new work - acrylic on paper

united states of influenza

influenza is a beautiful word.
I had my vaccination against the american influenza.They say i fit the profile.
The shot cost me nothing but still i paid fiftyfive dollars for the doctor.
If i had seen that coming i would have requested a script for valium or something.

Amid a newwave of heatwaves,the start of a summer of heat and smoke,the end of seemingly endless assessments i have been promoted.
Heat and smoke have quickly become our new national shudder..the new funnelweb spider,the new eastern brown snake, the new six metre shark.

some bodies in trouble

the floor

under the floor

on the floor

off the floor

dont know how big a quarter is but i'm assuming its small. . and still parents and surgeons go free after mutilating their boy kids by circumcision

Men face prison in boy’s tattooing

CALIFORNIA — A man facing a life sentence over a quarter-size gang sign tattooed on his 7-year-old son’s hip let out a sigh Friday when a judge said the act was not aggravated mayhem, a charge reserved for crippling attacks. Instead, Enrique Gonzalez and Travis Gorman will face the lesser charge of cruel and inhumane treatment of a child. With gang enhancements, they now face seven years in prison

— The Associated Press

keeping the closet door bolted in victoria

Government bows to religious right
MELISSA FYFESeptember 27, 2009
ATTORNEY-GENERAL Rob Hulls will today announce a controversial compromise struck with the state's religious groups that will allow them to continue to discriminate against gays and lesbians, single mothers and people who hold different spiritual beliefs.
In a move that has delighted religious groups but angered gay activists and discrimination experts, Mr Hulls will protect the right of hundreds of church-run organisations - including schools, hospitals and welfare services - to refuse to employ or provide services to people who they believe may undermine their beliefs.
Under the deal, Mr Hulls will allow church groups to continue discriminating on the grounds of sex, sexuality, marital and parental status and gender identity. But they will be unable to discriminate on the basis of race, disability, age, physical features, political beliefs or activity, or breastfeeding.
The decision has dismayed groups that argued that the review was a chance to eliminate entrenched discrimination in Victoria, which has more exemptions to its equal opportunity law than any other state.
Leading discrimination law expert Professor Margaret Thornton said it was a win for fundamentalist religious groups. ''In terms of a person's private life … their sexual preference or marital status really has nothing to do with their ability to perform a job. Being able to discriminate on marital status is particularly absurd. It is really out of date. It really amounts to the policing of women because the focus is on single mothers, not on men.''

trailer for queer east

go

ballad of you and me and pooneil..and cover of after bathing at baxters

bury my body to this armadillo

wee preview and taken by trees

snap of a couple of bits of some new works on paper that owe their colour at least to the arrival of the magnificent book on paul thek and the arrival of spring and the poppies and irises in my beloved garden. Im thinking of the text as self-referential, pm is the ahem! i notice that because of the brevity of our current prime minister's name he actually gets namechecked more these days..fewer references to 'pm'..so can we have a candidate w a longer name please?
I'm loving the new taken by trees cd east of eden. taken by trees is the former concrete's singer victoria bergsman. she took herself to pakistan for this album and recorded it with local musicians. true enough it's transporting music and great for mixing colours to in the morning

its more like this...

Size Queen screening

The ANU "Beginning, Middle, End' festival screening of the 4 Size Queens videos last night was a thrilling, exhilarating and strangely frightening experience for me. The heightened reality of the big screen/loud sound made them more wonderful but much more confrontational.
My experience of these videos had up till now been on a tiny screen with tinny sound..that skinny youtube experience.
I never realised what a great song 'Hot Frizz' is and that the video is as effective and sad as it is..Ive known a few 'Liz's' in my time and their stories need telling.( i said ' have known' not ' havebeen')
'Bang! Bang! Lynda Benglis!' is a brilliant song and so is the video..it's wicked and hilarious. I dont recall brunch in any of the group houses i lived in.
I loved seeing 'Reading Rosalind Krauss' huge on the screen. Its an immersive work of art on so many levels and those lyrics cut to the core of recent art history..I love that crotchet can be so damned offensive.
The gang loved seeing 'My Lover Is A Body Artist' and were rightfully as proud of themselves as they were of the song and video.
Thanks to all involved in the organisation of the screening.

victoria williams in Neurology Now

Bittersweet Symphony: With gratitude and hope, acclaimed singer-songwriter and MS sufferer Victoria Williams faces the music.

