Took the kids over to Mayflower Park this morning, and realised that it is as shabby as people suggest. But the neglect has at least prompted the council to set up a survey and website for suggestions.
The problem is that the park (at least the play area) is public open space and has to remain open right in the middle of the Boat Show which takes over the area for ten days every September. Though not widely known, the public still have access to the park during the BoatShow and anyone wanting to use it has the right to do so. They are escorted and watched over by BoatShow staff all the time...
So not surprisingly, the BoatShow is putting pressure on the Council to move the park - although I'm not entirely sure what reasons the Council is offering to the public.
My suggestion would be telling the BoatShow to f*ck off and find another council to leech on, leaving Southampton free to rebuild the area with a new park, landscape and a "world class seafront". The council owns the site and coulld easily put it up for redevelopment.
I know there's massive revenue for certain sectors of the city (accommodation providers and restuarant/pubs mostly) but I can't see how the council directly benefits from this?
Hmmm - that's about as political as I ever get. Suffice to say we had a great time and wore everyone out.
Spent the afternoon making Halloween crafts - pumpkin masks, pop-up witches and ghosts etc etc. The kids won't be Trick or Treating themselves, but they like to get into the spirit of it.

At last I have had a text from Biscuit, explaining that she left her mobile at home while camping last weekend. Safe and sound and had a great time, so thanks be to God for overseeing that adventure and bringing no harm to her. Looking forward to seeing them tomorrow with the usual nervous excitement that precedes their visit

Been sitting in the South Western tonight discussing - among other things - the place (or not) of text in art. I'm all for it - in fact, were I to be an artist in the visual arena, I would almost certainly make a piece of text an integral part of any image I create. I'd go so far as to suggest that a piece of text is in itself a piece of art. The word "FEAR" for instance, conjures images in the reader in the same way that a scary pixture or sculpture would do. Lori argues entirely the opposite, that text in a piece of art is a cop out and shows only the inability of the artist to convey his message visually. He has a point, but I'm not really talking about using the text to make the point, rather to enhance or perhaps even distract from the visual context in which it is placed. An interesting argument. I'll come back to it.
definitley need to try and work up a piece of "art" somehow. I am writing everyday day now, but I feel challenged to create someting visual. Wonder what sort of thing I would come up with...
Talking of art, had an MSN chat with Kink today who has recently set up her own mini gallery. Some of her stuff really works well - especially those pieces with text in! More convinced than ever tho that her relationship is going nowhere...
J was online today which inspired the last hour of my day at the office. Great to catch up with her, but all to brief. Why is that? Explore. Explain. Use visual art...

grey and raining traffic thunder clouds
in darkness i can hear the
lighting spears of thrushes call
across the silence in between
the thoughts I have of you

Owen then brought in the concept of music vs song. A similar argument, and a fine point well made. I'm for lyrics every time, but value the soundtrack too. THAT I have just realised is why Cthedral Oceans works so beautifully. It's that merging of edges between what is vocal and what is music. At which point does the resonance and reverberation of the human voice take on the frequency of "sound". The edges are blurred. It is perfect - the whole point perhaps being that it is actually neither one thing or another, and neither is it either of those things. I know in legal terms, a song has two copyrights "musical works " (the chord sequences and lyrics) and "sound recordings" (the work of the producers and musicians). An example of Dualizm of course (get that album - NOW), and an example of the way that concept prevents us identifying and relating to the WHOLE of an entity. By merging the vocal with the music so that the vocal BECOMES the music (rather similar to the way Liz Fraser worked in the Cocteau Twins) Fxx is asking us to perceive his work differently, to think outside the box. It is really definitive stuff. And when the rest of us catch up, he will have moved on to something else. Which leads me nicely to the working title I have now found for my biography. "Someone Almost There".
The title comes from one of the pieces on Drift Music which I am listening to right now. It's probably one of the shortest and most 'incidental' pieces on the album, but so fragile and magnificent in its understatement
"The Quit Man" was always to obvious and would introduce copyright issues, and I've always favoured "A new Kind of Mn" instead. I wonder now to if this isn't too 'time specific' pertaining of course to the emergence of Fxx as a solo artist and his seminal Metamatic album. So I'm using that title for a Part of the work (of which there will be five) and then particular lyrics or song titles that sum up contemporary periods.
Someone Almost There describes for me exactly what Fxx has been throughout his recording career. A man of shadows; a figure on the outside - standing so close, but never quite touching. Commercially too he was never quite "there". He's always been ahead and his presence and influence is felt in so many spheres of music - but more like a glance and a glimmer, a reflection on the water rather than something you can reach out and touch. Dust and Lght works in a similar way. I fear that Drft Music is all too often ioverlooked in his catalogue too, so using a title from that album brings the work more into the focus it deserves. And the sonic signature of Harold Budd runs through it too, the importance of which can never be overstated. One day we will wake up and realise the magnitude of what this Hdden Man is doing