2013

Listening to Cate Le Bon’s Mug Museum (2013). She sings in a kind of idiosyncratic faux Germanic intonation. A sort of Nico effect––I like it. Her album reminds me a little bit of Belle and Sebastian––nouvelle vague modulations. Maybe more after a Lou Reed aesthetic. Lovely melodies juxtaposed with slightly discord guitar riffs. Then surveyed Cyrk (2012), which I find is what Edward Lear’s Where the Wild Tings Are would sound like, that is, in an alternative imagining to Karen O’s soundtrack to Wes Anderson’s film adaption of the book. Le Bon sings In ‘Through the Mill’ of going to an island. She does delicate avant-garde Welsh pop-rock with a twist. Lastly checked out Me Oh My (2009). I like when she sings in Gaelic, I assume it’s Welsh? It seems reminiscent of Cat Power’s cover of ‘Satisfaction’ (originally recorded by The Rolling Stones of course). Spare blues guitar––effective. M must learn to let herself be loved as I must too. She hardens herself against it and this cuts her off from human affection. I must help her to trust––to create a trustworthy world. To do this I must care for myself, so that I don’t get run down and descend into intolerance and anger. After the children behaved badly in a shop I got cross. Back at home Marlene ran to her room shouting ‘I don’t feel beautiful anymore,’ which gutted me. And I ran after her––told her how sorry I was. But I must not recant on the boundary setting or it confuses the children about what is acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. Sometimes I’m so tired of trying so hard. Last night in my dream a voice chided: ‘You will outlive everyone.’ I was at the centre of a crowd––loved. The children bathed tonight as the wind rhapsodised the house. After the bath G packed up all of his Octonaut toys and paraphernalia, his most treasured possessions, and said ‘I’m ready.’ I asked ‘What for?’ He responded ‘Let’s go, let’s get on a plane and go overseas.’ ‘But where?’ I asked. ‘Where nana and papa went’ he said. ‘France.’ Bon courage I thought––until France. Bon Courage.

Boundary Speak (Diaries 2013-2021) centrally focuses on reportage of my life’s happenings, notes on readings, phantasms or wild forays, riffs off music or footnotes from poems that take me on a strange journey and thought fragments. My outsider artwork is focal on my Re-learn your Alphabet for the Twenty-First Century drawings (some of which are collaborations with my children), my robot series, as well as many other drawings undertaken over the period 2013-2021.