Discipline!

I just ironed. That’s the second time this week. I hate ironing. What is going on? Some kind of attempt to live an ordered life in defiance of my vast junk yard of a brain? The word discipline always makes me think of the song by Throbbing Gristle, but I’ll talk about them another time. Amazingly I managed not to burn myself on the iron. I saved that till later when I burned myself making a cup of coffee.

So I’m in the classroom 15 minutes before the lesson. This is adult education. One woman has turned up early and is talking to me about her time in Africa, only she starts slowly turning into an octopus. A very large orange and red octopus, but instead of octopus tentacles she has birds legs and huge great birds claws, loads of them clawing at the air. She keeps on talking. She is fully octobird now. I can’t understand anything she says though I’m trying really hard. I stand very very still indeed and say nothing. With time and patience this passes and I push it off with the excuse of bad hay fever. I feel rubbish but am very good at pretending and the class goes reasonably smoothly.

Epilepsy has been in the news last week after a boy had his cannabis oil taken away from him at customs and then was in hospital with a seizure a day later. I think I’m going to try to get hold of this cannabis oil. It wouldn’t be hard to be an improvement on my current medication. Three to five seizures a week is far too much to cope with and hold down a job. Though experiencing life as one long LSD trip does have some interesting insights.

Today the pavement, the shadows and the leaves of an overhanging tree merged together and surrounded me whispering to each other in a strange language important secrets. Then the sound took over, there was nothing but sound, it was alive and conscious and I’m inside it. It tears me apart till I’m just… not.

The teenage cyclist that found me curled up on the ground was very concerned, then zoomed off at great speed doing wheelies once id told him I didn’t need an ambulance.

Discipline.

How to stop myself fading away. The epilepsy plays havoc with my memory. I accidentally took money from work, lost my glasses for the umpteenth time, lost my keys, my favourite linocut knife, failed to turn up to the doctors appointment even though it is very important I go. I’m going to try and conquer this chaos with strict order. Yes, I, Miss Roberts, am going to become an ordered person. It is happening slowly. I have blackboards, and note pads and calendar on my phone, pill boxes and diaries, lots of diaries, so when I write one wrong I can check another. Slowly but surely I shall become ordered, in my usual tortoise like way. And decisive, I’ll be decisive! More ironing…

Trial Linocut of a Cyclops by me. I think he’s lucky.

Fairies in real life

Real life, huh! That is a bit of a joke when you have a brain with a tendency to hallucinating, but I digress

The art installation I mentioned last week went well, some people loved it, some people hated it, some tutted, some giggled, a lot got it and said they had worked in an office and knew exactly what I had felt. On Friday I rolled around on the floor in paper for a performance, which was thoroughly enjoyable, barricaded the audience off with the desk turned on its side and at one point burst out crying for real. I don’t know why. I never really know how these performances will come out as a lot of it is created by that particular moment in that particular space.

Needless to say after all of this the space was even more of a mess, paper scattered everywhere, mud, bits of old office equipment. It had to all be cleaned up by Sunday and I was working that weekend and couldn’t get there till Sunday evening. To be honest I didn’t think I was going to manage to do it. But then the fairies arrived.

But before I go into the fairies I have to say a huge thank you to Sheila who really helped me out, packed away the table for me and found the vacuum cleaner and mop and bucket, and also a big thank you to Martin who organised the show. There are other people to thank but this blog would just turn into a long list of names so I’ll skip that bit and go on to the fairies.

They would hate being called fairies I’m sure. They were two boys, roughly ten years old I’d say, identical twins. There mum had had a piece showing in another part of the gallery and I think they were meant to be helping her. They had liked my installation a lot, they saw it as aliens taking over, or the apocalypse, which I like. They said because they’d liked it so much they’d help me tidy it up. Now at first I was a little worried about this, I know what boys are like and that tidying up can often mean the vacuum cleaner is a bazooka and the art work a hand grenade. Although this was obviously the case, and many deaths occurred in the tidying up of my space, they were miraculously good at it. Master of the vacuum that I had been deeply perplexed about, adapt at scrubbing walls. Truly wonderful, and they managed not to ruin and artworks either. They even got me a glass of red wine from the party going on upstairs once we had finished. Remind me in future to make my art installations look like something out of an Alien film.

And this really was being rescued. I got quite ill last week from all the running from east London to west London. I was having two or three seizure a day at one point which really does make things truly impossible to deal with. I probably ought to apologise to the friend whose shoulder I bursting out into tears on in the middle of a tarot reading. Everything seemed so very dark and out of control. It’s how having multiple epilepsy turns makes me feel. You know I think the crying in the middle of the office performance on Friday was good for me and the help from the fairies saved me. I’m very happy this week.

