On - Being Social

Rough notes - billowing around my head this morning.

There are approximately 5.2 Billion Social Media users among the Human population of Earth.
That is roughly 64% of the total global Human population.
Across the planet, the average time spent per day per person on Social Media is 2 hours and 23 minutes.

Social Media is not "anti-social", in spite of its serious deleterious effects on a significant proportion of its participants. In many ways it is the ultimate expression of Socialism - Being 'Social'.

It is also one of the most effective, accessible marketing tools ever invented.
It is a publishing medium par excellence. This needs re-iterating. Social media is a publishing platform - with highly toxic, highly radioactive levels of feedback. It is a publishing platform.
A gateway for those seeking attention, validation and sales.

§  This is the POV shift.  §  This is all I need it to be.  §

When your identity is not being constantly reflected - projected back [on] to you through the perverse lens of the screen, you regain more significant control of your Self. One's Identity is one of the most important, primary psychological foundations of Being Human - Homo Sapiens.

Control of Choice - Identity is Yours - it always was actually.
Privacy is not loneliness.
Silence is not emptiness.
Playing For the audience is not the same as Playing To the audience, in the same way as Identifying AS, is not the same as Being identified AS, or Identifying WITH.
Identity is a state of Being. Identity is Conscious Self Knowledge AND UnKnowledge - Curiosity - Who Am I? I Am Not You.

How wise is it to publish/broadcast/expose your UnKnowingness to the gaze of Humans everywhere and expect their response to be anything other than illogical?

The phrase "Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not" originates from the novel "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" by Alan Sillitoe, published in 1958. The protagonist, Arthur Seaton, expresses a sentiment of individuality and defiance against others' perceptions of him.

A Performance is simply that. Alice Cooper is a character created and played by the performer Vincent Damon Furnier. Batman is a second level character created by the artist Bob Kane and the writer Bill Finger in the 1930's as the alter-ego of the fictional character Bruce Wayne.
Daniel Radcliffe is not Harry Potter. 

Refusing to reduce or diminish your existence to reels, shorts, highlights, captions, likes, comments - refusing to publish, to expose your Self to all the poisonous, carcinogenic feedback, does not mean Being Insignificant. Just because the world doesn't continuously acknowledge your presence, does not mean you don't exist. In fact, exactly the opposite of that is the Truth. You continue to exist IN Spite of the continuous lack of acknowledgement. And that is a very, very 'Good Thing'!

On - The Way To Work

Down by Asda carpark,
Over the roundabout,
Between the new housing estate,
And the dual carriageway,
On the last patch of green space
Behind the billboards advertising
Prime building land with planning permission in place.
Where the dog-walkers circle parade
While their charges defecate,
The trees hang heavy with ripening bags of shit.

Down by the gully
That runs through the site,
There's a movement in the long grass.
A badger, up late,
Rolls like an excited puppy.

Overcast grey dawn,
Low clouds and high tide
Meet before the open water
At the end of the bay.
No detail, no depth,
No sense of distance, space or time.
The scent of wet rocks.

The tide is high but turning and still.
The surface of the water smooth as chrome.
An odd bird bobbing low in the water
Among the regular Oystercatchers,
Geese and Gulls,
Has a hat on.

Same scene two days later,
Two Swans emerge from the mist.
The stuff of Arthurian legend.

Sparrowhawks (plural),
Plucking plumage in Waitrose carpark.
Scattered pigeon outside the front door.

Two Red Kites, low over the Big Yellow Storage,
Between the building college and the Holiday Inn.

Buzzard on the ground in the carpark at Selco,
Spooked, takes breakfast off into the shadows
Of the treeline to eat in peace
Behind the builder's knackered van.

Cormorants at high tide,
Skimming the creek at Portchester,
Doing that wing thing on the upturned carcasses of
Dead boats drowned in the mud.
Is it a Cormorant? Is it a Shag?

Purple Plover on the seafront at Southsea
On the concrete foreshore by the Castle.

Kessies over The George Inn
At the top of Portsdown hill,
Hounded by Crows.

Magpies roost with the Woodies at the back of 
The car door mirror factory.

A Rook bathing in the dew on the grass.

Today, I heard an Egret call.
It's not right for such an elegant bird
To sound like a Duck being choked.
Little Egrets, bloody Egrets everywhere!
Non! Je n'Egret rien!

Uncountable Foxes, tamed by their proximity to
Human detritus. Lulled into a sense of 
Tenuous security, cocky but cautious.

In the middle of Langstone harbour,
Slobbing about sunbathing on the sandbanks,
Grey Seals nobody sees without a telescope.

And I'm chatting on the phone at the side of the 
Square Tower, at the entrance to Portsmouth harbour,
Another Grey Seal casually bobs along in the grey-green surf below,
Watching me watching.

And, Grey Seal in the bay at Portchester Castle,
Just a few yards off the sea wall at Southampton Road.
Tides running out, but the Seal has a school of fish
Herded into the shallows. 
Surfaces now and then to slap one silly on the water
Before chewing on it like a dog with a bone.

Off the motorway embankment, under the trees,
On the gravel track by the fishing lake,
A scattering of wild Rabbits rummaging in the undergrowth.
A couple of Kestrels quarter the lake side.
Magpies, Moorhen, Coots and a flotilla of
Canada Geese populate the fringes of the reed beds.
Drift a little into open water.

