Some days

Everyone's terribly excited

A Guardian-run flickr stream where anyone is invited to contribute a message for Obama. Here is a small curated view.

Have you seen these?

Barack Obama's photostream on Flickr (thanks, Andrew). Some candid shots of the core team on election night. Notice the lack of people milling about. Notice the calm air. The lack of booze. A few bottles of water on the table. Muted.

The transitional government website is change.gov and it's an interesting spot to have a dig around.

Meanwhile it feels tribal around here. Obama! I call. Obama! they call back.

His journey here

This is a half hour documentary about Barack Obama's life, with interviews from school and collegemates, colleagues, family and friends. Some great pictures, too. There is an audio download option.

It's difficult not to love this guy.

Election night outside Freddy's

Hot damn

It was only about a half hour after Obama was elected that I noticed it. There was just sheer jubilant joy in Brooklyn last night. We just celebrated all night long. It was so beautiful. Every passing car, every passing person, cheered and beeped as we danced together. What a night to be in America.

We cheered the cabs, they cheered back. We cheered the people passing by the corner of Freddy's. They cheered back. They joined us. We danced. People swung from lampposts. We cheered the department of sanitation truck. They cheered back. We cheered the NYPD (well, I did). They ooh ooh ooh'd back. Every time anybody said yaaaaaaay, the room lit up, alive, yaaaaaaying back.

We sang, we danced, we played, we danced, it was a wreck of jubilation, I am covered in glitter dust today, we kissed and hugged strangers, no one was a stranger last night. Today I hear the same sounds of New York outside this corner house and they sound softer, chirpier. Of course, the jackhammers are back, across the street. This house is a confluence of streetcorners, one of them being one of the busiest thoroughfares in Brooklyn. There are always jackhammers around.

This was no mere Democrat victory, mark that. Last night, something reached deeply into people's hearts and set them free. Last night, the word OBAMA meant love. Something extraordinary happened in America's soul last night. This is how it was, here in Brooklyn, on Dean street.

OBAMA

YYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY. Hallelujah. Sleep well, folks. You can, tonight.

Today

It's festive around here, there's no two ways about it.

Tick tick tick

It's november 4th. Good morning.

The Day After

But you know, it is highly unlikely that Obama will actually turn into the little baby Jesus on November 5th, so there is likely to be tears and disappointment regardless.

The Day Before

New York: good place to be if he wins.
New York: good place to be if he loses.

Black Watch review

We went to see Black Watch at St. Ann's Warehouse in DUMBO on friday. Jesus I love DUMBO, my heart beats faster as I walk down Clark street. It was a crisp, clear afternoon, and we drank coffee as we walked under the Manhattan Bridge (the one I am in love with) and went to join the audience scene in the theatre.

It was quite a show. Very energetic, beautifully choreographed, and the first piece of theatre that I have seen that addresses the Iraq/Afghanistan conflict from the perspective of some of the soldiers from the Black Watch brigade, a 300 year old Scottish institution largely formed from Tayside working class men, who have fought "30 bloody Cullodens" in various warzones throughout the world, and how this one was different. The show was staged in traverse, ie. audience on either side of the performing area, which was a great idea for the dance sequences, but pretty terrible for the more intimate moments. They seemed to be using actual footage from the shock and awe raids, and at times the actors seemed tired, not surprisingly, given their extraordinary performance schedules on this show.

To be honest, the publicity for the show is a bit ridiculously heavy handed, but it is the kind of theatre that reconnects with one of theatre's lifeblood functions: to delve into the current affairs of our time, bring news stories to life, vividly, in ways that television or even film just cannot. There is a poetic licence available in theatre that is entirely particular to the stage, and a kind of language is created within the best productions, within which audience, actors and all can take off together and fly.

I am also some kind of a sucker for non-showyoffy men singing in groups, and there was plenty of singing in this show. The show has been running for two years all over the world, and this run in St. Ann's is being billed as the last New York city performances. If you care about theatre, you probably just have to go.

A subway serenade

Today I became a Clusterflocker

I wonder what comes next?

Turning beauty

McCain the slave legacy today

Here's the too short video.

These Absences

It has been so long since I have posted here regularly. There are endless things I can say. Lately it seems to be about this New York city reality that I have been living again this past 10 days. I have been busy with small things and thinking around the corners of big things. And real actual things getting done, also, which Takes Up Time. I do a lot of things, a lot of different stuff, and so sometimes this blog is a regular part of my routine, a regular mode of communication, and sometimes it is not. I still love it, though. And that has nothing to do with my stats, which vary wildly from time to time, depending on who is linking to me, and how often my regulars show up. This is not a one topic blog either, so it's a bit like showing up for coffee in your friend's flat, and having a chat, getting jiggy on a topic, around here, or getting outright talked at about something Lucy Feels Passionate About.

I hope you keep showing up. But whether you do or not, I am still here.

The last time I saw Richard

Richard I know you were here yesterday and I just want to tell you that well, goddammit.

My old man can turn on the stove

He has reinvented Prometheus for a new generation.

Insight

Here, 2

We're listening to Amy Winehouse Back to Black. The wine tastes of blackberries. It's the first freezing night since I got back to Brooklyn. This neighbourhood is familiar to me now, this house is familiar to me now, this man is familiar to me now, but there's an intimacy that is getting quieter, that seems to be wearing something in me out, slowly and quietly. New York still excites the living bollocks out of me but this time it is a low pulse, a far cry from the insatiable pull Manhattan had on me when I first came here.

You get what you get, even when what you get is not what your heart desires. Isn't that amazing?

With all of its complication

I am very happy to be here.

Immigration

I'm blogging from the boarding area of Shannon airport, after clearing immigration with a pretty cool South American woman officer. These things can, and have, in my experience, been intense. Last year I was interrogated for over an hour, before they let me through. This time, she asked some straight up questions, I gave her some straight up answers, she looked at my 'story' on her big database, stamped me up straight off, and vigorously. It's a nice sound, the stamping of a passport by immigration officials. But sitting in that little corridor for the second time, I really wasn't in the humour for all that bollocks all over again, so I'm really glad it was short and sweet.

