Where the OK Crow Flies
The sun in London is beating the pavement like a wet leather kiss, so I'm glad for the southerly winds that guide me toward the white cliffs. I'll always stop short of Western heights, exit at the Royal Harbour, and wind through the tunnels. Patterns reoccurring, alleyways home. Just before the enlightenment, prior to the blinding, the creeping onset of hysteria presses and pulls. Bipedal cattle marking lines in the road and no walk throughs. Only the pagan, insane, and degraded follow the flow of spring water. Paradise paved. And yet, amongst all this noise, the Crow found me again.
I was seventeen when it first appeared to me, on the banks by Jacksons Field, North Kent, where the art school stood that I did not attend. Recently however, I have started to sense its presence in memories far earlier. Mother told me that a black bird flew through the window, and so she had reasoned, there were baby birds in better need of the pacifier than me. Albeit a crumpled thrice washed and folded note-to-self lost to a jean pocket, I still remember. A short time after, spied from the sunken canvas of my push chair, that sky blue rubber nipple revealed itself nestled in the thickly lined rose bushes off from Berengrave Lane. As if dropped from the greatest of heights. My mother would often walk me that way. She couldn’t quite believe it either, I recall. Of course, this earliest of memories that has persisted all these years, has until now been known to me as nothing more than the kind lie of a parent confused by a moment of coincidence. Such is the way with tooth fairies, curly hair from crusts, and Christmas Eves. But I've started to wonder, was she telling a truth after all. And so with all this in mind, today, I say, Ok Crow.
I've felt lost, many times. Perhaps I walk too quickly. Maybe I look up too often when I should be looking more where I am going. Along the way I have searched for places to call home, and found nothing beyond the embrace of my familiars. We travel in a small party, spiralling slowly through time. The coastal cloud cover feels oppressive and my head hurts, but the open skies bring too much heat.
Having sought the coast, I can report that isle life is barren and materially poor. But in that absence the vibrations from the channel are more easily felt. A few years back I had found shelter in the manifest umbrella of Outsider Art - a spiritual halfway house for my broken arts. That feels to have been hijacked by lazy white hacks with a hard-on for Basquiat. Not sure if they are worse than the abstract grifters, mind - but that has long been the reserve of the upper sanctum. Inside and out, sometimes it all feels a lot like decoration for the spiritually dull. Hokey hieroglyphs and clowns in crayon crowns. Rainbow waste. The critics seem scared. Searching for clarification with their eyes closed. Do we even look with our eyes anymore, prior to a general approval having been met. Blinders on. Curatorial check list approved dropdown boxes. Where will it all lead? We will be at the gates with our begging bowls and pitchforks in hand, regardless. What a mess. Statistical curation has become the new wave. Familiar killers. Big Machiavellian merchandise. GoFuckMe.
AI won't help. A spiral downturn in critical thinking et al, bad painting will rise like cream - a new low bar with which to measure authenticity. Pre-ripped canvas. The final cut backs to Warhol’s factory line. Danny’s Dyer-bolical finger paintings and a Francis Bacon sandwich from Greggs. Some awful new wave of punk beckons. Selling shit to toilets. The worse it gets worse. Surrogate production. AI allows every half baked idea to bear immediate fruit. No chance of crumbling to dust under the weight of experimentation. There is no due process. These fucking idiots have shot crow in the head, but there's no blood on anyone’s hands. Idiot thinks. Machine completes. Astral dejection. Convenience feels like a castrated Trojan horse. Or perhaps I'm walking in the wrong direction, again. Crow? No wonder the soft spot on my head feels close to bursting these days. Almost cut my hair.
Thing is, when I paint, all this superficial noise seems unnecessary. Just cat revs and songs like captured conversations. Irony wired in. These sick notes seem to be helping. Anger is not the best energy. And so the psychic had said. Automatism. Borderline cosmology. Old books. Broken poems. Technical manuals and appropriated transmissions from the numbers station. Base 8. Water signs. Holy Robots. No Disclaimers. No drama. No dickheads. A place away from the noise is always a better place now.
I will never know, [where the (OK) crow flies]
Lupen Crook