[FEATURE: VICTORIA WILLIAMS]

GORA, SUSANNAH

Lou Reed once said, Listening to her sing is a demonstration of majestic power. Lucinda Williams has called her a genius.The Los Angeles Times described her as a musicians' cult figure. You may never have heard of singer-songwriter Victoria Williams, but chances are you've heard the echoes of her rich artistic influence across a wide spectrum of musical genres, since many of today's most legendary musicians cite her as an inspiration. Neil Young was so impressed with Williams' unique style (which Rolling Stone described as Cajun-seasoned country rock) that he asked her to open for him on a nationwide tour in 1992-even though he hadn't met her.

The invitation was a dream come true for Williams, who'd long admired Neil Young's work. But one night on tour, the dream became something of a nightmare. I was up onstage, remembers Williams, and my hand wouldn't play. Ever the professional, Williams finished her performance by singing a capella. Soon afterwards, she went to a doctor to ask about the strange incident with her hand. She'd also had occasional difficulty walking, tingling in her extremities, and feelings of electric shock when she moved her head a certain way.

Williams was eventually diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), an autoimmune disease that causes a recurrent inflammation of the central nervous system, which includes the brain and spinal cord, according to Allen Bowling, M.D., Ph.D. (neurologycare.net ), medical director of the Multiple Sclerosis Service and director of the Complementary and Alternative Medicine Service at the Colorado Neurological Institute, and clinical associate professor of neurology at the University of Colorado-Denver and Health Sciences Center. Dr. Bowling estimates that there are between 350,000 and 400,000 people in the United States suffering from MS, which affects twice as many women as it does men. As he explains in his book Complementary and Alternative Medicine and Multiple Sclerosis (2nd edition, Demos, 2007), symptoms of MS can include visual blurring and weakness, fatigue, depression, urinary difficulties, walking unsteadiness, stiffness in the arms or legs, tingling, and numbness.

The MS diagnosis was particularly devastating news for Williams because, like so many musicians, she didn't have health insurance. I had to go to a lot of different hospitals, remembers Williams, who is now 51, and I had to get lots of tests. I had a huge hospital bill. To help Williams in her time of need, a group of her musician friends got together and recordedSweet Relief, the criticallyrevered 1993 benefit album on which artists including Pearl Jam, Lou Reed, Lucinda Williams, and Soul Asylum recorded covers of Williams' songs. The album, named after a tune by Williams, was a great commercial success, and it did provide some much-needed relief by paying for her medical bills. She was deeply touched by the effort and felt inspired to give back. I said, 'I want to start a benefit to help other musicians who get sick,' Williams recalls. The result was the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund, which aims to assist professional musicians in financial need suffering from health problems.

MUSICAL YOUTH

Music has been an essential part of Williams' life for as long as she can remember. I just think music was in me, she says. I was always singing. Growing up in Shreveport, Louisiana, she sang in her church's choir, and started writing songs at a young age. She loved all kinds of music-gospel, country, blues, and folk in particular. Even then, her songwriting drew heavily on stories of the South and its inhabitants; it's an area she believes makes for fertile musical ground. I think it's the tempo of life down there, Williams suggests, and there are a lot of interesting characters about-a lot of eccentrics in the South.

Williams moved to California in the 1980s, where she frequently performed in Venice Beach, and was discovered by the friend of an influential songwriter named Van Dyke Parks. He became a mentor to her and connected Williams to other musicians. Still, the early days of her career were relatively challenging. In the days before 1997's women-centered music festival Lilith Fair, Williams says, there weren't as many opportunities for women in alternative music as there are today. Since Lilith, there have been so many more women artists getting worldwide attention, which is just wonderful, she says. But when I was starting out it was rough. I remember I had a development deal with [music label] EMI, and I made a tape and turned it in. They said, 'Well we already have [unconventional singer-songwriter] Kate Bush, and that's enough.' I was nothing like Kate Bush! But that's how it was back then.

