The Bean’s bean #4
I am really not a big fan of surprises in any way shape or form – however sometimes I am amused, even downright tickled by the way somethings work out.
A few years ago, I made a very strange abstract Zine called ‘Ca ne va pas du tout.’ In a nutshell, I took an obscene amount of photos of abandoned trolleys, mainly from in around Basildon and the south of Essex, and a satirical and tenuous link connecting those who are without housing and said shopping carts. The main message and metaphor being that certain systems within society and governmental factors are happy to abandon people much the same way they are happy to discard and objects. The title was in French for dramatic effect, and means ‘It’s not going well at all’
I was entirely not surprised at all by the reaction of most people. It was a combination of confusion mixed with a healthy dose of fear for my own mental health. If I’m perfectly honest it is almost what I wanted in the first place.
Very much and true fashion to myself there is another one that I have in the works that I will release as a sort of dark palette cleanser in between the actual serious bodies of work. I seem to take a love for the things that many other people don’t love. I have an unhealthy obsession with pigeons, as many of you may know, and I don’t entirely understand where it came from. Part of it is the fact that I find them generally adorable even if their feet are stumped but also I thoroughly love the fact that a lot of people consider them to basically be winged rats. Some people need to look in a mirror more often.
Anyway, I have wandered off a bit here. The point I was making is that something things aren’t too surprising at all – however some things catch you off guard in such a wonderful way it delights and confuses you. This took the form of a collection of haiku I made about defecating.
The collection itself started with a very good friend and mews Mr Phil Burdett, wrote a haiku on world haiku day and posted it to social media. I believe the haiku itself was about either world haiku or haiku – I think I’ve put the word haiku more times than anyone really legally should have.
So upon reading this, I thought I would join in for a bit of fun and I wrote three haiku about shitting as at the time I was having a shit - most people who visit the porcelain God do so while clutching their phone I am one of them. I took my three little childish haiku’s along to one of the instruments of danger poetry. Thankfully, people attending with his childish as I was and found them rather entertaining. Unfortunately, this is all the incentive and inspiration I need to hyper fixate on something as ridiculous as this, this resulted in writing 47 of them (I think that’s the number I’ve almost lost count and I am not going back and counting them again) and publishing them as a mini zine entitled ‘The Old Throne’ named after the first widely recognised haiku ever written by Matsuo Basho called ‘The Old Pond’
See what I did there….
Now for the surprising bit – people find it rather entertaining and even though I released it over a year ago, I’m still being asked about it now.
All the serious stuff I’ve written, the book that I keep constantly going on about, the other book that I am also equally blithering on about as well as all the little standalone pieces I have put out over the years including all the songs I have ever written in various bands over my life, and the thing that entertains people the most is absolute filth!
Deep within there is a part of me that he’s very happy by this fact. The other part of me is a little bit miffed and the rest of me is thinking the name of the actor who played Mac On The 2004 comedy series ‘Green Wing’ and where he is now after his small part in one of the tomb raider film.
(I had space for an image but what of, I didn’t note- so there isn’t one.)
Hugs and such and as always, thanks for the support.