Below is a sketch I did of a praying mantis which I drew at the Natural History Museum Thursday evening, a very relaxing activity indeed. It’s first gift to its children is the head of the Dad. I think the fairies might like that.

June begins with sinister paisley

It has been a busy week and I am exhausted, my head is thudding and the ibuprofen isn’t working yet. Thought I’d write this to keep my mind off it and before I start on the codeine.

The Library went well on Tuesday. The Library is currently my small front room and every full moon I hold an event there. This full moon it was Kathryn Davis giving a talk on quantum physics. It was fascinating, I still don’t have a clue about it apart from some things really remind me of The Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy, like the improbability drive. I was a young child when the Hitchhikers guide began, my dad was a big fan of Douglas Adams and we were brought up with the guide as a kind of religion, along with Star Trek. In fact, for a long time now life has generally worked out for the best if I just regard it all as The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

The epilepsy has been bad this week. Not surprising as it always gets more whenever I’m busy and I also have decided to take myself off the lyrica because it was doing my eyesight in. So it’s just good old Tegretol at the moment and my new faith in breathing exercises, which reminds me I missed yoga this week. Anyway I’ve been getting a seizure almost every time I wake up, which is really weird. I’m in a bad enough mood already when I wake up and having a turn pretty much ruins the entire morning. This week they have involved sharply coloured and intensely patterned spirals and twists enveloping me, they were like those famous silk patterns with tear-drop motif – paisley I think – but very conscious, exceeding powerful, and somehow gut twisting.

My dreams have also been disturbing this week. I keep getting this dream where I’m being chased by this sinister man/force. He is like a cross between William Blake, Beethoven in that famous portrait when he is older and very stern, and the twin peaks hero turned evil in the more recent twin peaks. He chases me though corridors and woods and tunnels. I wonder if it is anything to do with the installation of a ruined office I’ve been doing in Hammersmith this week. Will write more about that in a later blog, because the whole exhibition is huge and very worth while seeing but my head is just not together enough to explain such things as location write now.

On a more easy note I got some wonderful gifts for the Library this week, a box of postcards of botanical prints, a beautiful Aspen leaf necklace, a huge heavy book on Occult Philosophy that is big enough to stun an ox (Laurie Anderson quote, couldn’t resist), a catalogue of the Natural History and Science Emporium from New York, and a lovely card catalog box so I can order my books properly.

I have also sold almost all my Biro Beasts. Just one of the original 10 left, and I’ve started drawing more as they are good to draw and seem to get some of the mess in my head out.

Beasts in an old fashioned diary

This is a old fashioned diary, not a blog really, because an old fashioned diary was a splurge of inner thoughts to an imaginary person, where as I think now days a blog is a planned piece of writing written for the public or a specific audience. If I plan this I cease up, I have nothing to say that’s important enough, where as if I splurge out myself on the page I can just keep going forever.

Its a system of my condition apparently, this splurging, temporal lobe epilepsy gives one a need to splurge out the thoughts on paper, as well a experiencing god and being obsessed with religion, any religion, I’m not fussy, as long as it’s got a god or two in it. The condition is also thought to give you a lack of sex drive, this I haven’t noticed, if anything I don’t get enough good sex but then different people have different ideas of good I suppose. Perhaps I should date a vicar.

Tonight I’m playing another gig with the Rude Mechanicals in South London. Might try some tarot reading maybe. I’ve found I do this best when i’m drunk.

i’ll also be selling my Biro Beasts. This is because I’m in desperate need of money at the moment, and drawing monsters is one of the few things I can do easily it seems. There are a lot of half formed beasts in the corners of the mind, though I suppose in an old fashioned diary I would just draw them straight in the book, and it wouldn’t be just a photo of them.

Good Morning, Rude Mechanicals gig in Stoke tonight, I probably ought to get out of bed for it

I’m in bed, the cat is on my lap trying to stop me from writing this and my tea is nice but does taste just a little bit metallic. Tonight is a Rude Mechanicals gig in Stoke. Luckily I’m not teaching today. I must get out of bed, shower and get off to see Punkvert to collect the remains of the Cyclops and the Wildebeest albums. Then get back and finish the Wildebeest linocuts. Oh, also there is a video installation thing I need to prepare, filmed with John Callaghan it is of the naked Cyclops in the Library of Obscure Wonders. Need to find wig, make sure dress is still in one piece and not too smelly. And I’d better print out the new songs in extra large prints and ask Jowe to bring his music stand along. Jowe wrote two of the new songs we are doing tonight, they are very good, one is about Coney Island and one is about creating a Golem, which is something I will make one day along with my perfect child.

Must get out of bed

but I can’t get out of bed because that would disturb the cat!

This is a lot of spoododle (a word I’ve just invented for writing fairly drab descriptions whilst lying in with a cat on your lap). Maybe I’ll see you later at the gig?

