium which was use to house hurricane refugees. The background of the two teams was the difference with one professionals with a great offensive team led by what many consider to be one of the great quarterbacks of all time while New Orleans was also a team of professional, but with a mission beyond furthering their individual careers or team, but aware that the morale of a city, a state and a region was at stake.

I first came to enjoy American football in the 1980’s when whole games were shown live on TV. I made two visits to Wembley stadium in London to see pre season warm up games and visited Gateshead who, and may still have a team in the British league version which existed for a time and may still do. I supported the Chicago Bears in part because of a defensive player called the Fridge and also the San Francisco 49ers after being given one of their shirts as a Christmas present. I learnt more about the sport after getting a computer game played and fro a time it rivalled my interest in football. Over the past five years I having been preoccupied in my work and competing programmes to watch many live games during the season and then the playoffs involving the two separate leagues

Because of the national interest the games was watched by an audience of over 100 million in the US alone, the largest TV audience in the history of that country and also shown in some 30 other countries including China, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, Russia and the UK as well as Canada and Mexico Brazil and Chile,

For the third year in succession the national anthem was sung by a winner of American Idol- Carrie Underwood, Jordan Sparks and Jennifer Hudson. Queen Latifah sang an odd version of America is Beautiful and The Who provided the half time entertainment. Jerry Rice and Emmett Smith two of the 2010 Hall of Fame new entrants participate in the pre game coin toss. $100 million dollars of merchandise was pre-sold to indicate the extent to which the event is the biggest sporting event in the US Calendar, greater than Baseball and Basketball.

The highlight of the game came in the fourth quarter when just as the commentators were remaking about the overall lack of mistakes and turnovers Tracy Porter intercepted a pass from manning at the 26th yard to run the 76 yards to gain a touch down and force the Saints to get two touchdowns and conversions to go into extra time. For a few minutes it looked as if this might be on as the Saints drove all the way to within three yards. However there was then disaster because with pass interference they were pushed back to 10 yards and their last effort went through the hands of the receiver incomplete. At that point there was nothing more to do than to let the lock run down the remaining time and accept defeat. Then the celebrations commenced and the people of New Orleans were out on the street starting the Mardi Gras over a week early.

Having got up early the gas man did not come until midday but stayed longer than anyone giving the cooker the boiler a thorough clean and arranging for an electrician come and check the downstairs switch which had become temperamental, due to a loose wire. The visits were a bonus in two ways because I learnt that it was wise to keep the light on as in severe weather the boiler is designed to switch itself on to avoid freezing. The visit also provided an opportunity to get the ceiling light fixed in the day room although discovered that it looks as if the tube was a dud after replacing the starter. I will leave the tube until Wednesday when I get a 10% every little helps discount.

This brings me to a Richard Widmark film whose title I noted somewhere and hope to find. ( Pickup on South Street 1953). He plays a pick pocket just out of jail for the third time and facing life if he is caught. He makes the mistake of then take the purse of a woman whose dominating male partner has got her to pass micro film of a valuable formula to the enemy and who was under a surveillance, hoping to find out who the main culprits were. The girl takes a shine to Widmark and tries to help him keep to the straight and narrow as well as break free from her boyfriend, Widmark is a kind villain who does not carry a gun compared to the boyfriend who is a nasty villain and who does but both are recidivist criminals. The dividing question is Widmark also a traitor to his country in other ways. It can be argued that being a criminal is being a traitor to one’s country although not as damaging as selling or giving secrets away. This is typical of USA film making at the time and an obsession to this day that it is better to be dead than red and that anything which is true Christian or is social motivated is quasi communist and must be defeated.

Almost to the last moment the character still finds it difficult to give up making a small fortune from having got hold of the microfilm. What tips the balance is when the girl is beaten up and nearly killed and that she held out to protect him. Finally he gets he message and puts himself in arms way to help the Feds capture the next villain up in the spy chain. He wins the girl but the city cops reckon it won’t be long before he offends again and gets life inside. Great fun but a good performance from Widmark.

1863 Exqusite and necessary forms of Pain. Sophe Calle, International horror and Wallander

Over the past decade there are three series of images of human suffering on a scale which is difficult for most human beings to comprehend except through the circumstances of individuals. The first was those of 9/11. The terror of those in the aircraft which flew into the twin towers, the Pentagon and the fourth where the passengers attempted to overcome their captors knowing that pain and death was likely, coupled with those trapped in the higher floors of the building, especially those who decided to jump, and of the fire, police and other rescue workers who went into those buildings and then realising they were collapsing on top of them,

The second was the Tsunami rush of water which swallowed up populations of towns, villagers and holiday makers.

The third is only emerging now and I find them even more difficult than usual to bear. The firemen standing among the rubble of a community school where their dogs have confirmed what surviving local have said, there is no one left alive here and where those who survived are too shocked and full of grief to do anything of themselves.

Then there are the uplifting stories of the survivors, two children brought out from under the ruins after a week, a young woman who immediate sang a hymn of gratitude to her rescuers and her God. The frustration of the reporters, undertaking the essential task of bringing the horror to the attention of the world so that Government, agencies and you and me with reach into our pockets to provide a little of what will be required and press the authorities to get their act together and provide more and better help than they are have been able to do until now.

What impact will these experiences have on them and all those who are directly helping, the locators of bodies and providers of burials of the unknown reminiscent of the mud swamps of the first world war. This is real suffering and real pain although experienced at a safe distance by the majority able to continue with the rest of our lives as if nothing unusual has taken place.

The work of Sophie Calle, the contemporary concept and performance artist, photographer and mini film maker, which continues to impress me most is Exquisite Pain in which she compares her changing thoughts and feelings about a personal experience which devastated her at the time with that of friends who have experienced personal loss and physical pain of varying intensity and circumstance. The work is a brilliant demonstration of how our thoughts and emotions usually change over time and how in each individual situation it is usual to be overwhelmed and unaffected by everything else that is happening around us, including the pain of others, which objectively may be worse, until a distance develops between the actual moments of our individual experience and we can place the experience in the context of the rest of our lives, before and since, as well as in the context of the lives of others and the history of human and animal kind and our surrounding physical world.

In the same way that some people enjoy films about horror and blood shedding, including recreations of acts of extreme violence, I wallow in work of emotional intensity. I cry with any sentimentality at the cinema and over the past year have discovered the sophisticated grandeur of the live operatic experience of loss, self sacrifice and death with Madam Butterfly, Aida, Il Travatore and Carmen, and of Turandot, but to less extent. Five years ago I rediscovered the emotional fix live drama when the Playhouse reopened in Newcastle, and the Sophie Calle work was made into a theatrical performance without interval. This work had the most influence on how I approached my own project since visiting the Saatchi 100 show at the former County Hall building followed the same day by my first visit to the Tate Modern further along the south embankment of the river Thames. My two visits to the Sophie Calle exhibition at the Whitechapel in December of last year has not had such a dramatic impact as those before but reinforced and reinvigorated my work rather shifting it into a new direction. I returned to the gallery just before Christmas because of wanting to experience the bank of screens in which women performed the letter at the core of Take Care of Yourself, some adding their reactions. I watched what I thought was a set cycle in which one of the continuously playing screens became the centrepiece with sound. I discovered that the order of showing within each cycle changes which pleased me considerably. After the performance of Exquisite Pain at the Playhouse I had attended a short open session with the Director and actors and asked if they varied the order in which the experiences of Sophie’s friends are interjected between the changing account of her own. The reaction for the Director was in effect that I was daft to raise such a suggestion which seemed to me to miss a fundamental point of the work.

