GC # 4    30-7-08

 

Another, John… I thought I heard it and verified lyric… reference to ‘Green Man’ in verse from that ‘50 yo man’ song by the Fall:

 

I go round a hotel

I see “Throw the towel on the floor”

On The Green Man

I throw the towel on the floor and I piss in it

I’m a 50 year old Man, and I like it.

 

Crude language in the mystical metaphors of alchemy can happen like that

. (but I doubt if Mark E Smith intends an obscure association)

 

…Started thinking about our conversation about white pigment… urine used to generate verdigris on copper…white from lead. What is the principal? Chemical process? I’m ignorant about chemistry.  Does the lead completely break down into white powder/ chrystals? Likewise copper>verdigris?

Acid/ Oxidization?  

Oxidization would be natural transformation… but then subject to some ‘cultural’ intervention    …. To promote decay? What kind of corrosion?

 

In alchemy ‘Putrifaction’ (black colour) is significant step in achieving the Ideal.

 

… anthrop… Levi -Strauss Raw and Cooked … as I understand it…

natural transformation unripe>ripe(> Decay?)

vs cultural alteration…uninitiated>initiated (> Death?)

. Without the tattoos one is part of nature (and therefore edible)… nevertheless the ritual process parallels or reflects the natural process structurally...SEEMS TO.

                                      Maybe not coherently (?) Empirically?

 

Dissolution…Wax melting/transformation again.

Likewise the perfume of the green wax candle

… I like idea of combining wax with lead.

 

 Dreamt of dripping green      PERFUMED WAX    green candle wax and lead, john?, john?…

Your mentioning green and grey/black…comes to mind.                  Black and Green

Somatic dream maybe… wake up to micturate… Could Ubu’s ‘green candle’ really be the source of illumination …or a luminous stream of green piss?

 

BACK TO BEGINNINGS

Regarding your ambiguous thing about green colour…

the kind of green that has perhaps subjectively,… gratuitously… imposed itself on some my recent paintskin work, has been Phthalo… it strikes me as so unnatural, toxic, chemical colour…It asserts itself even through opaque layers of opposing colours.

 Dictionary says its organic greens and blues… applied to three acids – C6H4 (COOH)2 and an anhydride derived from naphthalene… a salt or ester of phthalic acid.

Any one of class of dye-yielding materials formed by union of phenols with phthalic anhydride.

 

Still haven’t read the Kingsley Amis novel… tell me the story again. Did check on film,

 … with Alistair Sims… something about a pub… but can’t recall story or seeing it or not.

 

Also there is an annual Green Man rock festival in Wales. 2008 is sixth year…August 15-17^th… This year featuring amongst many others - Richard Thompson, Badly Drawn Boy, and The National.

 

A quick Google shows Green Man to be folk myth …forest deity? (Druidic?)

Seems to appear in many radically different cultures …remarkably similar imagery… paintings and relief…e.g. from Europe and Asia

…typical representation is centred, frontal face (returning the gaze?)… framed/surrounded by green plants and leaves

…. Or branches growing out from head? (Like antlers on head in GM festival poster)

…Two heads, actually.

 

1-8

Irrational seems inadequate

 

Saying something or nothing? Is irrational production nothing?

 

…Depends on producer /consumer relationship?... If maker avoids presumption…

 

Duchamp talks about “a kind of ‘Non- Sense’” in relation to Roussel (dialogues?)

(? I think he talks here about shifting from Cartesian philosophical perspective, too.)

 

‘Ready to Proceed’

 

                                                                                              GREEN LIGHT

Progress implies presumed order, aspiration, teleology

(Raymond Roussel’s ‘procedure’ idea would rectify: the alchemists primal Green … …’ready for progress’ …becoming …‘ready to proceed’?)

 

In GC sense…a collaborative process without specific meaning… (Or intention?)… Without ideal... or presumption. Are there rules?

Object less ….Desire (without object is no ideal?)… D&G, Lacan?

…. ideas and suggestions for going on… without idealism or anticipation

… Green will do.

 

AD vert, IN vert, RE vert, SUB vert, CON vert, DI vert, PER vert

 

Pre vert?                                                                               LIGHT GREEN

 

A wooden green guitar rocking the infancy of art

A railroad ticket with all its baggage

                          ( from Jacques Prevert - ‘Picasso’s Magic Lantern’ in ‘Paroles’)