(aug26ce eclipsage from our backyard/backlane with hop)

we have been told humans sometimes clap when their plane is landing. today we’ve witnessed eclipse: the third (and presumed final) time in our life. once at primary, once during difficult times, and now as moorlands burn. prince andrew’s bro’s govern-mentals official advice (look on their website) is if you can’t colander or pinhole camera the eclipse then the equivalent is the same only thru gaps in leaves ... our eclipse is thru a tree down the back-lane, in semi-cloud, and thru our two backyard silver birches. one weeping (for us), one with ‘memories ov light’ slate tag i.m. for someone nine years gone to almost these exact days ... stars of various shape-size-n- multicolours are hung in them, some dog-tag stars, our friend was ex-soldier. don’t ‘watch’ the eclipse , tho we monitor a little online, also seeing the spread of less light across those ospreys on the afon wysg / river usk who will be travelling to west africa any day now, photograph the sky spectacular near eclipse with hop-tentacle waving; and we do witness the magnifique, this diminish-of-light refracting thru multiple leaf layers ... birds are silent but the magnificent outsize dragonfly shimmying wild wasn’t notified or its life is so brief it was out celebrating (was a gallivespian (ta, philip pullman) actually rodeo-ing this ‘un?) in the loss-of-light ... head after this to marys lighthouse sands at heron-light aka after-sunset first time since losing time there in the spring ... our rescue dog sated in wrestling kelp, feed ‘em a chow mein special, their top dish, then prep for perseid meteor showers ... cloud cover’s least inland and west northumberland rather than north (or south to co durham) looks best bet. aim for carrawburgh right beyond wall-of-empire, land a little after midnight. mackerel skies reveal some starring, the odd farmhouse is lit, quarry-lorries bomb the military road. the romano-british well to coventina was discovered in victorian drought; there’s a well-preserved temple to a minor roman cult (mithras), wiped out by a rival minor cult (christianity), the altars here are replica, the real ‘uns in toon - played around them as bairn. the rubble? that’s remains of this midway hadrians wall fort. settle back on the non-empire side in lightweight campchair, look up, wait. ... who needs acid when you have the perseid meteor shower? actually, we’d like both please ... you want the moon on a stick too? nope. just meteors n lysergia. fuck either / or, go both-and, be a binary breaker. avoid temptation to jerk around seeking ‘em out, let those meteor showers come, wee traces round edges of eyes initially ... perseids grow on you always. this is third year we’ve sought ‘em out. third year we’ve realised we could. and been mobile enough to do so. last year we said farewell to a dying friend on this night. they were from those osprey lands. held close, water in eyes but tears were for later. tell ‘em we’re going to witness the meteor showers. then they hold us at arms length, let one of their arms dangle, and say ‘go wish on every one of those stars’ and make a fizz-sound as their free arm traces meteor thru the infinite ... now theres flashes, glows, the occasional tease, and then a longer move and another and ... the mackerelling is lost from this sector of sky, stars move on thru, milky way is shimmying ... and then bursts, burstings of meteor beyond expectation. never seen so many previously, nor so many varieties. incroyable! two hours in a couple of cars spew southern-load scweaming too-loud how ‘its soooo quiet’!! sheep and cows actually protest their noise. ‘its so dark’ and then spewing mobile-lights afar. get wedged in the gate ... and they settle just inside the empire only are so busy talking that only once do they spot an incoming ... and ... applaud. convo includes the line ‘prunella, pass the crème brûlée’, applauding yr own extinctions, wanna call down that meteor, summons the megadetonation, impact homo sapiens to vapor, giver humboldt squid a chance, aren’t you glad we have no such power? one last burst of meteor unnoticed by the crème brûlées, head home for rtj n ?acid: nuuh, tomas luis de victoria and typing this

recent drawing from carrawburgh

thanx to jack at live theatre newcastle for inviting us to give a performance text version of our ‘tears for the angels of peace and other kinds of flow’ essay. this essay is from the ongoing collection of work about places of peace and about post trauma growth, collectively called manyfesto (and ta too, to creative future writers’ Award for our gold prize for creative non-fiction last year for another work from this ongoing book)

the work we read was companion piece to ‘The Name Of That Song’ by Peter Flannery performed by Christopher Eccleston, such amazing company to be in

tears of the angels of peace and other kinds of flow solstice performance text

‘all the best locations are located on the margins’.

‘all the best locations are located on the margins’.

the band clutch. their crackling song. 50,000 unstoppable watts.

clutches attitude toward us marginalia’s long firing up.

and now we’re off to clutches manchester gig, so deep south for us, do they fry squirrels?

follow the a69, the river tyne white-watering nicely as we ride and rise.

driven this river hundreds of times till we’re written off in 1999 by car chased by cops.

that fairground grabber-arm descends, moving us on.

leeds holding us at gunpoint, aaand ... homelessed ... again

december 2025’s weather means don’t cut corners.

no swinging over to alston and the south tyne, up-and-overing cross fell’s northern shoulder (they were gritting back in october), no switchback descent to long meg and her daughters (england’s third widest stone circle) and the eden river.

cloud cap builds on cross fell, later the mighty helm wind will roar.

surge instead the m6’s downslope. a hard rain is falling

photo of part of long meg and her daughters with cross fell in background from last october

twenty five mile to the left, britains last lynx remains were found in a cave at giggleswick scar.

a small population continued in southern dumfries till right before industrial revolutions.

rewilding lynxes into the northumberland / southern uplands is being worked up right now.

the main issue is lack of a cultural narrative on bringing ‘em back. bring ‘em back!

how soundtracks of mind play into the bittersweet of these watershed lands.

that long-ago haul of bisexual blues (is there any other kind?) outta carlisle.

stiff little fingers. their live album hanx! the cassette a precious gift.

unravelling thru these epic howgill fells across the 80’s and 90’s,

road and rail beading between city glows,

humans tiny in this epic-scape, and this is to the good

twenty-five year ago sax-player evan parker’s freezone on a lazy loop in the river eden,

us in that ex-chapel for hours, held in the intensity of blowing.

evan cradling those saxes, the equal weight of their intense not-blowing,

that active-listening holding up this vault of stone, before soaring skies above with circle-encircle-circular-breathings.

playlists for survival carrying us all thru so much.

playlists for survival are those essential sounds that fire up, networking with when you’re hearing and where you’re at in mind: mournings, missing in actions, accidental glories too.

why can’t the clashes song ‘straight to hell’ play as we burn down the crem?

there is room for a crem-and-mri-scan covers band

once sky burial at last comes to chopwell woods,we’re getting fed to red kites who long-ago clung on, survived, and with human help now thrive.

collaborative rewilding teaches that post-trauma-growth is possible.

dispose of this carcass, then a crackling playlist and righteous feast. enjoy some vast.

pick decent weather, safe travel, accessible commemoration and do please plant a bunch of saplings from across species, some will survive, a scattering should thrive

tears for the angels of peace by sammartini is one music we’re encouraging you’s to hear after we’re gone.

forget what ‘type’ you usually go for, there’s only two kinds of music: the good, and the other (think pop-punk).

sammartini bridges classical with baroque, brings beauty-full moments amid vast.

last music we’ll hear, given choice, mahler’s second, allow us that much listening yeah before the peace of unbreath.

conventional desert island disc castaways choose eight tracks, a luxury, and a book.

respect to bisexual elif shafak who demanded system of a down.

our desert island take is : who are the ten sound-makers (individual or ensemble) you’re taking? (you’re also gifted the entourage they’ve worked with.)

first on our list always is sainkho namchylak. she has ‘the voice’.

that voice! one reason why leo records is our favourite record label.

evan parker recorded with sainkho namchylak, so they’re also in.

final name on our list (please note, this ain’t hierarchy) is clutch

arrive in ‘’cottonopolis’‘ aka manchester.

most planets do have norths as at least one doctor who remarked.

map from shetlands top to lizards bottom, manchester is middle-lands, so not deep south at all.

