Category: Uncategorised

Part I

Life can be so weird! I’ve known about Pat Metheny since my mid-teens. The first album I had by him, or rather The Pat Metheny Group, was the live Travels. That was waaay back, in my teens.

I liked it, but not as much as a lot of other stuff I pursued more devotedly. Whether that was Led Zep, Thin Lizzy, Joni, Waits, Beefheart, Monk, Brubeck, Miles, ‘Trane, Weather Report, Santana or even, I dunno… Van Halen, Maiden, Slayer!

Then, many, many years later, a good pal turned out to be a proper Metheny nut. So I’d regularly hear various things by various Metheny projects. But somehow, even though I liked it, I was never captured by it. There were occasions I’d hear Metheny stuff I loved: Missouri Sky, with Charlie Haden. The trio with Larry Grenadier and Bill Stewart.

But there was also stuff I was less keen on, like his white noise thing, the one with Ornette Coleman, and the stuff with the world music vocals. On top of all this, Lyle Mays’ choices of keys and synth sounds kind of put me off.

It sounds weird to say it. But all told, whilst I liked Metheny’s grinning hippie doofus vibe, I just wasn’t very receptive. It was like I wasn’t ready, perhaps? Or maybe I just hadn’t heard the right stuff?

Whilst writing for Drummer, now sadly defunct, I wrote an article on Bob Moses, and Bright Size Life for one of my monthly Recycled pieces. It’s a great album, with Jaco on bass, and I love it. But still the good ship Metheny hadn’t docked in my heart.

All that has now changed, in a matter of days. I’ve just acquired the first two PMG albums, and the subject of this rather long-winded intro and review… New Chautauqua. And lo, it is good. Very, very, no… sublimely good.

All just Metheny, on a variety of guitars, plus some electric bass. Every single track is a thing of great beauty. My first spin of the disc was out driving with my wife. She didn’t like track three! Back home, listening to the whole thing on headphones I was in ecstasy. It’s mostly a very mellow, melodic affair.

I won’t bother analysing it here in any detail. It’s just a beautiful collection of original guitar music that combines elements of several genres. But, as much as I love music both as a listener and a musician, and I often like to ‘unpack’ what I’m hearing, I don’t really care to do so here.

Instead I just want to bathe in the aural gorgeousness, and surrender myself to it. And, frankly, that’s a good sign! The music compels me to listen. And it rewards me with beauty and feeling. Sometimes I enjoy trying to articulate exactly how this might be happening.

But New Chautauqua is, strangely perhaps, a literal but very polite injunction to, borrowing from and adapting Zappa ‘shut up and listen to the guitar’. I could try to describe the various pieces. And maybe at some point I will. But right now the joy of discovery is upon me.

My recommendation would be to to just listen to this. And if anyone reading this knows of anything along the same lines, by Metheny, or anyone else, please let me know.

…..

Part II

Well, it’s later the same evening. And after a third listen to this amazing album, I felt moved to do exactly what I didn’t want to do in Part I, and give a blow by blow account of this truly astonishing album. In fact this segment has become, more or less, my Amazon UK version of the review.

Wow! What a great album. Six quite varied pieces, all of which are unique and original, and yet all of which share various qualities.

It’s all just Pat Metheny, on a variety of guitars, overdubbing layers, including a bit of electric bass. As well as your normal electric and acoustic six strings, there’s the slightly less common 12-string, and a much less heard 15-string harp guitar! And it’s all instrumental.

All the pieces are pretty mellow. Tracks one and two, New Chautauqua and Country Poem, very accessibly so. The first and title track is perhaps the most PMG on the disc. One could easily imagine hearing the Mays, Egan, Gottlieb crew fleshing this out, and it still having much the same vibe.

After the upbeat energy of the strum-fest that is New Chautauqua comes the more laid back Country Poem. The folksy vibe comes to the forefront here, with Pat’s lithe nimble scuttling fingers picking away beautifully, the bright acoustic tone, and the homely chordal and melodic aspects of the music really rooting it in the Midwestern soil.

The near ten minute third track is in fact two pieces; Long Ago Child / Fallen Star, and both are a little bit weirder, more ‘out there’. But still gentle, delicate and beautiful. Over his long, prolific, multi-faceted career Metheny has ranged far and wide over the musical map (and even off it here and there). This combo’ is modernist ambient art music, of sorts.