My visit in Christmas week also reinforced my view that that three distinct groups of people visit art exhibitions. There are the tourist attraction visitor who goes to the Tate Modern or the Baltic at Gateshead who have had no previous interest in contemporary art or prepared for the particular exhibition(s), who pass through and who may stop at a particular work, usually for seconds before moving on. There are those with an interest in contemporary art, knowing something of the work and the artist before arriving and may spend time in reacting and considering the exhibition and to individual works, but rarely from my experience attempt to take in everything in one session. And then there are the artists usually students and young who go to study as well as experience and enjoy, and where at the Calle, there was more evidence than previously experienced of those sitting somewhere with a note book. It was evident from both visits to the Whitechapel that the majority if not everyone had come with prior knowledge of the work of Sophie Calle, even if they had not experienced the work directly before. Having said this only one other individual appeared to stay experiencing the different screens as they went through a cycle. The average stay was for one or two screen performance. Perhaps having grasped the concept they were not interested in its execution and therefore missed the extent which the same subject, a letter, can be read and interpreted and in this instance performed by singers and musicians as well as read.

Pain was also the subject of the last Wallander of the second series of three dramatizations of the nine novels of Henning Mankell. As with the other works, the subject is familiar, that of revenge killings where there is similarity in the modus operandi but the absence of an link. The killings are all of men where the victims die horribly. One retired man spends his time watching birds, and is impaled when he falls from a tampered viewing area. A florist is kept prisoner, starved and then tied to a tree to die. A jogger is placed in a bag loaded with rocks and dropped into water, with only the face exposed and also three were able to look into the face of the murderer before they departed, Only the fourth is prevented, a railway guard as he is about to be pushed under an arriving train.

Wallander and his team gradually discover that the connecting link is a self help group for women who have experienced violence within a relationship and that the organiser of the group is the likely murderess whose mother had also been a victim and had recently died. And then we come to the significant difference between this work and most others and will become an award winning episode among all three award winning masterpieces of dramatic storytelling scripting and acting.

The special ingredient is the character and life of Wallander and acting of Kenneth Branagh.

In this episode there is the sudden death of his father. Wallander visits his father at the residential home where the man has placed himself aware he is a burden to his family as Alzheimer’s takes stronger hold and he pleads with Wallander to takes him home where his life had some meaning. In one of the brief moments of clarity he talks of the joy of just sitting watching the passing of nature’s time and tells his son that he also should have someone to sit with him. Shortly afterwards, Wallander, while in the midst of the murder inquiry, is told that his father has died and he rushes to find that this is so and is immediately confronted with all the unresolved issues of their relationship, his father’s rejection of him, which was not just illness generated, and his own failure to spend more time with the man, and where the nature of his work and its demands was an important factor, but only one of several factors in the gulf between them, a gulf which one suspects had always been there.

I project this because of my own experience where my biological mother denied my existence in public throughout my life until going into care at the age of 96, when Alzheimer’s had already taken a strong hold and showed no affection during my childhood, never talked of my father or of our subsequent relationship and where in fairness several aspects of my life did live up to her fears about me and that I never measured up to any hopes and good wishes she possessed for me. And this was so until moving her to a residential home in South Shields where she progressed from the sad and angry stage of the disease into a demonstrable loving and happy person retaining the childlike belief in her Catholicism until her last breath, despite the pain and discomfort of her last weeks and days at the local general hospital. I was in the fortunate position of being to visit almost every day staying an average of one hour and although at times as he was unsure of who I was and although our ability to communicate directly ended over time we communicated and stabled a bond stronger than ever before and I had my childhood through her progress into babyhood and felt atonement for my many failures in other relationships and experiences.

This was not so for Wallander and worse was to come when arriving just in time to meet his daughter at the station for the funeral he found that his ex wife was with her at his daughter’s request. This was the first time they had met since the divorce and both communicated the challenge of the situation and he was confronted by his own loneliness and inability to come to terms with what had happened between them, especially when she confirmed that she was happy in the life that had developed since their parting. She has moved on, he had not. The film ends with both returning to his father’s graveside, and he leaves his wedding ring behind.

There are two other memorable magic moments. The first when he calls at the home of someone who had a relationship with one of the murdered men who physically abused her against her wishes. He is attracted to the woman who also reacts in a positive way to his visit as does her young son. On the wall he sees one of his father’s paintings which she inherited when acquiring the apartment. She thinks this is a print and he explains that his father only painted the same scenes with slight variations throughout his life, producing thousands of editions. The moment was wonderful because of the way Kenneth Branagh was able to communicate the pride felt in being able to explain about his father’s work and recent death to someone who appreciated the painting.

However the moment which was one of the most the most remarkable of dramatic portrayals of reality I have experienced during my own lifetime was when Wallander confronts the murderer and who manages to take him prisoner producing a gun with the consequence that colleagues, including a marksman, focus on the murderer. Wallander pleads with the woman to surrender or she will be killed unless she puts down the weapon and for a few seconds it looks as if he is successful as she breaks down in floods of tears in his arms but then turns the weapon on her self.

What had emerged beforehand is that the killing spree had commenced shortly after the mother of the women died and Wallander having just experienced the death of his father knew from his recent experience which included, meeting his wife after a period since their divorce that it can trigger extremes of behaviour with some children experience relief and a sense of freedom where others are devastated because of the closeness and bonds which had existed. There was also empathy for the murderess built up during the episode as we learnt of the extent to which those killed who had physically violated their partners, some assaulting a succession of women. Branagh was playing someone whose work and conviction was to apprehend the guilty and bring them to the justice of the society which employed him for such a purpose. At the same time Branagh also conveyed a man who believed he understood why the woman had behaved as she had. She would still have to face action of society against her and indeed punishments for actions for whatever the trigger and justification, the killings were premeditated and horrific involving torture and infliction of intense pain, but he also wanted her to have the opportunity for atonement and redemption. The level of acting was extraordinary.

We all need to experience both kinds of pain, that of the actual relayed and that of the drama and the performance. We do not need to experience directly and many people’s experience is limited in their lifetime although I suspect those who never experience directly are small in number. Because of this there is need to prepare for the eventuality and where through the reporting and experiencing in dramatic form we are able cope better when it happens to us and to show compassion and provide support to others when it happens to them.

1350 Art, Durham Cricket Tyne Tees Derby

08.15 Over the past few days I have been trying to put myself in the position of the early human beings who worked out how to create fire, how to fish, how to kill animals and discard the harmful components, how to eat and then cook the things that grew out of the ground which they were also able to distinguish from those which made them sick and which made some die.

I also wondered about the human beings who in different places and at different times first decided it would be good to draw and paint and tell stories or make objects, or sing or make noises, or move their bodies. What made one human do one thing from another? Was the first impulse emotional? How much thought went into the first actions.

