One of those deep and meaningful evenings:

I only recently discovered something very simple but very cool after reading two books by different authors [PD Ouspebsky's The Fourth Way, and Whitley Strieber's The Key], both expressing this one simple idea:

1. We are not a conscious species.

2. The moments that we experience consciousness are only fleeting: the majority of our time is spent in a lower state of awareness, where we are drifting around in this semi-conscious, auto-pilot state of being.

Ever wandered around a strange place, or suddenly found yourself lost, and you have found that you have become very aware of your body, your thoughts? Ever noticed how in this state you are able to take in more information - you start to see a lot more detail, your surroundings become a little more vivid and detailed.

What would life be like if you could sustain this awareness for longer and longer peroids of time - until you could make it a permenant state of mind?

That's self-awareness, and for the majority of us, it's only a fleeting, intermitent state.


So I've been looking around for methods of sustaining this level. It turns out that this is really the goal of most meditative practises.

Focusing your attention on your body and your sensations, not what's going on inside your head. You keep a clear mind as you move your focus around your body - your hands, your feet, your stomache, that soft acheing in your shoulders and your lower back.

You can do it while you eat, you can do it on the bus, you can do it when you are listening to friends speak - and you notice all of these details that you've been overlooking.

Like how dull chips actually taste, or the shape of a friends face [and how you hadn't noticed how miserable they've been looking lately].

I can totally relate to what Zen is saying about summer. You sense it coming on the air. Several years of living in unheated flats, and the occasional stint of sleeping outdoors has given me an appreciation of summer days that is nicely at odds with my pasty complexion and my shadey wardrobe. I spent a couple of hours working on this here powerbook outside this afternoon. Ended up spending about half an hour just watching the clouds, got some ideas down but I can't find them at the moment... and had to give in when the dog started humping my leg...

We have to make the most of them while they still come.

'The real choice is essentially between freedom and uncertainty, or stability and predictability.' Can't think where I heard that.

I wonder where they all go when Barbelith is closed for business...

Even more self indulgent than usual this one. But I'm feeling quite jolly this afternoon, for some odd reason. Something terrible is bound to come trundling over the horizon with me in its trundling sites at any moment...

Well, one week into my return to independent artweirdo status and it's begun again: the really dumb ideas in the middle of the night, the frantic 'am I a complete failure or what' panicy spells, the endless coffees, the ice-cream, going to bed at 2.30 am and getting up at 6 am [and I'm normally a twelve hours sleep kind of lad]. Life is sweeeeet.

And the only booze in the house was this bottle of Absinthe that my reformed alcoholic brother spent thirty five notes on and couldn't face : Absinthe, as I'm sure you already know is basically Terbo Pernod: pretensciousness to the 33rd degree, but bung it in a glass of pepsi and it's drinkable.

As I'm sure some of you are sick of seeing me type, I am still unable to put Whitley's new book The Key, down for very long. It's quite a worrying read really - but dead exciting, if you're into hearing ideas that bare no relation to normality that is [hello you]. And I love the way that some of it reminds me of the whole Barbelith Buoy / being born to consciousness thing. Apparently the world's going to get a whole lot more unpleasant to be around, but we're going to get a whole lot more magickal and awake.

Why is the bass always too loud on that one and not big enough on all the others?

Why does TOTP 2 make me so angry?

Imagine my surprised wallet at discovering there was a new Michael Moorcock book in Dillons on the way home on Friday. And the book King of The City is a damn fine read. Music and photography. Drugs, punks and hippies. Beautiful combinations I'm sure you'll agree. [I hope that links works].


I'm really serious about doing this passport thing and calling it art. I know it's pants but it really brings a smile to my unlikely face and a healthy warmth to my belly - can you guess which unlikely face is me? I'll give you a clue - I look like I'm half asleep. I'm urging everyone I know to send me copies of their own half-sleeping, blotchy, badhair day photees for inclusion but they have their doubts. Get in touch if you feel brave: I figure I need several million of these things before I can call it art. Don't ask, it makes me happy that's all.

See - I'm feeling better already.

Rollo 'does this name make me sound fat' Kim

Can't stay for long - I've had no sleep all weekend and I'm feeling a bit toxic. Loads to do - loads I want to tell you - but I need to go to bed. I'm a free man now. Which means I'll be able to finish all of the things I've been talking about for the last six months or so. I'm returning, as of tomorrow morning, to full time creative persuits.

things to sort:

escapeart.org
desertspoon23.com
chromograph.com
this blog
the spypunk sampler cd
memeplex cd
my portfolio
press releases for most of the above
crackerdog productions page
finding somewhere to live
work out how to get the Beatnik's Director plug-in for free
get away from everything for a week
get to brighton again
make it to a barbelith brainstorm sesh once more
scan in images
business cards
the prints I said I'd do for everyone

Bed.

etc etc etc.