Hermitage brings back the bass and a more accessible conventional harmonic and melodic landscape. And, like the evocative track names, Metheny’s music is very much like sonic landscape painting. And it’s a wistful romantic landscape at that. A landscape of the heart and the mind.

Sueño Con Mexico shimmers like light on water. Whilst the music draws on folk, rock, jazz, and all sorts of other sources, it really defies easy categorisation. And instead of some confusing minestrone, in which all sorts of undigested lumps of different matter compete confusingly, Metheny has thoroughly digested his ingredients, and the whole is a deliciously rich stew, a glorious synthesis of all manner of flavours. Incredible!

Proceedings wrap up with Daybreak. Is that odd, perhaps? Or have we just passed a dream filled night of musical enchantment? In which case it’s a perfect title. After many overdubbed pieces, the last gem appears to be a line solo guitar. But wait? All of that was a kind of plaintive prelude, presaging a final ray of joyful overdubbed sunshine!

One thing I love about this disc, amongst many, is how the ECM visual aesthetic, the song titles, and Metheny’s music itself, all partake of a magical synergy.

Truly an embarrassment of riches. The diversity, and yet the homogeneity? Incredible range and scope, and yet all within a harmonious spectrum that shares that Metheny signature warmth. Phenomenal! I’m dumbfounded by how rich and beautiful this album is.

This album has definitely jumped right to the number one spot in my heart right now. I’m blown away. I wish there was a lot more music like this. Can’t recommend t it highly enough. Metheny… what an artist you are!

Alec Guinness’ character, put upon farm machinery salesman Mr Bird, is told he’s not got long to live, by a rather too cheery doctor. So he decides to spend all he has enjoying what time is left him.

To that end he gets some new togs, and goes to stay in a swanky coastal hotel, in the fictional resort of Pinebourne (like Fawlty Towers, in Torquay). The combo’ of his stiff upper lip – not telling anyone why he’s carrying on as he is – and a comedic misapprehension of who he might be, by his fellow hotel guests and the staff, provides a great foundation for a comedy of errors/manners.

I won’t synopsise the plot any further, as I don’t want to spoil it for viewers coming to it fresh. Suffice it to say that it’s beautifully written (J. B. Priestley), filmed and acted, and is both funny and ultimately very poignant.

We love the black and white look, and the whole vintage British cinema vibe: from the genteelly posh establishment types, to Sid James as the nouveau riche cockney entrepreneur, the characters have a lot of charm; costumes, hairstyles, settings and ‘tech’ (as much horse and cart as motor vehicle), all evoke a vanished era. Wait till you see what £65 gets you at the tailor’s!

I absolutely loved this film. Guinness is, as so often, completely superb. And the film itself is both sweet and yet serious, cosy and yet a little shocking, gentle yet powerful. And ultimately, a bit different, yet reassuringly familiar.

Some of the themes touched upon are, wealth and class, living authentically, manners, and suchlike. It’s kind of an oddball movie, in ways. Hard to see anything like this being made nowadays, unless by an arty outsider auteur. But back in the ’50s, such things were more normal in the mainstream.

Highly recommended.

Tintin himself can sometimes verge on being too much of a goody-goody, which is what makes the irascible Capt. Haddock such a perfect foil. But page five of Red Rackham’s Treasure introduces another lynchpin character to the Tintin fold, the inimitable Professor Cuthbert Calculus.

Presenting himself to Haddock and Tintin after Haddock sees off a string of Rackham’s self-proclaimed heirs, Calculus’ deafness provides not only great comedy, but the opportunity for him to insert himself into the saga despite our heroic duo’s every effort to put him off. There’s something heart-warmingly lovely about his irrepressibly dotty absent-minded positivity.

Setting out to sea in the Sirius, (a different looking version – better researched and realised – of Haddock’s salty sea-dog pal Chester Thompson’s ship, previously seen in The Shooting Star) Tintin, Haddock & co, inc. those dozy dolts Thompson and Thomson, set out to locate the island, the wreck of the Unicorn, and the treasure itself, as indicated in the three scroll parchments found in The Secret of the Unicorn.

Without giving away the twists and turns, suffice it do say that the story doesn’t disappoint, delivering adventure and fun in equally well judged measures. Some highlights include: when things go awry for the Thomsons, such as when they chew quids of tobacco in an ill-fated attempt to blend in with the crew of the Sirius, or their misadventures operating the pumping station fo the old-fashioned diving apparatus; Calculus demonstrating his inventions (one frame on page eight in particular always has me in stitches); and Haddock, as he sits down in his diving suit after a vintage rum fuelled dive, sans helmet.