I also wondered about those first human beings who looked up at the falling rain or snow and wondered what it was, or speculated about the force that blew at different speeds and could move the clouds in the sky, and why it became light and became dark, or of that the first individual, perhaps in a cave, alone and afraid who thought about death as well as about life.
Such beings were the first human creatives, the first artists, the first teachers and first spiritual guides. They also had to hunt and fish, find shelter and warmth and know how to defend themselves, their mates, their children and their parents when they aged and could not longer hunt and fish and make shelter for themselves.

At various times in various places a community was formed of sufficient size and organisation that it was possible for individual human beings to contribute to their society as creatives, artists, writers, thinkers and teachers, and such like. It can be argued that the division of labour was necessary for society to progress as it was for each skill to develop techniques and methods, a body of knowledge first based on experience and then on written record, and to develop its own language and then systems for testing the knowledge and the skill, awarding competence, and rewarding exceptional ability. Sometimes I wonder if such a division was a good thing and that that we have lost more than we have gained when we lose the capacity to provide food, provide shelter, provide entertainment and provide for our owns security and those of others close to us. But whether it was good or bad, it has happened and for most people and for the most part it is necessary to adapt and accept change if we are to survive.

The function of those who draw, paint, write, who create objects, create and perform music, dance and drama has and remains varied: for pleasure and entertainment of oneself and others, to celebrate, venerate and pay tribute to the physical environment, the metaphysical, the supernatural and the spiritual, to show appreciation, respect and feeling for one or more others, or question and challenge aspects of the human beings, individually and collectively and over time the activity has been generated to create personal wealth, power and status. The emphasis or priority given by the creators has and will continue to vary and enables those who wish to examine the work of previous generations to learn something of the nature of the society and of the position of creativity within that society.

It appears to me that there have always been those creatives who become recognised, become fashionable, become rewarded for their work while other will be mocked, or ignored or make others angry or afraid, and they and their work is rejected, banished and even destroyed and that this will always be so.

To-day the position has only changed in one significant respect in that we can sit in our modern caves and with comparatively small amounts of trading goods we can experience something of the creations that are known to have existed and are continuing to be created from the commencement of time on planet earth and we can communicate with those who are creating, who are collecting, conserving and curating, who are thinking and teaching, who are learning or just enjoying and experiencing and sharing, and we can communicate anywhere and anytime in the known world, and perhaps presently unknown to us to other beings beyond.

Having expressed my own regret at not being able to hunt and fish, raise animals and grow crop, build my shelter, and suck like I also believe it is a good thing that when an individual human being shows a desire and an aptitude in some activity they are provided with all the help and the knowledge to enable them to satisfy themselves and those others interested in that activity, and that for this we have created teachers and tutors, schools, colleges and universities, and in order to differentiate between levels of activity and ability we devise tests to find out what has been learnt and what individuals can do and that as a consequence assign them roles, and in some instance give them full time or part work in the activity in question.

You do not have to go through these formal processes and structures to engage in the activity or excel at it, unless you live in a society which requires to do so, but in general the formal system of education, training and the management of practice has led to the creation of things we all value and which have stood the test of time.

However as I mentioned recently in relation to something else it is also fact that some creatives are different and special and contribute to society disproportionately to the majority of others, even if those others have also been educated and trained and have become experienced

For my part I came to what I do now and what I think and say about it, differently from those who are presently recognised as the experts in the doing, evaluating, collecting and showing and had I been younger, or wanted to do something different, I would have followed the available routes to learn, to be tested, rated and certificated. I would have done this not because I need to, but because like every mountain, desert, ocean bed, deep forest or glacial wilderness because it is there. I would also like to see more of what there is to see and to experience at first hand instead of through relayed pictures and sounds

I am confident, however, that given my experience of life beforehand I would not have arrived at different conclusions about what I need to do, how I need to do it, what I hope to achieve, or what I think and feel about the work of others.

I am a creative who needs and wants and has the means to create. I also used be someone who set out to intentionally influence, but no longer, for reasons, some private and some which can be made public. I have always had, and I still have the drive and the patience to complete what I am involved with on the basis of what I or others decided should be the desired outcome, or to adapt or significantly change, and even abandon projects according to priorities and circumstances.

It does not matter to me or affect what I think, believe say or do that some individuals create one thing in one way and then spend the rest of their time reproducing the thing in the same way or differently, whether they make no money, sufficient to live on money, or rich money beyond need to continue doing what they want and are able to do, whether they are recognised by the their peers or the rest of the world or not if they give what they do.
I have formed the opinion that art becomes historical the moment it ceases to be contemporary and that it is contemporary only from the moment of its conception until the moment its creator determines that it is completed.

I regard myself as a contemporary creative artist and therefore not someone just creating contemporary artworks because I am doing what I am doing full time. I am interested in historical art and I would like to possess the knowledge and the skill to reproduce some historical art but this is not my priority or immediate interest. I am expressing my thoughts and feelings through my work balancing between what I am capable and able to do with the available techniques and processes presently available. Therefore on one hand to qualify as a contemporary artist I should make available all what I do to anyone anywhere any time with the technology, and interact with those who wish to interact with me, but I am limited by the means to do this and the willingness to make everything all time open and available because of the belief and the commitment to what should be personal, private and confidential and what can and should be open and public.

Something is art if it is art to me.

Something is not good or bad, brilliant or poor because it is popular or appreciated by only a few. I know if something is good or bad, brilliant or poor and the opinion of others should be significance only to them.

Fashion is for those who wish to be fashionableIndividualist art is art created exclusively by an individual

Collective art is art which is created by more than one individual and that applies to all work where the artist uses the material and labour of others. I regard my myspace site as a separate and a component part of my artwork project and therefore it is a collectively art component, dependent on myspace and anyone who adds comments for example or becomes listed as a friend. The work cannot exist with me or you.

10.30 It is nearly time for cricket and football so there is washing up and washing me, preparing food and will need to think more and re write what I have written.

23.00 I have significantly rewritten what I wrote first thing this morning original has been printed and is part of work development set 2060.

