World scoop ! See Barney Bubbles move ! Make your own Barney flip book !

This amazing inchage filmed by Harvey Matusow and found by skilled Barnophiles on YouTube, are the only moving pictures of Barney ever seen.

It shews a sequence of Barney walking through the ‘office’ of Friends magazine on the second floor (called the 1st floor in the UK) at 307 Portobello Road, he is wearing a sheepskin vest, and holding a scalpel, he then removes something on a layout at the desk. Further notation will surely follow.

The YouTube link is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIgPCDAVTlM and this sequence of Barney Bubbles appears from 2m01s to 2m05s.

The fireplace in the background is evocative to me of an incendiary event later that year at Frendz, when Tiny Tony (as we called him) lit a newspaper fire that set the chimney ablaze, and started an inferno in the basement, so that I had to yell, “Fire! Evacuate the studio.”

That maybe Rosie Boycot in the background. (Not so, see comments.)

Mistaken Identity: Phil points out that that may not be Friends editor Alan Marcuson in the 2nd doorway to the right, that was one of the doors to the store-full-of-stalls called Friends Market, the door on the left heads upstairs to the Friends office. The changing scene evolved with the tenants, this format probably lasted a twelve month or so in 1970-71 I think, that so?

Barney signage outside 307 Portobello Road. The store named ‘Friends,’ could be read as either, A. the magazine which was upstairs, or B. the first half of the arcade of stalls called ‘Friends Market.’ The second store, labeled Market, is where there were a few record, beads and bangle micro-biz’s. The wall between the two stores had simply been bashed through to make a mega-mall, the usual remains of a Barney demolition crew, beams exposed, plaster crumbling from the yew-hewn lath poking into to the passage for a while, which was decorously later draped in flowing fabric to cover the deed from officialdom..

Barney had a secret curtained off corner in the back on the right (it was literally three sided, 3 ft x 3 x 3) where you could stand and hide, no one at the magazine knew about it. He said, “I use it sometimes.” which I did when, one day, I went to visit not wanting to meet Jo Greene (I did not like him at all) et al. It was when b showed the Sutherland Bros art for me to deface, that Miz Moon done do.

I had a dream the other night, based on a real experience in 1971, of being to the north of Glastonbury Tor and trying to cross one of Mary Caine’s supposed zodiac drainage ditches, that was a gross, deep algae ridden swamp that got deeper and deeper…

Hands of the master surgeon, with a scalpel in his right hand using his left hand as a fulcrum and stand-in mall-stick, to keep his right hand raised so there’s no smudging of the still-wet ink type. He is lifting a waxed photo up to reposition it, I think. (There is a major discussion of the minutia of this clip, see comments.) The scalpels we used must have been supplied by friendly surgeons or nurses to someone in supplies for I seldom, if ever saw anyone use a regular Xacto blade, the scalpels we used were the real thing, wrapped in sterilized foil, ready to cut.

… and this is the spread in Friends he’s working on.

Barney B in graphic Kruschev visitation – see the evidence for yourself.

Connections. Twiggy and Pope’s Grotto…

Was in the coffee-palace today thinking ’bout my Barney logs and Lissitzky the Russian who worked for Stalin, and how Barney called him a “Hack.” So I pick up a copy of ‘Soviet Union for 1962′ from the  library at ‘Coffee to the People’ filched from the SF Unified School District, History dept. ex libris the James Denman Junior High thinking it might be relevant.

And bless my unsullied soul, there on a page with a Kruschev picture, someone had written a pencilled (or more properly a ball-pointed) bubble, with the words  ‘Barney B was here’ inside. For real.

Spooky.

Alessandra the daughter – who knows how to do a contortion or two – says it’s Barney talking from the other side. I’m quite certain that’s what Barney would say too. An example of Serendipity if ever there was.

And this is a Serendip type event because it was hecka weird when I saw “Barney B” in a bubble coming out of Kruschev’s shiny pate. So this is a good example to illustrate Alexander Pope’s invention of the word, Serendipity, the happy habit of fancival discovery, which was named for (or after) the Three Princes (or were they Princesses?) of Serendip, in what is now Sri Lanka, and used to be called Ceylon, and featured as a mythical place in antiquity, then made fabulous in a 17th Century novel. Recently it was Tiger-territory. Pope’s example to illustrate the word with a story about a camel was not a very apt definition. Mine is better.

Daught Aless’ current pin-up is the 60’s London model Twiggy, the thin, but healthy model, who lived in a house close by Pope’s Grotto in Twickenham, a grotto under the road made of shells and dubious antiquities cobbled together in a faux mithras alcove. Twiggy’s house was a detached pebble-dash ’30’s builder’s special, front lawn with gate and central path through the roses. The house was, and quite probably is still, about one hundred feet from the Odeon cinema that Barney did a drawing of. The front of the flick-house was built in Egyptian mode, in that suburban British tile-factory way that some admire.

