Push

Beneath the shadow of the mountains we watched Hindus attempt immortality through immersion and chanting, it is quite a sight to behold man give himself to the gods in the hope of some sweet taste of safety.

I couldn't comprehend this mass enmeshed across the ocean over there 

I couldn't comprehend as the sun did set 

As orange crested building bricks I couldn't see only heard attempts

Your vocal chords they undulate over a PA system across a lake 

The crowd a call to meditate 

So loud I felt reverberate 

I cannot fathom why man would make himself immortal

Though immortal he must be

To hope to find a slice of peace 

Amongst this pile of trash and steam 

Your flesh is weak

Your arms they bend

Your bones they break

Your vision weak 

Your heart is hurt

But song is never stone 

And God is never done

So sing another and long hope 

This water dirty full of shit and socks 

Found a fish float upon its shores

Eyes all wide 

Brahmas tears did not cleanse

The chemicals we expend 

Did rot and row its own natures hand away into its end

Despite your effort for eternity your chemicals do not disappear

Your flesh is weak

Your shit is strong

All holy this, all holy that

But open sewers

Do death attract

I alone a vessel did wake in wicked hour and float with them in crooked song and hymn

 I lost myself in prayer later on

Inspecting every twitch my mind did make in remembering 

All memory is recall anyway they say

So I guess I summoned up a thousand lives from across the lake

Felt all their fates

Lax Sapien

I planted shrooms
waited for while, sipped shots with the moon
breathing in gloom, chatting gaps with a lesser of devils from an unholy few
with cider we rattled all cages, no shot low enough for debasing
every idea and weight of those cases, beyond good and evil is where had we claimed shit
we kicked it a dymanic loose duo, swung round all the haunts that the populace follow
I absorb from the roots and then shoot
play chess with the sleuthest of crews
whilst me and those powers that be, rake creeps into heaps
freewheeling in speech
but never sleep, that for the weak
unless you underneath
in which case I beat bodies, leave em hobbling and soggy

absorb from the roots and then shoot
eat all the fruit
lax sapien stick knowledge in skull which snake brew

oh how i grew
in thorns wine and spew
learn debate plato seven chakras bit snacks this cold mute

yickety yack
hack prezs bank
throw a few phrases then reassemble attack
volcano ebola over whack tongues new track
keep it here keep it now
keep it hymnal and holy in sound
keep that torch lit til baccanal found
I wandered town to town
naked unbound, still tripping on facts
stood straight ape
mistaken for grace a disgusting abstract

I lie down

(2013)

This was written at the grimmest period of my existence a few years ago; post-death of many kinds, I was sleeping on a mattress in my dads bungalows front room, it was christmas, i was alone and due to his dementia he wasn't aware of the season. I was incredibly depressed.

Good times.
Still a favourite though.

I write a lot about love, death, fire & home.
forever the cliche would say next that "theyre all ive ever known"
but as an infection spreads to the heart, my dearly departed ma & me discuss Ginsberg over coffee in a kitchen where the sun warms your face, spilling the room next to the brick walls with a sense of aching normality
like ive been filled to the brim with content, free from all earthly sin (excluding those inherited)
but she aint dancing in those mortal coiled shoes, long since tapping her feet to the great bass drum
the one that scratches at your face to take the skin for what it convinces you is sacrament.
but is actually kidnap. a stopped mid sentence silent vanishing.
and ill be standing before the reaper squealing, asking the only question that matters still
"but..does she still love me? like she used to?"