Williams' first record, Happy Come Home, was released in 1987 and was followed by Swing The Statue in 1990. In 1993, the Sweet Relief album brought her a great deal of attention. That same year Williams tried out her acting chops, appearing in the screen adaptation of Tom Robbins' book Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, directed by Gus Van Sant and starring Uma Thurman and Keanu Reeves. Williams was a fan of the book, having first read it in high school.

In 1994, Williams released the introspective album Loose, followed by 1998's Musings of a Creek Dipper, 2000's Water To Drink, and 2002's Sings Some Ol' Songs, on which she brings her unique flavor to standards like Someone to Watch Over Me and My Funny Valentine. All of her albums have been acclaimed by critics, and along the way, Williams has toured with many celebrated musicians, including Randy Newman.

THE SEARCH FOR TREATMENT

Her MS is of the relapsing and remitting variety. It comes and goes, she says. But my feet are always numb, and my hands are often numb. When she's playing the guitar, says Williams, I always look and see if my fingers are playing the chords right. I'll think, 'Am I playing the chords? Because I can't feel that I am.' And sometimes I feel like my hands are so weak that I couldn't be playing the chords. Dr. Bowling says that these kind of symptoms can be common with MS, and explains how something as physically demanding as going on tour could have a detrimental effect on them: There definitely is a sub-group of people with MS for whom high levels of stress, fatigue, and lack of sleep bring out chronic symptoms. Some people with MS are prone to gait instability [imbalance while walking], fatigue, or tingling that comes and goes daily, and high levels of stress or fatigue worsen the severity of the chronic symptoms.

Williams is extremely fond of her neurologist, Jeffrey Bronstein, M.D., a professor of neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. (I love him, she says enthusiastically.) Dr. Bronstein put Williams on the MS drug glatiramer acetate (Copaxone) in the early 1990s, to great success. She went from three or four exacerbations a year to zero-maybe a small one every three or four years, Dr. Bronstein says. She's been able to maintain a high level of function, I think, because of it.

The only problem, Williams says softly, is that it cost a lot, like all MS drugs. As a result, she has at times tried to alleviate her symptoms using alternative treatments instead. She once even owned a beehive. I would get the bees and sting myself, Williams says. Some people believe that apitherapy, or bee venom therapy, can help MS sufferers. Williams is also a proponent of acupuncture. If you have a good acupuncturist who knows what they're doing, it really does help, she says. At one point, the singer had been confined to a wheelchair but was able to walk again after she received electrical stimulation of her muscles. I kind of looked like Frankenstein! Williams laughs. But it really helped me walk.

However, there is little or no evidence to support the medical benefits of many of these alternative treatments, some of which might even be harmful. Non-traditional [treatments] that are not regulated can be dangerous, explains Dr. Bronstein. My stance with [Williams] has been that these alternative therapies have not been proven to be effective or safe, and so I don't recommend them. The ones that seem safe I have no problems with her doing, as long as they are not instead of things that we know work, such as glatiramer acetate.

Currently, Williams isn't taking any medication for MS. I can tell a difference now that I am not taking it-I'm feeling a little loopy, she admits. And there are some real risks that arise from not taking MS medication. Being on these drugs reduces her chances of being permanently disabled and in a wheelchair, Dr. Bronstein explains, so she's at a higher risk of being more disabled. We are trying hard to get her back on therapy. Sweet Relief, the organization that Williams helped create to aid musicians in need, is not able to help her at this moment. They are fundraising right now, Williams explains. Maybe they'll have enough money after a while. Dr. Bronstein believes Williams' situation is a great plug for having a national health program: We have a clear therapy that definitely improves long-term outcomes; we have somebody who wants to keep working, but because of the way our insurance works, she is unable to afford the therapy.

