poliphilo

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I thought I'd have another go at having AI conjure me up an old master. I asked for a Leonardo Virgin and Child again but it can't get the Mona Lisa out of its machine mind so I went sideways and asked for a Raphael Madonna.

It gave me this.

"But that's not the Virgin Mary," I thought,

And then a moment later..." O, I see....."

Last night's dream:

It's aesthetic is distinctive, monochrome, brown and white. It has a vaguely erotic flavour (as good dreams should)

We are giving a party, but I am the only one of us who is present to host it and the guests are already turning up. They are all friends of my friends who ought to be here but aren't. I think I am waiting for the woman I love (this provides the faint flavour of eroticism) but whether she is hostess or guest I can't say.....

The situation is complicated by the house being in a state of disrepair. Cheery workmen are mending a huge round hole in the ceiling of the main room, through which water is dripping. An elderly couple, also cheery, are digging in a flowerbed.

The object of the party is to join two hemispheres together. The hemispheres are smooth, unlike the hemispheres of the brain, but a little scuffed and worse for wear. In spite of everything the work seems to be progressing well.

The dream I had a few nights ago seemed to be an answer to the question, "What should I be doing with my life?" This one seems to be much the same thing though here the question is "What have I been doing?"

When photography came along they said that Painting was dead. They were wrong of course.

And now they're saying it again because of AI. Whether they're right or wrong remains to be seen.

The fact is AI can now produce images that look very much like paintings. I saw one on the site where I go to make my pix that pretty much had me fooled. Or, at least it would have done if I hadn't known better. I don't feel I can reproduce it here without the artist's permission, so what I've done is make my own version of the subject- which happens to be Table Mountain.

Not bad (though his was better) but I reckon it would pass as a reproduction of an oil by a 19th century French landscape painter. I specified it should be in the style of Gustave Courbet and it almost is. Bear in mind that I made it without trying, with very little emotional investment and using an app that cost me nothing.

Having started I carried on because it was fun.

Here's my biggest success- a picture of Sacre Coeur (one of my least favourite famous buildings) in the style of Paul Utrillo. I don't think it's exacly like Utrillo but it's very like a real oil.

AI had problems with Cubism but was capable of producing a nice early pseudo-Picasso.

Old masters presented more of a problem- partly because AI has no sense of period and a lousy grasp of art history. The man in its Rembrandt portrait wore a homburg. Asked for a Holbein it produced a mash-up of Titian and van Dyck. When I said "Madonna and Child by Leonardo" it gave me this horror....

Mind you, had I put more work into my prompts it would almost ceertainly have done better.

Finally, here's its stab at a Hockney.

These pictures prove nothing, of course. I don't accord them any value. They're jeux d'esprit, nothing more....

But I've always admired the great art forgers- the things they got away with, their twitting of the experts.....

They were selling bunches of daffodils at the Co-op yesterday. 60p reduced from £1.

The ones I bought are looking a bit scraggy and papery this morning, but they're still bright yellow.

One or two of the daffodils at the bottom of our garden are very close to flowering.....

Picture Diary 116

1. The White Room

2. Safe

3. Bonfire

4. Into Storage

5. Coming through

6. Benign

The world is so deliciously low, so physical, so slow, so immersive- that it's easy to forget- as many do- that other worlds exist.

What shall I compare it to?

How about one of those exercises where the players are dropped off in the wilderness without phone or map or compass and very few tools or rations with the aim of surviving and- a tall order, this- somehow winning back to civilisation.

Why would anyone submit to it?

Because we love difficulty.

Becaise we love challenge.

Because we love discovery.

Same reason that Shackleton went to Antarctica and people still climb Everest.

"You could die you know."

To which I would return Peter Pan's answer, "Death would be an awfully big adventure...."

I love books, but you can't live in them. I know, I've tried.

And if you take them as a guide they'll sooner or later let you down.

Books are just words and words fall short. Ask a poet, they're the experts and they'll tell you the same.

Books are written by people- and people- even the most gifted- are limited in all sorts of ways.

Books were written then- and this is now. This applies even if the then is very recent.

All the above applies, with suitable adaptions, to movies, TV shows, fandoms- and anything else that people get wrapped up in. It applies, with bells on, to anything that is presented or that presents itself as holy, authorative or eternally true.....

"I haven't read X," said my friend, "And don't know why I should regard him as an expert. Stop filling your arguments with quotations. Just tell me what you think yourself. Speak from your lived experience and not from books. Speak from the heart and not the brain...."

We had lunch at The Long Man. The waitress is almost always the same waitress and she recognises us- which is nice. It had been a while, "Christmas and poorliness" I explained.