don’t need clutches hits, always happy with new material time, and to complete our gig they needn’t roar ‘all the best locations are located on the margins’

... happy witnessing their rage and range across thirty five year of hard-n-heavy blues-n-bruise influenced groove.

bring the heart and the heavy, hardcore carves mountains with flow

clutch in manchester last december

a week prior, our heart again experienced such failure we near-died.

now multiple heart-attacks in, ta sick-chiatry. don’t take our word, take theirs.

after 2014’s first heart-attack sick-chiatrist stared dead at their screen:

‘whoops. yes. i wondered when that was going to happen. i suppose i should have warned you about those side effects’.

second heart-attack four year later.

nuclear medicines stress test confirms inferior ischaemia, our hearts part-dead.

this current heart-ill feels like crawling into death, lip-tingle,mind so unfocusable, sweat, unbreath ... lose consciousness, arms round our rescue dog, whispering sorry, we’re checking out ... only to come round much later

and now we rock out on the blues-heavy hard-groove-core that is clutch

return. recharging car around shap, recalling our best ever aurora borealis ten miles west and decades past (and while fleeing another homelessing too). marking this vast are so many stone rows, barrows, menhirs, ancient sheilings and stone circles. oddendale is circle within a circle. our fondest is gamelands. faintly above, for the sharpest of eyes, the lynx constellation taking up truly epic space

area around gamesland (including stone circle detail) at sunset

3am flows east on our beloved a66, pass gods bridge, the natural limestone arch providing safe crossing of river greta since ancient times. humans and lynxes alike, crossing the flow.

then barney (barnard castle to the covid press) and north side the river tees.

last gig prior to clutch was here. rock-folk steeleye span still magnificent 54 year in,

us crying bittersweetly into the tees after.

pass the sign to middleton-in-tees. that upper tees gateway is where we fled a long-ago sectioning slash homelessing (that sectioning enforced those anti-psychotic heartbreakers).

ragged from regaining our north, sink head to rucksack, fall asleep on the stony flood plain ... waken to milky way switched full on. the intensity incredible

finally the derwent watershed and last descent.

drop co-driver, and so much more off, they’ve witnessed us write clutches lyric

‘all the best locations are located on the margins‘ up gallery walls of derry.

5am home. drain bottle of non-alcoholic german beer (diabetes numbers are actually doing fine), eat an entire camembert, then lie-down briefly before collecting rescue dog from sleep-over

as we drift off, memory flows with the vasts many ghosts, marginalia’s are indeed best locations

p.s. we hope to place audio recording of the work on our bandcamp site in july

https://gobscure.bandcamp.com/

pps here’s (sort of) self-portrait (sort of) from the work

https://artshomelessint.com/what-we-do/training/associates-programme/2026-27-cohort/

nadine holdsworth’s essential new book on homeless and arts, including our art on the cover and a wonderful write-up on some of what we do just landed

https://www.routledge.com/Homelessness-in-Performance-Art-and-Society-Becoming-Visible/Holdsworth/p/book/9781032844367

when we meet new- to-us organisations we explain why we write lowercase , here’s that para for all (taken from essay ‘mx and the seahorses of toon’ - part of the ongoing manyfesto collection of essays)

... and then god stood up for bastards (after act one, scene two, king lear by shakespeare (you have heard of her?), a play about consequences of abuse against bairns). gods oppressive-mess underpinning a thousand+year of punitive binary in these lands alone. monotheism grooms thru choking differences, then divining hate in the othering. local bishopric was visiting our non-religious state primary when we were ten. teacher (ex-soldier, as many were) pinned a wall of multicoloured sugar-paper up in dodgy honour. having successfully brutalised empire elsewhere, soldier-slash-teachers were rewarded with bairns for life. everyone had to stick up a description of ‘god’ in all their pissflag-gory. our rectangle’s dead-centre, and ohh the irony, bright instead of mud-coloured. coincidentally, our first suicide try, a bloody good ‘un, was around then and should-of checked us out. mostly wishing since that it had worked, and all while wondering why we waited so bloody long. we then stole cider so that the next woundings would at least be done on a body that bounced. tell teacher we’ll write an alternative sugarpaper-tale cos there is no god. that blue-eyed sandal-wearer is the only story going up tho. get detained each&every while others fill the god-wall. punishment bleatings continue, our central colourful rectangle remaining bare. day before bishoprickery, teacher cracks us, the wordage getting pinned. dead-centre. final line was how god’s made up, fairytale, not-real. bishop-prick reads ours cos its colourfully dead-centre and explodes ... specifically cos we lowercase god. thru that soldiers miseducation, we genuinely understood god as lowercase like flower-dog-car. a specific god-flower-car (pansy-bragi-opel?) might need capital but gods category only. bashed with metrestick in front of that bish, we’ve lowercased since ...

and ofcourse thanx always to MoH (museum of homelessness) for having our back to begin with. their new season ‘criminal: an untold history of homelessness, resistance and survival’ begins next month https://museumofhomelessness.org/whats-on

our ‘wall-riot’ (a photo detail below - fuller set of photos at (www.flickr.com/photos/collectortears/albums/72177720324959136/with/54439300949) is a permanent vinyl text-art commission in the entrance/exit to their space - so do look up / around when attending ‘criminal ...’

love&rage

after urgently needed double therapy (last session before imminent surgery), we texted therapissed-off-on-our-behalf (hope they’re ok with that concept, its meant honourably) : ‘sitting in backyard with fizzy-water / lime, soothing music and solar-lights just coming on, sometimes life is worth it. thank you’ ... we are now trying to find such interstices of peace to see if life can be ‘worth it’ more. last years essay ‘invisibled’ (which won creative future gold writers award in non-fiction (www.creativefuture.org.uk/product/wild-2025/) was about finding joy in sunderland, our first realisation of that concept joy, (we ken sunderland well) ... where we keep finding this fragile thread, where the flow is seems to be water-places - rivers, lakes, sea, dirty canals, estuaries, beaches, a new-found quarry, being in the rain (not full on in face but when sheltered , e.g. under the defynnog yew). were wording together a ‘manyfesto’ - memoir in the form of essays is a ‘thing’ when a year ago we didn’t even know our rants, blogs, brokenwords, diy audio etc were ‘essays’ or counted as anything. thanx too, to niko stratis (www.nikostratis.com/) and their outrageously good ‘the dad rock that made me a woman’ - one of the best books we’ve read in recent decades. no trauma-porn, no neat ‘journey’, someone honest / honourable, truth-fuelled in their essays ... spiralling out of living / working / listening to playlists in the yukon and realising they are trans

for us: those bodies of water here in the north-east, even in swell and surge and storm and force and ferocity, (we are respectful of the power of this flow always, unlike some offroader who drove into a puddle on lynemouth beach and got sucked in, their mega-vehicle still stuck), is where we are held ... and the river tees is central always. on a map, this flow looks like face in profile (as does the afon wysg that curves round bannau brycheiniog). our earliest memory is of touching the river tees in flood (do watch our musical performance ‘touching the edges of flood’ from glasshouse international sessions via https://vimeo.com/gobscurefilm)

even then the flood seemed safer than what ‘humanity’ offered. following worst sectioning, then homeless hostelling, we made a mad-sane break for it and ended in the upper tees, literally. sitting on a rock in middle of river singing to the milky way switched on full and this rock literally held us, holding us in memory still

tho we have next bout of surgery in three days, we managed to get back to the tees and its spring flowering. (the wear too, including a new-to-us quarry with a secret avalon, island where we’ll willingly recover from our wounds.) for now here’s 3 poems illustrated, we’re hoping this will be part of a fuller sequence in the manyfesto. love&rage

can a river drown? probably. ignore those who say you cant step into the same river twice. childlike in life, we say it’s all about stepping into that same essence more than twice (conjuring the same flavours of peace), chase this dreaming

not much energy since the latest ambulance and hospitalling, never been wired into so many machines, (didn’t those anti-rave laws of the 90’s rules out such repetitive beats? or was it perhaps austerity?), bloods hourly, a lotta drummers would ?die for our beats ... greatest gig moment tho perhaps was when asked about allergic reactions (we go anaphylactic on a lorra lorra meds) we reply : ‘photo opps with health secretary wes the ghoul make us vom’ (in 2016 or so in that same hospital when asked what we did, we reply writing (easily misheard as rioting), their follow-ups would they know any of our words? nope, but the title health workers find funniest (their judgement no ours) is monologue: ‘how our anal fistula came to be called jeremy hunt’ ... psychosis and tiredness this week misread the brand of bed as skryker (caryl churchills superb monstering mad play) ... and the cheese omelette was edible till july27ce (sayeth the packaging), did we just con-sume liz trusses lettuce 2.0?