"has she kept that dimple acquainted with my fingers? has she hidden boxes of photos in a treasure chest?
am i allowed to assign hope to a ship long lost to a swamp?"

but she
always she, the forevermore Sma. forevermore, forevermore the biggest darkness in the hall, the gust of wind thats blowing down walls. the chill that creaks spine.
ive missed you. ill miss you. i am missing you. it is missed.
like there was never meant to be none of this but im piling books of knowledge like ignorance was going out of style.
histories lessons are stamped, or more scarred into skin that yellows with age.

ive learnt to know better, or so id hoped, so id penciled down on some red lines at the back of an old schoolroom class in a maths lesson i wasn't paying attention to. loud booming over the numbers at myself
but i scribbled and sat, scratching marks to paper that would last a life time in the heart.
then i buried it. and whispered to the ground that it better not tell a soul in the wind it blows lest i cut out a tongue with a pastry knife.
not that nature needs nurturing into silence, it doesnt do to tell the mountain about moving. it doesnt dwell on dancing.
but slow burns the skeletons, ravages the exo-ignorance.

'I'll never be alone, ill always have death'
i once wrote on a stone that i then cast out to sea.
i turned away from the shore, walked home & sat in front of a fire like before. light illuminating, old miser buddha position. i fell into the flames again (yet to feel alive). i cut off my arm to dissect the nerves to try and find the ones that were rattling the bone machine, spluttering cough medicine all over the carpet. i collapsed and went further, motorhomed it towards the sunset on a mattress the carers kept under my Dads bed for festive occasions,
but baubels dont reflect itv, christmas trees dont green to dying domesticity.

i've given enough to let go.
i've given enough to escape
what more can you take?

'There is a lifetime in the mornings sun' i woke up to know this stanza from a poem id built.
little light casting through the blinds, i pushed my eyes & tried to find the horizon point to disappear on.
little leprechaun, how does a rainbow grow? where can i melt into the colours, blues & hues?
he handed me a shovel, and recounted Sinking Ships:
"6ft between the days we spent and the way we wish things couldve been"
i sat hunched alone, a meditation my back had learnt and mused upon the best direction to dig in, the comfiest size to sleep in.

I'm shedding skin, but wanting sleep
I'm kneeling for prayer to bring a guillotine
I'm washed under history & seldom find peace.

All To Write My Name (45RPM BabMag Article)

For those who can't wait, here's the latest article I wrote for BabMag on celebrated Bristol based nutter 45RPM.

ALL TO WRITE MY NAME

“This was planned and persistent vandalism designed to show off to others similarly minded, with no regard as to the wider impact” 

- Judge Michael Leeming on the sentencing of SMT Crew.

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche

How do you unlearn subversion? Once you have been through the fence how do you ignore the gaps? Graffiti is dangerous not only because of it’s inherent ability to put its practitioners in the light of the law but because many of the most memorable moments it gives us are not the action itself, but all those beautiful stupid things that surround it and the wider viewpoint it gives us. The oddballs and addicts, the ways in and over, can you ever make a successful transition to mainstream reality once you understand how to cheat it? Would a 9-5 not ache?

“Once a cleaner walked into our hotel room and started screaming as i’d had a nose bleed in the night and was covered in blood...plus someone had drawn a hammer head shark over my whole body. Another time I woke up upside down on a fence as my trainer had split on its three prongs and I’d fallen on my face and knocked myself out. I have a million of these pieces of rubbish, someone once asked me what I would say to a kid starting out, those are the things I thought of.”

To look at 45RPMS work is to see a sea of colour and humour and to speak to him is to hear nothing but a genuine warmth, a boundless and unadulterated love for this culture but graffiti can will destroy your life if you let it and amongst the daydream haze of adventures he recounted in our conversation, you could sense the twitch of loss and gnaw of time (R.I.P Buzz, Wayne and Ekons) were digging. From funky letterforms to his endless throwup variations to his perfect phrase based characters he is an individual for whom art is everything, an obsessive creative who dedicates most hours to any number of outlets and has done for the best part of two decades. Now living in Bristol his time is spent between graffiti, illustration, photography and until recently getting himself into as many anarchic situations as life will allow.

"I’ve been painting since 1999, i’ve moved cities, i’ve lost girlfriends, good mates and jobs all to write my name on a wall for a handful of people to see. I’m always tired, scared, hungover or nervous, my hands are cut up and my clothes ruined but I’m a positive person, even in the worst moments."