I have had so many epiphanies in this departure lounge. It's a strange environment for an epiphany. A real, literal holding area. After last november's grilling, I sat here and vibrated until they opened the plane and I got into pretzel mode. This time, I've forgotten to order the Indian vegan option (apparently it's great) but otherwise the epiphany is muted. Thoughtful. This departure lounge needs an art project, something softening, engaging, drawing in. That corridor also needs an art project, to soothe freaked out people trying to get their story together.

So, it is going to be one of those long afternoons today. I love those. It's the best kind of jetlag.

Sheesh

Interactivity.

Here is ... This is Where

Finally, my two still movies, Milla and Rose from the This is Where series, are online.

This is what they look like.

(Also viewable on the vimeo page, where they are a bit larger. Bear in mind that these works are intended for large sized projected installations. Feel free to purchase a dvd where you can view them in the comfort of your own sofa, on your lovely flatscreen telly.)

My day

I got a filling today and the anaesthetic injection contained adrenaline. At least that's what they say, I don't know, it was intense. Also, I got a puncture in town and had to get a taxi home. Now it is 12:35 am and I am about to put the first undercoat (already primed, last night) of paint on the hallway walls. It's going to be a long night.

Get your arse in the kitchen

with this.

Please forgive this momentary need for endless repetition

but seriously, cloud cuckooland. Cloud cuckooland. Cloud Cuckooland.

How Sheep Shit Made My Blog Mega

Ok it is an attention-grabbing headline, but I have to say that google brings visitors from all over the world to LUCY TAKES OFF to read and understand sheep shit better. I would say that currently, 5 % of my traffic comes from this source. I will shortly dedicate a full and in-depth post to the topic.

New Projects

I am working on assembling a few new projects from the ideas files, that I'm interested in diving into over the next few weeks. Dude. I have 28 immediately pressing minimised files on my dock right now, and I've just started looking through a whole new place I've been keeping ideas lately. Lucy Inhales Deeply.

Pedro

When I was 18, part of my extended scene included a dude called Pedro. He was about our age, probably 20, and he was homeless, living by selling and taking drugs, knocking on his clients and friends’ doors at 2 in the morning, asking if he could sleep on the couch. He was a friend of Tadhg, who shared a flat with Caroline and me.

I remember him calling and asking me to just look at his eyes, as he looked up to the light, his pupils huge and wide and black. Six tabs, I’ve just taken six tabs of acid, he said. I kicked him out. He stayed for a game of Trivial Pursuit once and I remember being amazed by his ability to answer every question and take the game comfortably. I hope he got hip to "Who wants to be a millionaire?" when it came around. Pedro. I met him on Grafton Street, or maybe it was Camden street, about 3 years ago, in 2005. I was so surprised to see him, even more surprised that I recognised him, I hadn't thought of him even once since then. Pedro! I shouted, and went to greet him. He looked at me with horror. Don’t call me by that name. That’s not my name anymore. My name is Peter.

Slice o' life

So I find myself in a village where the local small shop is dying slowly from a trade that has turned away from shopping local (what's that?) to once a week car treks to the 24 hour Dunnes Stores, where they buy Everything. The local small shop used to be run exclusively by a single old dude, but he seems to have mostly retired now, and a female relative runs the shop.

But she's not there all the time because the sheer living reality of operating a slowly dying business is probably squeezing the life out of her, and so she hires this teenager to take care of things on the weekends. This teenager is cool you know, we have a chat of some sort whenever I go in, it's part of the appeal of nipping down to the shop, the whole casual blah blah of it all.

So I bring Stinky Yappy (what a charmer) for a walk down to get some Donegal Catch haddock fillets, and while I'm there, the old man comes into the shop and is kind of spruced up and cheery and he makes a bee line for the teenager. As my attention is drawn to the cola bottles it seems to me that dude is pretty delighted that teenager is around and wants to ask her questions and you know, be around her. Now, dude is like, 85 years old. Teenager is like, oh I suppose 19. She responds by shutting down and shutting up. It's a really common Irish teenaged response to weirdy old men. I did it myself sister, exactly the same way. And you know, he's never going to try to do something physically to her, and he probably won't even say anything explicitly freaky to her, but it's just all about the way he vibes in her presence, and the way she is clearly wondering why the fuck she has to cope with this shit for ten euros an hour.

Brought me back.

The beautiful beautiful Tube

Boots at Bacon

Here's Grace!

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Alert

Anyone who hasn't yet taken the whippet tour, I strongly recommend it. Opportunities will be available after the tour, for forms to be filled in where you can testify to how the whippets have changed your life, etc. Please wait patiently while we process your testimony.

Loving Tar

I am currently in a deep quiet slow love with an old alpha male black german shepherd, called Tar. I've had a tough history with Tar. He tried to eat me the last time I was charged with taking care of him alone. There was no aggression in him, just simple desire to satisfy his appetite. So I carried this huge black wolf dog by the scruff of the neck an acre down the field, my heart beating intense and wide, and threw him into a kennel, where I more or less kept him for the rest of the week. That was 2 years ago.

Lately we've been having gentler times, I've been helping him with his ears. He has a tough time with his ears. I squirt some squirty stuff in there and get massaging. He makes these sounds. They reach into me. I feel the soothing. I feel it.

And this week, starting slowly, I've been taking him for walks, and playing with him, rubbing his head, getting friendly with him. The way he looks at me when I bring him for walks. He doesn't usually get out for long walks like this, not since they retired him in the police service, which is how he got back here. I love this dog. I love him. I am thrilled when I see his eyes light up. I love him.

£2 each person

Dude

Family picnic at Stansted airport, between the departure lounge and the gates, in the smoking cubicle

Oh. This

rocks.

