The Lines

© James Taylor

The Lines, a brand new blog updated regularly.

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Spiders

I can't walk up the garden at the moment without getting a head full of spider web. Click on above image for larger view.

Clash City Morris

After my recent post/review of a weekend spent at Towersey Folk Festival, you can find an article about David Owen, "Britain's premier folk artist" on Eye magazine's blog



There's more of his work on The Ink Corporation website.

Doing the Lambeth skank

Storm

I spent Monday and Tuesday of this week at the D&AD Xchange conference in London, the best event in the D&AD calendar. Below, Storm Thorgerson, the designer of the Dark Side Of The Moon Pink Floyd album cover amongst many others, talks about why designers design in conversation with Adrian Shaughnessy.

Storm Thorgerson from D&AD on Vimeo.

The Ian referred to off camera is Ian Wright, an illustrator who worked on the N.M.E in the early eighties and has gone on to work in mosaics using many different medium and spoke before Strom.

Meanwhile…

After my recent exclusion from using computers I amassed a fair few photos on my Olympus and Cybershot. Today is the first chance I've had to go through some of them with a view to uploading them to Flickr. As there are so many, I published them in themed batches and that cover my usual interests and ongoing projects documenting typography, signs and notices, shadows and patterns that caught my attention, unexpected observations, self portraits and lots of McDonald's litter. They are largely from travels in Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. You can see the results here.

Queer as folk

Urban Morris troupe Boggart's Breakfast working on their set

Claire & I spent last weekend at the delightful Towersey Festival, an event that takes over the whole village of Towersey in Oxfordshire and dedicates it to all things 'folk'. 3 stages on site with other performers playing in the village hall, local pub and the chip shop in nearby Thame which was a short ride away on a specially laid on London Routemaster. Only 3000 campers or so and some 2000 odd day visitors that left plenty of space for all. The site even had flushing toilets and showers which left the most hardened folkies comfortable about sticking their fingers in their ears and keeping insects out of their beards. OK, so you have to be tolerant of some of the excesses of the folk scene, such as tankard envy and morris dancing, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself thanks to good company, Thatcher's Cider, and some good performances from the Imagined Village and Spooky Men's Chorale.

It was also good to see an organisation called Folk Against Fascism being supported so widely by punters and festival organisers alike. Apparently the BNP have let slip plans to infiltrate the British folk scene in a desperate bid to find some sort of culture they can call truly English. Read more here in a recent Guardian article . FAF (who I'm not sure they've really thought through their acronym,) state in their leafelt "The British National Party’s manifesto encourages its members to insinuate themselves into the folk and traditional customs of Britain. This involves the appropriation of British folk music and culture as a means of spreading its peculiar brand of racism and intolerance. The UK folk scene is a welcoming and inclusive one; folk music and dance have always been about collaboration, participation, communication and respect.
Folk Against Fascism has been created to take a stand against the BNP’s targeting of folk music, a stand against the appropriation of our culture."

Anti-fascism in the folk community has always been strong, as the great Woody Guthrie demonstrates:



That said, I do have lots of issues with the folk scene. One of the music tents was a dedicated Céilidh tent. Now I love Céilidh music but unfortunately you now can't seem to see a Céilidh band without the addition of a caller shouting dance moves from the stage. It's so regimented and frustrating. I don't want someone telling me how to dance. I want to enjoy myself on my own terms and I get the impression at Céilidhs, from the hordes who really like to take their fun seriously, that you'd be asked to leave if you just started dancing your own way somewhere on the dance floor (if there was space). And I must say, if the BNP really want to infiltrate the folk scene then there was a whole dance tent of willing people who unquestioningly respond well to orders. Each to their own and all that but I'm afraid I prefer not to have my fun dictated to me.

So we left the Céilidh tent and headed over to see Devon Sproule in the Concert Tent, only to find it was all seated. This is another thing about folk gigs I hate. Why seats? Ahhhh. I've seen too many gigs killed of their atmosphere because folkies want to sit down and stroke their beards. I once had an argument with a promotor for putting the excellent Eliza Carthy and The Ratcatchers on in a seated venue. Absolutely no atmosphere, despite the band being stunningly good and extremely lively. Now Devon isn't in the same league as Eliza and on this night she wasn't great but I'm prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt for having to work in extremely difficult circumstances. How can you perform dance music when you can't feed off the audience because they are sitting down and clapping so politely at the end of each song? Unfortunately, the drunker I got, the more I wanted to dance - especially when the completely underwhelming Demon Barbers came on. Not really my cup of tea but dancable if you've enough cider in side ya. But alas, it was all order order order. Hmmm, Folk Against Fascism may have their work cut out for themselves.

Luckily not all of the stages were this regimented and you could dance as much as you liked in the Festival Dance Tent which Claire and I called in on as we danced our way back to our tent, only stopping for a crêpe and maple syrup on the way. Towersey, we'll be back, but please only put seats around the edge of the dance floor and keep a space in the Céilidh tent for me to dance my own jig!

Dear Internet

Dear Internet.

I hope you are well. I know I haven't been using you much recently, and I know you like to be used, but I'm sorry, I've been hurting.

Our temporary separation has highlighted one or two things to me about our relationship. Sure, I'm aware I took you for granted and maybe didn't give you the respect you deserved. And I must assure you, it's not you, it's me. That said though, my time without you has made me realise that you do talk a lot of crap sometimes. There are sites and blogs I would feel deficient if I didn't visit regularly. I know now that I don't need them.

You see, my dear Internet, I've been seeing others behind your back. I know this is going to hurt but I'm afraid I have to be honest. You'll get over it I know you will but I must confess. The complete first series of Mad Men I watched on DVD over two days was dirty of me I know but even you and your Google database of my search history should know that I like a bit of well detailed retro. Lindsay Anderson's O Lucky Man showed me how to be a real man while Iron Man left me feeling slutty. I even scored with a German intellectual in the form of The Wave which got me thinking. Sorry dear Internet, I do not ask for forgiveness.

I have to, I'm afraid, also confess that it wasn't all pressing buttons. I've been thumbing paper as well. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies made me laugh again without it involving cats. I also read about music in the form of Thank You For The Days and Lost In Music. And they were both gentle with me I can assure you. And I must confess to a lengthy late night pillow session discussing ethics in graphics with Good.

There were others as well my little virtual reality. I witness things, places and people. British Sea Power, Thom Yorke, Magazine and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds enthralled me. The Peak District showered her beauty down upon my body and Le Tour de France gripped me by the seat of my pants. I've also caressed pens and pencils between my fingers and I've filled memory sticks to overflowing with images of the natural world and man mad beauty & ugliness.

So dear Internet, you can see I've been busy in your absence but I now feel it is time to reignite our feelings for each other. However, my binary friend, I wish not for the old dominating S&M relationship we previously had. I want a new one, one built on sharing our lives with others. There's room for more than solitary tappings and scrollings. There has to be if you and I are going to have a future together.

And so, I leave you now until the next time. I do love you but I won't let you control me, you have to understand.

Yours not quite so faithfully,

Nigel

The last post

I'm under doctor's orders to not use computers for a month in order to try and ease my RSI so Dublog will be static for a while. McJunk, Pindown videos and MA research are obviously all on hold. Check back here in a month or so and hopefully I'll be posting again with mended hands and observing all the health and safety advice about posture, avoiding f***ing laptops and not allowing my obsessive work ethic to get the better of me. So, as you are reading this, all I have to say is Sit Up, Look Sharp, to paraphrase Dizzee. I'm off to do some drawing and read some books for a month. Ta ta.