Category: field reports

Without My Mama

I wouldn’t be here now, without my mama. I would never have learned to type, without her. I would never have gone to University, without her. I would have been homeless, without her. I would never have had my first computer to make beats with, without her. I would never have had a sound-card to put into my first computer to make beats with, without her. I would never have received my first hip hop tape on my tenth birthday, without her. I would never have received a bass guitar for my sixteenth birthday, or a high quality sound-card on my twenty-first birthday, or the SM58 she gave me for Christmas later that same year, without her. I would never have taught myself how to draw, how to act, how to write, how to listen to music, without her. I would never have had an old, beaten-up acoustic guitar to play with, or for there to always be an old keyboard in the house to get sounds out of, without her. I would never have sat uninterrupted for hours as a little boy, exploring pictures, images and maps; with my pens and the paper she made sure I had, always. I would never have been corrected on that one Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy lyric I misheard, without her. I would never have learned about global warming and vegetarianism in the late ’80s without her. I would never have rocked a De La Soul t-shirt, aged ten, without her. I would never have had a BMX, or a second-hand Millennium Falcon for Christmas when I was almost too small to carry it around the cosiest family room, my wonderful grandparents, her parents, watching on and encouraging me; without her. I would never have had Chuck D and KRS-ONE as my first real teachers, without her. I would never have learned of the importance of Leonard Cohen, before almost anything else about music, without her. I would never have been able to have access to encyclopedias, to huge, heavy books about art, music, science, philosophy and technology, without her. I would never have been able to plant a Hawthorn tree in the garden which stands so tall, to this day; without her. I would never have been taught at such a young age about the magic of cats, without her. I would never have been able to interact with Ring-tail, Black & White Ruffed and Black Lemurs without her. I would never have camped above the Devonshire coast, or sailed in Poole Harbour, or know the difference between a Yawl and a Wayfarer without her, or know the difference between my tiller and my painter, without her. I would never have been driven to A&E with food poisoning and a head full of LSD25, without her. I would never have made snow sculptures, or sand castles, without her. I would never have made endless mixtapes, and burned CD’s and demos and compilations for her, without her. I would never have listened to Sufjan Stevens’ Seven Swans in the car on the way home from Bodiam Castle that one summers’ afternoon, without her. I would never have been taught how to use a 35mm camera, or how to use a dial-up modem, or a 5.25″ floppy disc, or a food blender; or how to make a nice cup of tea, without her. I would never have won horticultural prizes for my Sunflowers as a little green-fingered gardener, without her. I would never have had permission to go to Reading festival, just turned sixteen, to see Gravediggaz, Ice Cube, Cypress Hill, Gang Starr and Jeru, without her. I would never have spent endless months in my bedroom, getting baked, making beats and perfecting my raps, without her. I would never have been able to recover all of my possessions after i fled Deutschland, without her. I would never have found so much strength, from somewhere, in such dark hours; without her. I would never have known love, unconditional love, without her… and, no matter how long this rubble-strewn road carries on into the far distance, I know in my heart, that I will never truly be without her. I love you, mama. I will always love you, with all my heart.

James Reindeer

17th April 2018

Croydon, UK

distant images of a concourse going away no.1

insidious dreams beneath, the whole world out of reach… distant images of a concourse going away… fingertips losing touch as the dust sweeps up the moment to be lost and forgotten; or held endlessly dear…

the insurmountable depths of an instant, when all is cast away, deep into long doubt and regret… all that is fleeting and precious, all that will be gone… dreams of the undoing coming on…

slow moaning drones, building their steady rising… all is hurled headlong into the storm, the turmoil, the affray; endless nights of disarray… harrowing knowing on the brink…

the heart pounding, roaring with the cruel agony of ‘alive’ …let the fear creep in, let the waves of anxious nervous energy cloud the rationale; staggering  backwards into the bear-trap…

the collapsing aperture going away. the solemn swansong a funereal drone sounding out long over a mist-shrouded frozen dream… lungs, heart, brain of the machine…

see the snapshot glimpses of a bitter dawn, reflections in the shimmering shards of the newly broken…  sorrow slowly coming on… the long trawl into a murky grey… ‘let it not end this way…’