as folx may realise, tomorrow is rest-of-worlds belated take on 25jan aka saint dwynwen’s day (welsh patron of love). their wee partially tidal island just off newborough warren‘s immense nature reserve (south west corner of ynys môn) with incredible orchids among other loving fragiled naturings, is ash-scatter place for sure, those many-drift-memories among this sand-blast ... once-upon-a, enjoyed doing love-in-its-widest-sense art-celebrations, even offering wee commissions too. the many mx-fit attendees saying smilingly ‘that was for us’ - they (we) actually felt held. hoped this would become tradition, but art-venues too often decree you’s cant just d.i.y love&rage, whats the #bash-tag slash bullet/mission/point?

last night (you ken who you’s are, ta!) asked what languages do we speak ... barely-english to be honest. childlike in the music of tongue, the flow of wordage, teasing meanings apart, still. the one word we describe (barely)growing up with is cold. bairnhood was cold, the seventies was cold, we felt cold. heart fucked by sick-chiatry and their victim-gaming is cold. 2026ce is when we have alouded, allowed warmth, been allowed it. bairnhood was cold. now we are warm. with such guilt attached. in honour of the too many like us who have been homelessed there should be monuments for the fallen glove, monuments for the stolen sleeping bag, monuments to sodden-boots. we’ve discussed guilt of warmth, guilt in being warm with our therapist. now our rescue dog gets in close, melding, and this is best thing ever

we had maroon the the beanie from way-ago probably before merch was really a thing. that headcover didn’t die but so sagged out in shape-loss it held only a wee-warmth and so loose, dyspraxiana always sent specs each&every we pulled hat on ... and now gloves from a 20+year old homelessing (gorgeous tho not waterproof) become separated with one lost, and our beyond worn hurt-full stompy-boots so busted they were beyond gone ... so guilty in getting new hat (warm without overheating, it doesn’t sweat and doesn’t send specs flying), and we got sawn-off light grippy wellyboots (post surgeries, our feet ache each&every we go a-booting), and a pair of snug gloves too. water-resistant-not-proof but with a mitt you can unfold over the glove which does waterproof, and we can actually feel thru these too ... and then we went to the north sea in storm, to a wee causewayed part-island headtorched in the wrack. seafoamings in spew. beaks off cuttlefish hallucinating neon. and our rescue-dog commanding waves and wind. and our heart (at that point) safe enough. and water, waters always are places of peace. respect the sea. we respect this north sea: throwing, surfing its own line, breaking harsh-beauties but beauty-full. and in gloves and hat and boots we think, no we know, we know this is what childhood must (should) feel like. warm. for first time in life we say we are warm. next years bus pass year (if we make it). and only now do we say we are warm. guilty with that warmth too. ask therapist how many hats are we allowed? (can we have spares?). they spit (nicely) back 27. last autumn, ta live theatre and jack mcnamara, our words from streets: edgecity get staged by beauty-fuelled team: mariam rezaei on decks, bridget marumo on text, jason williamson of sleaford mods also on text, us on fragile tape, carnation, halved apples, brecht-sloganeering and dreambox, craig and others on (invisible) support, jack directing - and hats and gloves and scarves and sugar get collected for the peoples kitchen. 27 hats eh therapy? perhaps in the next edgecity we take off 27 hats (and folx can take-off hates too) and they are gifted live

guardian recorded edgecity as darker than sleaford mods, thanx tim jonze

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/sep/22/sleaford-mods-jason-williamson-acting-edgecity-gobscure

and on the subject of words it was verylate 24ce (december) when sunderland taught us the word joy, aided and abetted by clown slava polunin. as a result our essay ‘invisibled’ then won gold award in the non-fiction category www.creativefuture.org.uk/product/wild-2025

and so, this belated saint dwynwen’s day, with fucked-heart we offer love&rage

(ps 14feb is officially when various songs culled outta soundworlds goes live. collectively they sing out wordages such as ‘whats love in yer language?’ please listen / download / spread

the film can be viewed at https://vimeo.com/744681125 and the ‘stealing brecht’ text is at the end of this newsletter

late september - ‘edgecity’ happened at live theatre , thanx to jack macnamara. three nights of our words from the streets. onstage was our artwork (reworked to lp cover size) which is a quote from ‘mutha’ and it’s also the title of one of the monologues ...

theres also a wonderful stand-alone film that live theatre commissioned and this can be seen at https://vimeo.com/1128473421 and the guardian wrote a wonderful article around all that

www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/sep/22/sleaford-mods-jason-williamson-acting-edgecity-gobscure

and our other great news is our essay ‘invisibled’ from ‘ocean jars: a manyfesto’ (you’ll be hearing more on this thru 2026) won gold award in the non-fiction category at this years creative future awards. the book is at www.creativefuture.org.uk/product/wild-2025

and here is our (revised) monologue stealing brecht (from a much longer collection of monologues and brokenwords)

poetry always was the easiest to nick, slim volumes hidden in corners where those curved surveillance mirrors never reached. one day we made off with ‘a’ to ‘d’, found this included brecht’s middle and late poems, never did find who’d nicked his early years.   brecht’s words haunted us as teen.    words make a difference, they made a difference.    hospitalised so many times since, we’re the last, we had words in that ragged-army where others didn’t. we had poetry, stories, song ... slow islands against the pain.  and we stole brecht, aye. their poem spring 1938 and that apricot tree when war is coming, war is looming, and him exiled and on the move and all he can do is go outside with his son and wrap the apricot tree in sacking; at least they do, wrap that tree in sacking, keep it from the cold.  that poem leading us to knackered community centre and audiences surrounded with drumming, epic beats so when lights came up on this, our first play, mutha courage, we are war-zoned.  long after, we discussed brecht: theatre not as magic but as revealing the workings; their refusing to let audiences be passive, emotion can stop folx thinking. brechts break with traditions – how characters don’t learn that we may learn from them - and someone asks ‘but has brecht changed anything?’    tell of stealing their poems, of this pushing us toward that mutha courage , of this totaltheatre giving us power to run, to break with jailors, those who screwed us over.    writing changes lives ... slowly ... one by one.    and yeah we’re up for write-rioting muthafucker courage and their sixty eight bairns ... where we’re at now? a far cry from early 2000’s in that ‘icu’ unit of sick-chiatry.    psych-narratives make interesting reading: claimed as science, they owe more to fiction, yet also control folx lives.    staff grudgingly allowed us to write scraps – an attempt to keep hold of recent events, provided we’d taken meds, sat at a specific place in the secure unit main-room, at set times, supervised and no-one else kicking off.    any writing then locked in their office, the pen confiscated.  negotiating the piece of paper under those conditions made us feel samizdat. on discharge we couldn’t write but managed eventually to record improvised monologues to minidisc late at nights on hostel room’s floor ... words make a difference, they made a difference, fuelling so many velvet revolutions, they fuel ours. first hospitalized age thirteen, we’ve seen libraries where poets heads are missing, we’ve drunk underground stories, ken where everyone else is buried, we’re the last, having words where they didn’t, we had stolen brecht