Dr. Bowling offers some advice for Williams and others in a similar situation: There are some complementary therapies that are worth considering for MS, ideally in conjunction with standard treatments. They include dietary strategies, where you cut back saturated fat, increase polyunsaturated fat, and consider vitamin D-based approaches. Also, exercise may help with multiple symptoms of MS, and not smoking. Dr. Bowling also recommends relaxation methods, basic meditation practices-those are free and may be quite helpful if someone has got high levels of stress, and could also be helpful for depression, pain, and insomnia.

Williams recalled a recent tour in which the more music she performed, the better she felt physically. Music is such a healing thing, she says. She may be on to something: Dr. Bowling says music is one of the more promising approaches to MS. Moving to music, creating it, singing it, just listening to it- activates all of these different brain regions.

SHELTER IN THE DESERT

Williams has been busy in the recording studio, working with Scottish music producer Isobel Campbell (formerly of Belle and Sebastian) and also with the Arizona-based rock band Calexico. She says she has written songs about MS but hasn't released any-yet.

Williams' music is available through her website,victoriawilliams.net (be sure to check out her whimsical paintings there) and on iTunes. She is also tremendously excited about her upcoming tour throughout Australia and New Zealand with musician Vic Chesnutt. He's great, says Williams of Chesnutt, who is paraplegic. (Williams, a true believer in musicians helping each other, was one of the main proponents of the tribute album Sweet Relief II to benefit Chesnutt in 1996. It featured the likes of Madonna, R.E.M., Hootie and The Blowfish, and Williams herself, performing Chesnutt covers.) She is hopeful that her MS won't hinder her abilities on tour too greatly: God willing, I will be ok.

She doesn't use the expression God willing casually-Williams' belief in the divine has been a guiding force in her life and her art. It is a gift when songs come, she reveals. It's a spiritual thing. Williams tends to look on the bright side, often crafting songs that reflect her upbeat, grateful attitude towards life-even in the face of MS. I just feel so blessed, she says, earnestly. God has been so good to me. Says Bronstein of Williams, She's got a wonderful, positive approach to life. She doesn't focus on what she can't do, but on what she can. Williams even sees a bright side to having MS: I think it has increased my capacity for feeling empathy with people who are having a rough time.

Williams lives in the tranquil desert of Joshua Tree, CA. It is a place of exquisite natural beauty, where the smallest things can inspire moments of reflection as well as great music. Williams recently wrote a song about a bird who is always building its nest in the wrong place, only to have the wind tear it down. It was about a real bird, Williams explains, tenderly. In some ways, the song could have been about Williams herself: Life throws her challenges, but she perseveres. I'd see her, says Williams of the little bird, and the wind would keep blowing the nest down. And she'd keep on building it.

Figure. JAMMING WITH PEARL JAM, Williams playing with grunge rock superstars Jeff Ament (center) and Eddie Vedder in 1993.

'my lover is a body artist'-the size queens-new edit

My Lover is a Body Artist Preview from tarrantj on Vimeo.

the art, kids

its been a week that had me lurching from gloom to vrooom. woke in the latter zone this morning. where else could you be on a sunny spring saturday morning? there was a friday on my wall ope (and close) at the school of art last night organised by liang and miss beer.congrats on the best fomw yet this year. some great videos by new and old folks. i should be more active recording these events..someone remind me huh? tj screened the new cut of our video for the size queen's 'my lover is a body artist'. i adore it and those who saw it last night seemed chuffed esp the talented participants who donated their bodies and self respect in the name of artistic and musical license. I like that the new cut is more like my original plan. and its b+w. as soon as i can i'll get the vid up here. its due to be screened during 'our literal speed' art conference at the getty 2010..i dont need a better excuse to use my qantas ff points for a trip to the states. who wanna come? we can take in the collections of nyc too.
Really happy to have michael stevens tell me his book
'the road to interzone-reading william s. burroughs reading' is selling well as pre-order from amazon.
miss beer organised a great party with the king hits playing. .a great rockabilly trio but i still reckon they need a new name..shame the pink monkey birds is already taken. greg from sydney rejoined us as teaching asst. maybe i can talk him into modelling for me again. I planted a cat grass garden for my best little fur friend and am wondering what adventures my new and favourite pink and blue flanelette shirt had last night because it wasnt on my back when i got home last night. sydney trip later next week is looking like a hoot..main destination s the mca, home to a show of mid career artists including my friends alison alder, ruth waller, mickey allan and raquel ormella..the old folks show at the same time as kindergarten show primavera in the same art museum then the bronx on thursday night at the metro and catchup with friends before the obligatory runround galleries as students' hangovers wear them thin. no puking on the art kids.