A shocked Green Woodpecker yells startled green abuse,
Racing off to find another quiet spot to drum up lunch.
And a pair of Jays in pink and vivid blue
Add some spicy colour.

Down by Mountbatten, at Tipner Lake,
Occasional Godwits and Redshank turn up between
Hordes of Egrets. Oystercatchers, Gulls, and
Great Grey Heron. 
A pair of random Curlew stop by one evening.
Still there next morning, and a couple of days later
At Portchester bay.

One Friday in mid-November,
Eight Cormorants, a Black Backed Gull and a Grey Heron
Share the raft at Tipner.
Along the receding tide-line,
Tucked away among the Brent Geese,
A handful of Shelduck splap about in the mud,
Exotic and filthy.

Plucked a bewildered and bedraggled
Red Partridge from the sea at high tide
At Portchester bay. 
She was missing a dog-sized mouthful of feathers
From her back. No skin broken, she was shocked but alive.
We hid her away to recover. 

In the small brown bird ranks,
Dunnocks simply outnumber Sparrows,
Now rare in our gardens and dwindling to extinction
While their niche is filled by,
Well, other small brown birds.

A swarm of Wagtails
Flitter, picking tidbits in the lurid algae-green
Pebbles at the shoreline as the tide runs away.
Never more than a foot away from the other,
A pair suddenly tear away into an aerial display
Of rollercoaster swoops and dime-turns, 
Skater eights and vertical rocket launches
That put the Swifts to shame.

Blue Tits and Goldcrests bring the glitter,
Robins bully and berate
Blackbirds busy at the break of dawn.
Starlings shimmer in everything they do.
Their whole existence is a world of shimmering,
Song, flight, plumage and antics.

Parakeets, wild on Farlington marshes.
All Robin Hood green with radishes for noses.

Still on Farlington marshes, a Barn Owl
Floats across a backdrop of cattle in hazy sunlight
And vanishes in a puff of Hawthorn.

___________________________________________

I've been commuting to work for many years. I've had many conversations in that time about the things that I've seen and encountered en route, through urban and rural landscapes - largely of the "What do you even look at?"

So this is a poem about my failed attempts to spot wildlife in the kinds of 'pure', natural habitats you see on 'Spring/Autumnwatch' and elsewhere on the telly. It started off being about wildlife without the rose tinted long lenses, in built-up, urban, industrial landscapes, in closer proximity with us than we often realise, often so close that the great majority of us barely register it. Over time, I think it has changed somewhat. Evolved, you might say.

This piece is by no means 'finished'. It grows each time I see something extraordinary or beautiful on the commute from home to work each day. I cycle everywhere, though I'm not one of those 'Lycra Princesses' with all the gear, pretending I'm in the Tour de France everyday. I'm a cruiser, a meanderer. I'm interested in the texture of the journey. I have no desire to reduce it to a snap, nor to isolate myself from the experience plugged in to any artificial distraction. I want to exist in and experience the living world, not the dead world of the digitally dull, virtually non-existent. Can't touch it, can't feel it, don't know if it's real or fake. In the words of Robin Williams/Adrian Cronauer in 'Good Morning Vietnam', "What's the weather like today? You got a window, open it!" Well, now it's me saying, "You got eyeballs and a mind! Open 'em!"

On - Big Rain

I'm no Shelley, Keats or Byron,
No Hughes or Cooper-Clarke.
Just a speck on a spectrum.
The boy with the cardboard heart.
So I'll do this my way,
Be my own beacon in the dark.

Unstable as Uranium,
Gonna crack your cranium,
Put a short circuit in your brainium.
'Cos I'm firing on all cylinders.
Inspirin', it's tirin' and my busy fingers are dyin'
And I'm sick of fucking tryin'.

Collecting the uncollectable,
Forgetting the unforgettable,
Repeating the unrepeatable.
Every statement of status a state of explicit complicity
That believes in itself so seriously.

And the rain falls like suffering,
And suffering is truth
And it's a big, big rain
On a small, small town.
It's a big, big rain
On a small, small town.

You came like a crack in the ice.
Not who you said you were.
You wore a mask of integrity.
Your painted eyes, bitter lies,
Tattooed on your inner thighs.

You needed my dreams manifest,
The better to beat me with.
Pierced in the heart so your
Golden thread could drag me around,
Lead the parade, show me off.
Your broken prize from the merry-go-round.

You burned your brand on my arse.
Another tattooed barcode,
Kissing up to this paranoid farce.

And the rain falls like suffering,
And suffering is truth
And it's a big, big rain
On a small, small town.
It's a big, big rain
On a small, small town.

They say walking is the fine art
Of falling without crashing.
Well I started late 
And stumbled every step of the way.
But I threw myself wilfully,
Into the abyss of obscurity,
Laughing and screaming like a madman,
At the on-coming rush of anonimity.

And if every landscape is a condition of the soul,
Then I am a man of mountainous shadows,
Great, dark forests shrouded in the depths
Of Winter clouds.

Where the rain falls like suffering,
And suffering is truth
And it's a big, big rain
On a small, small town.
It's a big, big rain
On a small, small town.

