Something for the weekend-The Place Inbetween

1.As the week draws to a close, I am putting the final touches to the piece which has taken me almost three months to complete. All being well, I should be able to post a final portrait soon.

The show at Belly Up has also been confirmed for November the 12th, and having seen the venue, I am beside myself with excitement. I shall be setting up my paints for a live painting event at around 6pm, as well as hanging the new piece and others, before the bands come on. Full details are at the following link:

2.And I posted another piece -the mentor painting, which I am reticent to sell because of its personal nature, but space is becoming an issue with so many pieces lining the walls now, and I need to let work go just as I do any emotions that manifest them to begin with.



3.So the best laid plans of mice and men-given my distaste for rodents, the quote always struck me as diminishing human achievement to nothing more than rats foraging for moldy cheese and spreading pestilence and plague with our infestation. Certainly following today's events at the Fort Hood facility, and the subsequent bile peddled by so called experts on various tv news channels, gives one pause that perhaps the sentiment isn't too far from the truth.
Reflection rather than accusation takes precedent at such times, and as I watched the images, I felt moved listening to Unfinished Sympathy by Massive Attack on my ipod today. Sometimes the endless diatribe of reportage is so numbing, that one feels detached from the true tragedy of such events.

And Another Thing....Faux news

One of the most profound and disturbing things for me upon arriving here in the US for the first time, was observing the way in which prime time network news is relayed here. Tuning in to see what was going on in the world, revealed itself to be a veritable minefield of wry sarcastic opinion often served with a side order of the histrionic, presumptuous, deceptive, self righteous and fallible-depending on which side the network was batting for. Be it O'Reilly, Beck, Hannity, Comlbs or Olbermann-trying to swim through the sewage of muck-raking verbage, and soap box finger wagging, merely to make sense of it all,and discover some actual world news of the day,was akin to having my head encased in concrete.

Except it wasn't news relayed as factual, dry reportage, as it is in the UK-it was shouted with a shook fist, filtered through some scary party rally cry, where the fires are stoked for the viewers to eye each other suspiciously, and seeth and bait for blood through gritted teeth, and all the underlying fears of Mcarthyism are spewed through your cable, 24-7.

Is it any wonder then that in this twenty first century, that there are factions of such frightening extremes.

Now of course as a result of an erroneous comment that Glenn Beck made about Obama being a racist and hating all white people- his show is hemorrhaging advertisers. That's some splendid news for once-with a little further coercion, hopefully he will dig a hole big enough hole for himself to fall into.

Perhaps Beck and O'Reilly and their ilk, believe they are like Peter Finch in the excellent Sydney Lumet movie from 1976-Network-'Not going to stand for it, and Mad as hell'
Whilst I'm not adverse to the social order being shaken up a little from time to time-révolution-the context of that movie was unifying, not spitting bigotry, hellfire and damnation vitriol five nights a week.

At the end of the day, the doctrine of democratic free speech for all is one which I embrace , but if news is subjective, driven by agenda, opinion, and an allegiance politically or otherwise, then what you are left with is nothing less than a tenet of Orwells thought police.