Having first appeared, in The Crab With The Golden Claws, as a drunken sot, more an annoying liability than a dependable sidekick, Haddock has now evolved into the more complementary ‘yin’ to Tintin’s ‘yang’. Red Rackham’s Treasure is also, literally as well as metaphorically, the ‘making’ of Capt. Haddock, because it’s the adventure in which, without spoiling it for new readers, Haddock gets properly set up, in the happier sense of that phrase. By adventure’s end, they really can all reflect that ‘all’s well that ends well’.

A great continuation and ending to a classic double-bill, from the heyday of Tintin. This pair was one of my early encounters with the whole Tintin experience, and a very happy one too. I loved them, just as I still love it now. So, I’d definitely recommend these adventures as an ideal place for newbies to start.

NB – This is a review of the Egmont A4 sized paperback (and will stand for the hardback version too), but most emphatically not the newer, smaller reprint.

For instalments 11 and 12 of the Tintin sagas we get the first proper double bill, and on the classic theme of a treasure hunt. Having acquired a model ship for his pal Capt. Haddock, Tintin and the old sea dog discover that it’s a model of the Capt.’s ancestor Sir Francis Haddock’s ship. Amidst a spate of pick-pocketing and burglary it soon becomes apparent that more than one model ship exists, and that there are cryptic clues pointing towards possible treasure.

Haddock is on fine form, and the whole lengthy episode, occupying approx. 1/4 of the book, where he relates and enacts his ancestors’ tale for Tintin is priceless, full of visual and verbal fun. Part of the humour revolves around Haddock’s alcohol consumption during the tale-telling, and Tintin’s attempts to rein in his penchant for the bottle, but mostly it’s just the action itself. Beautifully scripted and drawn, it’s pure pleasure to read. Wonderful stuff.

This is also one of the books where Hergé’s diligent research is most apparent: he clearly wanted the historical naval scenes, and especially the Unicorn, to be convincing, and they are. To achieve this he not only did thorough research, but also had a model of the Unicorn built. Studying the frames with this ship reveal it really is a beautifully rendered thing. Capt. Haddock’s colourful vocabulary is shown to run in the family, and Hergé’s ingenious way of getting around the infamously broad language of sailors is thereby amplified. As a kid I used to love looking up the odd and unusual words in a dictionary.

The villainous antique dealing Bird brothers go to far more dastardly lengths than the average bow-tie wearing fops we see on TV to get what they want. It’s thanks to them that we’re introduced to Marlinspike Hall and Nestor, where Tintin, as an unwitting and unwilling guest, is forced to do some improvised DIY, whilst Snowy get a few brief cameos as the doting hound sniffing out his abducted master’s whereabouts and coming to his rescue.

Running throughout this adventure, the pickpocket theme eventually proves to be more than just a gag, but pivotal to Tintin and Haddock’s quest, but I won’t give any more away. This is a fabulous fun packed Tintin classic, even the way it ends, with Tintin addressing the reader directly to commend the sequel to them is just charming. I loved this as a young boy, and I love it just as much now, many, many moons (too many, alas!) later.

In Tintin’s tenth adventure he has to deal with a ‘near earth asteroid’ event, allowing Hergé to indulge his interests in science and a little bit of gentle pedagogy, whilst telling a fantastical adventure story. As his first venture in this direction it’s not surprising that it’s somewhat naive in this respect, his ‘mad professors’ more caricatured and his ‘science’ itself (always at the service of his stories, rather than dominating them) more slapdash hokum than it would eventually be, when, with the arrival of Cuthbert Calculus, and particularly for the lunar adventures, Hergé wanted his science to be at least plausible.

After spotting an extra star in ‘The Great Bear’,  growing alarmingly quickly and attended by a heat wave and numerous other odd occurrences, Tintin consults Professor Phostle at the local observatory. The prof. is greatly disappointed when the meteor passes near the earth without actually colliding, but revives on learning that the meteor contains a new element (a fact brought to his attention by his assistant), a metal which he names Phostlite in honour of, um, himself. The story then becomes that of their journey in a ship captained by Haddock, carrying an international science team, is search of the meteor, which has landed in the polar seas near Greenland. It’s soon learned that a rival team is also making for the meteorite: will Tintin, Haddock, Prof. Phostle and co., aboard the Aurora, beat the Peary and her crew, and thwart the Sao Rico financier Bohlwinkel?