____________________________

Another piece written entire by recital on my cycle commute to work each morning over several weeks in 2021?-2022? I like to ride along and recite out loud because it gives me a much better, clearer understanding of the "feel" of the words. I also find it easier than trying to just 'think' them in my head. Hearing the lines out loud in the open, somehow is just easier for me to remember them. Yeah, I know... I only actually wrote them down and editted them later, once they were more or less 'completed' by recital.

On - Simple Pleasures and Farlington Marshes

Simple Pleasures
Simple Pleasures like
A spliff and a can of Red Bull,
And walking the dog on Castle Field
Chasing gulls and crows for shits and giggles.

Clarence Pier keeping dry.
Abandoned buildings,
Dodging security and getting up high
With a bag of fat caps, burners and paint.
Tagging walls and comedy cocks.

Simple Pleasures
Simple Pleasures like
Dan's all-night parties,
Minesweeping shots,
K's and tequila, Jager bombs.

Off our tits, chased by cops.
Chatting up girls in Guildhall Square
- Getting nowhere....
Late for work, no surprise.
Hanging like a bastard - telling lies.
    (Ad Lib - "Some bullshit excuse")

Simple Pleasures
Simple Pleasures like
A can of Stella and a stolen bike,
Sitting in the sun having fun with the passers-by.
Try and blag a dollar for a Ginsters pie.

Back round to Dan's, he's got some weed
That helps the day go by.
Cheap Prosseco and a E for tea,
I'll tell you why - none of your business,
But I'll tell you why.

Simple Pleasures
Simple Pleasures like
Watching the sunrise over Farlington Marshes
With a spliff and a bottle of JD.

Lay back in the long grass
And listen to the birds sing,
As the dawn breaks.

Lay back in the long grass
And watch as the stars fade
And the sky turns from dark to light,
From pink to blue,

And the tide rolls in,
Bringing back memories of you.

And the tide rolls in,
Bringing back memories of you.

And the tide rolls in,
Bringing back memories of you.

_______________________________

Subject of the piece I painted for the Look Up Portsmouth paint festival in 2023. Written over a few weeks in 2021/2022 (?) on my cycle commute to work. I had the 'Can of Stella and a. stolen bike' line from seeing a bloke riding a bike the other way carrying a quite large flat-screen tv under his arm at half six one morning...

The process for writing this was reciting the line out loud to myself, repeatedly, and adding lines to it. There's something about speaking the lines out loud that embeds them more easily than trying to remember them for long enough to get to work and write them down. The metre was developed from the rhythm of the first line I came up with. The timbre of the last lines, 'Bringing back memories of you' is intended to be bitter sweet. Memories that just won't fade... 

On - Process

Having watched me working almost my entire life, I deeply love 'Process'. Whether it's printmaking, letterpress, typesetting, film/darkroom photography, bike maintenance, diy, making books, music, recording or playing an instrument. A significant proportion of the time the process is far, far, faaarrr more compelling and enjoyable than the outcome. The outcomes, are obviously important. But more often than not, are secondary to the process - if we're talking about 'What are you even doing that for?' I love wrestling with processes. I love mixing up and blending processes. I love knowing just enough about a process to be able to make it mostly work - and then working out the rest by investigation and experimentation. I love not really knowing every little detail of a process or how it will affect the outcome, but doing it anyway. There are things I Can do 'properly' (I used to teach them!) - but I just don't -why do I need to? Where's the fun in that? 

There's an old Monty Python skit about learning to play the flute that goes "You blow in one end and move your fingers up and down the outside". And that's it. That's really all you need to know.

There are pedantic people who get really deeply upset about other people "not doing it right/properly" - Like, properly offended. As if you've been rude about their mother by ignoring some intricate detail of the process be it whatever. Hm. Some things are important - others, just ain't. And here's a thing - my aesthetic is very definitely linked with my identity - probably in a more significant way than you would imagine on the surface.

It's all about the process. It is a Natural Sensibility too. By which I mean something key within the evolution of consciousness - as the brain of an animal gets better at processing (*not necessarily 'bigger'), evidently the functionality of the senses expands, awareness and 'imagination' seem to grow. One of my biggest questions about being a living H. Sapien is "Where does this fundamental urge to "make stuff" come from? What part of the brain, and how does it work?" (Right down to the level of Quantum Mechanics of synapses and the structures of neuro-proteins needed to make this shit work, right? - I have questions Prof. Jim Al-Khalili - local Southsea resident.....) (Next time I see you in Waitrose mate....)

We're unquestionably not alone in this. There are fish, birds, mammals, that build elaborate, temperature controlled, aesthetically attractive, highly camouflaged, secure nests - and decorate them, to the level of removing unwanted detritus - prospective mates judging what's good or 'better'. Rivals eyeing up their handiwork and nicking all the best ideas... Many, many animals build protective shelters for sleeping, breeding, raising young, storing food... There are insects that create sophisticated well-organised, socially structured, environmentally controlled earth mounds... 

What was the evolutionary trigger? What practical, evolutionarily advantageous function does an aesthetic creative ability, the ability to imagine an artifact, a state, a sound serve. But then also, the ability to work out a process by which that animal (*includes us - H Sapiens, monkey-boy) can identify and gather suitable materials, not just for the artifact, but for the tools and the method to make it. And to have a clear enough understanding of that process to be able to pass that knowledge on to others. 

