Gina Birch

Gina is going from strength to strength in her music and art, showing how her art school education really keeps on trend and relevant.

You can read about Gina in my book, Blank Canvas: https://www.intellectbooks.com/blank-canvas

A Guardian article about Gina is here: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/feb/28/hairy-legs-scary-gina-birch-punk-raincoats-stilettos?fbclid=IwAR3OjHMSGEnSK_F_YMfAa1wCgWBPY91suTGrvBeswqO3r_sRPDI94z41ekc

Has anyone read my book?

Hey, it’s been a while since the beautiful southern UK tour at the end of last year. As buds start to appear and colours glint or filter into my eye streams it could be time for a spring clean, dust off the books and get in there.

Great reviews are coming thick and fast so please head to my publishers site and grab a copy, or alternatively purchase from other notable providers.

https://www.intellectbooks.com/blank-canvas

Saskia Strange after reading Blank Canvas

Stars

Ah the joy of book publicity is getting ‘traction’ on the world wide web and friends, Romans, country humans it would be wonderful if anyone/ everyone who has read Blank Canvas could provide some stars, write a short review on the megalithic/ monolithic sites of Amazon/ Google.

Thanks, you’re all amazing

https://books.google.co.uk/books?op=lookup&id=-PWUEAAAQBAJ&continue=https://books.google.co.uk/books%3Fid%3D-PWUEAAAQBAJ%26newbks%3D1%26newbks_redir%3D0%26printsec%3Dfrontcover%26dq%3Dblank%2Bcanvas%2Bsimon%2Bstrange%26hl%3Den%26redir_esc%3Dy

Everything everywhere…..

The Portsmouth Sinfonia are heard to stunning effect in Everything, Everywhere all at once (Also Sprach Zarathustra) where an original idea of the orchestra is deconstructed by those who were desperately trying to not deconstruct it. The classic space theme tune crumbles under its own weightlessness. The musicians were trying deperately to play accurately, to the notes, but the music falls out of their technical range. Its use in the film really shows the power this version had, the irony, falling apart, fragile, psychedelic which numerous versions of the original don’t have. It’s hilarious but moving. Playing the in my local amateur group, the Axe Vale orchestra, there are some similar moments. Sometimes the strings are scratchy and out of tune, the cellos timid or the brass section thin but when collective energy connects there are moments of extreme beauty and wonder. You can feel the collective breath and almost an astonishment that this rag tag group of retired and failing musicians occasionally impart beauty.

In Blank Canvas I discuss the Portsmouth Sinfonia in detail and trumpet the positive case for the non musician.

You can buy Blank Canvas here: https://www.intellectbooks.com/blank-canvas

New Year New Start New Book

Here is an excerpt from my book Blank Canvas which helps to define the concepts held within, the idea of starting from a blank slate, which is something I feel most intensely at the start of a new year.

Blank canvas as a concept, a freeze frame within which new creation can occur, also connects with other art forms that time may change. Author David Keenan in an epitaph for beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti described his command of ‘beginners mind’, writing from a place that is pure and fresh, as though viewed for the ‘first time, every time, which really, you know, is the truth. Everything is new and risen up and blushing in its perfect moment’.

Swirling extreme movements can be utilized to support arriving within a trance-like state through dance, as shown by the Sufi whirling dervishes, or through Stanislavski’s physical action acting. Ashtanga or Vinyasa Flow Yoga centres on physicality, realigning the body for transcendental meditation, lifting into the air. Searching for a trance-like condition has also been associated with narcotic drugs, reducing the daily noise which covers a blank mind. Carl Jung’s psychological concept of serendipity relating to chance, breaking away from formalized structures as the randomness of early life creation is apparent within blankness, reflecting conscious and unconscious process decisions. Another element is Buddhism’s Śūnyatā state of no mind, relating to an emptiness or a void arrived at within meditative practice, so it is the stripping away which is important.

As former art student and socio-economist Inez Aponte suggests, ‘the notion of enlightenment is when all that drops away. That construct that we lived with drops away so we can actually see. We can really see. Most of us aren’t really seeing, we are walking around with filters’ . As the young Bill Drummond was told on his first day at Northampton College of Art by life room tutor Mike Little: ‘Everybody can look – only Artists can see. No life drawing no Art’ .

Order Blank Canvas: art school creativity to punk, post punk and new wave here:

https://www.intellectbooks.com/blank-canvas