Ok something keeps coming back to me since the debate

like a piece of undigested mouse viscerum. And it is Obama's answer to a question which quoted Ronald Reagan's framing of Russia as 'evil'. Do you think Russia is evil? he was asked. And he replied that no, he didn't think Russia was evil, but that it had done an evil behaviour. Jesus. Jesus.

Here

where I am alone, where it is pouring pouring rain, where the yappy one is quiet, where I have spent the day crying, where I don't know my own heart, where I am listening to Gillian Welch who can soothe the really out of the way bits like I can soothe Tar's ears just to hear the sounds of relief and bliss he makes when I do that, where I discover in a moment of crazy serendipity that this video was uploaded by Phil, the Clusterflocker, a blog I've been hanging around in lately, where I feel a flash of warmth that says hey, psst, it's here! It's here! It's here.

Self portrait in Hoxton Square

Where I fell in love again

Talkin, 2

So the biggest sleaze that McCain threw at Obama on tuesday was the $3 million overhead projector he tried to secure for a planetarium in Chicago, but apparently failed, depressingly. My ears perked up at the mention of this overhead projector. I've been using overhead projectors lately, and I would love to explore the possibilities afforded by one that cost 3 million dollars. I bet it rocks. I find it interesting that nobody in America seems to find it bizarre and disturbing that McCain would strip back all public funding except for the care of returned veterans. Seriously, do you not find this incredibly bizarre? From a European perspective, this is nuts. From a Scandinavian perspective, I think it is hardly comprehensible.

So this little weak bit of rhetoric exposed more about his own value system than Obama's. Overhead projector for kids and adults to learn about the cosmos in a planetarium? I certainly fucking hope so.

And while we're on the subject, all this talk about bringing soldiers home "in glory and not defeat" - does this not creep the fuck out of any human being who is not bloodthirsty? I mean, jesus.

I am a Brooklyn-bound L train

You know, I was never one for either The Smiths or Radiohead, though I have had my moments with Radiohead, but this song is captivating. Anyone know what it's called?

Bizarrely enough, the very first song I ever busked was Creep, belting it out on the Bedford L platform while my guitar-playing French dude friend did his best to be heard above all the machine noise. Waves and waves of indifference. It kind of rocked, in a very weird way. So it was Creep and there was one other song I can't remember right now, this was 5 years ago in new york, and the other song I only knew one verse of, but it rocked, and I figured that people would be gone by the time the verse was over. Those L trains were sparse though, so pretty fast we moved into town. We'd start playing on the beat of the doors opening. I can't remember what that one-verse song was, now. Dude.

I bought my ticket last night. I fly to New York on the 17th.

Talkin

Somebody needs to send an email to both teams in this election, explaining what the word 'oversight' actually means. Oh, and also if they could please finally drop the cute undergrad little 'wall street main street' thing, that would be cool. Thanks.

Dogherding update

We have been joined by another pigdog: pigdog 3. Pigdog 3 is yappy most of the time, unlike pigdogs 1 and 2, who are yappy only some of the time. It is an unfortunate turn of events.

Curated LUCY TAKES OFF whippet surf

For the casual visitor who has arrived at LUCY TAKES OFF today courtesy of a 'pumping udders' google search, or for those of you who have recently discovered this shindig, I highly recommend a peep through the LUCY TAKES OFF archives, beginning with a search for 'whippet'. You might want to look at, for instance...

Epithalamion for a pair of Brooklyn whippets

Romance

Ode to a fire escape

Whippet love: the musical

The whippet love series starts here, but you really don't want to miss any of it, there are lots.

There is a lot of posts devoted to the whippet in this blog.

Not to put too fine a point on it

Somebody just farted. I think it was pigdog number two. But then, you're on the internet. You can't tell if I'm lying.

First there are kisses, then there are sighs

Jesus, now I'm blogging lousy Boy George videos, but really, isn't this song amazing?

I really don't think very much about Boy George but

his just-flat voice is just-flat in a really haunting kind of way. Anyway, I saw a few minutes of the current incarnation of this dude in the 15 minutes of telly I watched here yesterday (what can I say, it's satellite tv, it's a novelty) and today every time I go into the kitchen and see Ivy and Daisy the pure-black sweet wide eyed german shepherds staring at me, I have been singing the chorus to this song. Nothing on youtube captures the gorgeousness of the single line I have been singing: it's the way he bends the note on the last "make me cryyyyyyyy".

It is rocking my mind right now.

Cool article on the Great American Election Chessboard

by Michael Tomasky, who is pretty much running the Guardian coverage of the US Presidential elections. It's short, it's straight, it's simple.

Poochie mama

This week, I am a dogherdess, an animal husband, poochiemama to 9 dogs and 3 cats, 5 of whom are big high energied german shepherds. I have a favourite, she sleeps with me in my bed at night, but she's leaving tomorrow. Last night, she laid in my arms, on her back, her short legs sort of dangling in the air, as she rested her head on my chest. She is playing me like a fool. Here she is. Meet Dolly.

The problem with Obama

The problem with Obama is that he might only last four years, if he does get in. Unless he starts turning water to wine PRETTY FUCKING FAST after getting into the Oval office, people are going to be very, very disappointed.

A curated youtube surf

So we start here,

then we take a left,

go straight up for a bit,

then stop

and mosh suddenly.

Stop, listen to the heart beating.

It says, fly.

And then suddenly, we fall into the sea.

Last night as I lay dreaming...

So last night I dreamt of the Clintons. Bill AND Hillary.

Bill and I met somewhere, and ended up in his apartment suite in the basement of some large old house somewhere in New York. We talked a lot. I talked a lot with both Clintons. They did most of the talking. But with Bill, it was more like talking around. Specifically, around this incredible sexual chemistry that was happening in the room. God, I have rarely felt anything like this, and he was a figment of my imagination. Maybe that figures, really...

