I dreamt of myself as a child in London, though younger than I was when really I did frequent that lovely garden, and lovelier it was by far in my slumber, though I had inexplicably altered. The child I was played by a pond carved into the patio. In truth my mother had dug squares out and inserted an old sink as a pond, sort of a bohemian experiment that failed and became stagnant. In the dream it was a sprawling success, filled with lillies and glassy surface. Child me wanted adult me to fall backwards into her arms as a bond of trust, she would stand with her back to the pond and if it failed, would fall in, possibly to strike her head against a paving slab on the way to water. ’It’s really hard,’ she grinned and rubbed chubby paws together. A teenage version of me said something from the side. I refused the child i think, i could not trust her yet, i could not risk her.
She had large dreaming eyes, and there was intelligence there, though she was lazily, slowly blinking like a cow. She was 4 or 5 years old but big and fat and blonde, with much acne around her mouth and in all the divots of her vast face.
The garden was dusted with lint and snow in an hour hovering between deep night and a silver dawn, it was timeless and stuck. All the trees were tall and slender and foxgloves high as houses wafted in an unseen breeze. the temperature was brisk.
When everything has stuck in place
And built on top of that which has settled,
And the structure you see full of eyelets and cracked bare beams,
Makes your skin crawl.
When you crawl bodily away to a patch of space and feel important again,
How can you look back to the call of the rubble?
It calls you by a name you’ve had etched into flesh,
And like that you assimilate again with the city.
Oh but look to the little ratty eating dust with human paws.
And the threadbare pigeon grazing oer the treats of nights before.
There is fruit from out our faeces and
In tangles of asphalt and iron hide tiny pockets
Where life may lift its head without banging
and smell the salts of the sea, though far away.
And though the body rots in fetid alleyways,
Arms trapped beneath the mouldy beams,
In our armpits there is air and breeze and
somehow we must feel such things as a caress so long forgot.
i think i may have to become a veggie (small help small, no help, small symbol)/at least 4 a while (ha)/fucking wanking pet shop//depressed me so bad/hada big old cuddle with the dulux dog/he pressed against me so hard… looked me madly in th eyes like it was his happiest day/i wanna go there in th middle of the night n check if they keep the cats in the fish tanks at night aswell/pacing cats/huge cats, too big to sell/pacing and wont look u in the eye/lovely cats.. look pedigree or sum shit/big as ghost cat, grey short hair beauties/no one will buy em so old/theyre 2 of em in a tank about 40cm square and tall with a weird perch one sits on/n the other paces paces/makes me feel like scum, which I am, I am scum./i’m one of us, who inbreeds em n locks em in n if we want it to be cold it’s cold /and we ration em water n they beg like bitches/n we wrap em up like freakish babes lolling heads in our arms /n patronise em with garish fucking costumes n make em give paws /i went in to give the beasts a stroke. /my pity/only the dulux dog is around./n it’s made to sit on this bench only just big enough to hold the bulk/ it paced aswell/ the owner, a man, had a cold look in his eye, he ignored the beasts,/but they tolerated me stroking./the rest are locked in an asylum in the window/ security door bars you from em./the girl went in as i watched from outside, trying like a nut to meet a cats eye/all the animals begged as she poured water into long dried bowls of tiny ratdogs./the cats came last in the fishtank./the dogs are in tiny pens. 40cm x 40cm again, very economical and frugal little bowls aswell /2 chiawhawa type mutts couldve jumped the fences n joined some of the lone pups but they just stood about on hind legs, little wastrel dancing ponies./sleepy eyed pups slept and waddled like rotten hamsters./and we keep all animals this way. /days in petshop cells, are they there at night? /or are they ferried away in boxes in cars? /in Korea the humans fare little better. /In China even worse. many are not even deemed good for a window to air, or a view./rows and rows of slums and great orwellian towerblocks plague the green earth and we are all scum./keep our pigs in keeps with no room for walking and fucking lucky am i to roam as i do./so shut your dirty pudgy, grease spewing mouths when you moan about your situation, and paint glue about your eyes and pity inside,/and hope that we do not conform to our dominance and lose all respect./Oh, the meddling mediations of the tired child… /but what petty victories we have won over other species sadden me, we’ve ruined their lives and our own are damnable. But damn god and damn damnation for they exist not./sneak back in darkness and brick the window!!/oh, a dolphin does not play this way and a dolphin is far wiser than we.
Hongdae Graffiti Exhibition. Artist, Yeom Ji Hee.
Some of this seems to be sanctioned, some of it illegal. I cannot tell.
The Law: ‘For a while, nobody in Korea really cared about graffiti in public. But recently, the government has officially made it illegal to paint on public spaces, and more citizens have begun to complain about it.’ -BFMin, Graffiti Artist
Hongdae graffiti, South Korea. 2010. Small anarchy in a stolid state.
Nana is Real is somewhat of a renegade in Korea. She lives in Seoul, I think. She has created what may be a self portrait on her website www.nanaisreal.com. It is a black and white stencil of a pretty fringed girl. She graffs just about anywhere, including this gate! Her sense of colour is adept; using lurid shades in a very muted fashion, she rolls, spraying pretty hate along the city walls.
Hongdae Street Art, 2010. Unknown artist.
2004. Another very very early attempt at editing a scribble. This is a portrait of a friend of mine (Steve Buscemi-esque and demonic).
Scan and early Photoshop attempt, 2004. From an old and dusty hard-drive. Nae many of my newer ‘works’ are digitised yet. This drawing was very tiny and scrappy, but I quite like it. I like my teenage antics, little punk that I was, then the crushing reality of it all did truly set in…
And you fall down as you gaze
Bored at the specatacle on offer,
The performances and wonders that are feeding life and themselves,
But not you, as you’re watching the pink dough of your eyelids,
And thinking of what with a smile wrapped in self?
As the boy speaks of folk and the blusterous wind rages,
The panes squeak and crack and you wonder how you’ll look
In your new clothes,
And whether they were liked to be given?
*
(crazy teenaged poem that I still remember by heart, perhaps then it has some worth)
Street Art, Hondae, Seoul, South Korea. Unknown Artist.