my morning jacket and calexico w. yim yames

2 bands who cant do any wrong. my morning jacket despite working every rock cliche in the book always come up smelling like genius. calexico make me want to move to new mexico. these 2 clips have j(y)im j(y)ames from mmj fronting both bands. going to acupulco is of course from i'm not there,up there in my top list..dylan tops all my lists. then theres yim yames'my sweet lord george tribute

out damn spot!!

haha god..

after a week or so of auditioning every song i heard for top spot at my funeral i just found out i dont have liver cancer.

I would like to thank sarah my uber doc, the woman who did the ultrasound, robyn who almost let me walk out of the ct scan with catheter in arm, the taxi driver, russell the bus driver (who saw alice cooper last week) and yadda yadda..you get like this at times like this. i'm gonna celebrate with a trip to the mall :0

'The Road To Interzone-Reading William S. Burroughs Reading' by Michael Stevens

Michael Stevens has published his highly anticipated work on the books that influenced William S. Burroughs. 'The Road To Interzone-Reading William S. Burroughs Reading' is available from Suicide Press or Amazon. To know everything you need to know about WSB's reading habits buy a copy and get one for a fellow traveller. I'm very proud that michael stevens included my work on the cover of this truly important book.

Review
A fascinating and richly helpful piece of literary archeology, tracing as broadly as possible the sources William Burroughs had available to him as he wrote. Both the title and the method echo the classic
Road to Xanadu, John Livingston Lowes' excavation of Coleridge s reading: Coleridge, like Burroughs, being more than a little interested in drugs. It is a work for which all Burroughs students should be grateful. --Larry McMurtry

Michael Stevens has found the right vein, circulating raw material of the mind of visionary genius in post modern literature and art. His exhaustive compendia and matrix is like the fractal's pattern bringing similarities that could reveal whole equation. He has provided the reader with the sources of allusion, influences, critiques, and the spirit of scatological obsessions of the late William S. Burroughs, the well-read innovator, inventor, and investigator in literature, art, culture and cosmology. Ezra Pound once advised readers who thought the Cantos too obscure, to just think of them as people throughout history sitting around talking. This book allows me the conversations with Uncle Bill that I unfortunately neglected in his presence. --Charles Plymell

To scan Michael Stevens' bibliography is to dream of entering into William Burroughs' head from a new angle -- not from his writings but from his readings. You can't live Burroughs' life but you can read the books he read. You can infect yourself with the same word virus he picked up in writers ranging from Abrahamson (Crime and the Human Mind) to Yeats ( 'cast a cold eye on life, a cold eye on death...' ) Will these get you any closer to the mutations Burroughs performed on the word virus? Doubtless you'll understand the man and his work better. And perhaps, with the help of the creative reading Burroughs espoused, Road to Interzone will even put you in position to subject the same viral sources to a few new mutations of your own. --RealityStudio.org

the gayest man on earth would call this over the top

it took me a while to warm to YACHT..

i never liked tequila when i first tasted it
or acid
or yoghurt
or sausages
or coriander/cilantro
or the smiths
or fassbinder
or richard larter

2 collages and an inkjet print

amy macdonald .some pop for ironing to

m. s. subbulakshmi bhaja govindam

m. s. subbulakshmi is my favourite singer. this video of bhaja govindam is not the best vehicle for the performance but it is a recording made in her prime.