The supposedly devout Catholic Hergé (thankfully) hardly ever refers to religion in his Tintin adventures.* Indeed, here we have the former assistant of Decimus Phostle, now the self-styled ‘Prophet Philipullus’ – one of the only characters in the entire panoply of Tintin to explicitly use theological jargon – who is both clearly insane and a nuisance to our plucky hero. Interesting! Other points of interest include the depiction of Auguste Picard, a real life scientist Hergé had seen in Brussels, as Swedish scientist Eric Björgenskjöld. Picard was the figure who ultimately inspired Hergé’s creation of Cuthbert Calculus. There are also appearances by Prof. Cantonneau, who reappears in The Seven crystal Balls, and Capt. Chester and his ship the Sirius, who return in Red Rackham’s Treasure

Two rather more contentious points are the ethnicity of Bohlwinkel – is he, as some suggest (his name was originally Blumenstein), an anti-Semitic caricature? – and the changing of his nationality and that of the backers of the rival expedition from Americans to South Americans. On the other side of the scales, Hergé clearly wants to show, as the multi-national science team of the Aurora makes clear, that science is a cross-cultural international collaboration. The references to science range from the plausibly informed mention of spectroscopy to the fanciful effects of Phostlite. 

Although it’s the tenth adventure in the Tintin canon, it was actually the first to appear as a full colour ‘album’ in what became the standard Tintin format. Created during the war in occupied Brussels, the changes subsequently made are fascinating, and in some cases rather worrying. But the end result as it now stands is a solid example of early-middle-period Hergé, and very enjoyable.

* At least not as we see them today, his original strips were significantly altered between their original weekly episodic state and the ‘album’ versions we now see today.

In this thoroughly enjoyable adventure an empty tin of crab meat sets Tintin off on adventure that lands him in North Africa. ‘Shanghai’d’ at the docks, it’s whilst on board the freighter ‘Karaboudjan’ that he meets the drunken sot that is Captain Haddock, and his dastardly first mate, Allan. 

The doppelgänger detectives are on hand to clown around, but it’s Captain Haddock, making his debut, who steals the show, his clumsy drunken faux pas causing Tintin as much trouble as the opium-running villains. I dock half a star here, because as much as Haddock is an excellent new addition, he isn’t yet fully formed, and will mature and improve in coming adventures.

It’s interesting to see how Hergé introduces and develops new characters: Allan arrives on the scene fully formed (but then he’s a relatively minor figure), acting and appearing much the same in other stories in which he appears (e.g. Flight 714), whereas the Capt. Haddock of this adventure isn’t quite the Haddock of most other Tintin stories.

With some nice full page single frame art, and an enjoyable plot, this is solid, reliable fun from Hergé. 

Bravely topical at the time, now just beautiful period-piece fun.

A classic Tintin adventure that finds our earnest hero travelling to Syldavia for the first time (he returns in Hergé’s lunar themed double bill), in the company of the mysterious Professor Alembick, sigillographer. Embroiled in tense cross-border politics, court intrigues, and a general ripping good yarn, our doughty young reporter and his faithful canine sidekick Snowy escape numerous jams on their quest for good wholesome adventurous fun.

Whilst the artwork was, as noted by other reviewers elsewhere – I originally posted an earlier version of this review on Amazon’s UK website – reworked when colourised postwar, nonetheless Hergé’s gift for beautiful crisp drawing and strong clean layout was, by this stage, more or less fully formed. The courtly costumes are great, as are the pseudo-historical ‘tourist guide’ spreads Tintin reads on the plane to Syldavia.

Hergé’s storytelling is also growing stronger; although the episodic cliffhanger moments, suited so well to the original serialised format these were first presented in, may occasionally appear contrived to adults, returning to this material, the joins probably won’t be visible to young readers.

This was an early youthful favourite of mine, so I’ve a partisan soft spot for it, but it is now, like almost all Hergé’s Tintin books, simply a wonderfully innocent period piece. That it manages to remain innocent despite Tintin’s royal(ist) imbroglio, and the political parallels between the Syldavia/Borduria dispute and the dark period of European history just then unfolding (this was originally written and published in the late 1930s) is fascinating. 

