my life as a artist
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knees up mother earth
Sunday 15th July 2007 11:30 PM
There was a time, when if somebody mentioned Madonna and Jordan, I would think of the mother of Jesus, and the river he was baptised in. Now, unfortunately and shamefully, I think instead of breasts, conical and large respectively. I'm hip and down with the kids enough to know that Madonna has had some sensational smash-hit, number-one pop singles in the chart parade, and that there's been a few films in what she has acted, but none of those achievements, to me, have been as striking or memorable as her funnily funnely, comical conical breasts.
Jordan's real name is Katie Price. I know this, because in my Mum's flat, under the glass top of the coffee-table, openly and unashamedly, for all to see, is a pile of old copies of Hello! magazine, donated by the fabulous Betty. This afternoon, while my Mum was making the coffee, I had a furtive flick through, and came across a sickeningly long article about Ms Price and her suckling, bicepped beau, Peter Andre. One particular photo, of a straight-backed Ms Price, atop the arm of a large sofa, looking meaningfully into the distance, put me in mind of Landseers 'Monarch of the Glen'.
I was rescued from Planet of the Idiots by my Mum, who returned with a cafetiere of in-date, fair-trade, organic coffee, ( Rufforth car-boot sale, 50p for 250 grams), and some of her fabulous, home-made, lemon and ginger biscuits. These deliciously scented, firm yet yielding, excitingly innovative but reassuringly traditional, subtly textured, crunchtastic, beige moons of loveliness are the pinnacle of the biscuit-makers art.
My mother is obviously a very talented woman, more so in my opinion, than either Madonna or Jordan. She's well dressed, her flat is tastefully furnished, and she has large breasts, yet not once has she featured in Hello! magazine. I think she needs to get a better agent.
Posted 11:30 PM | 3 Comments | Permalink
rain rain rain
Saturday 14th July 2007 7:11 PM
It rained, it has been raining, it rains, it's raining, it's going to rain, it will rain, it will have rained. It's making me quite tense. It's midway through July and there's no sign of summer yet. I feel as though I've been hustled by Spring. I met her on a street corner in April and she showed me some daffodils, so I gave her some money, but she kept the money and never came back. I expect she's spent it on one of those 18-30 holidays in Majorca.
Tomorrow I'm going to light the fire and have an indoor British summer holiday. I'll put my shorts on and dangle my feet in a washing-up bowl of cold, salted water and watch Mark's donkey through the caravan window. I'll eat potato pie and chips, with croquettes, mash and crisps, with a baked potato on the side, and feel care-free and gay, in the old fashioned way. Temporarily freed from the daily grind of crosswords and pottering, my soul will take wings and fly, and if Mrs Abercrombie calls to collect the rent, I might ask her if she's got time for a low-key, whirlwind holiday romance over a cup of stewed tea. When evening falls I'll watch telly and imagine it's the Blackpool hallucinations.
Five minutes ago it stopped raining! I opened the window and checked for tell-tale speckles in the tractor-rut pools, and they were like glass. It was unraining! The sodden field, previously sulking, blue-tinged and bruised in the fading light, looked surprised, breathed in, and smiled. 'Aha!' I thought to myself and any passing clairaudients, 'Turning point!'
'Turning Point' is the title of a book by Fritjof Capra, about new physics and God. It's also the title of the second chapter of Denis Law's autobiography, 'Give it to me and I'll kick a good goal' and, on top of that, it's the twenty-fourth hexagram of the I Ching, the mysterious and ancient Chinese oracle.
Four minutes ago, it started raining again , about forty seconds after I said the words, 'turning point', only this time much harder. Luckily, or because I did a good deed in an earlier life, or because I went to Aldi's yesterday, I've got half a punnet of delicious giant strawberries from Scotland, sitting on my table, inviting me to eat them. After living in strawberry fields, forever hearing stories of Wimbledon, they call to me in the only way they know how. 'C'mon Tim!'
