Our Trash edition of the DKuLT Fan Club (Vol IIIVIIV) - BG

Apologies for such late posting of this DKULT fan mail, which arrived in good time for the Karnival of Trash. Interestingly, the colours on Pgs, 2 and 3 are clearly looking forward to halloween, Christmas and Valentines day, so no problem there! As ever, it's a pleasure to look back on the recent past, to be connected to all the trashpoets in our lives and to share our communal appreciation of DKULT's trash output in BG's whimsical way. 

The puzzle of American Agast - Sticker Dude

Joel has packed this mailing with politics, life lessons, connundrums and as ever, beautiful stamps and stickers!  The bonus is that opened this letter today, on International Poetry Day to find a wonderful poem by Mary Oliver. It's funny, I have two unsaved files on my computer of other Mary Oliver poems that I copied today to share with students.  As ever, we seem to be thinking about the same sorts of things from across the Atlantic.

I heard a UK newscaster say that Trump is losing momentum.  Still I think it's best for us to remain aghast/ against this angry buffoon and as ever, Thomas Kerr has captured the spirit of our mortification that this man is in the race. Three oversees votes coming at you for the state of Maine from this family!

 Great to see this sticker in collaboration with my mail art friend, Amy Irwin!

I've worked it out.  Can you?

a-maze of music Jude Wiermeir Issue 72

A few years ago I was part of a charity that worked with young people and teachers to reflect on and engage with growing and art. One of my wonderful colleagues was a green-fingered permaculture specialist who knew a lot about mazes.  We discovered a school in the Midlands that has its own labyrinth that they use to 'graduate' the students, and went to visit it.  Mazes and labyrinths are thinking spaces for me.  One of our collaborations was with the Royal Institution and we played pots of plants which we arranged on a stave.  'We' was not me.  I just helped to encourage the others to do these things. We had the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in the collaboration and they read the pot music and played energetic pieces in response. An environment can be the catlyst for exciting music!

I suspect Jude's Maze Music is equally revealing. I wonder if he imagines carrying an instrument or simply singing as we walk. Would everyone have the same tune to sing or would there be rounds, or squares?  I am also curious whether the sound would change as you went around a corner.  I guess Jude's view is looking down on the notes.  For diminuendo would you bend low and stand tall to make a louder sound? I wonder about the colour too. Is this a comment on musical colour?  So provocative!  Thank you.

On returning from Maine

Fabulous to have this pile of mail art to open over the next week or so and blog, bit by bit.  I got another two today which will be folded into my blogging pile.  I am determined to savour each piece of mail and equally determined to begin sending things out again with regularity.

With excitement and anticipation!

Commodity Civilization IV - Cascadia Artpost

I love Cascadia Artpost's artistamps! They require careful inspection and make a biting commentary on American civilization. I hope what Cascadia sees is only part of the picture and must admit that the English and other culutres probably share some of the evils he highlights. Whatever, although I like them, they make me sad.

And Cascadia may be cheering tonight on hearing the news that I heard this morning… apparently the biggest shipping company with 7% of the market has gone bust and that means 7% of the goods heading around the world for consumption will have a harder time getting there!

Many thanks for this provocative mail art!

In Memory of Susan McAllister - amalgamated confusion

Such a bitter sweet moment to hold Amalgamated Confusion's tribute to our friend, Susan McAllister.    I can't supress a smile but have a heavy heart. I hope I ism in some direction.

Inalienable truths and trumpdities - Sticker Dude

What with all the activity from the sticker dude in my mailbox lately, I can sure spot one of his envelopes! They are fat and stamped with nods to biting humour and frivolity, all at the same time.  His rubber stamps make me smile and reach for my letter opener.

Wise words curated together with Thomas Kerr's striking imagery tell it like it is…so I guess I am old, then, because all of this seems true to me! Except that I am young at heart and while moaning about twenty-somethings, I am secretly vying for them to stand up to those with the power!

Now most of you won't know about my Grateful Dead past… that I lived in California in the late seventies/early eighties and that the bulk of my friends were total, absolute deadheads. And I had a new music radio show and teased them mercilessly because we went to very different concerts. Towards the end of my time in Palo Alto, I guess the constant din of Garcia, Lesh, Weir, Hunter, etc… got under my skin eventually and I found I knew the lyrics and the tunes.  I even went to one of their concerts in LA, once. Another time, in a frenzy of art making for a friend, I made a visual representation of a box of rain, my favourite Dead song. Later on, in the Peace Corps my friend Ken, who recorded everything he went to, sent me a stream of Dead recordings that I passed on to volunteers as I departed. So in Kenya, as I type, I suspect there is a volunteer somewhere jigging up an old tapedeck listening to this song… such beautiful lyrics and related to Mary's quote above.  We'll always be looking for answers to those slippery questions...

Sticker Dude's throws key icons of an age at me… Elvis, Duchamp and the Dead into one mailing. And then as an afterthought, or perhaps as a striking contrast, he includes TRUMP'dities'