a drawing

a drawing

wendy saddington and loka nunda my sweet lord

yes i know.its over the top but i love the way wendy avoids underselling a song.

collage sooth and try state magazine

its not often i 'm called a soothsayer but in the spirit of salem there's the odd occasion....the top image of mike was made a decade before i assisted his delivery as we used to say.

try state magazine serves a dose of maloney here

the antlers

as usual my new favourite cd is the same as everybody else. This has to be the best album since funerals..its a subtle masterpiece beyond my expectations of pop

herrmann not sherman

(detail) dont try this at home

do try this at home

the amazing viennese artist matthias herrmann has produced a new book of images of his stilled performances set in the tuscan landscape.
as always, herrmann's body is the site of the self-photographed enactments of operettas of his inner life.
I'm not sure what I'd say if I came across these characters in the woods...somewhere between 'dont worry..help is on it's way' or 'help..polizei!'
They are hilarious, tragic, menacing, and erotic in hilarious, tragic menacing ways and i for one instinctly know this language perfectly well.. but that's a secret i can never tell.
He commissioned drawings of himself by artists salvador cobrero alarcon, brian kenny, zachari logan and sito mujica included here in the book.
Matthias Herrmann has been perfecting this self-referential work for more than a few decades and as far as i'm concerned he totally out-shermans cindy.. always has, always will.

toscana 3 is the third in herrmann's pocket-size italy series.
you should buy the book from printed matter.

mink deville dead

never put a foot wrong

winston tong

genius!

gary hume

from red eyes & sticky fngers ACP 2005

my my times fly

fall in a hole

in my room

ny senator tom duane on social services

first cut

P.P.Arnold 'The First Cut is The Deepest'

new dead artist

i do love granma's houston museum and i have just germinated the basil seeds i snaffled from a houston roadside to remind me of those texan rauschenbergs

vic chesnutt and victoria williams

Night of wonders with two eccentrics

Reviewed by Bernard Zuel
July 13, 2009

VICTORIA WILLIAMS AND VIC CHESNUTT
The Factory, July 10

WHEN Vic Chesnutt, wry, sharp and foul-mouthed, and Victoria Williams, scatty, loose and smiling, are together on stage, the night comes over all Beckett-like. In their banter, their seeming aimlessness, their humour intersecting with pathos, not to mention their touches of madness, they are a transposed Vladimir and Estragon.

Williams, in loose woollen pants held up by suspenders, an old linen-like shirt buttoned to the throat and what looks like a faux-fur bonnet, is op-shop odd and Chesnutt, his damaged legs in baggy pants, a plain sweater and smart hat, is halfway between rumpled and dignified. Like a pair of old vaudeville tramps, together they fill in time, make do, don't always make sense but entertain themselves in their own way.

Opening the tragic comedy in two acts on his own, Chesnutt had sung songs of rambling narratives that blended brutal truths and pointed humour with poignant undercurrents. The set list was arbitrary, his songs simple but charged, like his guitar playing, and his asides

to the small audience progressively took on more of an edge before he wheeled himself off. He has something indefinable but potent.

When Williams arrived, accompanied by Chesnutt playing a makeshift drum kit, she forgot to plug in her guitar, wafted about with various mouth organs and engaged in circular chats with Chesnutt while scratching out parts on her guitar. It was hard not to think eccentric, if not crazy, old woman.

But when she sang she was part Tom Waits, part Nina Simone and part Granny Clampett, capable of oddball melodies and startling attractiveness as well as discursive sidetracks and on-the-edge tones. Her own songs can swing between extremes but to hear her sing Moon River is to walk a very thin line between incredibly real and too bizarre for words.

At the end you don't know if you've seen something wonderful or merely odd, or even if it matters on which side you fall. Which seems about right.

felion arrachnarrative

u n d e r l i g h t s e d a t i o n

sound and vision by maloney

n e b u o l o u s f e e l i n g s o f f a i l u r e

vision by maloney..i stole the sound from buck 65's dirtbike