So it was intense, and his energy was intense, and I remember thinking that he was acting like a king who was used to his demands being satisfied by eager courtiers. I wasn't feeling like a courtier. I wanted to be woo'd. But the vibe was getting more and more intense, more and more difficult to resist. Fabulous. Eventually he had to leave to go somewhere, and I went to the bathroom.

Then Hillary showed up. She was totally unmoved by the presence of a young woman in her husband's New York apartment, and didn't ask for any explanations. I didn't really have any to give anyway, I didn't know why I was there, and thus far, nobody had had sex with anybody. I was hoping it wouldn't be with Hillary.

So Hillary and I went outside to a garden bench, and had a drink together, and chatted. She was good company, vivacious and mischievous. I wanted to tell her how great I thought she was, and it was a pity that this relaxed, funny side of her didn't come out much in the media. But there was an edge to it too, it was like a performance, a perfect performance. There was no way Hillary was thinking of this as a casual opportunity for friendliness and fun.

There is a website for this kind of stuff, you know. But BOTH Clintons? Have YOU ever dreamed of a Clinton?

Enniskillen: initial thoughts

I wrote this the day after the show opened, a few days ago...

So the show has opened in Enniskillen, at the old Portora Royal School, a 400 year old shindig that once educated the teenaged Sam Beckett and Oscar Wilde. It has been fun seeing today's teenaged boys - and a smattering of girls - interacting with the new rolling, low humming beast in their foyer. It is running there right now, and up to the 5th October, so if you happen to be in the viscinity, or feel like making a trip up there, Fermanagh is gorgeous, I recommend it, and Portora is a very special place.

And for what is basically a simple set-up of video projector and audio system, it's really been a lot of work, in fact three full days of work. I feel like I'm leaving it in good hands, to wend its way in this border town. There will be gigs in the evening, so adult humans will be exposed to it, too. But you know, I could really just hang out there chatting with the fourteen year olds like Ryan today, who is studying art, and who doesn't have exams this year, they just put him in a room, "say a word and we have to draw a picture. It's alright, like", and who hung around to watch the show, and dug the story. Or the two older boys who were vibrating with excitement at the whole thing, and who really dug the soundtrack with its purely analogue instrumentation and electronic feel. Or the very small kid who stormed into the middle of the foyer, hands on hips, and shouted, "What is THIS?" with some consternation. Or the boy who shouted to me, "did someone paint in the water?"

Or the teacher who asked, "can't it stay forever? I love it! I love that it can just be around, slowly infiltrating the boys' senses".

This is pretty far out stuff for kids of that age, so it's thrilling to see the few that seem to be inspired by it.

Generally, I found things friendly out there. Teachers have been keen to get involved and help out with turning the project on every day, and I have been made tea the last couple of days. I'd be into doing this kind of thing again, with perhaps even more interactivity between myself and the kids. This particular school is of course interesting to me, because when I was the age of these kids, I was reading about Oscar Wilde going to that school, about Sam Beckett who went there too, and kind of rocking out to the whole notion of wild creativity. I had no idea of what this arcane 400 year old institution, at that time for boarding boys, the children of the ruling and well to do classes really meant, or signified, or was ACTUALLY, or any of that shit.

And then I went to Trinity, where both of them went after that (am I right about that? I know Beckett went there, maybe Wilde went to Oxford?) and you know, when I made my application for rooms in college as I was entering my fourth year, I scrawled all over the pink application sheet all about the specific room, on the specific floor, in the specific location, as if they didn't already know that that had been Beckett's room when he was there. As it happened, it would have been very handy, because it was right by the college theatre, which I was very into at the time. But I didn't get rooms, that one or any other. But today, my work and Ross' soundtrack is being projected where those boys spent their teens a hundred years ago, and I see them running through the flickering light of the projector rays reaching across the foyer.

I have fallen in love with my work again. I have fallen in love with the business of bringing it from that endlessly in-love first process of pressing pen to paper watching the ink flowing until it is done, of taking the photograph, of receiving the idea - those sensual moments of happeningness - and now, through a five month process of moving shyly and excitedly toward each other, as I construct, edit, reconstruct, collaborate (with Ross Bonadonna, Brooklyn composer, producer and my squeeze) and make these things available for other people to see and interact with.

It has been fun.

They will be showing up on Here Comes Lucy very soon.

UPDATE: Lovely Clusterflocker Sheila has written a lovely note about this post here. Thanks, Sheila!

Dublin in shades of grey and blue

London

The very first crisp brown leaves were beginning to fall from the trees. Autumn was underway in London. In Enniskillen, the trees were just beginning to blush red and yellow. In Clare, the trees are still green.

Daisy: a true story with pictures

Daisy discovers the Spiegeltent...


Daisy meets her very first cocktail!


Daisy discovers some big city conundrums!


Daisy sees a little hint of home in the city


I have been taking pictures. They will be up soon. London rocks. In the meantime, have this...

In Dublin, I performed a little show in the Fringe Festival about a daisy's fantastic journey of living in some hard circumstances, and her plucky, inspiring attitude to life in the midst of what others might consider tragedy. To accompany my performance, I illustrated the journey with daisy herself, sitting in a plastic beer glass with a little water in the bottom of it. I brought daisy with me through the streets and interiors of Dublin I visited on friday, and took some photographs of what she saw there.

It is a long way from the train tracks of Ballybrophy, from where she was plucked.

Incidentally, my one woman one daisy rollercoaster of a show, the one minute love hit, is available for booking for our forthcoming world tour, which will be accompanied by a photo show, detailing her amazing journey from the Ballybrophy railway tracks. Queries from promoters, festivals, galleries and hosts are welcome at the email address on the right.

London girling

So I'm on the road until next weekend. Here in London until tuesday, then back to Dublin, then Enniskillen for the show, then back to Dublin, back to Clare. Posting will probably be thin, but juicy. Like a London girl.