The pews (donated by or purchased from Berwick Church) have plaques attached honouring members of the Bloomsbury Group- who used to gather just up the road at Charleston Farmhouse. We sat in the corner which remembers John Maynard Keynes. Do you understand Keynesian economics? No, me neither. Wasn't Mrs Thatcher a fan? I think so. Or maybe she wasn't. I dunno. It's all such a long time ago....

OK, I said to Myself, as I was going to bed last night, It's my birthday tomorrow so give me a clue as to what I should be doing with my life.

And Myself obliged.

The dream had me moving to a farm in Sussex with a ready-made family in place. First I was having a bonfire, chucking the dead wood onto it (obvious symbolism) and then I was going through the attics where I found a huge cache of drawings and prints and writings by a chap called Phil (my own pseudonym- Poliphilo, right?) and realised I should be doing what I could to disseminate them and get them better known.

Then it was a meal time and I was introduced to the men who worked on the farm and one of them was called Jordan and he shook my hand and I knew he was going to be an ally. Since waking up I believe I've identified who he is IRL.

So the dream is saying, "You're in the right place at the right time. Carry on doing what you're doing and maybe put more of yourself into it."

Thanks. Wilco. Over and out....

Wimpy's came to the UK in 1954- well ahead of McDonald's and KFC. Burger King followed in 1957. In 1989 the company which owned Burger King (Grand Metropolitan) took over Wimpy's. Both companies are currently owned by a South African conglomerate.

KFC came to the UK in 1965. Unlike its rivals it it didn't immediately go to London or even a major city- but opened its first branch way up north in Preston, Lancashire.

As of the present moment the number of UK outlets belonging to each of the (originally) American Fast Food giants is

McDonald's- 1494

KFC- 1016

Burger King- 574

Wimpy's- 61

Following on from the last post......

Mcdonald's opened its first British outlet in Woolwich in 1974.

Here's a picture of the event. The ribbon was cut by BBC DJ Ed "Stewpot" Stewart, accompanied by the Mayor of Woolwich, Len Squirrel.

On that first UK menu, a basic hamburger was priced at 15p. If you wanted to push the boat out a Big Mac would have set you back 45p. O, the extravagance!

(Yeah, but, I can vaguely remember when 45p did seem like a lot of money. )

This next fact surprised me. The first branch to open outside London was in Fallowfield, Manchester in 1986. Yes, a whole 12 years later.

I wonder what took them so long.....

Few weeks back I jibbed at paying £17.50 for a couple of portions of curry and chips in Crowborough. Yesterday I paid £11.00 for the same thing here in Eastbourne.

Curry and chips used to be a cheap snack. Ain't that any more. But £11.00 is a whole lot better than £17.50.

What does constitute a cheap snack these days? Not much. Nearest thing is probably a Big Mac only I don't eat meat....

I used to like a Big Mac. Won't pretend otherwise. The grandkids still think a trip to Macky D's (as they call it) is a treat.....

I didn't grow up eating fast food. We were Middle class and the chip shop was Working Class. Not for our kind. I don't think I crossed the threshold of one until I was 18 and away from home. Guy I was with had to tell me what to order. That was in Sheffield. Never looked back.....

The current President of the USA got a lot of mileage while on the stump out of his promise to "drain the swamp". Surprisingly it's a promise that's being kept. Only in these latter days he's been doing all he can to halt the process because it turns out that one of the biggest swamp monsters (did we ever doubt it?) is himself.

I forget where he used to stand on NATO, but the MAGA rhetoric sort of implied that the USA didn't need allies. Anyway, whether intended or not, he's currently in the process of taking the alliance apart- with the once unthinkable spectacle of European forces being mustered to deter the US invasion of a European country....

He has surrounded himself with incompetents, he appears to decide policy on a whim, he is only feared as a mad dog is feared. He gets no respect.

The USA has been an Imperial power since at least the end of WWII. We have seen it behave rapaciously and amorally and foolishly, but never with so much clown-footed, whitewash-slinging, buttonhole-flower-squirting slapstick as under it's current president. The nation will probably survive him but I doubt that its Empire will....

Picture Diary 115

1. Mademoiselle

2. Gotcha

3. Not a care in the world

4. Pretty steamy for the 1950s

5. Here comes Trouble

6. Take it!

I got through the night without having to get up periodically to douse the coughing with cups of tea or wear it out by watching vids.

The night before last I caught a couple of hours sleep by shifting onto a different plane and taking deep breaths, each one visualised as a little square green window, lit up from within. When I'm ill this shifting of consciousness seems easy, when I'm well it don't.