Hergé certainly appears in a bolder and more favourable light here than he would if you only read Tintin In The Land Of The Soviets, or Tintin In The Congo. Especially when one considers – though we have the benefit of hindsight – the dangers posed by the forces of fascism at this time (just before and during WWII), who might’ve chosen to take potentially fatal offense.

But ultimately, like all the Tintin adventures, this is, first, foremost, and fundamentally, good old-fashioned fun.

Seeing Tintin in the UK is great for those of us in the UK, and there are some beautiful pictures here that capture aspects of British and Scottish life and landscape now largely lost, but still discernible here and there. Like Tintin in Tibet, The Black Island features a lovable hairy gorilla type creature in a prominent role, allowing Hergé to play with our perceptions of nature vs. nurture, brutality, fear and tenderness. All of which typifies the breadth and depth of enjoyment one can still draw, even as an adult, from these ‘picture books for kids’.

Troubled soul, rock n roll poet, troubadour and cowboy, Phil Lynott was (and still is) a big noise in the OST of my life.

Over lockdown, during this bizarre Covid-19 pandemic period, I’ve ‘finally discovered’ Facebook. I mention this up front, despite it not being the central point of this post at all.

The central point of this post is much more about, well… lots of stuff, actually. Some of the things it’s about are: blogging; me and other folk; life in general; social interactions; goals (or lack thereof), and prob’ much more besides.

First, a brief return to the FB motif. I’ve always had an initial reaction against cyber-era ‘social media’. From the very early days, when a buddy would visit us and disappear online, before the www was even ‘a thing’, when the monster it has become now was little more than a hatching egg, to now, when things like Tik Tok and Twitter strike me as symptomatic of goldfish brained narcissism.

However, despite my innate antipathy, and perhaps due to the enforced isolation of the last year or two, FB has become a welcome way to maintain some semblance of relationships. Far from such convivial ideals as fabulous dinner parties, or swanky soirées with the cultural elite, if such things appeal, yes. But human interaction, of sorts.

I’ve also now got two blogs. This one, and my ‘mini-military’ wargaming and model-making (and military history book/film reviewing!) one. I’m very errotic in how I post on both, oscillating ‘twixt feast and famine, manic depressive or bipolar style binges alternating with long layoffs.

But this inability to stay with one thing in a continuous way is key to me being me, or so I’ve come to believe. And I view the specialisation that the modem world promotes (and rewards) as, pretty much, anathema. Peter Burke quotes sci-fi author Bob Heinlein saying ‘specialisation is for insects’ in The Polymath!

One of the many issues – the downsides (of course it has up sides too!) – with professional specialisation is that it ghettoises our lives and our minds. Such that it becomes increasingly difficult to know what others are really doing, and people wind up in little self-contained self-referential bubbles.

I think a major desire behind doing this blog is a fervent (if possibly forlorn?) wish to connect with people, but hopefully on or through a very broad spectrum of interests and activities. To have conversations. Some might be backslapping agreement orgies, others tense and slightly spiky debates. But an exchange of information, ideas, views. All of that stuff!

Being a bit of a ‘lone wolf’ and recluse, I don’t get too much social intercourse! Nor am I embedded in any institutions that might nourish the full breadth, or even just little bits, of what interests me. So setting out my stall, my wares, here might give me a space to find such things as community and conversation? I hope so!

It’s often said that social media outlets are, and may only ever be, rather facile. I think they quite clearly are, a great deal of the time. But I don’t think it’s inevitable that they always will be, or must be. Indeed, whilst I can and do enjoy the convivial banter that is internet small talk, I’m generally more interested in pursuing things a little deeper.

But can one get really deep? Is this in actual fact impossible online, esp’ when one is widely diverse in one’s interests? I believe, personally, that it is not impossible. But I may be wrong! Clearly if one dedicates all ones’ time to just one, or at max’ a couple of things, one can, rather obviously, explore that thing, or those few things, more thoroughly. But there’s also a danger that over-specialisation sees experts disappear up their own fundaments, and lose relevance to others, even in closely related or neighbouring fields.

These ideas are addressed, although perhaps ironically in no great depth – given, again, the breadth of his subjects/study – in Peter Burke’s aforementioned The Polymath. But for now I feel content to set this issue of depth to one side (to be returned to again in future, most definitely), in favour of addressing some other topics.

The next item on my improvised agenda again relates to variety, and picks up, whilst simultaneously moving off from, the theme of depth. And this I’ll describe as ‘range’: I’m quite happy for posts here to sometimes be the briefest and lightest, and others, intense serious and involved. This blog is me, online, not just one aspect of me, unlike AQOS, my mini-military blog, which does have a specialist focus. But even there I want to range from light and/or silly to dark and/or profound!