Posted 7:11 PM | 54 Comments | Permalink
a spot of bother
Friday 13th July 2007 3:44 PM
Here are some reasons why, on Wednesday night, I didn't deliver a self-indulgent, bridge-burning diatribe against the BBC.
a) I've calmed down a bit. One of the old English bantams has been unusually affectionate towards me this last week, and for the first time in my life, I've begun to experience the redemptive power and healing grace that you can get from the love of a good chicken.
b) On the morning after my no-show on the radio, I woke up with a small spot in the middle of my chest, right above my heart chakra. Over the next two weeks the spot grew, until it became a livid red Glastonbury Tor, rising from the misty chest-hairs of my off-beige Avalon chest. I got Pat to dowse it, and she discovered that it was situated on the path of my body's most important ley-line, that runs from my penis, through my navel, nose and brow chakra, over my head and down my spine, and finishes at the label on the back of my Marks and Spencer's underpants. I call it the St. Michael line.
Last Wednesday night, as I was staring at a blank screen and a blinking cursor, ready to launch my blog of wrath, my eyes were magically drawn to my little Glastonbury Tor, nestling in the valley of my unbuttoned shirt. Wishing to trace the mystical contours of its subtle labyrinth, I went to touch it with my finger, and as I did so, the yellow St. Michaels tower on the top blew off, and there was a tor-flattening eruption of unspeakable white stuff. (Apologies to anyone currently eating a walnut whip)
Dear reader, that pus was my anger! Now that it wasn't inside me, all I had to do was wipe it off with a tissue, dab the wound with the tea-tree oil of forgiveness, and I'd be free from its destructive poison. So I did and I was.
c) The respectfully full and frank apology that I received from the BBC on Wednesday morning, while not being as overtly fulfilling as the love of a good chicken, or as prophetically symbolic as the bursting of a big spot, was nevertheless the main reason behind my change of heart.
So there you have it, my faithful blog-follower. There'll be no ugly outpourings of impotent rage going on in this blog, thank you very much. Neither will it continue to be written in the style of an e-novel, with pulsating narrative and unbearably tense cliff-hangers. Or will it? Don't miss next week's wordtastic blog, here, at rorymotion.com! ( Now with added ammonium lauryl sulphate, to bring out the Goddess in you!)
Posted 3:44 PM | 1 Comments | Permalink
eat my blog
Thursday 12th July 2007 12:34 AM
Dear hungry blog-eater,
Before you try and touch me with your tasting tongue, or put me in your mouth and mash me with your mind's molars, or just swallow me whole, without bread and butter, consider this. While all the ingredients of these blogs are home-grown and organic, many of them are unwashed, and you may find them dirty or gritty sometimes. That's farming today, I'm afraid.
Truth is the brown rice of any balanced blog. Cultural insights and clever wordplay may be pumpkins and beans, and witty one liners could be lime and chilli pickle, but without truth we can't go to the toilet the next day. When I cook truth for a blog, I always make too much, because I know that if I leave it in the fridge, I can go back to it a few days later, and it'll still be true.
Today's truth is special, it's basmati. I'm serving it to you as a love offering. It's my way of saying, 'You're more to me than just a tall, pixillated blue tower on a webstat graph.'
When I started blogging in January, to be honest, you were a funny looking little thing. You were small and squat and actually wider than you were tall. However, in March and April, your stocky, blue body grew strong and you became taller than the beige tower. (I don't know who that is, but don't worry, you're taller than them). In May, fed by the fabulous pumpkins of spring fever, you trebled in size, and on mid-summers day, you stood before me, a bright-eyed, handsome, tall, pixellated blue tower on a webstat graph, and I was proud of you!
However, in the last two weeks of June, while hitting the road in a loving way, I abandoned you. Caught up in the selfish solipsism of showbiz, I left you to your own devices, deserted you, neglected you. The next time I saw you, I'd swear you'd shrunk. I don't know who you'd been hanging out with, but your trousers were torn, your complexion wasn't good and I could see you'd been fighting. I'm not completely sure, but I think you were on drugs as well.
