Monday 27 April 2009

1st Posted Drawing


St Erkenwald

     Today I thought I'd post one of my drawings: a fine piece of English Baroque (Talman) - mutlimedia (pen, coloured pencil and wax pastel). I hope you like it. It was produced on my (as yet) only trip to Lancashire.

     Addendum 30th May 2014.  It's actually Stonyhurst.

Thursday 23 April 2009

An except from 'Chameleon'

St George's Day

     I thought it was about time I posted something from 'Chameleon'. I won't give a long introduction.

     What I have selected is the beginning of chapter XII (aka. 'The Leather Chapter'). Alex, the narrator, describes his intense relationship to leather, or as he writes 'Leather'. Alex, and the other main character Jason (the chameleon) are both fetishists. They are also lovers. In this chapter Alex is actualised as a leatherman by Jason; Jason remakes Alex in his own image. 'Chameleon' is indeed a novel about appearance and deception, and Jason is the main protagonist; he is 'both pimp and whore', a self-made man who is the first to believe in his own image. Compelling. Charismatic. Deviant.


"You don't wear Leather."

     I can't remember which one of us said it, or where, but I've always been inclined to take the credit even though, on reflection, it's more likely to have been Jason. The sentence has his immediacy and his rhythm; it only needs a 'mate' to be both complete and authentic. By 'Leather' (my own capitalisation) I mean bike leathers and the sort of leather I like to encase my body with - the stuff that I buy from dim, dark-windowed shops in London back streets. Jason called this leather 'Hard Shit'. He classified 'Leather' like others classified drugs; there was 'Soft Shit' and there was 'Hard shit'. He wore both but preferred the latter. And Jason was an addict. He was heavily dependent, and, although I like to pretend it is different for me, I know that I am too. Jason happily claimed, as with porn, never to have enough to satisfy himself: 'I live for bikes, mate, and Leather,' he explained, 'not that I have enough money for the Leather, but I manage. I'd have a wardrobe full of the fucking stuff, if I could. I'd live in it mate.'

     'Wear' is too inadequate a word. Jason was right about that. 'Wear' cannot possibly describe the interaction between Leather and the body, simply because this 'Hard Shit' is not submissive like wool or cotton, even denim, or the polite leather - the 'Soft Shit' - you buy on the High St, that hang dependant on the body. Leather is different. It has parity. Neither can 'wear' convey the nature of the fetish, the psychological relationship between Leather and guy like me, or Jason, or Tom; a relationship that goes beyond mere wear and tear and the protection from the weather and the hard, abrasive surface of a road at speed, beyond even arousal and gratification. Even Jason's drugs metaphor, apt in many ways, was unsatisfactory.

     To a hard-core Leather guy like me Leather seems to fulfil some, at least, of those rhetorical dreams of Sixties Drug culture, for to encase the body in Leather is to put on a more vivid, hard identity - one that all the identities with which we clothe ourselves - has the greatest synchronicity with the inner core of being. Leather, by allowing the mind to work beyond the societal norm, opens consciousness to new experience to a more sensual reality. In Leather there is transcendence.

Wednesday 22 April 2009

something of the chameleon

     Some words about the 'title' of this blog. Not only a reference to the title of my first completed novel 'Chameleon', and a direct quotation from the book, 'something-of-the-chameleon' refers to me. I have such wide and disparate tastes, some of which hardly sit well together - just a mess of contradictions, I guess, that somehow manage to rub together and lead me off in all directions.

Saturday 18 April 2009

Something of the Blogger

     I thought today I'd say something about myself. I'm 43, male and gay. I'm a carer. I live in a market town in rural England. I write and I paint, when I find either the time or energy. This afternoon, at this moment, I feel like the debris left on the beach by the high tide.

Friday 17 April 2009

1st post

     After long deliberation (nothing happens quickly in this household) I have finally got to starting my blog, my literary/artistic blog. The object is simple to make available my work to a wider audience, and hopefully find an agent or publisher, (yes, me as well). You will find samples of my current attempt at getting published 'Chameleon' a novel of 'love, loss and leather', reviews, potted biographies and my paintings and drawings. There will also be moaning and gnashing of teeth and probably some ranting.