So, as examples, I want to post series here covering all or parts of a given musicians’ works. Or the equivalent for a visual artist, or whatever. Book and film reviews might be quick and flippant, or long and serious. A current series is short reviews of the entire Tintin adventures, plus some related ancillary stuff. But running parallel with that are reviews of and thoughts about more philosophical stuff.

It’s my hope and belief that such variety is good in life, and I want that richness and variety in both my life, and this blog. Hopefully that also means that there’s something here for many types of potentially interested readers, in many different moods and registers.

Truth be told, I don’t think this blog is visited much, as yet. I try and promote it, mainly on FB. But I worry that it’ll bore friends! Plus a common reaction is ‘who wants to know what you – a nobody (this bit is inferred, rather than said out right) – thinks about whatever?’ But, you know what, at present I simply don’t care about that. I have my interests, and I want to pursue them. So I do.

AQOS has been going a while now, and gathered a certain amount of its own momentum. I hope and trust the same might happen here? If it never does, then there almost certainly will come a time where I cease to be bothered with doing it. Or then again, maybe not? Who knows!?

Having given some reasons for why I bother doing this bloggery stuff, I now want to address further related ideas, such as monetisation, other possible motivations, or root causes, etc. Starting with the latter, I think that writing for Drummer got this whole shebang started. My monthly Recycled column, a classic (or obscure) album, written about with an emphasis on the drumming, was just gravy to me. Getting paid to wax lyrical about music that (for the most part) I loved!? A dream gig!

This lead in turn to posting reviews of favourite albums on Amazon UK’s website, and then books as well. And then Amazon Vine ‘recruited’ me, off the back of the growing number of ‘helpful’ votes other shoppers/users would leave. I’m still an enthusiastic Amazon Viner (ranked, at the time of writing this, in their top 300 reviewers). But that’s a topic for another post.

With Drummer mag defunct, and AQOS established and ongoing, I figured I really ought to have a more personal but complete and more broad-based blog, attached to my sebpalmer.com domain. AQOS is a Google Blogger thing. So I figured I’d try using WordPress for my own broader personal blog.

Typing all this now reminds me that sebpalmer.com was originally my illustration website. I need to update and upgrade that aspect of the website, as it’s lain dormant and unchanged for too many years now. And, more importantly still, I want to be making and promoting/selling original art. But once again, these last two are subjects for another post.

The final thing on tonight’s agenda relates to two aspects of this blog: why I do it at all; and what I’ll call ‘flashpoints’. I’ve already said that I hope this blog will evolve in such a way as to connect me to people, hopefully through shared interests, and with a view to mutual (intellectual) enrichment. Like so many nowadays, I can both glean a lot of value, or waste a lot of time and energy, online.

This sharing of myself and my interests is neither purely altruistic, nor (at all!) monetised. I did say earlier that I’d address ‘mammon’! So I’ll do that now. Sure, I’d like this activity to in some way help me generate an income. Not because I especially or particularly want that, but because under current social circumstances that’d make life a lot easier. But I do have issues with money. Monetising activities can poison them, in my view. But that’s it for now, on that topic. I’ll return to this line soon enough.

So, last of all, ‘flashpoints’. What I mean by this term is when something one says or does causes a reaction, and that then sets in motion a chain of further reactions. I’m going to very deliberately not mention the most recent nodal point for such an event.

Instead what I want to do is note an irony: let’s say I admire twenty different art works, and I post about them all individually online. It might be that my top five favourites elicit little or no response. Whilst a piece much further down my list, in terms of my interest in it, sets off a clamour of reactions.

I then react to those reactions. And maybe that leads to several discussions, whether amicable, hostile, or mixed. The biggest irony for me in such situations has nothing to do with the things the flashpoint might be alleged to be about, or to represent, but is instead about how this process misrepresents one’s actual interest in the series of artworks.

As nobody, or very few, react to what I’m most interested in, those things can pass unnoticed and unremarked, whilst, at the same time, things of much lesser import (to me) get amplified, due to them prompting multiple reactions. And thereby they appear to take on undue significance.

This post is, by now, long enough, I think. And yet I’ve still not addressed myriad things – such as goals – I had in mind when I started it. But those many things will have to wait for another post!