Steve Judd, my favourite astrologer points to a big conjunction of heavenly bodies (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Pluto) starting today and carrying on over the next few days with an even groovier and rarer arrangement on the 20th. This, he says, marks the beginning of a great movement of resistance against the lies of the powerful- which I'm guessing, though he doesn't specify, means Epstein, Epstein, Epstein.....

Every astrologer, psychic, channeler, cartomancer I pay attention tohas said there will be great upheavals this year- startling revelations- and the world will emerge on the far side a kinder, saner place. Old power structures will collapse, old certainties be disproved, new truths established.

Can't wait....

But they have also said that these first few weeks- where we are now- will be hard going- which is just what they're proving to be....

Judy is reading a time travel story which has modern day people going back to 1914- and it's annoying her that the dialogue the author gives his Georgians to speak feels really "off".

Yeah, well, but how did people speak in 1914? What's our evidence?

It's almost entirely literary. And literary dialogue has been cleaned up, tidied up, rendered, well, literary. And, anyway, we can't know whether any particular writer had a good ear for dialogue or not.

Did anyone ever speak like Oscar Wilde's people- except, perhaps, Oscar himself? Was the speech of Irish peasants half as as colourful as the stuff Synge puts in their mouths? Going back a bit further, did Dickens's Cockneys really transpose their "v"s and "w"s and if so when did they stop?

And how did people cuss during the Great War? Someone a while back was protesting that is was wildly anachronistic to have soldiers saying "fuck" in the movie 1917- and it piqued my interest, so I dug. Turns out they certainly did- all the fucking time- only you wouldn't know it from most of the contemporary novels, memoirs and plays.

Accuracy bows before good manners. It does in our time too. Stick a microphone in front of someone's face and they'll start minding their "p"s and "q"s. There's a lot more casual casual racism (the taboo of our times) in the speech of the streets than shows up in the record that will be available to our grand kids....

I'm not sleeping well because, "Cough-cough-cough, cough-cough-cough." I keep thinking I've got this cold on the run and then it rallies. On the whole, though, I haven't been feeling ill, just tired.....

William Allen, the Quaker polymath, scientist, financier and all-round do-gooder was an ancestor of mine. His younger brother Samuel was my several times great grandfather. Does that make William my many times great uncle? I'm not sure. Anyway we are related.

I don't think the brothers were close. Leastways Samuel doesn't get a mention in the biography of William I'm currently reading. William was a high-flier, active on the world-stage, whereas Samuel was never anything more than a respected Quaker preacher.

Here's William, wearing a Quaker hat. (I want one)

William_Allen_abolitionist_by_Amélie_Munier-Romilly_(sq_cropped).jpeg

William_Allen_abolitionist_by_Amélie_Munier-Romilly_(sq_cropped).jpeg

And here's Samuel, holding forth (gloomily?) at a Quaker Meeting.

Samuel_Lucas_(1805-1870)_-_Samuel_Allen_at_a_Quaker_Meeting_-_HITHM.5518_-_North_Hertfordshire_Museum.jpeg

Samuel_Lucas_(1805-1870)_-_Samuel_Allen_at_a_Quaker_Meeting_-_HITHM.5518_-_North_Hertfordshire_Museum.jpeg

The difference in status between the two brothers can be gauged by the quality of their portraits. William gets a delicate pencil sketch by Mlle Romilly- the distinguished Swiss painter- while Samuel makes do with a daub by his brother-in-law Samuel Lucas, the brewer.

Oh, these old time Quakers, they're so serious! William is esteemed by the Duke of Wellington and more than esteemed by the saintly Russian tsar Alexander I but wouldn't it be jolly if he'd occasionally meet a poet (there were enough of them around in his era) or attend the theatre or say something funny. He had a wonderful mind for facts but he wasn't creative or playful. He partnered the great Robert Owen in setting up schools for the poor but fell out with him over what should be taught. Owen wanted to teach music and dancing and what we would now call ecology while William wanted nothing but Bible study. Oh, Uncle William, do lighten up!'

You may gather I'm having a hard time actually liking him. A man, however mild and obliging, who wants his nieces to read Pliny to him over breakfast is never going to be my soul-brother.

But he did like the ladies! His third marriage- to a woman pushing 70 and a good decade older than himself- allowed the profane to go, "See, we always said the Quakers are randy old goats under those silly hats." Cartoons were published. Sincere and loving Friends wrote to tell him, "Don't do it!" For the first time in his life he was a cause for merriment....

Ah, unseemliness! Now that's more like it!

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poliphilo

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