I've tried to have this conversation with many people over the years, mostly hitting a wall where they cannot understand that we are just one of the other animal species filling an evolutionary niche. (We are just another one of the animals folks.) And the algae and bacteria waaay outnumber us. And that's just on this planet......

And yet... For sure, we've carved ourselves a pretty big niche. The iPhone is just the latest iteration/extension of this same functional process. The application of the conscious ability to imagine a thing and to work out how to make it. We have iPhones, cars, health care systems, multiple cures for multiple cancers... We have so much good shit going on. And it's very very easy to get distracted and forget that in the current geo-political climate. But we need to remind ourselves, and to remember, that we also have the inate ability to create some truly wonderful things.

We are H. Sapiens and we are the last of our kind.

On - The Walls Of Your Cage

This is not a state that
Gives a fuck about its people
They'll arrest you for the slogan on your shirt

Where is the integrity
The honesty of purpose
When Fascist legislation bears your name?

Naivety weakens
And threatens your authority
Your childish angry outburst set in law

Is a vain attempt to legislate
Against emotional responses
Against people feeling vulnerable and threatened

Well you're making an assumption
'Cos your ego leads your judgement
Like your opinion is the only form of Truth

And you believe your actions
Speak louder than your words but
Empty words and hollow gestures weigh the same

And there's a bigger picture
You're unpicking thread by thread
A tapestry of Natural Time and process

Where the voice of opposition
Is the catalyst of Progress
And incremental Evolution is the way

But every point of view is valid
Even though it's not correct
And something else is better written here

'Cos Democracy is beautiful
Like mathematical equations
Tho' beauty's rarely pretty, never pure

And there's an inner rage
That's dying to engage
And bring a revolution to the stage

And when the revelation hits ya...

Don't be afraid
It's just a picture on a page
And the surface of the image is your cage

Don't be afraid
It's just a picture on a page
And the surface of the image is your cage

Don't be afraid
It's just a picture on a page
And the surface of the image is your cage

Don't be afraid
It's just a picture on a page
And the surface of the image is your cage

Well it's Fear As Entertainment
And it's Fear As Entertainment
They love your Fear As Entertainment
They want your Fear As Entertainment

But I guess I never had that kind of Intelligence
I guess I never had that kind of Intelligence
I guess I never had that kind of Intelligence
Well I just never had that kind of Intelligence
_______________________________

There is an instrumental track for this piece on Bandcamp…

One of the characteristics of corrupted corporate consumerism is its ability to commodify the emotional voice of the opposition and to sell it back to its 'believers' so that they feel they have a 'voice'. Bought and paid for. (**Just because you paid for it, don't mean you 'own' it...)

It takes courage, strength and determination to stand outside of that circus. First you must gain distance from it. When you have distance between you and it, turn around and squint to see the bigger picture. 

On - Being Idealistic And Pretentious

Before Eno, there was John Cage.

And in 1993 a couple of things happened. Exact Change brought out a new edition of 'Composition In Retrospect', and I started Uni at Portsmouth. 

'Composition In Retrospect' is a fabulous tour of John Cage's ideas and methodology. The book is written as a series of poems based on mesostics, but the key part for me was the introduction to the second section, 'Themes And Variations', where Cage lists one hundred and ten ideas laid out in some of his other books - 'Silence'; 'M'; 'Empty Words'; 'A Year From Monday'; and 'Virgil Thomson'. 

These hundred and ten ideas were the spark that set my motor running. Not just the ideas, but the format. The simple, minimalist lay out, with no explication. Just let them stand on their own merits and explain themselves for themselves - and if they don't, or require some unpacking, then that is work for the reader to do. I love that. So I began to formulate a bank of such ideas for myself. 

Many of these stock statements I've come back to repeatedly. Some have bubbled up to the top, burst and sunk or evaporated, others have solidified into foundation strata that underpin parts of my output over the years. The rest make up the mountains, rivers, flora andd fauna of 'Dave World'. The landscape that I live in is largely made up of statements like these - in no particular order then, this is the Los Dave Matrix.
____________________________

Continuity and Change

The surface of the image is your cage

Be the pebble in the flip-flop of consciousness

Liberate our minds by any means necessary

Liberation does not always lead to Liberty

Everything - in moderation

Stand back and squint

Learn to listen

Listen to learn

Talk big; act small

There but by the grace of good fortune, go I

De-commodify the populist conception of 'creativity' in favour of the biological foundation of the urge to decorate 

Simplify, codify, unify

Arrogance and ignorance, or innocence and unsophistication?