23.30 Washing up of the day has been completed and rubbish ready for putting out in the morning There was coffee twice and one toast (a concession) in the morning. I had a small plate of vegetables just before the match started and then half the stuffed roast pork joint with six or seven slices of roast potato at half time. This evening I had a defrosted prawn salad with olives and more pieces of cucumber than usual with two slices of nutty brown bread and my last can of Pepsi Cola with the intention of buying no more until the weight is below sixteen stone There was one cup of tea and I am about to drink iced water, undesirable before bedtime but better than anything else and I have gone off drinking OJ.(I did not drink the water as I lost the need during further writing and viewing)
At 11.30 Sky was at the Riverside for the first competitive cricket match of new season against the nearest county team of Yorkshire and where extraordinarily Durham had become the team to beat as the holders of the competition which involves ten 50 over innings games played home and away in a mini league and then quarter and semi finals with the final played at Lords in August. I was due to attend the final last year and then my mother went into hospital. I used to attend most days of cricket played around the County and once a year in Northumberland after Durham became part of First class cricket and the annual visited to Darlington, Stockton, Hartlepool, Chester le Street, and Gateshead were always of interest as well as to the beautiful university ground at Durham City before the Riverside Ground also at Chester Le Street was opened and then developed. I also enjoyed visits to various county grounds, at Headingly and Harrogate of Yorkshire, at Lancashire's ground at Manchester City, to Grace Road Leicester and Trent Bridge Nottingham, Warwickshire's ground in Birmingham close to the university where I studied for a year and then to the London area grounds especially the Oval where I visited as a boy and saw the last innings of Sir Donald Bradman and the great Sir Len Hutton whose autobiography he signed for me and Lords where as a Durham member I was able to use the Long Room, and the grounds of Kent at Canterbury and Maidstone, and Sussex at Hove but did I get to Essex, missing out on Cardiff although I have visited the city and passed ground when there was play, and Somerset, Worcestershire, Hampshire, and Derby, I think. The day was bitterly cold, the word freezing was used and the audience. well it could not be called a crowd, was negligible because of the weather, because of the football derby and because it was on the telly. As the first competitive game of this season and as preparatory matches and preparatory work outside had been non existent, the decision was taken in all the matches where play was possible, in four it was not, for the captain who won the coin toss to ask the other side to bat first and this was so with Yorkshire who were without their captain Darren Gough, but under the leadership of Mr Moxon who was instrumental in creating the Durham success but then could not resist the opportunity to join his home county in a similar role midway during the season. There is therefore added rivalry as there would be if Keegan left Newcastle and Keane took over although a better comparison would if Keegan had first gone to Sunderland and then moved to Newcastle. Durham had two Harmison's but no Collingwood and last year's West Indian bowling star has become coach to the English Team. The start was slow and boring and I felt for the brave souls wrapped up in blankets clutching coffee flask.

13.00-15.20 The first Tyne Wear Derby for a couple of years was a challenge. There would have been no problem had Sam Alladyce been in charge but with Kevin back the problem was different. I hoped to enjoy the game and for the result to be a draw. Unfortunately Sunderland quickly lost heart to a brilliant Michael Own headed goal and you felt their fate was sealed when just before half time there was penalty which Owen also converted, but only just.. They tried harder in the second half and had one bullet header from Jones not been saved the outcome might have been different. The Toon will have bragging rights until the next time.

15.20 I rushed out to Tesco in the hope of a Mail on Sunday which contained a Simply Red CD but not expecting there would be any Brit Film DVD's. On the way back I passed a pub where a Sunderland and a Newcastle shirt fan were enjoying a fag in the afternoon sunshine perhaps husband and wife, boy and girl friend but that is Shields. a town divided between the two team, within streets and within houses.

16.00-19.00 At first it looked as if Durham were going to have a good first win as they reached over 200 runs with one good score of 77 and then put the Tykes under the cosh with five wickets for 75 or so runs. It looked as if the game was over, ho, ho, ho, slowly, despite the loss of further wickets Yorkshire held on and then all the Durham substantial advantage was thrown away in one crazy over yielding over 20 runs. All was not lost with the final wicket taken with one ball to go. The winning margin was 5 runs but the overall performance indicated that last year's progress was not a flash in the pan. It got even colder as the evening progressed and quite dark. I could feel that cold sitting in my warm from the memory of occasions when I had been there although admitted I did watch one early match against Scotland from inside the restaurant area, watching first to last ball without ever sitting in the open air.

20.00-22.00 Foyle's War was magnificent as it explored again the impact of the ending of the war with Germany on returning service men and on the community. It recaptured feelings which I remember so well. The scene of the promenade with the beach fenced off with barbed wire, other obstacles and warning signs Danger keep out, was exactly as I remember, as well as the VE day and returning home of the soldier, and the telegram from the one who did not.

00.30-01.30. I went to the internet to see if BBC Eye were showing the TV Baftas and my attention was taken by programme about a young single mother ( alleged) struggling to pay her university student fees) and doing lap dancing which is actually stripping naked for a fee of £15 from the punter but where the girl pays the joint owner £85 a night for the privilege so that makes 10-12 punters to make any profit if taxis and drinks were taken into account I quickly realised this was not a documentary but a clever drama film produced by the Ministry of Information to warn young women away early single parenthood and dipping their toe in the sex industry where with the help of the programme the lass was introduced to someone who said she could earn £900 in a night as an escort and someone else £2000 a week in the porn end of the market. The most interesting and revealing exposure was however the London based fixer who arranged girls to escort celebrities to parties, in this instance the Brits but where she failed miserably on all counts. You knew the evening was to end with disaster when the she was told she did not have hair, make up or clothes suitable and incredulity was stretched when she decided to go home to catch the last train around 11 pm having been contracted to stay until 12.30 and paid up front and of course what she did after that and who with was then her own business. She was clearly after meeting some famous millionaire who would pay her debts and give her the life, including mansion which she stated she longed for. The clue about the nature of this programme is that she was studying to be an actress but found it difficult to find time to learn her lines, but was being given an A grade for performance although if it was not clear if this was from her personal tutor who she was sharing the home with, but was somehow managing to increase her overall debts, including to him and he admitted he could lose his job if the his employers found out which did not seem to worry him given that he was announcing the situation on the telly. The levels of delusion and exploitation were upsetting. Reality usually is. Hopefully I will be able to watch the Bafta later in the Day.

1349 Remodernism

16.00 The day has continued from last night except that I was able to get the next two British War film DVD's in early morning blue sky. In fact in kept cloudless over my hill for the greater part of the day although I could see the cloud stretching back over the river towards Gateshead and Newcastle. I celebrated the day with a coffee in cafe and then had another with toast on return (A nutty brown bread but where have all the cheap breads gone, long long time ago) I continued listening to the Blues Sun House's version of County Farm Blues is a good one, Ruby Hayes version of One scotch, One Bourbon and One Beer reminded of the days when I could enjoy a bottle of bubbly without looking down at the size of my tum and feeling the back ache when I walk a mile or more from overweight. Jimi Hendrix Voodoo Child, Am I one of the few that never took to Mr Hendrix's music. James Blood Ulmer with You know I know sums an important aspect of my being; Buddy Guy and Junior performed a solid version of classic Hocchie Couchie Man and which for me will always be associated with George Melly (Hope you are enjoying your perpetual jazz cellar with plenty of booze and birds George. Hear me talkin to ya)The original and authentic blues man Muddy Waters is great on Wailing Blues. I also liked the unknown to me Ella James offering herself on Here I am - come and take me, guess she was not short of offers though. The greatest females blues woman of all time was Bessie Smith who summoned up a chunk of my adolescence and later cane across an established artist who included Bessie in her list of musical interests. The new generations miss out on the original soul music of the negro south -Need a little sugar in my bowl, I need a little loving so bad. Katherine Davis followed up the theme with Give it to me Papa Wild about that thing, another George Melly classic Whereas John Guitar Wats said it as it was, Aint that a bitch while being rocked by that jelly roll. And Grady Gains went on about Stealing love. And John Le Hooker Blues for Sunrise spoke of ones hopes for the morrow, Junior Wells went off on his mystery train.

Yesterday I was contacted by Remodernism on myspace which placed me in something of dilemma because I agreed with much of the statement in the manifesto published by Childish and Thompson around 2001, except except for the label Remodernism.

