Books published on Amazon

When I thought about publishing by myself about two weeks ago I asked for advice online and they said “Just do it.” Ok, the Nike response. Fine, I thought, let’s try it. Kindle Direct Publishing is the website you use and it took me about 5 hours one day but even then I got some things wrong, had to go back several times, and made mistakes that couldn’t be fixed once the book had been accepted by the firm.

Honestly they should put up a video before you start.

Look there probably IS a video and I just didn’t see it.

Fine.

The process was actually probably a bit easier for me because I already had images from 2008 that I could use or the covers. Plural because you set up the Kindle version and the paperback version separately. Sigh.

In any case you can now buy the book. (Note this is the Aust site, other countries' URLs will be different.) This book will improve your life, make you smarter, prettier, more healthy, more patient, more resilient. BUY THE DAMN BOOK. If you want to, I mean, it’s totally up to you. The “control is the manifestation of joy” thing is just part of the blurb it’s not an axiom to use to order your life.

In fact “control is the manifestation of joy” is a saying I came up with when I was in my twenties. I was probably half being sarcastic and half being sardonic, but the idea of “control” was in the air in the 80s, for various reasons most of them linked to the conservative renaissance that was happening worldwide and which Australia was to a degree insulated from because we had a Labor government at the time.

But when you think about it machines are only possible where there is total control. In its absence accidents happen, like when a gold 4WD is not steered correctly and crashes into a tree, or maybe it is steered correctly and still crashes into a tree. Joy.

Trip to Goulburn to meet gallerist

I had a scare two weeks ago catching an intercity to Goulburn because having not slept enough the night before I fell asleep on the journey. In my seat. Lucky that a friend called several times finally waking me up when the train had already been parked alongside Goulburn Station for about ten minutes. I scrambled out with my bags and met up with Michael Garside who runs Gallery 59.

The bags had my artworks in them, paintings as well as a tube with a large paramontage packed in it. I had also brought with me my PC so that I could show Michael the combines I‘d made over the year-end period.

The trip back on another train (see above) was easier because I didn't have to barrel on like I barrelled off! Michael at his gallery discussed plans for my third solo show, to open on 8 March and running for two weeks.

When I got home I thought up the name for the show, I'd had a few ideas but seeing the space and seeing works in the space I had a better notion of what to need and settled on "Gold 4WD", the title of one of the works.

It’s also the title of a free-form poem (see prev post).

If anyone knows a person in Canberra or surrounds who likes art please let them know about our show. The more the merrier. The opening event is 4-6pm on Sat 9 March. 

Michael is a painter himself and he said my works are more "modern" than what he usually shows in the gallery. It's nice to feel wanted by a great person, I had a few dodgy interactions on the socials over the end-of-year break. The reason I wasn't sleeping in fact is because I'd been staying up all night. Part of my motivation for keeping this sort of whacky schedule is because operations in the western hemisphere are open when we're closed (for example the US and Europe), but I'd also had trouble sleeping the previous year at around the same calendar horizon so decided to try something different. 

Keeping odd hours might've almost made me miss an important appointment but the strange chest ache I'd had the previous year didn't return.

Gold 4WD, a poem

Numbers
      resolve 
      measured by

organic time

my eyes
      and brain

recognis-
ing
      three-oh
      then
– a slight pause as I get ready to receive the crucial detail
      and it drops – 

      it’s a
nine
and finally the 

destination name

like clothes appearing alongside
      it a child’s paper toy

they
      have their own
      odour
deep

in the recesses
      of my consciousness – 

I never go there

      – there
      where meaning

forms blind

      to the consequences
coming out
of their burrow
click
      in its wake
      in 

the lake of memory
washing by

rocking the boat 
      of the present

like

out to a meeting
near Ingleburn

      I see a dark Tesla
      driving on 

the motorway
or

      on the way
      home in the car

sitting at a light

      and I can’t work
      out if there’s
      a siren

or if it’s

the car beside
      me in the
      queue leading back
to the empty

stretch of road

      where people can
      still move

so I turn off

the radio
      and the moment
      I do
shutting off

Triple J

      with its woke derivative rubbish
or 2DayFM with its never ending cycles 

of
      Ed Sheeran 
      Pink! and 
      Lady Gaga

I under-

stand that
      the noise
      was just

      the golden
4WD

resting like a promise next to me.