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hallucination dreams from the abandoned desert camp no.3

dead end horror of the centipede gods, hallucination wrapped in ill reason… colombian necktie sky explorations, tasting the poison preachings of the hypocrite madmen; prarie dogs at the throats of the roaming lost and ashamed…

licking the screen, decimated… bleeding out across the valves… lost ideals float downstream on rivers of dusty pollution… there is a policeman inside the sky… an endless dead gaze fixed in satellite orbit…

inside the imperial sarcophagus, a low moaning through the fractured blast-walls… wide-eyed cannibal populace eating themselves alive… waves of misery, misunderstanding and desolation…

‘…i am shot with wounds which have eyes that see a world all sorrow, always to be, panoramic and unhealable, and mouths that hang unspeakable in the sky of blood…’

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base camp vantage point thought saturations no.2

morning prayer and holy water purification; futile ritual motions in the radioactive field…  frozen omens in an endless nuclear winter… dead eyes staring out into the steppe, fever dreams; flickering lights on the consoles long since fused and gone out… slow imbalances shroud conjurings in the long cold…

rogue drones whine hopelessly lost in the chemical heavens, casting blurry shadows over the myriad demolished cities of the western lands… recruitment posters hosed in bodily fluids, smartphones piled-up by the thousand; hammer-smashed… gold and nickel, magnesium and iron…

base camp vantage point thought saturation… ever-receding dissonant resonance signals going granular… dark portent, grim knowing… notebooks filled with slowly mutating equations… unworkable geometry of the brave new world… standardised procedures dead in disconnected head-sets…

a broken promise through a long stare in the half-light…depopulation, fire-bombing… citizens reduced to shadows down blast-wall corridors… empty beds, shattered windows, our breath in the air as we boil the remaining rations… board member mahogany tables in flames…

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base camp vantage point thought saturations no.1

slow imbalance shrouds conjuring frozen omens in a long cold… two room field hospital on the northern perimeter… drawn-out dissonant resonance, standardised procedures crackle in dying head-sets… a crippled sun bleeds poisoned yellow over dismal radioactive snowfields…  empty beds, shattered windows, our breath in the air as we boil the remaining rations…

morning prayer and water purification… magnesium and iron… rogue drones whine hopelessly lost in a chemical heavens… cold fronts blow in as war hymns flit and whirr from a portable turntable, car-battery operated, connected to a clock radio speaker… a hundred thousand miles of steppe, a broken promise in a long stare in the half-light…

depopulation, fire-bombing, base camp vantage point thought saturation… do that cold-hearted loss-of-innocence pose on the rifle-range, board member mahogany tables in flames…. oil-slaked body parts; war games… a protocol sheet nailed to the head of a dead child soldier… know still there is a dim flicker of salvation beyond these blackened inclines…

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one thousand grave candles lining the drained lake no.1

full blown grave decoration slave state, body farm dreams of the delta… magnanimous clown-face; doom shroud for the post apocalyptic spiritual… thousand yard stares into the radiation fields… homeless talk-show host abortions; blood parasites going viral…. transient moments doused in ‘go live’ humiliation… morbid tourist hostage crisis news-feed… codeine relapse; histrionic… saddle bags draped in kings solomon’s mines…

basic sunken tomb layout, two room, windowless coffin; eye into the world… hold tight, slit throat, convoys on fire… ride the snake. one thousand grave candles lining the drained lake… pump jacks wince in a psychedelic dawn… frozen go codes, dirt roads, black bison lashed to the back of a flat bed… petrochemical sheep-deep. shake those rusting chains…

momentary lapse of proportion; off topic… fourth quarter punt to armageddon,.. losing the voters to a bout of pandemic, genocidal fields… that’s that harrowing dissonance dream disturbance on on an upriver row-boat, floating out into  psychedelic eclipse…. where we riding to? …mercenary approach, lawn furniture fold outs on burial grounds…. cesspools in eden… gutting a two track to the sound of shell-fire on the west bank…