Definition of Remodernism -
Remodernism 'towards a new spirituality in art' Through the course of the 20th century Modernism has progressively lost its way, until finally toppling into the pit of Postmodern balderdash.(It depends on what is balderdah and what is not)
1. Remodernism takes the original principles of Modernism and reapplies them, highlighting vision as opposed to formalism
2. Remodernism is inclusive rather than exclusive and welcomes artists who endeavor to know themselves and find themselves through art processes that strive to connect and include, rather than alienate and exclude. (This is my fundamental connection) founding fathers of Modernism and respects their bravery and integrity in facing and depicting the travails of the human soul through a new art that was no longer subservient to a religious or political dogma and which sought to give voice to the gamut of the human psyche.(great)
THE REMODERNIST MANIFESTO


1. Remodernism takes the original principles of Modernism and reapplies them, highlighting vision as opposed to formalism.

2. Remodernism is inclusive rather than exclusive and welcomes artists who endeavour to know themselves and find themselves through art processes that strive to connect and include, rather than alienate and exclude. Remodernism upholds the spiritual vision of the founding fathers of Modernism and respects their bravery and integrity in facing and depicting the travails of the human soul through a new art that was no longer subservient to a religious or political dogma and which sought to give voice to the gamut of the human psyche.

3. Remodernism discards and replaces Post-Modernism because of its failure to answer or address any important issues of being a human being.

4. Remodernism embodies spiritual depth and meaning and brings to an end an age of scientific materialism, nihilism and spiritual bankruptcy.

5. We don't need more dull, boring, brainless destruction of convention, what we need is not new, but perennial. We need an art that integrates body and soul and recognises enduring and underlying principles which have sustained wisdom and insight throughout humanity's history. This is the proper function of tradition.

6. Modernism has never fulfilled its potential. It is futile to be 'post' something which has not even 'been' properly something in the first place. Remodernism is the rebirth of spiritual art.

7. Spirituality is the journey of the soul on earth. Its first principle is a declaration of intent to face the truth. Truth is what it is, regardless of what we want it to be. Being a spiritual artist means addressing unflinchingly our projections, good and bad, the attractive and the grotesque, our strengths as well as our delusions, in order to know ourselves and thereby our true relationship with others and our connection to the divine.

8. Spiritual art is not about fairyland. It is about taking hold of the rough texture of life. It is about addressing the shadow and making friends with wild dogs. Spirituality is the awareness that everything in life is for a higher purpose.

9. Spiritual art is not religion. Spirituality is humanity's quest to understand itself and finds its symbology through the clarity and integrity of its artists.

10. The making of true art is man's desire to communicate with himself, his fellows and his God. Art that fails to address these issues is not art.

11. It should be noted that technique is dictated by, and only necessary to the extent to which it is commensurate with, the vision of the artist.

12. The Remodernist's job is to bring God back into art but not as God was before. Remodernism is not a religion, but we uphold that it is essential to regain enthusiasm (from the Greek, en theos to be possessed by God).

13. A true art is the visible manifestation, evidence and facilitator of the soul's journey. Spiritual art does not mean the painting of Madonnas or Buddhas. Spiritual art is the painting of things that touch the soul of the artist. Spiritual art does not often look very spiritual, it looks like everything else because spirituality includes everything.

14. Why do we need a new spirituality in art? Because connecting in a meaningful way is what makes people happy. Being understood and understanding each other makes life enjoyable and worth living.

Summary

It is quite clear to anyone of an uncluttered mental disposition that what is now put forward, quite seriously, as art by the ruling elite, is proof that a seemingly rational development of a body of ideas has gone seriously awry. The principles on which Modernism was based are sound, but the conclusions that have now been reached from it are preposterous.

We address this lack of meaning, so that a coherent art can be achieved and this imbalance redressed.

Let there be no doubt, there will be a spiritual renaissance in art because there is nowhere else for art to go. Stuckism's mandate is to initiate that spiritual renaissance now."

Alas I wish I could be as optimistic. Creative Art, Creative visual art in particular, can be divided into historical art and contemporary art. Most will not accept the narrowness of my definition that all art is historical except from the moment of its conception until the moment of its completion. It continues to live and change as an object, and as a contemporary experience by every being who subsequently interacts with its object form and then as an historical experience in the memory, so that even when it is material form dies naturally or is destroyed, it has a continuing existence in the memroy of beings, in the pictures and filming of it. New art is mostly reproduction of historical art and all new creative contemporary art is an expresion of the feelings or lack of them, and the spirituality and the soul or lack of them of the present. There is not more likelihood therefore of contemporary creative art universally becoming fully of spirituality and soul than there is of Christianity, Socialism, Communism, Pacifism and all other combinations of faiths and beliefs becoming practiced universally by human beings individually or collectively because of the nature of human beingness. What is important is that human beings do have the capacity to understand their short comings and limitations and to strive for further enlightenment, continuing in their search for truth and resisting the forces of destruction, of hate and of negativity. The journey to truth ha smany pathways and fundamentally is the method of travel, and awareness of the destination but a lack of concern about arriving.

I listen toThe Alman Brothers Statesborough Blues; J B Hutto Leave your love in. Magic Slim Just before you go. Hound Dog Taylor on Wild about you baby got me going again Irma Thomas does the classic Another Man done Guy Davis Sugar Belle Blues is a good warning to all mother's who allow their 15 year old daughters to dress up like twenty year olds .BB Kings Bad case of love remembering that he will soon be six feet deep bring this session to an end.

17.00. It is time to catch up with the weekend, papers and news. First the MK Dons, Wimbledon that was, the team that provided cup final tickets against Liverpool which they won by one goal to the amazement of everyone especially me. Alex Fergusson's son has also gained promotion as manager of Peterboro. Dad could not be there as he has a crucial match about to start at 17.15. I was about to check the Daily Mail weekend magazine to establish what is on when tonight but an n article about the gorgeous Renee Zellweger caught my attention about her inability to find a life partner and children having reached the age of 39 and become one of Hollywood highest paid and Oscar winning actresses,. John Hurt writes about trying to say sober and make his fourth marriage work at the age of 70. Beware John good intentions, including putting it down in print is no substitute for actually doing it. Take my weight. There is a look at the original St Trinians who are now of my generation grannies The Volvo C 70 looks a great car in the advert which is should as the start price is £25,750. The evening programme is definitely Dr Who and I've Got talent. There was a rerun of I've Got last night which I part watched yesterday evening before the American Idol results show, There is a good article about Andre Johnson who stole the show with his rendition of (did I say rendering yesterday) in the main paper which explains that the image of council estate was wrong. It is nice Housing association area but everything else was correct and both mother and son come out well. Tomorrow is the second match of the season as Sunderland go tot eh Toon at lunch time and the TV Bafta's in the evening which tends to be soap and against soap. But I will go for Foyle's way and hope to watch the Bafta's later on BBC I. Durham is home to Yorkshire on Sunday also on TV so that sorts out my day. The Saturday Daily Mail includes a special edition of Hullo magazine, an essential for Wannabees and this week has photos features on Ronaldo, Antonio Banderas, Mylene Klass ( who?) George Clooney,( bless the old man) he met Gordon Brown and Renee, we take a look at the home of Reese Witherspoon and her beaux Jake Gyllenhaal, and no edition would be without a Beckham who is the world's number two Caleb after David. The Queen is 82 is a couple of days and there is a fact for each year of her life which will keep and which a lead in tot eh main future of future King William Wales Windsor getting his Wings from his father accompanied by future Queen Kate? Will I live to see it? Talking of spice Geri is still in the picture and so is Elizabeth Hurley in fund raising pink along with Elton, Gary Rhodes has been transformed by his wife into a beefcake hat is not on anyone else's menu. The cheese cake is provided by Lisa B and a bevy of brides but there is also a recipe for an edible lemon one with wholegrain, and then lots of adverts plus a feature on Crab which is of interest.