(and even had time to re-read hermann hesse’s demian - another writing/(quiet)rioting we hadn’t read since those times of fleeing that teen-hurt - those words we acquired back then have kept us going, and re-reading demian did make us feel a little calmer, flow was less turbulent, including about ‘procedures’ to come

night

a foundational truth for us has long been andrew vachss 'anybody who has served in combat in any way understands that words are weapons. and i'm in a war. the war hasn't stopped.' its no coincidence that MoH (Museum of Homelessness) refer to those who haven't experienced homelessness (yet) as civilians. all are born with a voice. and we all have stories (plural) to tell. yet we're all almost always silenced. occasionally permitted a tiny voice but only within controlled circumstances. how narratives are told actively shape power. oxford trained power, and more importantly they trained 'opposition to power' aka how you're permitted to think about asking in a straightlaced way, and lose. ask straight, and you will lose every time, lord sir keir. kink, curve, bend, deviate to flow around their right-angles and walled-in-nesses. stiff little fingers and other bands rewrote 'rules'. decades later it was finally acknowledged those northern irish punk bands contributed to the peace process by bringing together young folx (aka the future) from differing sides that divide, uniting them with love&rage in the realisation they were all being lied too. 'the' future ain't written despite what oxforde dick-shunrys might preach

philip pullman says that after food, warmth and shelter humans need stories most. they crafted that concept daemon, an animal-familiar that travelling with us thru life and the moment we read that we knew it was a crow, ragged. crow first stole fried bread off us when we were wee. been outside every hospital we’ve been in, followed us here to our council backyard. pullman said their daemon was from the crow family, cos the crow family is a thief. so glad we stole andrew vachss (and then bought more). and pullman names another truth of this cuntry: like it or not, we are cultural christians. religions are the most successful storytellings, they have framed most narrative. and so, altho we're lifelong atheist, force-fed with 1500+ year of binary, heaven/hell, capitalist/communist, 'enemies of the people' versus tory-cons is a head-thrall. govern-mentals and bishoprics need enemies, otherwise, who to blame when all ain't milk and honey? bipolar is an old political term, from way before its use in mental distress. bipolar politically means heaven and hell, which translates left / right, capitalist / communist, gendered-binary, are you for or against? cultural christianity is bipolar, an oppressive concept from the judaeo-christian-muslim-god borrowed from other, prior religions. the binary construct makes it easy to luurve to hate ... and cultural christianity across these countries of the yuck ('u.k.') are so straightjacketing

... other religions offer multipolar, multi-gods, multi-p.o.v. while still more hold out no absolutes, gotta find your own. norse myths entertained us as bairn with their multipolarity: their gods-slash-goddesses (multiple) change gender, acknowledge disabilities, play tricks, fight-fuck, laugh-love, drink and write poetry, eventually dying out while a wise woman völuspá shelters life and re-greens the earth, world continuing. p.s. norse gods were birthed thru being licked out of glacier by a giant cow. they were so very human, offering multiple possibilities ... i.e. they were born and then they died

wayne kramer of mc5, then mc50, a convicted criminal and way more honest than many an mp said how growing up in turmoil of the 60's, jewish folx who had fled nazis in the 30's told how the 30's were worse, kramer has suggested the 60's were worse than 'now'. (wayne died in 2024). kramer acknowledged the despair but said, you just gotta put in the labour. come to our council flat (don’t put the door thru unlike mental teams with their lanyards aka ligatures) and read writings up our hall wall. a while ago we wrote large in dusky pink, octavia butler’s words: ‘the normals don’t survive’.

don't think of an elephant is book by george lakoff: don't think of an elephant? you're now thinking elephant. whoever frames 'the' argument wins. push-back against dominant story means you only ever firefight. reframe argument: drowning street, cisgender, sick-chiatry, break those bishopricking binaries. brokenword is all about curving around the top-down narrative, so folx just might get heard. housing ain't difficult. britain signed the universal declaration of human rights after world war two. article 25 says all shall have the right to a standard of living adequate for our health and well-being and this includes food, clothing, medical care and social security as well as housing. tell the truth each and every: housing is a human right. and right now? anyfucker saying 'britains a small island'. spit back: nuuh, zakynthos is. nazis invaded that small island in 1944c.e. and demanded 'the list'. on zakynthos, prior to invasion, there were 275 jewish people. nazis invade, go straight to the authorities, the mayor and the bishop, demanding that list. given a piece of paper, nazis open this, read only two names. 'we are your jews, take us we will share in their fate' said that couple. those 275 jewish people disappear for the duration of that invasion, nazis get kicked out, and then the invisible 275 reappear. there were no deaths and no reprisals. so let's change narratives yeah?

edgecity: monologues from the street is powered by the above and then some ...

25 - 27 september. 7:30pm. www.live.org.uk/whats-on/edgecity-monologues-street

Frontman of the most influential post-punk band of the last decade, Sleaford Mods, JASON WILLIAMSON joins the cast for a very special selection of monologues written by our associate artist gobscure exploring the many unexpected facets of homelessness and street life. Edgecity will be made up of six searing monologues, read by a cast of three including Williamson with live music. Each piece comes directly from gobscure’s own lived experience of living homeless across Britain. Through stunning fragmentary language, gobscure paints a picture of Britain from those on the very edges of society.

Jack McNamara, Artistic Director of Live Theatre, said: “We are truly stoked to welcome Jason to Live Theatre to give voice to these amazing pieces by one of the most genuinely radical North East writers I have come across. I had a sense that gobscure’s work would resonate with him. These are artists who, in their different ways, have glimpsed hell and know how to talk about it. But their approach is full of unexpected insights, brutal honesty and gallows humour. This endorsement of gobscure’s work really is very meaningful. Two radical voices coming together in a very special way.”

'anybody who has served in combat in any way understands that words are weapons, and i’m in a war, the war hasn’t stopped.' andrew vachss

vachss tried to find a corridor for aid into biafra in the 60s; person next to him got brains blown out, he survived. survival was dumb luck, his words: the trick is to transcend. words are weapons. language constructs power. first rule of any war: some folx make a killing. rule number two - psy-ops, psychological operations, headgames. the actual killing is only number three. number four never gets taught tho: frag, fragging, to frag. realising the real enemies the c.o., commanding officer, grunt-slash-squaddie sometimes takes a fragmentation device aka grenade, pulls the pin and ... boooom. frag's the real problem

govern-mentals like other predators work on binary: predator/prey; you for or against? they need enemies, this fuels the hate-drive, displaces their unearned helplessness / expertise by inexperience and misframing, points digits of blame so there’s an easy 'other', a target to 'excuse' why things haven't been fixed ... protest is hard. harder now, there’s more to lose. way less safety-net, way more uncertainty, precarity, fragility, bigger debts you’re expected to buy into ... housing? boy is that fragile. binaries eh ... bled into us across fifteen-hundred year of the minor cult of christianity implanted into north-humbers-lands and leaching out to erase more complex multipolar truths, wider linkages. as in rewilding where the straightened rivers need rewiggling, so we need to recurve the straightness/straightmess of cultural christianity, allow instead a complex flow, of multiple and wider and healthier stories

we've frequently written 'different battle same war'. and sometimes battlefields join. war got declared against us so long ago. over twenty year ago while in one homeless hostel, following our worst sectioning / sick-chiatry icu, and having been told by a hostel worker 'what dya need books for you're homeless?', we read engels 'conditions of the working class' and wrote down the line 'provoked to madness by the brutality of wealth.' this was about miners families in seaham just south of us now being put onto the moors homeless. pure poetry and an explanation of much of what has crippled us across life. and yeah we also got revenge. thirteen year reading, graduating from the open university, 2016c.e. those places we have lived / been made homeless / served time at their freudians displeasure are 'edgecity', places where wealth rubs against poverty in extreme ways and brutalises all we knew

one of our arts from ' housing contains the word sing'

(picturesbybish)

live theatre, 2023ce.