Capitalism embraces and legitimises H. Sapiens' natural tendency to corruption

Everything is Not fair game

Some things are important, some things just ain't

All of this will have soon all turned to dust

Other timescales exist

Schemes and dreams, promises, platitudes and propaganda

Anti-propaganda is still propaganda

Conform to your own codes

Repels in a slightly attractive way, attracts in a slightly repulsive way

Live vicariously, live precariously

Choice is a privilege, not a right

One man's freedom is another man's cage

One man's freedom is freedom for all

Freedom by proxy is not freedom at all

The system of lies and hate? It's taught me what truth and honesty are

People come in two flavours; sweet and unsavoury

Even food poisoning has its benefits

Sometimes enlightenment is found in the darkest, furthest corners from the sun

The triumph of the irrational over the implausible

Learn to live

Live to learn

Just 'cos it ain't true, don't mean it's a lie

Not my camels, not my train

It's not just ok to not know, it's ok to admit you don't know

Learn the difference

If you want to know the answer, ask the question

Fewer statements, more questions

This cracked and fissured landscape

As far as possible do no harm

Not all of the days are equal

Truth don't give a shit about your dumbass opinion

Collaborate and compete

Don't be afraid to say no

Not my sax solo, not my jazz

Impossibility of knowing the unthinkable

None of this is important, none of this is permanent

True things are true irrespective of you

There's two kinds of opinions - informed and uninformed

Value is as value does

Buried amid a storm of words

Compliance is conformity

Conformity is complicity

Complicity is corruption

Anger is an energy

Grasses and saplings still stand when the wind has broken many great oaks

Knowing what questions to ask

Not my cherries, not my pie

Caught in the undertow

You are in high speed wobble. Hold on tight and enjoy the ride

All the words in the world won't save you

It all cuts both ways

A spear without a point is just a stick

It is, until it ain't

What's next?

You say the words without digesting their meaning

Think about it. Don't over-think it.

There are more ways to get answers than just asking questions

Why do you need to know? 

Just pick it up and play it

Ritual and circumstance

Identify as, identify with, not indentified by

Rebel and conform

The establishment wins by subsuming the rebellion

Simply shouting down your opponent is not the same as winning the argument

Commodify the spontaneous

It does, until it don't

Minimalism is refinement by distillation, not a hatchet job

Context is everything, except when it ain't

Everything is a commodity

Context is a commodity

Humility and humanity

What matters?

Mindful mindlessness

Last night it did not seem as if today it would be raining

Once there were no borders, no boundaries

The unwavering path crosses the river many times

The alternative is unthinkable

On - Burning Down The Oasis

Easy to assume

Easy to dismiss

Looking for - The Oasis

Searching for - The Oasis

All you can do with insanity

Is infect the rest of humanity

What do you want? 

What do you need?

Thumbing a ride back to reality.

Easy to assume

Easy to dismiss

Show me the way - to The Oasis

Take me down - to The Oasis

All you can do with insanity

Is infect the rest of humanity

Based my whole personality

On a t-shirt I saw in captivity

Easy to assume

Easy to dismiss

Waiting in line - at The Oasis

Fitting in down - at The Oasis

All you can do with insanity

Is infect the rest of humanity

Bones of words learned from kids toys

Janet and John, and a popular song

Easy to assume

Easy to dismiss

Talk to the walls - at The Oasis

Shouted down - at The Oasis

All you can do with insanity

Is infect the rest of humanity

Crowd-fund appeal for a remedy

Gaffer tape, cable ties

Recycled self-help books from the seventies

Easy to assume

Easy to dismiss

Setting fire - to The Oasis

Burning down - The Oasis

All you can do with insanity

Is infect the rest of humanity

Wrestling smoke and shadows

Lipstick, masks and eyeliner

Easy to assume

Easy to dismiss

Toeing the line - at The Oasis

Keeping the peace

Sneaking around

Spiking them up

Strapping 'em down

Freaking out

Climbing the walls

Breaking down - at The Oasis

There's a lock-in - at The Oasis

Sink or swim - at The Oasis

Easy to assume

Easy to dismiss

Setting fire - to The Oasis

Burning down - The Oasis

Setting fire - to The Oasis

Burning down - The Oasis

All you can from the other side of sanity

Is infect the rest of humanity

All that you consume

All that you resist

All aboard - another crisis

All aboard - another crisis

Breaking down - at The Oasis

    *Ad hoc repeat*

Hear the track here -> Burning Down The Oasis by The Vulture Is A Patient Bird

Words by Los Dave; Music and samples by Rusty Sheriff and Matt Chuter
Published by Press Without A Press October 2017

Your well-being is a vanity.

Recovery is the responsibility of the sick.

Mental health is subordinate to dental health. 

This is fearasentertainment. Performed live at Southsea Castle as part of Portsmyth Darkfest in October 2017

Suffocating and culturally undermined by its fear of the consequences of failure,

for decades, our health services have subsisted on a thin gruel of funding, anaemic and starving in a culture of political intransigence and neurosis. 

On - The Next Evolution Of Hominin After SAPIENS

We are Homo Sapiens, and we are the last of our kind.

We might very well be the final iteration of Hominin species.
We are certainly the only surviving species in the genus Homo.
We are most likely the last surviving species in the entire genus.

Which must suggest, surely that as an evolutionary pathway, big brain/bipedalism is not particularly successful. All of the other Hominin species have gone extinct, and now we are extincting ourselves... Arguably, not that good. 

The period with the most hominid species alive at the same time was around 300,000 to 200,000 years ago, when at least nine different human species coexisted, including Homo Sapiens, Homo Neanderthalensis, and Denisovans, among others. The map of human diversity was much more complex than the single species (that's us - Homo Sapiens) that exists today, though the exact number, timescales and overlap of species is still a subject of scientific study and debate. 