Enjoyed Dr Who with an anti slavery message and aliens can be fun and then there was an early episode first series of Lost on more 4.had little choices for the evening meal not having defrosted the coated chicken pieces and did not really enjoyed a vegetable pizza which was a little undercooked for my liking. But the pint of lager helped it down.

Britain's Got Talent followed the formula of last week's programme. There were two performers who impressed buy I do not believe they will command more support that those of last week. A ten year old who will make pantomime this Christmas, and Oliver and the like and a young woman for the clubs and Ceylon.

Could not resist seeing Get Carter for the umpteenth time although I now know every scene and most of the script. If you add this film to Our Friends in North you get one valid perspective on Tyneside side four decades past

Have a midnight supper of two slices of chese with salami and play Hearts having got back to 16% Just about keeping up with new work sets of four a day and looking forward to tomorrow.

1851 Wallander and Friends myspace

Kenneth Branagh is not a natural character actor in the sense of the having the ability to transform yourself into someone with a different personality to ones own. There are elements of the core Kenneth which he brings to every role. In particular his vulnerability and capacity to feel deeply which he is able to communicate in whatever role he performs. As Wallander he has the experience of the master Krister Hennriksson to draw on as well as his own. It will be interesting to see if Branagh stays the course and completes the original Henning Mankell stories, and then moves on to the two series of 13 episodes of new stories created for the Wallander character and his daughter. Who has trained and become a police woman assigned to his team. The nine original novels have been translated into English. There is another story about Wallander’s daughter which has been translated and two other books which have not

The nine Mankell novels were made into cinema films between 1995 and 2007 and featured Rolf Lascar in the role of Wallander. It is these books which Kenneth Branagh is starring rather than the two 13 episode series with Krister Hennriksson brilliantly takes the role, so in fairness comparisons are difficult because the two actors are involved in different stories.

In 2008 Branagh made three 90 mins films - Sidetracked, Firewall and One Step Behind and this year there are three more, and I assume the final 3 will appear in in 2011 or 12, dependent on the other commitments of Branagh.

Last night’s episode - Faceless Killers has a conventional murder mystery as its main subject, the brutal killing of two elderly pensioners in their isolated rural homestead with two sub stories which in fact predominate. The first is race and the arrival of the new Europeans. When I visited Sweden in the early 1960’s it was proud of its reputation for welcoming foreigners, especially those of black skin but this was deceptive and applicable more to the cities and universities. Similarly Sweden had the reputation for being open and frank about sexual relationships and other social issues. Yet my superficial understanding and observation based on a two week visit but where I did get to talk to a range of people was of an essentially conservative country of contrasts. Alcoholic drink was discouraged with penalty taxation but in the country town close to where I was based for over a week. the young people with the use of cars would drive around picking up their friends and go off into the hills for drinking from illicit stills and sex on a nightly basis. It was the sixties though.

Faceless Killers was written in 1991 some 30 years after my visit and portrays a Sweden where everyone is being forced to face their attitude towards colour, race and foreigners. Shortly before Wallander is called to the murder scene he discovers that his daughter is sexually involved with a Swedish Syrian background doctor and he is surprised by his reaction. When a dying murder victim struggles to tell him of her killers Wallander is unsure if she does say foreigners or he has interpreted what she says because of the meal with his daughter and her new male friend. He is reluctant to share the information with his team and insists that the information is not disclosed for the time being to the media for fear of fuelling the public volatility over race and the seasonal encampments of migrant agricultural workers of which there are many. When the team fail to apprehend the killers, someone with access to his mobile warns that a migrant will be killed and a father is shot. Wallander feels guilty, about his reactions to his daughter and about mentioning what the woman has said and pursues a lead of someone who reports their car stolen while away on a visit, a vehicle which matches the description of one heard in the vicinity and where there is a little evidence of tracks and cigarette buts. Eventually this individual leads him to the killer, a member of right wing organisations who Wallander shoots to kill and which results in a youg policeman, traumatised by the sight of the two murder victims being the source of leaks about the investigation to the media. The murders are eventually tracked down, and are foreigners, travellers at the fair positioned in the main street outside the bank where about to bank their takings the two killers had seen the address of the farmer on the receipt for the 100000 Krns he had drawn on a quarterly basis to pay the woman who had fathered his child thirty year before against her inclination at the time. He had kept his former relationship and the payments secret from his wife and his daughter who lived away in a town, as well as the small fortune he had amassed from black-market dealings in the past which he had bank invested, living simply, neglecting his farm.

The second sub story which continues through several of the original novels is his relationship with his father, played in the BBC series by David Warner, a visual artist who is experiencing the early stages of Alzheimer’s and whose relationship with his son has always been difficult. The programme see his father taking himself to a residential establishment before he causes his wife and Wallander further problems. He resist Wallander’s attempt at physical reconciliation accusing him of always running away, when in fact Wallander has been called away and responds immediately to any pleas for help from his mother or his daughter in relation to the erratic and challenging behaviour of his father. The man has been discovered in his pyjamas with several of his canvasses rolled trying to make his way to Italy where he has recently been on holiday with his wife and son. He is rescued by migrant farm workers which adds to the mixture of instinct and thoughtful idealism about race and migration affecting Wallander’s behaviour. The programme ends with Wallander handing in his badge as he is about to be questioned following the death of the prime suspect.

Understandably the programme brought to the fore my relationship with my birth mother, her disintegration through the same disease as well as those final amazing three years when she transformed into someone content and loving and those final weeks when she met her death, fighting survival but with full Catholic grace and acceptance.

The Wallander which had just as great impact was the final part of third series of original stories created for the Wallander character and performed in Swedish with English sub titles. The story is a powerful one about sex crimes against pre teen boys and where one of the men involved turns out to be a senior police officer working under cover and whose work has successfully led to the capture and imprisonment of child sex offenders.

An 11 year old boy is found murdered and to have been drugged and sexually assaulted. The team are able to identify the sex criminal only to find him shot on arrival and where the prime suspect is the father of the murdered boy after it is realised the man did not commit suicide.

Wallander and his team are alerted that the way the boy was killed, first drugged and then hit on the back of the head after being covered in a towel, is identical to a previous killing where a young boy had first been sexually assaulted and where the convicted individual was still serving a life sentence after a decade in prison. Wallander’s daughter visits the man who convinces her that although he had committed sex crimes against boys he had not killed the child who was the victim of the conviction.

When they track down the their suspect to his home they encounter a neighbour who claims to know little of the man but says he was not the kind of person to kill. They first discover he was a policeman, who has an alibi for the night of the murder, visiting and staying with a female neighbour who has a pre teen child. Wallander and his daughter are concerned that the man did not disclose his former occupation and his comment that the man was not a killer but they are partly reassured when he reveals the neighbour has a summer property where they find the man dead and a photograph of what appears to have been a victim of sexual assault.