At Hoxton Square

I am in a hotspot in Hoxton Square, London. London is very peopled. It feels denser than New York and I can't figure out how that could possibly be. Maybe they're just all out on the street or something. Anyway, it's fabulous. I'm totally entranced by the tube stations here. Jesus. I have always been a big subway fan, and thrill to experiencing different cities' subway systems. It's a way of getting to know a city intimately, even at first glance. Love the stuff. And I've been to London quite a few times before, it was my first ever subway system when I was 14 and wandering around on my own, and several times since then.

But this time it seems different, I've seen quite a few more subway systems since the last time I was in London but Jesus, the tube is so beautiful. It's really entrancing me. The stations themselves, architecturally, the sheer labyrinthine quality of them, the colours, the designs, are so different from station to station. Then there's the trains. The seating is all lengthways down the carriage, and the seats are much closer to each other than New York, for instance. And they're soft furnished! Oh. I love subway systems. People here are so interestingly dressed also.

I'm really very surprised by this city. Really enjoying it. Loving English people. Loving them. More when I have another minute to spare...

Stuff from the future, you can make (mostly)

How to make hover shoes so you can, you know, hover, above the ground

How to make a piss simple set of audio speakers, for about 3 cents

Small steps toward the realisation of our smellovision dreams

So if you have any other tips for making fab stuff easily, send a link or a comment...

Clonlara landscape, summer

Maybe this is the reason people come to my blog by googling 'sheep shit'?

The future of sex, caring, nursing, um... women?

Female robots.

"I see faces, understand voices and make facial expressions. At the moment I am just a machine, but someday I may be fully alive and aware."

Kiddy voice, looks a lot like daisy lowe

I kind of dig Eva

Sinister child woman

Conservative hockey mom

For the gentleman who likes his android in a plastic miniskirt

Ok. And there are some male versions too. Compare and contrast. Discuss. Comment!

Cycling robot

Village people go Michelin: I am not sure this is the future

Fiddlin bot

Show news!

I have a number of posts in various states of undress, but today I am up to my goolies in trying to find a dvd burner that is compatible with apple, and that can also be shipped to me by tuesday (or in-person pickupable in Dublin or London over the next couple of weeks. This is proving more tricky than you might think.)

Meanwhile, show news! I will be performing my one minute one woman show, Ode to a Daisy, as part of the Project Brand New's Magic Moments series in the Dublin Fringe Festival on Wednesday, September 17th! The time is 3 pm, the place is the Fringe Festival Offices, on Sackville Place. I would be delighted to see you, and have you see me.

Other show news: I have a couple of still movies showing at the Enniskillen Arts Festival, from the 26th September to the 5th October in the foyer of the Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. My movies are Rose and Milla from my "This is Where" series of still live movies. They will be live on my site within the next couple of weeks. I'm really excited to be showing at the Portora school: it is an old private boys school that is celebrating its quatercentenary this year (ie. 400 years old!). Oscar Wilde and Sam Beckett both went there. My work will be projected in the foyer! This is seriously thrilling. There are lots of cool gigs and stuff happening in Portora over the course of the festival, Eliza Carthy and Andy Irvine are both playing there, so lots of people will be milling through. Come on up!

What is this love stuff? Or, jealousy makes for better sex.

It is official, Howard Jacobson says so. He says:

"People will tell you: "We've been together now for 40 years, never had a cross word, she's never looked at another man, I've never looked at another woman." And there's enough of Felix Quinn [the lead character in his new novel] in me to think: "well, that would be a bit dull".... Jealousy quickens. And to miss the quickening of jealousy, is to miss a big part of erotic life. I'm sure you can settle down and have a nice domestic life without jealousy.' A pause. A wicked smile. 'But - why would you want to?'"

He says that jealousy is the 'quickening' of love. The glue, the proton, the enzymes, the baking powder, the bit that makes the heart beat faster. I kind of have a soft spot for a species that needs things to kick its arse in gear and couple up. Here's Jacobson on desire:

"Intense desire is living in constant fear of loss. Can you love someone properly, without fearing that you'll lose them? I doubt it. I doubt it. With love grows this real sense of danger. The world will take it from you! And one way to lose someone you love, is to death, or an accident, or any kind of mishap. And the other, is to infidelity, which is another kind of mishap."

But what is the stuff that is getting quickened? What is this love stuff? So there's a moment when we recognise that we feel 'love' for somebody, the romantic version also, that really only occurs in moments. A minute after the fuzzy wuzzies and we're having a blazing row with that person, the flame of passion flickers with the wind. That's a different kind of love to the the love that finds the lover in a myriad of forms, whatever happens to be around.

Is the addict in love with his dealer? Is that love? Maybe it is... It's perceived need, it's a craving that flows through the body, and the perceived one who can soothe and supply what is craved. That's often how romantic love at least, is perceived, experienced. A feverish surge of drythroated desire. Most people would probably not think of it as love. Who is to say?

Matter. Anti-matter. Bang. Repeat.

When word started to filter out into science-ish blog land a few months ago, about the impending Large Hadron Collider deadline, the beginning of the experiments to generate little big bangs in a circular 17 mile long tube around Geneva, I was quite surprised. Because I had heard first about the LHC something like 15 years ago when I was piss young, and however I heard the news then, I just assumed that it was already happening. Of course I didn't call it the Large Hadron Collider, or even the LHC, and I didn't know the organisation organising it was called CERN, or any of that stuff that is so readily available to me online today, right now, as I type and fact-check and seek links to pepper through this post. Look at how beautiful it is.

Back then, and since I heard about it, CERN's Large Hadron Collider has been a part of my repertoire of conversational metaphors. I was deeply excited about it when I heard about it, and I have been talking about it ever since. A typical CERN moment might run something like this:

[time: 5.30 am, place: somebody's attic flat in Ranelagh or a shotgun house in Algiers Point, New Orleans, and the kind of 15 hour conversation that is a rolling stream of inspiration and widening energy]

Lucy: And that reminds me of this thing that they've built, somewhere in Switzerland, Zurich I think, and they have this machine that circles the city, way underground, and it recreates the big bang several times every hour! Imagine that! The origins of our existence, the moment of the birth of the whole manifest universe, happening quietly underground, in a lab in the middle of Europe...