finalist in arts homelessness international awards

all are born with voice, too often its stolen / silenced / denied. mostly we're permitted only to speak on certain 'things' in small ways. and we so desperately need wider stories don’t we? our ongoing first battle is regaining voice. the reason we lived while others died is cos we had voice, those others didn't. we weren't heard but our voice was never stolen. we did steal an initial andrew vachss book, was unable to steal others, instead nicking other things so we could afford more vachss writings / riotings ... we were able to let andrew vachss know they'd saved our life before they died, didn't expect a reply but they returned: 'the debt of gratitude is mine.' fuuuuck. and folx wonder why we have boxers knuckles ... and andrew vachss wrote 'My technique has always been punch the wall, punch the wall, punch the wall, punch the wall. Sooner or later, either the wall cracks or you're done. That hasn't changed.' (case magazine, 2004)

version of art we sent andrew vachss

about the time we stole that vachss book we also learnt aikido. badly. ... we came to aikido thru disability-dance. candoco, new-formed, were coming to oilopolis, an edgecity, and asked disabled folx in the community to come down to the theatre ... this was after we'd been failed by arthole-gatekeepers when we dared propose a community 'celebration of survivors' arts-feast. social model of disability didn't exist that far north before internet got underway ... sent lengthy letter to candoco giving every reason why we should be given a break, as we remember (honestly trying to recall something decades on best we can), a compliments slip arrived by return saying if you say you're disabled then welcome. coming from street, street-theatre, political-performings, clown-and-fire as community organising we were always secretly a writer. our secret wish for this time with candoco was to sit at edge of their stage, writing away and maybes near the end of the time we could hand a postcard over, dancers might slow, and one reads a few short lines aloud to the community gathered, the flow then continuing. didn't work out like that ... candoco used contact improvisation, dance-form coming out of aikido (among other elements), so that whatever mobility you had, whatever body, ways were found to safely work / move / flow together without prejudice, oppression, hierarchy ... by the end of this theatre-time we were thanked by dave toole of candoco for infiltrating everyone and everything, sometimes simultaneously ... was this dance, performance, clown, writing by any means? who cares ... its magic. an art/'poem'/other of ours is wee transparent box with dream written across. boxes are for dreaming outside of ... (tom leonard who came to this edgecity around this time was first person we ever showed writing / rioting to. outta all this flow, rest in rage and power, all)

dreaming outside boxes

oilopolis is one of those locations where some serve life / death having run from significant threat. big enough to be anonymous(ish), far enough from all but the most motivated outta town) predator to hunt you's (this was way before internet). always viewed this edgecity as on a level with leningrad (tho admittedly we had michael gove while they had vlad putin). but after the storm tho? after the storm! how the granite g/listened and that (very) north sea uncompromising and beauty-fuelled with vast horizon sands wept clean ... we could sometimes be found in a wind-and-hail-shelter, stuffing down poutine (never to be confused with putin). poutine, as we discovered by this (very) north sea, is canada's national treasure: gravy'd chips with cheese-curd, true angel-food. and on these sands we first learnt to fire-breathe/eat/devilstick-juggle ... and this is also where we came to aikido-of-mind

beside these vast horizon sands, a european gifted us aikido-mind. we were crap at the actual practice of the martial art of peace. their gift was assisting us slow understanding of this narrative/story: of step aside, slow down, hold space, actively listen ... active-listening, slowing the fuuuck down, getting outta the way, and where necessary holding that space. active listening is what improvisers do from clown to musician, and we always listen to streets and hear word as music. in life, on aikido-street (not street aikido, there’s a difference), learning to take up the right amount of space; to be neither aggressor nor victim but street neutral; evade / avoid; if absolutely necessary, martial peace, complete the circle, return the aggressors energy to them

so yeah we get the story: of flipping binaries of aggressor v aggressed, right-left slash heaven-over-hell aka sick-chiatry's victim-shaming; triangulating this to street-neutral awareness of situation and timing and taking right amounts of space (not aggressor or victim but 'enough'); responding to threat by flowing away; not getting captured but if you are do not resist force with force, relax into ... blend with aggressors energy rather than bend to it; then encircle predator into ground ... aikido might not win streetfight but it de-macho's, allows minds to fall from aggro, less breaking binaries more allowing them to roll over their own edge/s. thugs take too much space, victims take too little, so take just enough. instead of bystanding or grandstanding, take responsibility and join with the force of attack to find stillness, strike with compassion, wield the heaviest peace. its about reading the room the street the empire. takes discipline to walk this peace-path, unfist in face, such subtleties in outsonging ... when predators do come with blade or paperwork then step inside their arc, narrow yer own body, take their blade-slash-pen-arm gentle down, the power of hip to guide, pour weight, sink and hold 'em flower-light, if they struggle they hurt theirselves further while you hold peace ...

after serving ten year in that edgecity (life prisoners have been known to serve less) we follow the north sea south to our original north-humbers-lands. our oilopolis estate hits national news within a fortnight, a child was tortured and murdered, estate ripped apart by unlistening from power, police chief is forced to resign a year later (for different reasons), cops and 'services' get comprehensively 'restructured'. we don't return to do one last street/fire clown as booked, still so much fucking guilt decades on, if we had returned we'd likely serve time for attempting / failing to return serious energy to some who failed (again) to stop predation

before we left that (very) north sea, we bought ourselves gift we'd long-ached for. (we'd long given up shoplifting.) there was this gorgeous japanese brush pen plus four ink cartridges in a wee shop, we wanted to buy this pen, maybe £20 max, but such guilt. then it was on half-price-sale, but still such guilt, halved again, but still guilt, could we? we bring our precious gift south back to the north-humber-lands, still feeling guilt over what we'd likely waste those four precious ink-cartridges on. now there’s internet, debit-cards and replacement cartridges can be mailed across the world (tho there’s still guilt), but now brush pen illustrated brokenwordage flow internationally and virtually, and we are realising how brokenword is an aikido-mind of wordage. love&rage

collecting tears, asking questions, rewriting futures with live theatres artistic associate gobscure

newsletter #9 https://substack.com/@gobscure

www.live.org.uk/whats-on/edgecity-monologues-street

edgecity: monologues from the street written by gobscure

Frontman of the most influential post-punk band of the last decade, Sleaford Mods, JASON WILLIAMSON joins the cast for a very special selection of monologues written by our associate artist gobscure exploring the many unexpected facets of homelessness and street life. Edgecity will be made up of six searing monologues, read by a cast of three including Williamson with live music. Each piece comes directly from gobscure’s own lived experience of living homeless across Britain. Through stunning fragmentary language, gobscure paints a picture of Britain from those on the very edges of society. The performance will be directed by Jack McNamara, Artistic Director of Live Theatre, who said: “We are truly stoked to welcome Jason to Live Theatre to give voice to these amazing pieces by one of the most genuinely radical North East writers I have come across. I had a sense that gobscure’s work would resonate with him. These are artists who, in their different ways, have glimpsed hell and know how to talk about it. But their approach is full of unexpected insights, brutal honesty and gallows humour. This endorsement of gobscure’s work really is very meaningful. Two radical voices coming together in a very special way.”

Edgecity runs from Thursday 25 to Saturday 27 September with performances at 7.30pm.

www.live.org.uk/whats-on/edgecity-monologues-street

in newsletters in the run-up to this unrepeatable, unmissable event were going to talk about brokenword and also art out of our lived experience of homelessnesses

for now : what do we mean brokenword? the narrative, all narrative, is bust, its broken, its owned-one-way-directional, and as we are a species that makes sense (or right now too much none-sense) of things thru languages, languagings, we gotta break 'the' narrative (hint theres more than one way of telling) to remake so languagesings again

thank you jack and all at live theatre for believing in us - thank you museum of homelessness for giving us space - thank yu tom leonard writer for being the first to see our writing/riotings

https://www.live.org.uk/blogs-resources/sleaford-mods-singer-jason-williamson-perform-radical-texts-about-homelessness

Jason Williamson of the globally revered post-punk band Sleaford Mods is to make a special appearance at Newcastle’s Live Theatre for three nights only Thursday 25 to Saturday 27 September, lending his unmistakable voice to the first ever hearing of new works by the ‘brokenword’ North East playwright gobscure. edgecity will be made up of six searing monologues, read by a cast of three including Williamson with live music by Geordie turntablist Mariam Rezaei. Each piece comes directly from gobscure’s own lived experience of living homeless across Britain.