What is however, undeniable is that they are all gone.

The most recent period when multiple hominid species coexisted was the Late Pleistocene, around 100,000 to 40,000 years ago, a time when Homo Sapiens, Neanderthals, and Denisovans inhabited parts of Eurasia, with evidence of interbreeding among them - we still carry some of their DNA in our genome today - mmm ancestral DNA... We're all descended from a bunch of monkey-shaggers. - The power of our ancestry lives within us! Yeh, that ain't gonna save you.

Around 50,000 to 67,000 years ago, a few even smaller hominins like the Indonesian Homo Floresiensis and the recently proposed Homo Luzonensis of the Philippines - it's really not very easy to distinguish between what is and what isn't an actual different species - also lived concurrently with other human species. So as recently as 40,000 years ago, there may have been as many as five different hominid species all coexisting concurrently. That's not that long ago, archeologically speaking.

When we finally extinct ourselves, Nature will literally have to go back to the Great Apes, and begin again... Yus!! Planet Of The Apes was real!  Unless we extinct all of them on our way out the door...

Even if we can survive our own self-inflicted socio-pathological implosion, we have absolutely no defence against one really good solid asteroid or solar flare. Zero. None. 

Has all of this happened before? Yup. Many, many, many times long before we got here with our bipedalism and big heads... Maybe not to our entire genus, specifically - yet. But we definitely ain't the first, and we won't be the last full genus to go extinct. Evidence for the prosecution your honour? I give you the dinosaurs m'lud.

Will it happen again? Yup. We are just the latest in a continuing evolutionary process that will go on for another 5 to 10 billion years, and then the sun will torch everything here.

What will replace us in the evolutionary continuum? Dunno. But I bet they look back at us and think "What a dumb bunch of .... !"

Goodbye Earth.
Goodbye Homo.
Thanks for the ride.

Dang, we didn't even make it quarter of the way round the galaxy....

Cheers y'all,

Los Dave

On - Being Difficult

It started as such a simple idea - and not really an original one either. I just wanted to try it for myself and see where it goes. I love a bit of minimalism, and this idea is common to composers like Steve Reich, Terry Riley, John Cage, Brian Eno and so on and so on. It's also a bit "math rock" if you're that way inclined, but it's definitely minimalism defined.

Take the first 5 prime numbers; 1, 3, 5, 7 & 11.
Give each part a musical note - so sequence 1 is one note - say C;

Sequence 3 has three notes - so for example, a short arpeggio like C major = C, E, G,
Sequence 5 has five notes - such as C, E, G, C, E, 
Sequence 7 has seven notes - so sticking with our C major scheme - C, E, G, C, E, G, C
etc.

Yeah? You get the idea. These are just simple examples to explain the concept. In reality, each of the prime sequences would be in a different key, or octave up/down or something more interesting. This is just a basic compositional structure. The actual allocation of notes to numbers in the sequence needs more consideration than I'm giving it here, I've just simplified so I can explain the concept.

Now we build a grid sequence - we can skip 1, 'cos that's just going to repeat the same note every note - and no one wants to listen to that, it's just boring. (*One note is not an 'arpeggio' - discuss...)

So :
      Step.|1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20  21 22 23  24 .....
Sq 3  =  |1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3,  1,  2,  |3, 1,  2,  3,  1,  2,   3,  1,  2,  3,   1, |2,  3, ....
Sq 5  =  |1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4,  5,  1,  |2, 3,  4,  5,  1,  2,   3,  4,  5,  1,   2, |3,  4, ....
Sq 7  =  |1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 1, 2,  3,  4,  |5, 6,  7,  1,  2,  3,   4,  5,  6,  7,   1, |2,  3, ....
Sq 11 = |1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 1, 2,  3,  4,  5,  6,   7,  8,  9, 10, 11, 1,  2, ....

 

Very quickly the sequences start to move out of line with each other, then we start to look for resonance where two or more values from different prime sequences coincide. In the example above, all four sequences begin in unison. Three drops out first, then five, then seven. We can calculate the number of steps between each of the sequences until they resonate again.

Sequence 3 and 5 resonate again after 
3 x 5 = 15 steps have completed   

    Step 16 is the start of the resonance.

Sequence 3 and 7 resonate again after 
3 x 7 = 21 steps are complete 

    Step 22 is the start of the resonance.

Three, five and seven will resonate together after 

3 x 5 x 7 = 105 steps are completed 

    Step 106 is the start of the resonance

So:    Seq 1 x Seq 2 (x Seq 3 x Seq 4) + 1 = Res step

All 4 sequences resonate together again after 3 x 5 x 7 x 11 + 1 steps are completed = 1,155 steps.

So I drew up a grid by hand and started to colour code the harmonic resonances according to whichever sequence(s) were resonating.... My grid is just under 8 metres long.... Here are some photos of bits of it. It looks like a DNA sequence, part of a genome. Yes I could  have done it in Excel or on a spreadsheet, but where's the fun in that? 'Cos that's a really important part of all this for me. Yup, I'm 're-inventing the wheel'. And yeh, sure there are probably multiple downloadable, pre-programmed versions of this sequence/composition on Reddit forums or whatever for every imaginable modern and vintage sequencer and yes it really would be much easier and quicker to just go get one of those.