When Wallander’s daughter visits the man imprisoned for the earlier murder she learns that he knew the policeman from a joint visit to Thailand for a sex with boys. The daughter takes her concern to her superiors who dismiss the referral but later it emerges that the man is still a police officer working under cover tracking down perpetrators and with an impressive record of convictions. However we the audience and the Wallanders have our suspicions although the father of the murdered boy is the prime suspect for the murder except for the similarity with the killing a decade earlier, There is evidence that a red van was used of which there is no trace.

There is an important other dimension to this story which and takes the programme and the series to a higher level than most. What has made the series better than the individual stories from the original series and novels is the interaction between Wallander, his daughter and the male colleague in the team Stefan Lindman played by Ola Rapace. Much to the displeasure of Wallander his daughter and Stefan have had a relationship although friendship was always stronger that sexual passion.

Stefan has also been more hot headed that father and daughter although this is relative as all three are affected by their past as well as the nature of job. What emerges in this programme is that Stefan has been damaged by his childhood and that he was not only a victim of sexual assault as a pre teen boy but the perpetrator was the murdered sexual assailant in the case. Stefan is already the subject of an internal investigation for the assault of a criminal in the previous programme and is also carrying an untreated bullet wound in his shoulder. He is suspended and Wallander’s daughter is warned by her father not to have further contact with Stefan despite his appeals to her because of his suspected involvement in someway in the case under investigation. The programme reaches a climax when first the undercover policeman visits Stefan and offers to help him if Stefan reciprocates, after which Stefan is found dead to have shot himself and then the daughter who has mounted surveillance on the home of the undercover man sees that he brought the van from where it was hidden to his home and calls for help and waits as instructed until hearing cries which she investigates to find that the man has bludgeoned his mistress who has interrupted his attempt to remove evidence from the van and realised that he is the killer. The daughter is nearly overpowered by the man but manages to overcome and resist the strong temptation to seek instant justice after appeal from her father.

The captured man argues that he had tried to overcome his sexual inclination towards children and for every time he failed he had convicted ten others. The series ends as father and daughter consol each other on a beach while a young boy plays with his dog in the distance. The daughter has pointed out to her father than Stefan had wanted to talk to him but Wallander had been unwilling, unable to listen, something which she has accused her father of before in relation to herself. It was a brilliant ending to series although the subject is a distressing one

When I commenced publishing my writing on Myspace I had completed 1000 pieces on AOL Blogs, which sadly disappeared removing all the uploaded photographs at the same time. Originally I wanted to create a 101 site with 101 photos, lists friends and writings and at one time proposed to create a separate site for this purpose. During the first year I decided to go with the flow as I discovered the wide range of possible friends, those who were indirect links to people and interests of past experience, those of the present, and those who approached, mainly music and voice artists but also others, most from around the world and across the Atlantic in particular. It was towards the end of 2008 that I thought it would be interesting to try and match the number of friends with the number written pieces and set about attempting to do so in a structured way as part of the overall artwork project. Only once in the Spring of 2009 did I managed to match the number of writings to Friends and since then the gap has widened once more with 725 Friends at January 3rd and 850 pieces of writing. I have commenced to review the list of friends noting those who have departed with those added since the last review in March 2009. I begin with the first couple of hundred carried out todate. The list is alphabetical and not grouped according to interests and background significance which will be undertaken as the 1010 are approached sometime during this year or next as other writing and work requires more attention. There is a miscellaneous list at the commencement which has always fascinated me as to why. There 222 sites listed up to and including the letter D with 52 having come and gone. I have deleted one Friend previously accepted, during the past three years this February.


001 Acrylick added 2007

Mary 4 Music added Jan/Feb 2009 - not on review list


002 6th Art Outside previously Art Outside

003 Individual added early 2007
limited contact when added

004 Kimber Devil added 2009

Kelly Osboune added 2007 not on review
famous daughter -2

Missa added mid 2007 not on review-3


005 1thousand June 2007 accepted

006 you can added 2007 top forty

007 Fourth Dimension added 2008 top forty

The hostiles accepted 2007 not on review list
music group request 4

Astro act 2008 not on review list 5

008 Paul Martuarano music request

009 3 am Magazine 2009 added

010 Marco Lam artist 2008/9

011 Euphoria 2007 top forty

012 Tate Modern top forty

013 Z Top two sites 2007 top forty

014 Optika friend of Euphoria 2007

015 Gee Gee since 2007

016 VL early 2007 site appears defunct

017 Missingroof 2009 added

Power CD Launch added Jan Feb 2009 not on review 6

018 Mr E music request accepted 2008

019 Dream C 2007 early

020 Artworks Grafitti 2009 added

021 Bridget Bardot added Jan Feb 2009

022 Youngchiefbeoncall added 2009

023 Two Creative Roses Art added jan /feb 2009

Fear and Rain important 2007 was top 40 not on review
some contact early on 7

Malcolm S post nov 2008 8
The Journal Tyne Theatre 2008 9
Mr E Shah 9

022 Onyx since 2007

023 Jacob Himes Art 2009

Rook Jan Feb 2009

024 20 21 Visual Art Centre Jan Feb 2009

Platform com Jan Feb 2009 10

025 Tokyo Hot 2009



A


Aami June 2007 Request 11

A Spam post nov 08 not on review 12


026 Angie Mattson post nov 08

027 Aimee Mann post nov 08

028 Aleah before may 2007

029 Amy Winehouse 2009 added

Art outside before April 2008 now Miscel

Art parties Seatle query 2007 13

030 Active Entertain July Accepted

031 Artie Shaw added Jan Feb 2009

032 Atum Jan 2008

033 Allen Ginsberg post nov 08

034 Alyson Moyet post nov 08

Astro React autumn 2007 not on review 14

035 Atia monika June 18 2007


036 Anti Chamber July 1 2007

037 Alan Lomax added JanFeb 2009

Alan@ post nov 08 not on review 15

038 Aikia May request 2007


039 Adrian P Before May 2007

040 Alice before May 2007

041 Amy Marie post nov 08

042 American African Dec 2007

043 Artoony before May 2007
early contact was best friend some early contact

044 Alfred Hirchcock new batch film friend

045 Ana Popovic added Jan Feb

046 Alfio added 2009

047 Albert Camus latest writer 2007

048 Alejandro Erdmenger added 2009

049 Aaron Locke new late 2008

anti form 2007 dep sine Jan 2009

050 Aristotle from 2008 autumn additions

051 Aldous Huxley before may 2007

052 Ari Fuchs query when Dec 2007

053 Amy K Art Jan 2008

054 Andrew 2 late 2007

055 Armed Jabali added 2009

056 Art world post nov 08

Arabella before may 2007 16

057 Arts Council Jan 2008

058 Alan Before May 2007

Alan see August 2007 departed 17

Allan 2007 May/June 2007 18

All that Jazz mid 2007 dep since Jan 2009 19

059 Alison Moyet added Jan Feb 2009

Allelula status 2007 not on review 20

060 Amber July 20 2007 04

061 Andrea Bocelli added 2009

062 Allana requested by mid 2007

063 Annalee spring 2008

064 Arts Community added 2009

065 Anton Martins early 2008

066 Artaz July 1 2007 14

Amphitheatre August 2007 21
Angelicly before May 2007 Accepted 22
Annie departed 2007 23
Armada before May 2007 24

