The Procrastinator and the Haruptian Decoder

Did I tell you that I was a fucking black belt master at procrastination? Did I? Well, I don't think I did... and anyways, my god, I'm gonna be up all night as it is, so I might as well spill the beans.


How many times a day do you check your statistics?

Hmmm, maybe 5 times? Maybe more, maybe less. Depends on the day, depends on whether I'm at home for work... depends...
Actually, that's bullshit. I probably check my stats around 10 times a day, regardless of whether I've actually posted anything, or if there's a giant red-eyed bull eyeing me from the corner of the room... still checking... I know some of my faithful readers's IP addresses by heart. Sick? You bet!


Why do you check your statistics all the time?

Hmmm, because I have nothing better to do but see if anybody registers my existence on a larger plane... Craving for false celebrity, random pieces of free love, making connections from nothing and nowhere, or finding out that the guy who really likes to ping pumpkins for fireman sex digs the fact that you have a gay boyfriend. I like friends...


Do you really have that much time in the day?

I know a lot of my family and friends assume that I have a lots of spare time on my hands and that I'm a slack. Actually, it's part true, part false. I work my ass off, thinking, reading, writing proposals, drafts, sketches, researching, teaching, general brainwork, when I'm not out cruising for vintage porn, vintage 70s handbags and rabid rebus people.

Seriously, I don't. I have way too much stuff to do. I freelance, therefore I manage my own finances and schedule, which is harder than you think. I multi-task, between laundry, internet and buying stationery. I make art, which I sometimes force myself to schedule into the day, because nothing comes more painfully than slow dripping blood... actually, my work tends to be conceptual, which works in my favour because I don't really have to make much... just think... However, there's always some making at some point, writing/documentation/potatoes, and that's when I suffer. It's hard for me to acknowledge my body is real, except when I'm on drugs, in the sun, dancing, or fucking.

I work roughly 28 hours a week on real work, and roughly 15 hours a week on art, which, add it together, means I work more hours than the average person. But that's the life of every artist I know, except french ones.


Why do you do when you say you're working on your art?

This is the biggest question of all. Well, most of the time, when I say that, I mean my brain is drifting on some internet sea of dreams, where random futures and presents crash in one eternal thunderous clay turtle crash... I dunno... I write, I write, I write... I think, I eat, I do laundry, and then I write... Occasionally, I draw, and sketch, and take photographs, to get some sort of framework into the thing... but mostly, it's words and words and words... eventually transformed into objects with images/sound... occasionally just a piece of toilet paper or potato skin can suffice...

lighthouses... I started a story the other day about a lighthouse. This nephew of Donald Crowhurst, he lives in a lighthouse, and from his lighthouse he watches all the various vibrations and movements of the sea. One day, he notices to his strange delight, that in the evenings, the play of the lighthouse beam on the water creates strange patterns, patterns he could almost think of as letters. These letters he begins to take down. Each day there are a series of letters, never more than 20, never less than 10. He writes them down and, in the day, he compares them to the notes of his uncle, who also saw these strange word manifestations in the sea.

At first the letters make no sense. They are a jumble of consonants and vowels but laid out almost in a pattern, as if in another language, if he could just read it. Then, one day, the little girl from the village who comes to give him his daily bread takes a peak in his book and solves the riddle. "Oh, but it's Haruptian! My old family is Haruptian!" This being the most ancient and blessed of the lost tribes of Chile, and the child having learned the language from her grandmother, long since lost in the ancient bloodletting that the British troops inflicted on their island, covered up by the death of the two officers who swore to tell.

And so the Haruptian princess begins to tell the story she sees from the letters, the letters that appear in the sea... and lo and behold, it is a tale about a ship that cannot be sunk, whereupon live a family of rats, guinea pigs, mice and beetles. The whales know this ship well... it is the ever-constant floating universe of detritus and filth. The story is narrated by a captain who has so withered away that he is represented only with a yellow cloak. And so the Haruptian continues...

meanwhile, the nephew of Donald Crowhurst is flabbergasted and dismayed to find that the secrets to his nightly recording reveal themselves in nothing more than animal porn and incest. He throws himself into the sea in a fit of grief, only to be swelled upwards by a school of whales... the joking school of whales, who, after suffering years of grief from the Japanese sailors, have developed a very refined sense of humour... and now write Haruptian jokes for their friends, the night gulls.

.......
ok, I really must get back to work now...