But, I like the minds-ercise. I like the brainy-trainy-ness. I'm not a mathematician or a musician. I love thinking about stuff like this. How will it sound? Dunno yet. But the plan is to turn this  ^^^^ sequence/plan into a hand-made artists book and include a recording somehow, somewhere - maybe a tape, maybe a download - I dunno. I guess I'll let you know - eventually. 

Meanwhile, if you reckon you can find a recording by someone whose already done this, well done. Good for you. By all means ping me over a copy.

Cheers all,

Los Dave

On - Making Noise - LOS DAVE ON BANDCAMP

'A Fart In A Hurricane' or 'Pissing Into The Wind'

I haven't always made music. Some would argue that I still don't. Don't listen to them though, make your own mind up. Have a listen - https://losdave.bandcamp.com/music - I'm not saying they're wrong - it could all very well be crap, but so what. 

Like quite a lot of kids, I started to learn about music when I was little. I still remember a music lesson in junior school when the teacher put on Emerson Lake and Palmers' 'Pictures At An Exhibition' (prog!). I had (a few) recorder lessons, and even graduated up to a clarinet (with my mum's encouragement). I always loved listening to the music on the radio, and eventually started to buy records and tapes of my own - (ELO - Mr Blue Sky). I loved to drag the speakers off the shelf and lay down with them either side of my head in lieu of headphones. I still love my headphones. The viscerality of getting the music right into my brain case. 

I got to know some kids who played in a metal band at school, and still remember the first time I went to watch them rehearse in a small backroom in a church in St. Albans, or Watford or somewhere. After I left the sixth form, me and my mate 'Sweeney' would go over to the Headstone in Harrow, a metal club in an old church hall, and spend the night with our heads in the bass bins...

When I was earning enough to afford tickets, I started going to live gigs. Must have been around 1979 - 80. Local bands, mostly rock/metal around the Watford/Rickmansworth/St. Albans areas. Clientelle were top favourite. One of the earliest 'big' gigs I went to was Angel Witch at Rickmansworth with Clientelle and a couple of other bands in support. I still have albums and tapes that I bought at those gigs. The first big venue gig I went to was Supertramp at Earls Court in 1983. We were waaaaaaaay at the back. The band were tiny... 

When I was eighteen I worked at Sellotape. The guys there took  me under their wings and my education began. Real ale and prog rock. Fairport, Led Zep, King Crimson, Crosby Stills, Jethro Tull, Yes... All added in to the mix of metal, punk and post-punk I was already attached to. At the start of the '90's I got a job in a record store in Hendon. I stayed with the same company when I moved to Portsmouth for Uni and Bristol as a post-grad. I was with MVC until '99/2000-ish. Almost 10 years working in that environment had a profound effect on my listening education and musical taste. Jazz, hip-hop, ambient, world music, classical, new age... Anything except the 'main stream'... 

I've had a few significant gig-buddies. More, I think, than actual relationships... Sweeney, Stainer, Ben, Andy, Gav and Eddie... Wherever they are, whatever they're doing today, I hope they're all still well and happy. I still have nearly all of the tickets from the '90's/2000's until venues stopped doing physical tickets - which is shameful and they really ought to bring them back in some form. 

I am also extremely blessed to have spent a very significant proportion of my life surrounded by proficient, legitimate, educated, talented, creative musicians. They have all been incredibly open, encouraging, facilitating, and generous. They've also put up with my bullshittery for many years, which is not insignificant, and for which I will always be grateful. With their enablement and encouragement, I've found myself on a few stages performing in front of audiences. I'm gotta mention Rusty, who's put me in front of more people... And we have done some very cool things... The man is a legend. Dude.

I have also been lucky enough to live through the most significant technical developments in the performance, recording and reproduction of sound. The seventies, eighties and nineties gave us access to the totality of aural cultures that exist on the Earth. We got portable, then digital equipment, software, the means of playing, recording, producing, publishing and distributing at home, in your bedroom. And equally unlucky to see all of that poisoned by capitalism, greed and deteriorating ethics. Oi, BOSS pedals - fuck 'subscribing' to a pedal on your fx rig! BUT, I've still got a guitar and an amp and a smartphone I can record on, so bollocks to them. 

Everyone's an artist... Except they ain't. Not really. Just because you got a camera in your smartphone, don't make you a photographer, and just 'cos you passed your test, don't make you a talented driver. I'm not an audiophile. In the same way that I'm not a musician. In both aspects, I consider myself "aspirational", pretentious, a dilletante maybe, a dabbler... I do however, as an artist and self-publishing creative guy, I do have a significant obsession with music. 

I gave up driving over fifteen years ago, essentially 'cos I'm shit at it. 

I was told a decade ago by an NHS mental health counsellor that I should give up chasing a career in art, grow up and get a proper job. I was also told by a GP that taking up a sport would help with my mental health problems, despite commuting a hundred miles a week by bike.

I ain't giving up my music. I don't care how fucking shit it is. 

3 Is A Magic Number - Bird Mobile - Langstone Junior School - 2016

Commission for Langstone Junior School by Portsmouth City Council.

Wanted to do something beyond just a static line of birds along a corridor.