067 Art of Dzset new early 2008

068 Aiming for Sunday added 2009

069 ART added 2009

070 Anton Rubenstein added Jan Feb 2009

071 Anthony Salari added 2009

072 Anthony Hopkins new early 2008

073 Amnesty International 2009 added

074 America Got Talent added 2009

075 Andrew Morrison added Jan Feb 2009

076 Art and Artists 2009 added top 40

077 Robert Strazalko added 2009

078 Alex Piskin new autumn 2008

Johnny Stash added Jan Feb 2009 not at review 25

079 Adrianna Posta added 2009

080 Andrew added 2009.


B

081 Beethoven before may 2007

082 Bo Bice Feb 2008

Bagada Feb 2008 accepted 25

Benjamin august 2007accepted 26

083 Billy Bragg post nov 08

084 BC Beneke before May 2007

085 Barabraque 17.6 2007

086 Beccy before may 2007

087 Beth Fleenor added Jan Feb 2009

088 Blind Before accepted autumn 2007

089 Bad Girl Art post nov 08

090 Blind Lemon July 2007

091 Big D before May 2007

092 Bjork post nov 08

093 Bertrand R before May 2007 Top friend

094 Babacha before May 2007

Bambi before May 2007 27

095 By Polar August 2007

Benedetta post nov 08 not at review 28

096 Bradfordville Blues added Jan Feb 2009

097 Bette Ross before May 2007

098 Buddhist Inspirations added 2009

099 Behind Closed Eyes added 2009

100 Benn Mills before May 2007

101 Brian Blessed Before May 2007

102 Bix Beiderbecke Nov 2007

103 Buddahliscious before May 2007

104 Balgo

Bob French before May 2007 29


105 Barbara before May 2007 accepted


106 Billy Holiday before May 2007

107 Birdie query 2007

Beyond Dark July 1 2007 Accepted not on review 30

Brat Attack before May 2007 31

108 Boundless added 2009

109 Baltic added Feb 2008 top 40

110 Barack Obama added 2008 top 40

Big Bands 2007/2008 not on review 32

111 Barry Keenan Jan 2008 accept

112 Bridget Bardot summer 2008

113 Bessie Smith November 2007

114 Bratislava post nov 08

115 Beach South Shields Nov 2007

116 Blues Legacy Nov 2007 accepted

Born to please before may 2007request departed 33
Butt Naked august accepted 2007 self deleted 34
Broadgate autumn 2008 departed since Jan 2009 35

117 Beatrice Morabito added 2009

118 BBC audiobooksadded 2008

119 Bertolt Brecht post nov 08

120 Bliss added 2009

Ben Roberts Band Tour autumn add 2008 not at review 36

121 Beau Brummell post nov 08

Beau Diddley added 2009 Jan Febnpt at review 37

Butterflyreturned Top friends Jan Feb 2009 not at review 38

122 Ballad of added 2009

123 Bacca Levy added 2009

124 Brian Clare added 2009






C



125 Curious 2009 added

126 Coming of before May 07 accepted

127 Carlitto Cinema Italian autumn 2008
128 Chet Baker post nov 08

129 Christina post nov 08

130 Chazz before May2007 Gib

131 Charles Darwin Autumn 2998

132 Corrine Bailey before May2007 request

133 Carolyn M before May 2007 request
bought two of books of poetry

134 Caitlin P Before May 2007

135 Clare Means added 2009

136 Cyrille Aimee added 2009

137 Cosmic Gypsies Accepted Dec 2007

138 Clare Before May 2007

139 Corrina H before May 2007

140 Claudia D 2007

141 Coletta Zoe post nov 08

142 Camilla Boler added 2009

143 Carl Jung Before May 2007

Carol before May 2007 request self del 39

144 Christina Elenni before May 2007

145 Christina nov 2008

Crow mess post nov 08 not at review 40

146 Chavela Vargas added 2009

147 Chris Hyde 7 July Accepted

148 Charlie P Jan 2008 accepted

149 Chano Dominquez added 2009

150 Collective before May 2007

151 Cliff Jan 2007 accepted

152 Cot Life August 2007 accepted

153 Chucho Valdes added 2009

154 Cy before May Accepted

155 Cecil N De Mille autumn

156 Christina 3 Jan 2008 ed

Coralyn August 2007 41
Craigy before May 2007 42

157 Concha Bulka added 2009

158 Crissy Art autumn 2007

159 Carl G Jung post nov 08

160 Clint Eastwood autumn 2006

161 Charles Benavent added 2009

162 Cook n Snook autumn 2008

163 Cabell added 2009

164 Creative partnerships 2008 top 40

165 Cham deliv 2008

166 Casablanca post nov 08
disco autumn 2008

167 Concrete Kiss added 2009

168 Craig Bohemian Poet 2009

169 Charlotte Dawson 2009



D

Derek before April 2007 TF 43

170 Don’t be post nov 08

171 D J Greenuts Before April 2007

172 Dasco added 2009

173 Diana Krall post nov 08

174 Dark empire autumn 2008

175 Defected August 2007 accepted

176 Dalibor before may 2007

177 David Bowie before April 2007

178 David Madrid 55 accepted autumn2007

179 Dixie Chicks post nov 08

180 Damien Rice before May 2007

181 Detroit Women before April 2007

182 Dawn Zahra before April 2007

183 Dlugokecki jazz autumn 2008

184 Darkling P before April 2007

185 Dirty Princess 7 July2007 accepted

186 Dave Diamond autumn 2998

187 Danielle before May 2007

DJ Norte Before April 2007 not at review 44

188 Dana Gill autumn 2998

189 David E Merry autumn 2008

190 Daniel P post nov 08 new top 40

191 Dharmacist added 2009

192 Daughters before May 2007

193 Diana July 2nd 2007 Top of the tops

194 Dogfighters accepted autumn 2007

Deidrie New Mexico liked pic comments not at Rev 45

195 Daze Dec ? 2007 accepted

196 Deadly Night Serenade autumn 2008

197 Dr B Tutti Newcastle TF 2007 accepted

198 Django R post nov 08

199 Degas post nov 08

200 Drumshop added 2009

201 Double Zero post nov 08

Dod post nov 08not at review 46

202 Dollau FanKid 16.6 2007 accepted

203 Darlyne Cain autumn 2008

204 Dessie Muniz 2009 added

205 Debber Curtis 2009 added

206 Daddy I Love you 2009 added

207 Dees Sun August 2007 accepted

208 DJ Defuse before April 2008

209 Donatien 17.7 2007 accepted

210 Denise August 2007 accepted

211 Dame Judy Dench post nov 08

212 Duffy 2009 added

213 David Glass added 2009

214 Dora accepted 2007 autumn

David Blaze August 2007 departed 47
Debbie Cu before April 2007 departed 48
Delicious before April 2007 departed 49
Diana Con July 2007 departed 50
Die Walkurie 17.6 2007 departed 51
Dream X July Accepted 52

215 Daen Maracle Band added 2009

216 Directing Actors added 2009

217 De Chirico added 2009

218 De Campos Maris added 2009

219 Diego Rivera added 2009

220 Danny Ray added 2009

221 Destino added 2009

222 Daniel Pearl tribute added 2009