( soon I will write about my beloved chrysanthemum which recently passed away and do more animation)

She Snored Like A Rhino

Its been two weeks. I know I said I’d create a miniature animation every week, but this is a little bit bigger than miniature and almost, but not quite, has a story. Very loosely based on a Rude Mechanicals song done many many moons ago. I think the track is on the Homemade album, though to be honest with you I can’t remember how it goes. And yes I do snore, horribly!

5 weeks

There are now five weeks leading up to my birthday and I’ve decided to set myself a task. The task is to create one miniature animation per week for the next 5 weeks, or one larger one with a story.

This task is very much like my New Years resolutions in that there is a high possibility of it not actually happening, or even beginning. But this is a mission that has been set and I will try my best to complete it!

(Note the determination in my eyes there)

To get me in the mood here is a very basic little animation I did 5 years ago about Derek, the man in my loft, with sound by Rude Mechanicals and especially Tom Greenhalgh on drum sticks.

Oh my, yet another year, yet another set of resolutions

1. Get organised – my neuropsychologist says I must do this if I want to stay on the same planet as everyone else, so i’ll try

2. Go to gym –  yeah right, that one was made to break

3. Don’t drink so much –  the new tablets I’m on get me drunk very quickly so it won’t be too difficult keeping this one, hopefully

4. Go swimming – even less likely than gym, but I can have ambitions

5.. Learn to cook apple crumble – mmmm, I’m hungry

6. Make some money for once – anyone want to buy a beautifully hand-crafted limited edition Rude Mechanicals poster of a beastly creation?

Incidents and accidents, hints and allegations

This is my head, yes there are a lot of voices in it, talking away, trying to control what I think and do. I’m trying to quiet them a bit at the moment, sssshhhhh… Can you spot yourself in there? Lots of my friends have become voices, it is not good. However, although they are problematic I am also addicted to them somehow, I talk to them constantly, and my brain also unconsciously searches for voices in the fans, in the light buzzing, in the noise after the record. This is why I chose the old gods, because its better for the voices to be gods than people I know. The clock is in the drawing because I always get the feeling that I should be doing something other than what I am doing, like now I should be tiding the flat and buying food for the dinner I’m giving tonight, and preparing for the interview I have on Saturday and the workshop I’m giving in the afternoon and so on. I must stop this feeling.

But now I must correct some mistakes, hints, and allegations…

Firstly I am NOT a born again christian, or indeed a christian of any sort. A reader of my blog somehow came to this conclusion. I think it is more likely that I get burnt at the stake. When I talk of God I am referring to a huge, unspeakable thing that IS. It can be talked of as a symptom of my brain disease but it is more than anything else and must always be in my life. It appears in the most ridiculous things, bottle tops, cracks in the paving stones, stains on the table, but no matter how ridiculous its placement it still is everything, life, the abyss, everything. This is very different from the Christian God I think.

Secondly, children. Just not meant to be.

Do I have them or want them? I’m very frequently asked this, it is annoying!

I guess it is asked of all women of a certain age and I’m just glad I wasn’t born 50 years earlier. The truth is I may look alright but I am in fact an alien in disguise, my body doesn’t comply with the things other human bodies do. It is not just my brain, I get endless surprised comments from doctors about the oddities of my body. I know my uterus isn’t “right”, this doesn’t definitely mean I can’t have children, but history suggests there is something not happening. And I’m fine about that.

I like children a lot, but really I knew from an early age I wasn’t going to have any. I was going to take over the world (obviously, I’m alien) and there just was no time for this children lark. My family disagreed though, they are a very child based family, “women that don’t have children go weird” they said. When I’m with my family I feel valueless because I don’t have children, and this, in the past has made me want them. The idea of having a child has also been an imagined escape route, a way to change my life when I am not happy with it.

Around this time last year, after the removal of the large cyst from my ovary, I ceased having periods, my stomach swelled and I felt nausea a lot. I did a pregnancy test and it was positive. I went to the doctor, I wasn’t pregnant, it was a side-effect of the operation. It broke my heart though, in a way, because it made me picture a loving family of my own which I can never have.

That makes it sound like I am upset that I can’t have children doesn’t it? But I am not. I like my life as it is, and children and conversing with God are two things that have historically never gone well together.

Kay, the cat, is a cat, and not a baby, I have had animals around me all my life, why must people now assume I only have them to satisfy my need for children? And if I do turn into a mad cat lady so be it! I shall have company in the cats, God, the voices in my head, and the ability to draw trees. Anymore would be greedy. (Oh yes, and I’m taking over the world, along with the trees, very very slowly)

Quick sketch of the faces in the pillowcase mentioned in last blog

Faces in the Pillowcase,a rather silly sketch and nowhere near asm sinister and threatening as it was. Probably why I draw nature and not surrealism.