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fever dreams at the detection facility no.3

torrential chemical rain falling from a neon cloud-field sky… black lung howling through the valves… poisonous centipedes crawling across the consoles, writhing inside the switch-boards… fever dreams at the detection facility, cold sweats, malnutrition and radiation sickness…  absolute silence in the seconds before the blast-wave…

intermittent static, morse-tapping and cut-up voice-tracks coming over the field sets… batteries bleeding acid out over dusty concrete floors… oil pools under decommissioned patrol vehicles.,. hissing ghost voices in the wires talking of fallout sex agonies and nausea dreams within the fog of war turmoil… gas mask baptisms…

shivering limbs under the fluorescent lights, white-noise-side-chain dissonance in the headsets… cold stares into the field, faint shadows in the half-light; radioactive dust spiralling around the reinforced concrete bunker walls… walking out into the nothing-field, dead insect eyes reflecting the new desert sun, in the exact moment of the flash…

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fever dreams at the detection facility no.2

a gathering storm coming in, radioactive dust spiralling around the reinforced concrete bunker walls… low frequency modulation across the radar-field, white-noise-side-chain dissonance through the valves… cold-sweats and shivering limbs under the fluorescent lights; before flickering instrument panels…  poisonous centipedes crawl across the consoles…

filtered drones in the long distance and a looped image track of rain falling on the corrugated iron awning roof of an abandoned farmhouse; seconds before the blast-wave hits… an endless rattling and scratching within the air ducts… cold stares into the field… frozen moments captured on magnetic tape, rotting in the sunken archives… fever dreams from the detection facility…

intermittent static, morse-tapping and cut-up voice-tracks coming over the portable units… faint shadows in the half-light… the wind whipping across the compound; the hammering of a worn shutter breaking free of its fastenings… distorted calculations, lost reels, invalid results; corrupt data… dead insect eyes reflect the twin desert suns, in the exact moment of the flash…

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geometry of a mid-town intersection no.3

sepia image tracks bleeding out across a blast-wall frame… white-noise and static over the field radio… impossible hymns in diseased throats echoing out along shattered glass corridors, down polluted streets; climbing above tower-blocks looming over the slowly decaying industrial district… a match-head ignites at one thousand frames per second…

dismal gloom, and a hazy chemical sky hanging thick above the geometry of a mid-town intersection… a drone camera circles the scene, detailing the unfolding complexities… merciless falsehoods of the tabloid news press spilling over into a storm-drain… a series of blurry 35mm shots blown-up across a bombed-out mall; misery and starvation…

vagaries of the street-corner architecture, complex measurements amidst the fractured landscape snap-shot. slow polaroid exposures framing burnt-out bodegas and cop cars… grid networks undulating, intertwining; steadily burning across the map. we set up camp on the roof of an abandoned police precinct overlooking an empty parking lot…

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geometry of a mid-town intersection no.2

blazing heat, and a hazy chemical sky hanging thick above the polluted streets and tower-blocks of the slowly decaying financial district… hiss-tracts of merciless static issue from abandoned radio-sets; film-reels project glory days of hostile takeovers. high-yield fantasies of the money boys, wallowing in their own grim filth…

an image track of an M1 tank, rolling slowly into aleppo… a series of blurry 35mm shots blown-up across a bombed-out mall; all broken glass, twisted steel and melted plastic… a match-head ignites at one thousand frames per second; flames begin to writhe and crawl diagonally across the page…

unfolding complexities of the intersection geometry… angles contorting and changing, slow polaroid exposures framing reinforced concrete in ascending layers… we set up a two-day camp on the roof of a five-storey tower block overlooking a burnt-out hospital… poisoned flask-water and exploding flashbulbs…

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