The layers of the concept just kind of blew my mind every time I thought about it. I've even met Swiss people and talked about it to them, and they have all nodded and smiled sagely, yes, that's the LHC, yes, that's right, we are a very advanced people with our chocolate and our watches and NOW, OUR LHC!! But nobody mentioned the fact that it wasn't actually in operation yet.

So now it's really really happening, like, tomorrow. And actually, the fact that it hasn't been really really happening for the past 15 years has been kind of blowing my mind all over again, for the past couple of months.

One of the possible outcomes of these little hourly mini-recreations of the origin of the universe is that there might (tiny possibility, granted, but cool enough to mention) be created a tiny tiny baby black hole that will rapidly suck up all the spacetime around it, and thus gobble up the solar system, and god knows, maybe the galaxy in which we live. Wow. Awesome (in the biblical sense, not the californian surfer dude sense. Hm. Actually, both). This is how we would die. But can you imagine the moments just before? Seeing the black hole gulping up the galaxy from the inside around? Imagine how that would look? "A stream of atoms descending toward the abyss..." That ain't no pixillation, baby...

So they start sending particles around tomorrow in a clockwise direction, then the next week they'll send them anti-clockwise, just to get the Collider nice and warmed up. It'll be a few weeks before they start banging them together. First, some tests around the track. So. In a couple of weeks time, keep your eyes peeled. If you're gonna get spaghetticised, you'd probably want to at least catch a glimpse of the spectacular view.

Do something

We are a heaving house of hounds at the moment. Everybody is on their holidays and everybody has left their pooch with us, because we treat them nicely and let them stay in the house. We now have everybody's pooches in the house. The house is saturated of pooch.

I am getting ready to take Dolly, Smudge and Fluff out for a walk. Together. I have become each of their replacement 'go-to' person. They are each lovelorn and competitive for my affection. Particularly Dolly and Smudge. Dolly sniffs Smudge intently when I am stroking her, as if to find out what she has that Dolly doesn't.

Then Dolly makes her groovy twirling arse dance, and looks at me expectantly.

When I am cooking, one or other of them will come and sit by my ankles, facing out into the room, defying any other pooch to come near. Molly meanwhile is in full tilt nervous breakdown mode, very very dramatic. Tiny tiny pooch and her whole body heaving.

Molly, Dolly and I went running last night. Molly got very very excited and passionate and then it all got overwhelming for her and she started to snarl and nip at Dolly. Of course Dolly wasn't keen on any of this shit at all, and snarled back, and looked at me like, do something.

They all look at me like, do something. When somebody comes into the kitchen, there are usually 3 expectant dogs, staring at them, saying do something. When they hear a vehicle driving in, they all bark, do something.

So I am the one they have figured out is their best bet for long walks in the tall grassy wildish fields around here, and they are all keen to be my favourite. This morning, I felt that I had an inkling of what it might be like to be Hugh Hefner or somebody, with all these small pooches vying with each other for my affection and attention, sniffing each other's arses for hints and information, before nudging the other one out of the way and placing their head on my leg.

Insects Live Furiously

Today I am inspired by insects. It doesn't take much. But I am going to London soon and this is one place I think I will have to visit while I am there (except that it doesn't open until early next year... groo). One house. 17 million insects. Right in the middle of the city. This is very very exciting. This is the kind of thing that would make a gal move to London. Just to be close to them. Just to visit them every day. Just to be near humans who say things like, "The point is that I have a huge amount of admiration for these kinds of flies." The scientist in question is talking about maggots that go to live in human corpses that he then collects and investigates.

This article is so full of people who are passionate about insects. It makes me long for the tribe. There is a place there called the Insect Information Service and it is staffed by a man who is the " 'go to' man for the whole world's bugs." Hurrah! Here is what he says: "There are 23,500 insects and spiders in Britain and no one knows all of them, but I know most... My single mission in life is to make people more aware of the life around them. It mystifies me that people are interested in what's on Mars when all of this stuff is at their feet to be handled and touched." Swoon.

And there is a female mite specialist, who is married to the Curator of Cockroaches. This needs to be made into a movie.

So it is a long article. This is the anecdotal visceral emotional core of it:

"Hall is the country's leading forensic scientist, his speciality being the study of maggots in flesh wounds to discover the precise time of a murder.

He is a wry and engaging figure, a man who should be a TV drama series. He greets me with a selection of fattened maggots in pots, a kind of juju necklace of maggots removed from the rear end of a sheep, and a series of graphic photographs of wounds (mostly in live animals) in which maggots are making hay. In among the photographs are a couple of pictures of his own legs and arms with livid sores.

'I had a personal experience of some of this after I came back from Bolivia one time,' he explains matter of factly, 'along with the maggot of a botfly in my leg. They can eventually get quite large,' - he opens a 2in gap between thumb and forefinger - 'so I could feel this movement and I could see the tip of the maggot coming up to breathe and going back down.'

What did he do?

'Well you can't really squeeze them out, because they have these backward facing spines. You need surgery. I had a couple in my arm, too. I discovered if you put Vaseline over them they can't breathe and tend to back out of their own accord, eventually.' "

Ok, I've just realised that the insects will actually be dead, not living, and so, the whole heartbeatingly exciting spectacle of Lucy wandering blissfully through an eight storey cocoon of fucking and fighting insects has vanished in the space of a paragraph. London can breathe its smoggy air safely again. But I like this bit a lot:

"In the heart of the new building the Natural History Museum will also be putting its greatest living wonders on show: its staff of 220 scientists will be presented in full view of the public.

At intervals, along the winding descent through the dramatic cocoon, these rare creatures will be viewed behind glass at their work stations, preparing petri-dishes, peering through microscopes, eating lunch, perhaps grabbing an afternoon nap. At various points the public will have the opportunity to interact directly with them, to ask questions and to examine experiments."