So I've managed to spend the entire weekend in bed, feeling too ill to move very much, tinkering with escapeart in the hope of injecting some positivity into my head. There was a moment there where I thought I'd deleted the entire site, but hopefully it's all working and looking a bit more wholesome.

Back to normality tomorrow. Still feeling a bit drained though, but at least I'm not speaking [and looking] like an extra from a zombie movie.


Life becomes too easy, to unfocused, too normal.


Eastenders for subversives.



Taking obligations. Taking trouble. Taking time. An office with no windows and shitty lighting. Sulky receptionist pacing pedantic.

In the blink of an eye, life has become unfathomably mundane.

Don’t dream. Don’t aspire. Don’t attempt to better yourself. Don’t excell. Just fit in.

And at twenty seven I’m awake to find myself utterly appauled with adult life. Aspiring to distractions, all of the unecessary crap and none of the fundamentals. And as time goes by, the restrictions are more and more extreme. No freedoms, only aspirations to more of the same meaningless crap that we already have.

The need to learn – about you and the world around you, continues to horrify all those around you…

They fear difference. They fear change. They fear all of the things that in this life we should celebrate.


None of the fundamentals. The possibilities concealed. Potentials severed. As we become animals once again. Wild, senseless, afraid of all things.

Systems that conspire to smooth away all traces of sensations, of aspirations, of the need to look beyond the day. Leave us numb, dry, content, a little dazed. And all of our resentment and confusion nicely focused in all the wrong places.

The antics of the playground prevail, in every high office, every system of control.

Another sudden Sunday evening, shadowed, enclosed.


Rules and restrictions. Escape into toxin. Escaping to cruelties. More confusion, more missing time.

Schools that wash away all trace of self.

I promised that I would try one year of normality - a nine to five.

My god, TV: wannabies and lessons in how to signify sincerity. Cheese and ham.

Mutants are very real.

They have hollowed out a book to make a cage for the finch. I can’t work out how to feed it without letting the bird out between the pages.

In our society it strikes me that we assume that, to lay the blame is the solution to the problem: rather than establishing why the problem has occurred, we simply dish out punishment and demand that they ‘never do it again.’

Comforted by another Lemsip,

Stig of the dump

I've just about stopped talking like Tom Waits, parts of me have stopped pulsating but my brain is still a little detuned.

"For most of you out there, money is hard to come by"

Don't call me scarface.

Thankyooz to Biz, Kooky and Zen for refreshing my head. 'Just like old times... sob' etc

I am sitting here in my sick bed, sweating and confused.

My need to create bad art had returned once more, and my thoughts have returned to the collection of passport photographs I'd been accumulating a couple of years ago. I went through this stage where I kept finding them lying around, on the streets, in pubs and cafe's... but I don't quite have enough! So I'm going to be putting out the 'embarrasing passport photo appeal', and I'll be posting what I have so far somewhere on escapeart.org.

Having done a bit of searching around, so far it seems that no one has done anything exactly like this yet [but the chances are...]

There's no place like Foam...

This evening, I kind of feel like a cartoon character reduced to the states of an office junior. "It's a great position, and one your company really needs, but I'm just not the man for the job".

No fixed abode. No dependants. No cats. No kittens. No car.
Just some clothes I've no real attachment to.
Just some books, just some records, just some notebooks and broken musical instruments.

No obligations but an increasingly unpredictable career.

Fear versus aspirations.

Things I miss:
100% freetime
Clare
Lee Danby
Brighton
Playing live [a real zen slap]
Beer and pizza [an allergy to grain proteins]
New Wave nightclubs
Stray Dog City

Things to do:
finish what I've started
get brave

Having feasted and supped, I'm now ready to sit me down and tell you all a story. Well, I mean I'm ready to do that, but I won't. [I'm sure we all know just how unconnected saying and doing really are...] It shows you how out of touch I am when I hardly recognize any of the names anymore [what happened to Mistress Smack? What happened to Gibreel? Jack Shit? Are they all in here somewhere, have their names been changed to protect their fiendships?]

things on my mind:

the fact that Lucozade's Solstice reminds me of sex
Ghostbusters
Julian Cope [and why I like to read his writing but not listen to his songs - apart from Reward]
Not enough freedom in adulthood
the state of things
staying switched on
Why I can't do music on a Mac

so, knowing you, knowing me, it's...

Rollo Kim's Top Ten Good Things

Solstice
Fight Club
Wheat Free biscuits
Free jazz drumming [seriously!]
if... [the movie]
Ghostbusters [the movie]
PiL [the popular beat combo]
The Invisibles [still!]
Anything by Whitley Strieber
Anything by The Cocteau Twins

I could go on...

Missing times...