Since then I've been trying to feed you up, by including extra protein, in the form of cliff-hangers and memories of Stingray, and I'm glad to say you're nearly back to your old self again. This intense catering has, however, not been without considerable cost to myself. I feel a blog should be of the day and complete within itself, whereas for the last two weeks it feels as though I've been writing an e-novel. All that narrative and connecty bits… it's doin' me 'ead in.
At the end of the latest chapter of my latest e-novel, 'On t'road',I was in a remote Welsh cottage with my friend Pat, about to listen to myself on radio 4, in a recording from the Glastonbury Festival. To create a bit of bearable tension, I said that I didn't think it would be very good.
As it happened, the programme wasn't very funny at all. The fact that I'd been edited out and replaced with another comedian, and nobody had told me, didn't raise much of a chuckle either. The next chapter of the e-novel was, at some point, going to veer off the narrative, and I was going to deliver a self-indulgent, bridge-burning diatribe against Radio 4.
However, while listening to the Archers, I decided not to, for various reasons. What are those reasons? Are they valid? Find out soon, here, at the new, different, fresh, organic, cybertastic, rorymotion.com! Now with added meaning!
Posted 12:34 AM | 4 Comments | Permalink
life in a welsh sitting room
Tuesday 10th July 2007 12:09 AM
Pat's small cottage was built in 1600 BC on the site of a Neolithic Rayburn. The solid dry warmth afforded by its wise old stones was in marked contrast to the weekend's sodden misery of mud-flapping canvas. After the swirling cacophony and bowel-wrenching bass cabinets of Glastonbury, the songbird-speckled silence of the place was sweet balm indeed. In the afternoon we walked along the Kerry Ridge and looked out over the roof of Wales, which was leaking.
The First Wednesday after Glastonbury is traditionally celebrated by the Cleaning of the Wellies, when thousands of well-slept and freshly washed festival-goers go out into their gardens and chip the dried mud off their wellies with a golden toffee-hammer. Sometimes pieces of the dried mud are wrapped in clingfilm, and sold as cannabis at the next festival.
This year, comfortingly, the First Wednesday after Glastonbury fell on a Wednesday. Due to the complete absence of anything remotely resembling mud-baking sun, I washed my wellies down with a golden hose-pipe. Feeling partly shriven, I discussed with Pat the potential karma I'd accrued in the act of taking the sign to Beguildy. We decided we could either put it down to experience or put it on e-bay.
Refreshed and healed by the freely-given natural remedies of Mother Earth, we now considered the benefits of human civilisation from a more generous viewpoint, how the brutal concrete alienation of the city can sometimes cause such friction in an individual, that they become illuminated with a creative fire that can make them a beacon of hope for others. Lulled into bovine contentment by the sirens of bucolic bliss, we knew it was time, once more, to re-engage in the search for holy conflagration, to face the screaming banshees of a pre-apocalyptic urban hell, so we drove into Clun to buy a Guardian.
We went into a little café and shared a pot of Earl Grey and a large slice of carrot cake. (it looked nicer than the Brussels sprout cake) Then we went to the Spar shop and bought some thin-cut orange marmalade and a bottle of soy sauce. After about forty-five minutes, we both noticed that we were becoming illuminated with a creative fire, and being beacons of hope for others, so we went home.
The news section of the Guardian was filled with tragic stories of suffering, injustice and routine atrocity, so we were quite glad when we got to the crossword on the inside back page. I find cryptic crosswords are a bridge to happiness. They get one across without getting too down.
In the papers 'what's on' section we saw that the radio programme I'd recorded at the festival was featured in pick of the day. It said '11pm. Radio 4. Comedy recorded at the Glastonbury festival , featuring Canadian stand-up Phil Nicholl, performance poet Rory Motion, Janey Godley, Sean Hughes and Ed Byrne.'
It was nice to get a two word description, although it did go on a bit. My memory of the gig was one of tepid joylessness for all concerned, and I wasn't sure I was looking forward to hearing it…
Posted 12:09 AM | 4 Comments | Permalink
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