The performance will be directed by Jack McNamara, Artistic Director of Live Theatre, who said: “We are truly stoked to welcome Jason to Live Theatre to give voice to these amazing pieces by one of the most genuinely radical North East writers I have come across. Jason and I worked together on an Alan Moore audiobook during lockdown (even making a limited edition vinyl for purgexxx records). I had a sense that gobscure’s work would resonate with him. These are artists who, in their different ways, have glimpsed hell and know how to talk about it. But their approach is full of unexpected insights, brutal honesty and gallows humour. This endorsement of gobscure’s work really is very meaningful. Two radical voices coming together in a very special way.”

Edgecity runs from Thursday 25 to Saturday 27 September with performances at 7.30pm. To find out more and book tickets go to: https://www.live.org.uk/whats-on/edgecity-monologues-street

(part of our ‘housing contains the word sing’ at live theate, finalist in arts and homelessness international awards, and title of one of the works in edgecity)

heres an initial brokenword thats relevant to all this. yes it covers homelessnesses, the bust-ness of stories we get told rather than tell, and is something we wrestled with while touring/performing brokenword at millennia-turn and that finally got written down for www.thi-wurd.com only in recent weeks as a result of a discussion that happened there, and yes thi wurd is named after / for tom leonard, and are an amazing bunch of cats herded by alan mcmunnigall ... and this brokenword is part of a longterm book of writing about touring brokenword and includes other brokenwords that will be performed as part of edgecity - works for us

atrocity-tourists taking polaroids at the gate of auschwitz

how did all come down to this? n were no talking rotten apples, good-folx doing nowt, wrong 'uns ... its an accumulation, its meteors un-nudged n frankly who has time? (is theft of our time the largest crime? disallowing time-space for non-action), cock-up over conspiracy each-n-every n face-it tech-bro's are cocked-up-ozymandiases one n all 'look on my wanks ye shitey n despair' ... our time in oxenaforda clarified this. no what yr thinking. if that leeds-gunman hadn’t got us, the headrow librarians would-of, n we'd only hit leeds cos of being hit by car chased by northumbria's finest ... so: get outta leeds fast n far. we'd lived (n been homelessed) in aberdeen n were due a heart-attack in coventry n thus believed oxenforde was aberdeen (ancient-uni x delusions-of-leningrad) divided by a car-plant bombed in word war ii ... ugh-ughh. homeless then sectioned then psych-icu, finally illegal discharge to street. scrape into a homeless hostel where this 'support-worker' queries 'what d'ya need books for yr homeless?' get revenged. grade 'a' a levels in psychology n sociology followed by open university degree (wtf are 2:1's? firsts for workers we were recently told). our degree takes 13year, lucky for some. get to inhale engels 'provoked to madness by the brutality of wealth'! toss the difference between 'kiss of the spiderwoman' n 'do androids dream of electric sheep' n ink on abnormalcy theory being sick-chiatry slash dick-chiatry (n all trained via oxeforde) who once-upon-a sugar-rushed on those highest ranking nuremberg nazis on trial for death being more depressed than victor yank-gb(h). germs thus had abnormal aka non-anglo-brains (er, saxons came from over there, founded oxford, which hitler later refused to bomb cos it could serve as a northern kapital). if it could be proven they'd holocausted (n face it, they did keep meticulous papieren slash paper) then they go hang. only eine kleine jahre before they were true believers that their operas would run a thousand year when conducted in time ... us bi's were just one small target while what became known as aktiont4 was the learning-curve of killing disabled folx industrially to work up the wider holocaust, n yup we're crippled too ... sixties finally showed via normalcy theory (ta stanley milgram and their (fake) electric-shock experiment), that kraut-brains ain’t different to brit-uns when given an authority figure, a step-by-step approach, to allow folx slowly knowingly willingly to hand their autonomy over to the greater go(o)d of clipboard, white-coat, stiff-upper. p.s. due to be born into the northern place where violence is off all charts (north-humber-lands stewed by being the punchbag of these lands, the bladed edge where binary bishoprickery rammed against p.t.s.d. danelaw n outlaws roiled down from higher lands) instead we got geboren 'over there' accidentally, yup, were a germ!

post-berlin wall fall we toured broken-word thru badlands flattened by hitler then widened by stalin. couldn’t save the yoof, hell, couldn’t save ourselves but we did howl-whisper-raw-dubchant with free-improv n hardcore musicians while bairns n librarians fed us n for a time this kept all sane ... now that map is open-carry-swastika again ... also drank fire n water in iberia with soundpoets tonguing edwin morgan n blake n pessoa n ritsos into languages unkenned ... this 'regular' poet then offered up holocaustlengthpoem as (theres this unwritten law, see) declaring suchlike as the poets-responsibility - offer authentically how their sparse final handful of word on how birds now sing even at murdersites was what sung to us n they flounced for departure gates faster than border guard set to stun ...

to remake languages first you gotta break, n face it, all narratives are now fucked, so brokenword yeah. during the times above our longform brokenword with visuals voodoodoll got gifted at various euro-prides n elsewhere. voodoodoll included a chunk on contemporary news of atrocity tourists taking polaroids at the gates of auschwitz (oświęcim) ... this millennia-turn text was for our long-dead euro-lover who gifted love&rage, taught resistance-n-poetry as we clowned-clumsy with fire n rage ... now selfies at the gates of auschwitz are acknowledged as ongoing problem (look it up)

once-upon-a, folx looked around n took photos, but now our time is stolen n antisocialmeejuhs shout: go! now! be on 25:7! n so we flustercluck into con-suming even tho that binary flies no more ... p.s. 'normal' contains the words 'or' n 'mal', just saying ... ... folx (mostly) don’t intend to disrespect but get bought/sold - you for or against? selfies are egotist-narcissist, erasing time-situation-memory, selfies look now into the distort-lens n snapsnap ... dalai lama's been saying for centuries 'when a finger points at the moon its unwise to look at the finger', were only fingers pointing (n not even rude-uns!), now slow the fuck down, thiiink, n allow non-action to offer more useful ways

love&rage, gobscure, june25ce

artwork 'building communities of struggle' has been been with us thru a lot. multiple versions include those charcoaled up walls outside london (just one of the times we were homeless) and mid-wales; exhibited like this at live theatre (part of our epic body of work 'housing contains the word sing' supported by MoH (museum of homelessness) and finalist in arts and homeless international awards 23ce and now at arc stockton.

