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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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| Ivor Cutler: THE SUN The sun quietly withdraws its light from the bit of earth you are living on to give to the people who are just about to get up. But anyway, you are tired by then, so you just go to bed. FEEBLE TRY WITH A STONE #1 Why do I look at the stone -- draw it? Why do I stand apart? I shall speak to it. "Hello stone. How are you?" "Well I have a little pain at the back. It's the damp. A little moss gathering at the crack. Can you see it?" I bend. "Yes, I see," but do not offer advice. A cat is also talking to the stone about tinned food and the stone seems very interested. "Goodbye," I say. The cat and the stone turn and nod. "Come again soon," says the stone. What a bloody cheek! 'Come again soon!' A stone! In front of a cat! A TOUGH MARRIAGE There are words -- and there are thoughts. Try putting them together. Try clothing a thought with clear words to make it visible. If you are clever with words, the visibility will be facile. Watch the awkward person struggle for the right word, the honest word. Trust his integrity. | Dave Shrigley: |
My friend Von Bark, out of the blue, recently started quoting the Scottish wag and out-there poet/artist dude, Ivor Cutler. Thank you, friend! I'd forgotten all about Ivor Cutler and his crazy, sideways tug-at-your-heart stories, songs and bits of unclassifiable ephemera. Another friend, Sandra, lent me three wee books by Cutler, published in Scotland by the wee press, Arc Publications (the top left piece above, "The Sun," is from Is That Your Flap, Jack? and the two below it are from Fresh Carpet). If you do nothing else, follow this link to Ivor's Radio Sessions, with online audio samples. Scroll down to the mp3, "I ate a lady's bun," and listen to it. Then browse.
Checking in with Ivor Cutler again after all these years is timely, as another younger waggish Scottish bloke, Dave Shrigley, was all over Toronto's transit stops this spring with posters of his enigmatic nature/culture photographs that "walk softly" and poke pointed sticks at existential melancholy while evoking an "it's a damp cold" style of naturalism. Me and lots of other Canadians have been following Shrigley for years. His off-hand drawings, full of self-deprecation and foul abject humour strike a chord. Maybe I'm going too far to say that Canadians relate to Shrigley 'cause the stance of Scottish identity vis-a-vis England is so similar to us and USA? Yes likely... I am ...Dave Shrigley's career is doing fine all over the world, not just here. But I am excited to be finally putting Shrigley and Cutler together in the same sloppy zone of brain space inside my too-thick skull. Of course there is a lineage here, and how nice to finally grasp it.