This fascination with new possibilities, the opportunity to find / forge new pathways and curate his own life is at the crux of 45RPMs celebrated work but therein for him (as for many readers I assume) is the core of the problem. There is an absolute and vibrant fascination with language, place, people and the way not only that they are used – but can be used, talking to RPM you get the idea that painting is beyond just putting medium to surface, it is the key to a different world. To get a proper insight into this we need only start with his photography, this predominantly 35mm work may not be the primary outlet of his creativity but it provides perhaps a more illuminating glimpse into it; whilst painting may be a depiction of the hand, photography is surely a depiction of the heart and in his snapshots graffiti meets halloween costume meets street life meets weird tattoos in a 35mm presentation on not what could be (as his painting serves) but what actually is. Little light hearted incidences of importance, the every day hours between action that bleed comedy. Some graffiti photography can be beyond dull but 45RPMs viewpoint is infectiously inviting.

Within these photos lies RPMs letterform variations but more notably that which has bought him to the limelight in the past few years, his characters. These operate around representing in literal terms the little oddities that language births and start life as beautifully clean ink drawings whose influence is taken from either well known pieces of cockney rhyming slang (‘dog & bone’, ‘apple & pears’), subcultural lexicon (‘biter’) or simple unique takes on phrases (‘no fox given’, ‘a pizza the action’). Beneath simply stating your name graffiti is a love for how language functions as an action inherent to our encounter with the world and whilst not all writers take their name directly from slang there are huge similarities between slangs idiomatic, openly metaphorical inventiveness and graffitis stylistic exploration and the spatial possibilities of meaning. A good piece of graffiti is its own poetry and looking at RPMs characters, who not only take directly from slang but add in the visual / spatial element of graffiti you can’t help but feel there is an overwhelming enthusiasm for how we construct and value meaning.

This inventive playfulness acts as a common theme throughout RPMs work, his desire to explore and encounter the world in as many ways as possible shows through even when the form is simplified to pure weaponised style; the throwup. These to 45 are “graffiti at its purest form”; mobile, agile beings able to be executed anywhere to maximum effect in minimal time andtherefore perfect for the natural wanderlust of a writer. Graffiti strives at its heart to uncover, to understand the world in a more unique way and the throwup is one of its strongest weapons, providing immediate access to that adrenaline fuelled existence -  “when I'm painting one I don't think about anything but that throw up, its like a switch is flicked. Its just you and the silence, a hyper awareness to noise and movement that if your lines well enough become a dance”. But again it comes back to pure enjoyment - “how can you can walk past an Oker throwup and not smile?”

It is this utter concentration on the moment, this fleeting escapism of which all writers are aware which is unfortunately, the most troubling – because it is this which is the crux of the problem which so concerns RPM at the moment. The more time you spend in your own world, as all great artists do, the more developed that vision becomes, the more divorced you are from ‘reality’. Adding in softly near the end our chat he remarks “Bukowski said find something you love and let it kill you, I have”.
Bumping into an old friend recently he tells of how he stared blankly when they mentioned their recent BBQ and kids, replying “nothing” when asked what he had been doing with himself because how are you supposed to explain all of this? In the words of writer Buford Youthward “after all, when the sun comes up, graffiti is beyond documentation” The longer you go the more affinity you find yourself having with drug addicts & armed robbers, and what are we if not both of those?

45RPM is an artist who creates passionately and this enjoyment is obvious in all his work, you cant help but laugh with him, but in answer to this question of ‘what happens next’ I would say one word; adapt. Life is a series of chapters, utilise your skills in a different way and make the most of it. To those doubting their path remember it is not the destination but the journey that matters and to me it seems that 45RPMs work is a pure celebration of this idea. Allow yourself a moment of clarity, we are luckier than most.

We could all stand to learn a lot from 45RPM.

“I’m 36, single and without a mortgage but I wouldn't have it any other way, one day i’ll have to calm down so until then i’ll keep burning the candle any way I can.” 