Timmy Thumbs

This is Timmy Thumbs. I met Timmy Thumbs in august 2003 when he was the resident cat in the tattoo parlour on St. Marks around 1st ave. I was taking pictures of the tattoo artists and generally shooting the shit in this incredible cave of images. Timmy had had some kind of a chequered history, I think. Kind of a rocknroll polydactl.

There were Timmy Thumbs posters on the wall of the waiting room part of the studio, next to an old fullsize pacman machine. Timmy spent a lot of time hanging out on this futon sofa, showing off his crazy paws. I made him a photoshoot.

Black republicans

Yes, folks, they exist. So 90% of black americans who vote, vote democrat. That leaves a lot of votes in the leftover 10%. I guess we're all human. Just goes to show, race is not a decider of the colour of greed. But best of all, this woman's comment that she doesn't want Obama to win because she "doesn't want to live under socialism". It's amazing, really. This kind of people just doesn't travel. Anywhere. They wouldn't know socialism if it bit them on the arse and gave them free healthcare.

Well...

John McCain: sheesh, this is a tough one. Singsong. Blinking a lot, especially when lying. Girlish. Approval-seeking toothy grins after every sentence, eyes scanning the nearby crowd for a friend. Jesus, I'm sorry to have to say this about a 72 year old, apparently heavily sedated man, but, impotent. It's really clear what the Republican end of this election is about now. Not surprising that none of the Republicans are addressing the economy, or you know, like, ideas. They, um, forgot to think about that stuff.

No wonder they need the lipsticked pitbull.

This is a particularly favourite thing

of Brooklyn Lover... and it's pretty hot stuff. But check out Elvin Jones, I mean, seriously. He is a living prayer: a human instrument of focussed, relaxed, polyrhythmic devotion. It is off the charts.

Just wondering

I've just seen footage of John McCain walking across a stage. I have never seen him move before. Has the man got whiplash?

Lucy Takes Off's word on This Election: Cloud Cuckoo People

Sarah Palin is Cloud Cuckoo People.

She's got a four month old infant with special needs (time and priorities are clearly elastic concepts for her), a 17 year old daughter who has just gotten pregnant, she believes in guns but not birth control, got her first passport a year or so ago for a quick tour of the Alaskan guard in Kuwait, and two and a half years ago she was a mayor of a town the size of Nenagh. And she thinks she's all set to step up in a crisis as president of the United States?

These people talk about family values as if the only family values were anti-abortion, anti-birth control, guns and anti-sex education. So, vice president of the united states: how many hours a day do you think that job entails? Twelve, at a conservative estimate? Always on call? How many weekends off scot-free do you think the job allows for? In terms of a constant presence in your life whether you're at your desk or not, in terms of your availability to the government machine, you are basically owned by the office. Does it really not matter if a mother does not see her children for most of their young lives? I mean, when your whole philosophical platform is family values, for instance?

Anti-sex, in all its myriad forms, is the only family value ever discussed by these people. What about the family value of legally supported decent wages, state healthcare for children, education, these basic infrastructural aspects of living that come up again and again in American general elections, but no one seems to associate them as being 'family values'?

You know, I think to be honest that Obama is also Cloud Cuckoo People, but I dig him anyway. At this point, he is speaking a tongue that is inspiring, quite possibly, a revolution in feeling in America, about what is possible. Sure, the system itself is the same corrupt lobby-ridden bureaucracy it has been for 232 years, but if you're a thinking feeling human being, your money has got to be on Obama. That said, the man is full of unattainable promises. He stops only slightly short of promising the manifestation of the lord jesus christ on the earth in the form of a wiggly piggly sexpot in a bikini and everybody to have cake every day and lullabies at bedtime.

But for the past day or so, GOP sympathy has gushed to this bear-shooting woman who has to cope with her white trash daughter's errant ways. Hurrah, another opportunity to entirely miss the point AGAIN.There are many points to be missed, they've really got to get to work on it. Only just over 2 months left to miss all of them. Christ, I seem to really CARE about this shit.

They are all Cloud Cuckoo People.

The rain and the fever

So here's another perspective on this rainy miserable Irish summer: enjoy it while you can. Because very soon it might just be shorts all year round, and waves and waves of climate refugees fleeing their burning lands. According to Gaia theorist, and legendary climate scientist James Lovelock, Ireland, Britain and Scandinavia will be some of the few places left on the planet that will be habitable, when the fever starts.

How do you think the Irish economy would respond to that one? Do you think we'd let waves of refugees from Spain, Germany, France in, let alone Africans? Do you think it'll all turn into a huge money-fest, with property values REALLY soaring, as Ireland turns out to be actually one of the few habitable places left on the planet? Or will humanity step in and turn the mansions of Ailesbury road, Dalkey and the green fields of the west into refugee camps for fleeing Europeans? On what criteria would we allow them to enter: their professions? Or a demonstrated intuitive sense of understanding of nature, of the earth? How do we measure these things? I think we will all have to learn on the hoof as this episode of human history unfolds.

If you've ever seen James Lovelock being interviewed, you will know that he is a very mild mannered, practical and pleasant Englishman, and the original environmental scientist. His Gaia theory was treated with severe scepticism when he started talking about it back in the sixties (he's a feisty 88 now), and he's been warning about climate change for forty years or more:

"There have been seven disasters since humans came on the earth, very similar to the one that's just about to happen. I think these events keep separating the wheat from the chaff. And eventually we'll have a human on the planet that really does understand it and can live with it properly. That's the source of my optimism."

Dolly: nothing escapes from that Event Horizon

The CURE for monday morning (all twenty-odd minutes of it)

Rock your hearts out... apart from the pixillation, this is about as gorgeous as it gets. All dirty white brick, men in bowlers, orange raincoated Ringo, London black cabs, well behaved aback-taken "bit of an imposition to disrupt all the business in the area" humans on the street, the little twiddly fucking little microphones, the passion christ the passion, the beautiful fucking guitars held lovingly, bearded Paul, "everybody had a wet dream" John and fucking gorgeous sound of it all. Yeah, so they were bitching and falling apart at this stage. Who cares - look at them, they are having FUN. Oooooooh...