Dynamic movement, character, living, educational, multi-layered,


The theme here is 3 and multiples of three. The mobile is based on three sets of three arms across three levels, three birds on each level with three bonus 'loose' birds flying around the corridor. The lengths of the arms on each level are prime numbers - the differences between the prime numbers being multiples of three. I made birds in three different sizes to populate the mobile, which hangs under a glass roof of three colours...

This is the confluence of art, maths, engineering and natural history, combined with recycled materials to produce a site specific installation for grown ups and children to enjoy.

There are more photos somewhere. I'll upload them when I find them. ;)

On - Being Naughty

I’ve occasionally wanted to deliberately be ‘naughty’ for at least as long as I can remember and probably longer. I clearly have phases when the ‘rebellious’ spirit rises up and needs to be expressed. I guess it goes with being emotionally twelve years old all my life. What do I mean by ‘being naughty’? We’re not talking seriously criminal here – I’m not a murderer – we’re talking; maybe drawing penises on public walls, swearing like a trooper, nicking stuff from work or skips, being in places I shouldn’t be - Protesting openly about stuff I believe in... ‘Being Punk’! 

Like, for instance, I really enjoy swearing. If you’ve spent any time with me you’ll know I use it like punctuation or breathing points. I try to be sensitive to these things, and there I are people that I love and respect who really do not like swearing. So I will swear and cuss openly and freely when I’m around people who have indicated that they don’t mind, and I will ‘behave’ myself when I’m not. I know we all do that. But we don’t though, do we? There are some of us who just don’t give a shit. When was the first time you ever swore in front of your Mum and Dad, or your Nan? I have only one memory of my Nan dropping an F-bomb…

I like to imagine that I’m actually a somewhat sensitive soul and quite deeply repressed, so I’ve mostly lacked the courage to be ‘naughty’ in public. I over-think things a lot! I constantly talk and shame myself out of doing things that other people would just wade into. My inner emotional rebel really is very heavily repressed. The angry twelve year old that lives in my head is sometimes really angry and potentially incredibly damaging. He has from time to time got out and fucked things up royally. So the repression and self-censorship has grown over the years. My chosen method of suicide in the past has been suffocation… the visceral, physical expression or manifestation of the psychological warfare with myself. **NB - I am currently good thanks, don’t panic. I’ve been in a relatively good, stable place mentally since at least 2018**

Of course I’ve been ‘naughty’ from time to time. I’ve been out on late night graff and paste-up missions, pinched stuff I’ve found or needed here and there, got into places I shouldn't have been, that sort of thing and such. I gave out hand-drawn, illustrated, erect penis stickers at a Christmas PCM night – I seriously agonised over that. The artists book that they belong to “Mr Dick Stickers’ Book Of Sticky Dicks” will (probably) remain forever a work in progress, (I’ve got hundreds of dick stickers in a drawer here) – or performing ‘Burning Down The Oasis’ at Southsea Castle, and painting it as a ‘protest piece’ at Upfest in 2023, but I’ve always found it extremely difficult emotionally. And I know I am or can be horrifically unforgiving, passive-aggressive and judgmental – an absolute wanker – people have told me so…

In my head, the lessons of my childhood live strong. Any sort of “Showing off in public” is ‘very bad’. ‘Self-promotion’ or being “prideful”, these things are also shameful. If your work is good enough, it will stand on its own merits. I know my two sisters feel the same to an extent – and we’re all three of us highly creative, expressive, repressed individuals. 

So. WCIDWWIG - What Can I Do With What I’ve Got? 

Where has this path lead me to? What is my enlightenment? I over-analyse everything. Everything. I self-censor to the point of being stifled and unproductive – and yet I am incessantly creative. I express myself in riddles and metaphors – clouds of ‘meaning’ that say everything and nothing. Bury everything beneath a storm of words. Keep my feelings to myself. Suffocate my creativity with guilt and shame. Definitely don’t let it out in public. Be ashamed and doubt the veracity of my feelings. (The current state of the backroom canvas is again, a physical manifestation of all of this – and it’s fucking magnificent! See photos!)

What's my strategy to counter all of this? Fierce Independence and as far as I can, self-reliance. Constantly question and refine my beliefs about everything. Make work for myself, which makes me happy. Try not to judge. 

On my back room wall there lives, for a few years, a 3 metre canvas. It covers one complete wall. Over the years, I've painted it, and repainted it, and painted over it, and repainted over it many, many times. It's purpose is to be a completely free arena for whatever is in my head at the time. When an idea is done, it gets documented and painted over - wiped clean. It's had a drum machine and laser harps built into it, (not there now). It's a 3 metre non-permanent, sketchbook; a go-to for immediate throwing up of ideas and experiments. It's had collages, drawings, paintings, landscapes, portraits  - every kind of art work on its surface. If I just need to get in and work out some emotional angst or just burn off some energy, it's there. It's job is to be on standby. 

It is iterative, constantly moving, constantly changing, but continuous. It's about process. It embodies so much of the way my head and my art works. It's transitive, open, free, enabling, non-precious, living. 

And if you’ve made it this far – thanks for listening, thanks for being there, have a great day and go and do something positive for a complete stranger. I will love you for that.

Thanks, all the best,

Los Dave