- 45RPM

4:30AM

tonight went to go see the sugarhill gang, didnt like it though, seemed like it was middle age digging at the grave lot going through the motions making money from dead moments
imagine having never grow above something which made you famous in the 80s, imagine vanilla ice sitting at home a legitimate and caring artist but only known for one song
imagine how long those nights mut be, imagine how long and lonely are the one timers, knowing that theyre better than their lime light says.
because respect lost is defeat, you cant crawl back to strong and stable
nah that scars your fable, chris brown will forever be known for violence
what seems may be for now, but what could be should never be shadowed by its cloud
we respect it in our musicians and artists
i cant conceal a fate but i can change my ways and thats important in allowing growth
the ability to be wrong and move on, to change song
forever shedding effects in time and sentience
back to normal static relevance
embibed in the hive mind like resonance, shifting atwist beneath the crowds
a one type billionath of matter in a mind
we aint stopped that feet first ape
no rest for the wicked
for freedom we chase
ran right by god
didnt see him in the twisting turner blinker of a mirror, havent seen him around here
walked upright and straight into error

but i see him every now and then, in a day with too much coincidence or lining enjoyments lingering glare
i sense a certain beauty intransient in here
unexplainable, maybe self confidence in perfect objectivity, a pure state of stillness with the ocean

Ways Of Seeing (CHU BabMag Article)

Finally got round to picking up the new issue of Babmag for which I wrote an article on midlands 3D graffiti specialist CHU.

Here's the full piece.

Ways Of Seeing
The Work of Chu
by Murdok

“the relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight” - John Berger

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.” - William Blake

“Teenager leaves spectacles on floor of San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art as a prank, leading some to think they were an exhibit” - The Guardian, 2016.

Pareidolia, the name given to the way the brain will interpret and find patterns in shapes where there are none presents us with an interesting view into our imagination when looked at through the lens of art & creativity. If these simple instances of mental trickery made in moments of fright or fancy can construct worlds that simply are not there then what does it mean for our wider engagement with reality? What have we built that does not exist? Or more excitingly...what perhaps, are we missing?

Born in 1971 in Blakenall, Walsall Chu is an artist of multidisciplinary interest whose practice incorporates graffiti, world record breaking mural attempts, print, installation, video game design and a large role in the digital 3D rendering world. As he puts it though, there is a common theme of giving the viewer “more validity…..a super-human power” running throughout his work, whatever medium it is executed in there is a paramount interest in breaking down barriers through the introduction of the spectator to, and immersion of them in any number of different alternate realities.

Having just passed into his 34^th year as a graffiti artist and with 20 of those spent organising events his client base mirrors this lifetime of dedication with such companies as Coca-Cola, Virgin Trains (alongside Jamie Hewlett), Glastonbury Festival (numerous times), Nintendo, Digital Arts Magazine and even Banksy (who hired him as a print and event consultant) all seeking out his talents over the years.

To encounter Chu’s cross platform work is to have a glimpse into worlds beyond our own, beyond the realm of pure 2D representation and dipped into fantasy. As a self-confessed video game addict and having enjoyed employment with Walsalls leading games developers early in his career Chu is well versed in the creation of separate spaces that both mentally and physically engage users in their experience. For his ‘Cubic Experiment’ project Chu constructed an enclosed, decorated cube that upon entering would create an all around artistic experience when viewed from a single point in its centre. Disorientating, even for himself (Chu found it hard to distinguish between wall, floor and ceiling during the process) the piece sought to merge his fascination with the material capabilities of illustration and the immersion of virtual spaces.

Bringing the possibilities of the virtual realm to the street has meant that Chu has explored and experimented (sometimes on a huge scale) with ideas of 3D graffiti for a long time, whereas traditional Wildstyle graffiti feigns affiliation with projection from a surface its primary focus remains the distortion of letters, not of space, which ultimately means any environment created is understood as being linked to that surface and unfortunately retracts any promise of proper absorption into it. Chu understands something deeper though, that when a graffiti artist builds their name and style they are building a world – this being what we value outside of technical precision, the ideas graffiti artists (and wider artists as well obviously) communicate through their work. The best artists are the ones that make us see in the world a different, undiscovered place and in the case of Chu, whose work seeks to go beyond simple aesthetic fascination and into that pure meditative, hypnotic state that comes with a complete loss of self in contemplation, we find just that.