'building communities of struggle' is also a quote from angela davis that we've lived with longer than we can recall. its what we try holding onto, always have, always will, not least cos right now is the same old playbook of hate, as was claws 28

returning to teesside with this work after so long is strange but as andrew vachss writer (who saved our life, more than once) said, the trick is transcending ... get out / above / beyond. this solo show 'you have already survived'40 year in the making, tries doing that. we travel upstream along the afon wysg / river usk , a river that saved our life and showed how post-trauma-growth is possible. some rivers have rights, this one has riots. travelling upstream links britains last insurrection to date; with asking whats love in yr language; learning how unicorns are real, if extinct; attending our first punk gig as teen in defiance of sick-chiatry; and finally out to widened horizons. along the way welsh poppies, ancient yew trees, and survivor carrion birds, red kites and crows all taught us post-trauma growth is possible. we also offer up struggles against those playbooks of hate, breaking binaries and busting claws 28 as well as other creative resistances. oh look at the radical pride colours in the demo placard: wales is to the left of england. more accurately wales cuuurves to the left of england (it aint straight), and 'you have already survived' is about doing things on the curve

this is accompanied by album, installation, publication, more

https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/gobscure

a one off show is @arc_stockton fri 9may, 7pm. (exhibition is till 30may)

thanx for making this show possible
@livetheatrenewcastle
@purplestateofmind76
@llantarnam_grange
@alexander_kelly
@lindsmef
@brettinthecity
@somebodysgottobestupid
@daniel_stewart_russell
@thesocietyofauthors

@lyngardner says : Such a joy to catch @collectortears show you have already survived @LiveTheatre. such a slice of humanity and teasing connections with both heart and an angry punkish spirit. Feel privileged to have seen

love&rage

flow is a slide show (including images below) of 78 photos taken along the afon wysg / river usk. ta to trish wheatley of dao (disability arts online) and dan russell for making this possible. slide show is is accompanied with soundscape / songs remixed from our album whats love in yer language (ta late girl for mentoring)

the whole project has been a moveable feast of sound, text, visuals, performance, more - celebrating that river as we flow upstream from insurrection to wider horizons via punk and post-trauma-growth. it was a lifetime in the making

flow can be viewed at

the album is at

a publication (ta gwyneth lewis for mentoring and society of authors for award) at https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/gobscure

flow premiered as part of our installation and solo show yu have already survived last summer at live theatre where were proud to be associate artist. thanx to all, especially David Flynn yu have already survived was made in association with live theatre. thanx to all at live whose a.d. Jack McNamara has described us as 'one of our region's (or country's) most original artists'

whatever 2025ce chucks at you's remember yu have already survived

picturesbybish

love&rage

words and sounds were supported by an a.n. bursary and society of authors award as well as access support from dan and mentoring from late girl and gwyneth lewis

albums available at

publication at www.lulu.com/spotlight/gobscure

a version of this song is the final part of our solo show made in association with live theatre

thanx to live for ongoing support and for describing us (on the record) as

one of our region's (or country's) most original artists

whats love in yer language : a song

whats love in yer language

whats love in yer language

cariad

city-babel-sing, city-babel-sings

sings out to bridges n bridgings

birdsongings n longings

- gwent levels gleam

all the wrong places on the map

too many year ov wrong places on the map

ssllllow dooowwn, sloooww down

recovering our first rainsong

recovering our first rainsong

poppies aint binary, poppies are many

multiple species flowing iceland on down

our possibility are welsh-poppy

childs-hood-beauty marking no war

upsung into wysg upland

wider horizons never undone

(wider horizons never undone)

ps - more on these photos of the afon wyg / river usk in our next newsletter

this latest newsletter has taken a while, recovering from too much surgery with more to come, meaning more or less shutting down till at least 25ce. this year however we finally completed yu have already survived - 40year in the making, travelling up the afon wysg / river usk finding punk, post-trauma growth, wider horizons - thanx live theatre, and all who supported this work to finally be seen. lyn gardner loved it. Such a joy to catch @collectortears show you have already survived @LiveTheatre. such a slice of humanity and teasing connections with both heart and an angry punkish spirit. Feel privileged to have seen. @lyngardner

alongside solo performance and installation, theres album (ta late girl for mentoring)

theres publication (ta gwyneth lewis for mentoring and society of authors for award)) https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/gobscure

and film (ta brettinthecity)

punkpoem is part of the solo show and in the publication, text is below

our first punk gig

punk aint gobbing or corporate beer

n that cop-out 'pop-punk'? never ...

punk is d.i.y. n asking why-why-why?

sick-chiatry slick with background-radio

grabs our maw, forces our swallow

roil their numbcore sick splutter g-gigs

gonna undo all we've done to yu

foundries ov noise we are

founded on noise, chosen family

never deny our rights

surge rivers-side in first gig flow

searing - punk as verb - unclench

n into fond-found ov noisery -

mekons kilhets wire fugazi hüsker dü

(bob mould happy-shredding is long way

from land-speed-record turntabling 1982)

anhrefn to datblygu, the ex to the ex big band

poison girls to nisennenmondai

bruxas maria thru maja osajnik n out to ut

clutches the best locations are marginal

lowkey beats beyond calais

black lives still matter

orgreave, zapatista, soweto, rojava

beat-beat-beat - never be beaten

mc5 to mc50 - lingua ignota - leatherface

shakespeare - sappho - garcia lorca

boots vegan slip-on, were full-on arthritic

floor were taking inch-by-smoulder-inch

from numbcore sick-chiatry-pop-punk

punks the smoulder-stick that lights firework

fuse-lit slick into guitar-bass-vocal-drums

s-lipped inside ov gobsmack undefeat!

gobsquads ov aberhonddu mohican

un-slit b(l)indings, this gare, were home!

in sinew-screaming seismic-seizings

fuck pop-punk n antipsychotics both,

never to market in that great unwar

love&rage weave great waves

learn to love yer madnesses

learn to love, this we cleave

may these mikes never empty

nae swansongings just truth

words as weaponry still

long may s-lippages twitch n spill

this swan-black river, to never leave

n that armistice ov actually being held?!

other worlds really do nestle alongside

multiverses holding us to unstill

finally heres a poempainting from 'survived' installation about the above

till next time, love&rage

hope some ov yu can make performances at leeds 15 june www.slunglow.org/shows/

or harrogate 25 june www.harrogatetheatre.co.uk/events/you-have-already-survived/

feels like most ov what we make / do would-ov saved us a lot ov scarring growing up and saved 'the state' a fortune ... learnt to distrust education edge-yu-cayshun edge-yu-k-shun, socialsmirk-socialwork, sick-chiatry early on, top gaslighting but nae help ... one early blatancy wz age six n other bairns getting tongue-lashed for no reading ... 3 primary school teachers were previously soldiers and got handed us bairns as reward for their brutal repressions far far away. we loved books, loved to read, so would slip to the windowsill and nab other books to hide inside the one we'd already fully digested ... one day that soldier-teacher spots what were doing, stops lashing the others and bullies-bullies-bullies us and bans us from reading (i.e. sitting quiet, causing nae disruption, and learning ourself). were forced to sit and witness others receive their lashings across months cos theyre not reading ... born with a voice, we kept ours (just), ken where the others are buried (who lost theirs), were finally being heard, folx who were broken yet questioning and writing / making sounds / community organising helped us - 'yu have already survived' is partly about that

'yu have already survived' solo theatre show, plus album, installation, publication and more is about the power ov words, our first poem (age seven) and realising unicorns were real (if extinct) at the same time. i.e. those stories mustov come from somewhere (palaeontologists have long said its the now extinct siberian rhino. neanderthals, denisovans and homo sapiens will have seen this species - not a predator, not something easy to prey upon, aloof and unusual (folx would not have seen many single horns on animals?) and so a different story will have been told about this megafauna . books and jokes and stories and song taught us about scraping away the mud and guts ov myth and legend (or whatever) to find the roots (sometimes routes too) underneath

altho we loved words we spent much ov our time around musics - folx lugging / driving boxes ov records to market, those who crafted fliers/posters/liner-notes, who built instruments, who sang or improvised or ... learnt way more here than thru edge-yu-cay-shun. one single wz the men they couldnt hang song ironmasters. blokes almost two hundred year ago putting on frocks to go out and smash toll-gates across west / south wales - such love&rage wasnt shouted in school. we call such songs : playlists for survival. what sounds are essential for yu? that keep yu alive, allows yu to keep going? heres illustration we use in 'survived'

last time we were homeless, (hope it is last time), we named what drove us nuts about homeless hostels most. the noise. internal voices, tinnitus-sing, shouted threats, doors being kicked in, the intercom buzz from gaslighter 'services', football matches opposite, glass smash, drinks can blown uphill (beauty-full!), nazi demo parking under our window one time. but we'd been donated blanket by our best friend marty (their playlist for survival included outlaw country, bizets carmen and birdsong), and taking wire-structures in that room and building kindov cage to keep others at bay, mattress on floor and us on top ov martys blanket with leaves on and putting headphones on and listening to ... stars. we played and played sinopah by annea lockwoodover and over. she had sampled stars (among other things) vast, epic, crunchy ... cd player, batteries, headphones, a plastic tub with cd's in kept us going ... we had dvorak string quartets, a lot ov leo records cd's (our fave label ever?) including amina claudine myers saluting bessie smith and sainkho namchylak and vladimir tarasov and ... mahler, june tabor, marina rossell, a load ov real world from mari boine to little axe, kayhan kalhor, boogie, albert ayler, carla bleys escalator over the hill, south african jazz, age ov chance, laibach, odetta, joe ely, omit ... liberation!