In other news: Twig-tech, a play on Twickenham Tech, is the contemporary expression of the wicker or wattle arts, also hedgerow weaving. I studied advanced Twig-tech with Faye Schoolcraft the sculptor in the ’80’s. Current expression of the latest advances in Twiggery are to be  found in the architcture of the raised beds in my garden.

Bevin , a charismatic singer with the intesity of a Janis who’s played the subway, sang at the bewailing for Mary Fields. Great occasion, not to be misssed.

There’s the svelte photographer, Penny …

There’s the svelte photographer, Pennie Smith, on the left – looking a little unsure of the outcome of Colin’s rumble in the rugby field.

Colin Fulcher photographs his graduation, but not himself.

1963. I realized that this graduation picture, that recently became positive, after a lifetime of negative obscurity, is from the missing Fulcher shoot of the class of ‘63. “It must be there, I know it was.” he stridently asserted. I said I’d never seen ‘em, which was true until yesterday. He is apparent by his absence from this, his own show. I’m sure there are some of these engaging loons still around, Pete Brown of the Muleskinners, Mrs, Wordsworth who paints with skilled brazen guache, Bob Priest of Esquire, Mac McLagan of The Small Faces etc., Stephen Goy off to the left, Susan Wallbank who makes the most beautiful lino-cut views-of-the-Thames series as cards, Pennie Smith the photographer, they are all in there and still jiving. These cavorting with car photographs were taken by Colin Fulcher with my Yashica. That’s Roy’s Morris, he’s standing on his head. The other shoot, mourning over the bed of droopy flowers in the Quad were taken by me. None have e’er been seen before.

It’s amusing that there’s a coming-of-age movie out now about a 16-year-old girl who is in her last year of school at St. Margaret’s in Tickenham of 1961, the year I graduated.

Realized that the graduation pictures th…

Girding up for a garden party. Bringing out the winch to deliver party supplies from the third floor. Tom The Grill is coming by two hours early to prepare the fixins. There gonna be song and dance, young-folk – and the other, jaunty attitudes, Waterfall will sound the conch, and there shall be a respectful bewailing for Mary Fields, who passed.

Re-aranged the tiles into two bodies with ceramic mask heads. One small and knobbly in cool colors, the other with a long nose, in warm colour browns, all on a mid-tone grey tile.

Fulchers surveys his handiwork with trusted aid, Lorry Sartorio by his side

1964, Heeeeeeeeere’s Barney! Fulcher akimbo in proto-executive bemused stance, and Lorry looking well pleased with the results of their handiwork, Colin is wearing his office Minette Street attire with waring grid checks, knitted tie, rolled sleaves and button-down collar. Lorry in mascara-city with Vermilion hi-neck T,  Shiny velour, Vandyke brown and rose-pink Victorian trousers, and low slung belt.They are looking at the contents of Lorry’s portfolio in which Lorry has painted, for maybe the fifth time, a Rose Malmaison rendering of a blob, on an Azure ground. Each time the Malmaison reacts with the Azure and changes its tonal value. This eases the shimmering clash as the eye adapts and readapts to the vibrating color-line at electrical speed.  As a result of all the repainting the formerly flat-art has a raised, three dimensional surface that Fulcher enjoys.

This is in the back room at the end of the 1A Leigh Court, 35-foot corridor we used as a shooting arcade on one or two occasions. I had an air-rifle and we’d make impromtu targets and left indented evidence in the door of a raid by deranged air-pellet weilding people.

The set back above their heads was a cornice that covered a mysterious gurgling pipe, which chunked and bribbled at odd moments. You can see evidence of the Fulchurian exactitude in the methodical arrangements of push pins lined up to support some long-gone thing.

If the picture is too big for your support group, write a letter to your local MP.

I now hold a trove of scanned pictures i took in the sixties at home in Leigh Court and at work and play. Lotso’ fun I’m writing captions, and will post the first of them as time goes by.

DWills@uamail.albany.edu David Wills original research was in Surrealist poetry but his published work has concentrated on literary theory, especially the work of Derrida, film theory and comparative literature.
In which writing functions as a technological in/outgrowth of the body. Wills’ major work, developed first in Prosthesis (Stanford, 1995), concerns on the one hand the originary technology or “non-naturalness” of the human, and on the other, the ways in which writing functions as a technological in/outgrowth of the body. Those ideas are extended via what he calls “dorsality,” a thinking of the back and what is behind – the other of the facial – where the emphasis is on certain ethical, political and sexual implications of a technological rewriting of identity. In recent work he also investigates the question of conceptual invention against the background of musical improvisation, for example in jazz, and the instrumentality or technology of the voice.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125737254573529027.html We got ink in today’s Wall Street Journal for the Museum of Haight Ashbury, MoHA ! Did you know that the local, Coffee to the People, the best buzz in town, is offring MOCHA’s (Mighty Organic Haight Ashbury’s) at low prices, as a special to those who contribute to the Street Fair. Join the throng, come along, dance for the Street Fair. Hand your $20 bills to David Wills or Michael at Clippers. Get your Certifate of Compliance now.