But whereas the virtual realm is limited to just that, virtual reality, Chu’s work in its use of the confrontational methods of graffiti and mural art forces us to examine and explore these ideas through sheer accidental exposure alone. These ‘Anamorphic Projections’ whilst meaningless from one view are reconstituted through the use of a specific standpoint or device and are a sublimely powerful act when mixed with the forceful space taking that graffiti employs. The everyday pedestrian can find themselves transported into a different world by simply being in the right place at the right time, they are a launch pad to alternate ways of seeing and just like Pareidolia work their magic suddenly – their absorption impossible to ignore.

Whilst the most illustrative and characterful depiction of these merged interests is most exactly given in the record-breaking mural attempt at ‘Hole In The Wall’ in Walsall town centre in which Chu single handedly painted a 40x95ft anamorphic projection mural over 42 days, the most precise and stunning experiment with these ideas is his black and white geometric work. Whereas the variation of subject matter (characters, letters, background) in traditional graffiti offer a chance to break up a surface – the consistency of line and colour in these monochromatic works do not give us that chance. Employing these devices of optical illusion for projects such as See No Evil and Room K in Bristol as well as the simply astounding “largest ever freehand 3D graffiti illusion” for City Of Colours mean the possibilities of graffiti and street art have been taken to a new level, especially when they’re painted without projectors, ladders or measuring devices – as Chu is prone to doing.

In Chu we have a master of alternative realities, a connoisseur of the understanding that art can be more than simple posturing. Together with the subtle political humour that creeps through the titles and ideas of much of his work we are shown an artist adept at getting to the crux of our experience and forcing us to confront how we perceive, engage and construct it. He is an artist that takes us to the edge of our reality, and demands we jump.  

In The Fields The Bodies Burning.

The flickering flames drowned over the screaming of some names as I confronted the kid who was building that huge fucking pyre in the graveyard in stoke
I smelt a grim stench recognisable as death
we sat down against the stone, shared a can or two of worms, spilt some cider on our clothes whilst we watched the orange glow slowly engulf their bones
he said he’d heard about those political scandals, read the papers knew his angles decided side with all the vandals against the digging at the heart by those above
in one hand his knuckles white as tight he gripped some gasoline,
but put it down when he had to drag more bodies to the heap,
mps, celebrities – he didn’t differentiate between
all was equal in that primal light
all was equal beneath soil and starry sky
at home in silence decided to solve matters without debate
scythe and weigh all the evils that these money men create
the panama papers, mps expenses, david Cameron fucking a pig
now he tied a lot of knots, ignored a lot of groans, over the cackling of a fire focused instead on his seething, gritted teeth tight form of hope.
determined to make a charcoaled and heaving mass, towering crumbling carbon ash and black –
rolled someones history, someones personality in his fingertips then…*blow*… blew it back
a crooked type of augustus
building an empire from several degrees
a blistering type of justice

the cloven hooves are back again
I hear them clicking on the rooves of all my kin
don’t let them in
don’t let them in

he barely moved or muttered further after that,
kept eyes fixated on that glowing burnt inferno
stoked and poked at any murmurs til they ceased.
that danse mcabre dug no hole in which to shovel that fall of rome, just slowly paced around his creation, cremated
come tomorrows dewy dawn
would set out, pile more flesh in mounds

our progress a slow descent, an ape bipedal made
still flings his shit around afraid
against that end of light afraid
we lurch and shriek in shame

some was me, most was them – lost a youth now a melancholy of older man. Leonard Cohen died and is Trump is president.
All was me, all was you, all was them

the cloven hooves are back again
I hear them clicking on the rooves of all my kin
don’t let them in
don’t let them in