4 illustrations from may yr map never run out collection ov shortpoems / drawings via lulu.com/spotlight/gobscure

more liberation wz hiding out along that river - afon wysg - birdsong, trees, our first punk gig (audience) defying sick-chiatry as teen ... 'survived' show starts with us explaining waters ov this river as places ov peace : stilling tinnitus, lessening physical pain including herniated spine (caused by those soldier-teachers) and osteoarthritis, and easing our mental distress ...

show ends with our asking folx to close their eyes while we build soundscape ov birdsong, river-sounds and leaves and then sing 'whats love in yer language?'

(title ov album ov song / soundscape sitting alongside 'survived' show

live theatre yu have already survived performances

we plan to generally send newsletters out every few weeks - there might be art, sound, film, thoughts, links - frequently relating to our art / what is influencing us

hope to see you at performances in toon

(25 may, 28 may, 1 june (solo theatre show) or 30 may (spoken word / gig with late girl)

we believe all are born with a voice, most get silenced which is unhealthy, we've been fortunate to keep our voice and finally start being heard. we use arts to ask questions (the question-mark was most likely invented by a queer northumbrian in around 800c.e.); reframe narratives; rewrite futures (theres always more than one narrative)

'yu have already survived' is 40 year in the making, travelling upstream thru south wales along the afon wysg (river usk), a river which has saved our life.

heres a banner we use in the performance - banners thanx to cvan-n.e. (now arts network north east) anne.art - there are 5 more, including a mega-one commissioned by the baltic

and heres an interview with D.S. Russell that explains a bit about the work / us

the artist known as gobscure is from teesside, via the larger continent and south wales (and all the better for it). you have already survived  is a body of visual art; words; sound and performance. its about insurrection, madness, post traumatic growth, rewilding and wider horizons ... everything gobscure does really starts from words. you have already survived returns to the site of gobscure’s first ever poem: where the words started. the afon wysg (river usk) is a river they have a long-term relationship with. gobscures lifelong approach is asking questions, reframing narratives and “rewriting” futures (there’s more than one)

habitually unconventional, gobscure has travelled back in the dual sense of going back in time and heading upstream. at 78 miles the wysg is the equal longest river entirely in wales. It starts just below casnewydd (newport), which has britain's other transporter bridge alongside middlesbrough. you've got some of the oldest footprints in britain on the gwent levels - beautiful landscape, ex-power station, nature reserve. casnewydd only recently became – like sunderland – a city. unloved, it always feels like the falklands war is about to happen, but it's also a beautiful, wonderful place.  travelling from this site of britain's last insurrection to date (1839), via caerleon, one of the main roman outposts in britain: those arthurian round table myths travelled thru originated here. on to y fenni and one county lunatic asylum where 3,000+ folx died across 100 years. gobscure has been locked up for being insane. they also learned of the trade in lunacy. one of these countries 'achievements' is monetising madness. further upstream, the first ever punk gig they attended, in defiance of psychiatric orders, aberhonddu, brecon. on to pontsenni / sennybridge: theres been a military presence in this area for millennia. p.t.s.d. is a rare useful label, documented across the world and across millennia, mostly in relationship to soldiering. gobscure’s p.t.s.d. doesn't come from warfare

heres a postcard from limited edition art / publication / envelope available with show

this land is where welsh poppies are in the wild. poppies are seen either as pain relief (you know, 'drugs') or 'the glorious war dead'. post-trauma growth is also possible. welsh poppies are colourful, child-like, they cling in cracks, unnoticed, all-of-a-sudden, popping up beautifully. the yew tree at Defynnog is at least 3000 years old; and theres standing stones (e.g. maen llia where julian cope’s car caught fire). gobscure learned most of their history lessons from hanging out and working in record shops, being around musicians, instrument builders, improvisers, promoters ... they weren't big names, just folx doing it, loving and organising tiny gigs.  music was the water gobscure swam in, providing a home when they didn't really have anything else

you have already survived features a long poem sequence; an album; a series of banners including red kites that clung on here back in the 70s, now rewilding everywhere, including north-east england; an installation with paper poetry poppies; curlews made out of fragile tape; photos ... there is also a solo show, supported / premiered at Live Theatre Newcastle.  its all laden with politics and poetry and myths and legends and history and nature, all kind of wound up together: gobscure and other folx

heres a detail from the baltic commission - lightbox, featuring in the exhibition and solo show - the title of the final song in the show too - and a useful question for all : whats love in yr language?

welcome to newsletter #1 from us gobscure, which goes out a month before 'yu have already survived' premieres thanks to live theatre newcastle. we plan to send newsletters out every month or so from now on - art, writing, creative resistance

live theatre yu have already survived performances

'yu have already survived' is the sort ov project we make. (40 year in the making, travelling upstream thru south wales along the afon wysg (river usk). this river has saved our life more than once, wz home to britains last insurrection to date, where we wrote our first poem as child, attended our first punk gig as teen in defiance ov sick-chiatry, learned that post-trauma growth is possible from birds n flowers n trees n had our horizons expanded for the first time. like much ov our projects, its long and slow and is presented as visual installation, as album, as print on demand publication, and as solo show ... it mixes personal and political, history and legend, psychology, disability, resistance with nature to widen horizons. there are songs, banners, poems, unicorns, paper-flowers and more ...

and like much ov what we do it is fired by love&rage. did we hear that phrase from lyric? campaign? other ... it seems to fit and so we deploy it regularly

we've been described as 'artist immersed in a wide variety of art forms, whose work continues to defy pigeon-holing crossing visual, performance, literary and digital art forms with ease and uncomforting elegance. an abiding concern within their work is the disconnect between hierarchy and human rights. often playful to the point of frivolous, they are also capable of writing and producing arresting theatre that cuts to the quick'

(Disability Arts Online).

we dont like being boxed in ... heres a box for dreaming outside ov, made from something that would be ordinarily thrown away, we prefer to dream outside boxes - at lasting building a wee sanctuary in our council flat / yard close to the north sea of tyne&wear

our projects tend to layer experiences and ask questions, reframe narratives, rewrite futures - theres always more than one narrative. some are fat mad big-kid bisexual dissidence; some spiral out ov our homelessnesses; we reckon all were born with a voice but mostly we get silenced and this is unhealthy - and so work lifelong on ways ov reclaiming voice, playfully pointing out the absurd and reclaiming spaces for and with other marginalised folx and suggesting creative resistances

russell hoban once wrote 'i may not be deep but i am wide' we like being wide

and yes we do use plural as reflection on our broken mind. our pronouns are they-them

aye, we write in lowercase, heres why: age ten the local bishop wz due to visit our (non-religious) state school. wall ov multicoloured sugar paper gets pinned up – our rectangle wz dead-centre. all had to write a page describing the sandal-wearing god – fair-haired, blue-eyed, clean-frocked. told teacher we’d write another essay but after all we'd been thru we couldn't describe god as they weren't real. got detained each & every break & after school as that god-wall filled, our central rectangle still bare, punishments worsening. us cracked day before visit, pinning up essay - tho ending on god is made up, story, fairytale. bishop exploded reading ours - specifically cos we'd spelt god lowercase - & so got beaten with metre-stick. aint god lowercase same as flower / dog / car? specific dog / flower / car needed capital but 'god' wz category only. we've been lowercase ever since

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