You know, I grew up at a time when John was dead, George - and indeed Bob Dylan, who I also only discovered a couple of years ago - had turned into a Travelling Wilbury, Ringo was a lardy old cigar smoker, and Paul was playing the pipes of peace, so I didn't get a Beatles infatuation until I lived with someone who had the White album. And then lived with my Brooklyn Lover last winter, who had the rest of them. I see footage like this and it makes my heart soar.

Must have also been such an antidote to all those early stadium gigs where they couldn't hear themselves play with all the screaming going on, to play a gig with such disappearing acoustics and bewildered onlookers. I am going to wear a miniskirt and boots tomorrow, mark my words. And play some guitar now.

And then along comes the fuzz. Boooooo!

Another kind of street photography

Beautiful example of what digital does brilliantly. The clarity is unbelievable. You can read the paint signs on the street.

The bear and the small squiggle

If you haven't seen this yet, and you're feeling even slightly poorly, then you need to have a look at this and all will be well.

You can kind of imagine what she's feeling, even if you are wildly far out in your impressions. It is an evocative scene. The gal was artificially inseminated, so she's probably a bit surprised by the sudden appearance of this squiggle creature. She looks a bit surprised, a bit like, oh for goodness sake, look at this squiggly little maggot, it has just appeared out of nowhere and it really is hopeless. I'd better take it in and sort it out before it squiggles itself out of existence.

More about home, and happiness

But happiness comes and goes, and when it's present there's nothing complicated about it at all. The only thing that's complicated about happiness is the search for it. I used to think that I needed to love everything about Denmark in order to be content living there, but that was never going to happen, because it just wasn't the right chemistry. So some people get a kick out of being stared at unselfconsciously by the local wildlife, and other people want nothing more than to feel entirely ordinary in the place that they live, not the weirdy one that lives on the corner. I think it is entirely dependent on the chemistry of the person in the place. When you find a place or a person that draws love out of you daily for it or him or her, then it's just a question of getting on with it. There is no more search, or expectation of finding happiness. There's just living.

Awake

It's 5:43 am in County Clare and I am awake.

I am not an early riser, nor am I still fucking around since yesterday. No, I have just been sleeping bollockily tonight. Fell asleep at something to ten, and woke up at four am. And here I am, blogging. This is No Way To Live, and I'm living it.

I feel like I've been in a kind of jetlag living freeflow since february, more or less, when I slipped from the influence of the steady circadian rhythms of my Brooklyn Lover. He came to Barcelona with me in June, and there was probably another steady period of sleeping and rising at Decent Hours, for that month. But these days, left to my own devices, I am sleeping arseways. I will probably try to get another few hours sleep before waking up again, and hopefully waking up again will happen before noon today.

I'm kind of living the endless day these days. The day as continuum of Not Getting Much Done, Spending Much Time Randomly Internetting and Taking Small Pooch For Mutually Satisfying Long Walks In This Fucking Beautiful Place.

A kind of floating.

Home

There was a post asking about 'home' on Clusterflock lately, and I found myself making a long comment reply. Here is the question, and this is what I wrote:

I've been living nomadically for a while. Right now I'm in the south east corner of Clare, Ireland. I am planning to travel to New York again soon. It's a question of layers of meaning, layers of what I could call 'reasons'. I overheard two people talking about where they lived a few days ago, and one of them said, "ah well, if it's home, it's home". I found this to be as wise and deep as anything I have ever heard on the subject.

Sometimes you just end up where you end up, and it doesn't feel like home at all. I lived in Denmark for three and a half years, feeling like that pretty much all the time. It was absolutely where I lived, and I learned the language, and made homes there, moved through the culture, but I was never settled there. Every flat I lived in had a quality of 'just for a couple of months' about it, often written into the contract. I worked on an entirely freelance basis. Having lived in a number of different cultures, I think that home for me will always be a multiple of places, that I return to, regularly.

What I've learned is that finding love and engagement in and for the place you live in is an important thing, and there is no 'perfect place'. If it's home, it's home, and you enjoy the good things and deal with the bad ones. When the bad ones overwhelm the good ones, you do everything you can do to move. Usually the blend is more nuanced than 'good' and 'bad'.

Sometimes you just can't leave a place until your time there is done. I am still living on a 'couple of months' kind of basis, whether here in Clare, or Barcelona where I spent most of the summer, or New York which I am electronically connected to daily, or Denmark which I have left but whose influence I can still feel, or Dublin where I lived for a long time and which is a rich seam of memory for me, or the internet where I spend so much of my time. It is not restlessness. It is the circumstances of my sense of home. It is a constantly evolving circumstance.

Pulp

My parents have just gotten a new juicer. They are very keen, and have been juicing fruit and veg for breakfast every day this week. I have just seen my dad go down the field with the leftover pulp, to leave down in the glade, for the foxes and badgers. Thrift and eco-friendliness in motion, my dad.

Mister, please don't put your tarmac over our wild green shit

I'm in love with a muon detector

Something exists on our planet, that "spends its time "silently counting cosmic flotsam called muons" – ghost particles that ceaselessly rain down from space".

This thought is very soothing right now. And not only that, but this silent muon counter is branching out beyond its principle astrophysics specialism. When repurposed, muon counters can see inside thick stone, can discern intricacies of structure inside an archaeological ruin that has long been reclaimed by the rainforest. So they're using it as a non-invasive archaeological tool to pick out detail of the interiors of mayan ruins that currently lie beneath thick green mounds throughout the Amazon rainforest, without tearing them apart. They just sit the muon detector by the side of the mound, and it quietly goes about listening, counting and mapping. Far out.