Psychology of colour

This morning i just couldn’t think of anything clever or amusing for the write up for this piece, so whilst racking my brain I thought i’d have a quick trawl of the interweb to see if i could find any inspiration. It wasn’t looking great until I came across an article about google’s new poetry AI and that’s when things started to fall into place. So instead of some well thought out prose I give you some poetry created by a computer after a little nudge in the right direction by myself. I hope you enjoy:

Psychology of Pink

First I fell into an idle bed;

Drowning all a feeling with a think

To breathe those flowers upon my head.

Psychology of blue

He knew that an artist, an marked school,

Brought on its heart, like the distant dew

As if a dog I might paint a fool?

Now if that doesn’t strike a chord i’m pretty sure you are dead inside…

Cheers

id-iom

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Turn up the speaker

I haven’t just been sat on the sofa enjoying the fruits of various streaming apps. I have also found time to go for a daily walk and have also been doing a little creating. I’ve done a thematically similar triptych of sorts and today we’ve got the first part ‘Turn up the speaker’. 

This lady has been alternating between really enjoying lockdown and wanting to go out and socialise. She’s found the best thing to do when she’s in the latter mood is to sit with her head in front of the speaker and keep turning it up until she hits that sweet spot when she can believe she’s clubbing once again. She imagines she’s a basshead with hair like poetry floating on the music or somesuch. The neighbour then inevitably bangs on the wall at that point but by then the music has done its job and she’s good to go.

I may well give it a go this afternoon with Afrojack’s ‘Turn up the speakers’ and see how I get on. Watch this space…

Cheers

Id-iom

Emergency/She walks in beauty

 

What’s better than one picture? Two pictures! Since it’s coming up to Easter I thought it about time we treated you to another double sided creation.

Side one features a privacy inspired CCTV wallpaper design. In today’s always-connected society the feeling that you’re being watched is very real indeed. Because you probably are. If the proliferation of CCTV covering the length and breadth of our fair isle isn’t enough we have our online movements tracked by just about everyone with most of the information apparently available to the highest bidder. What strange times we live in. To commemorate this I decided to create this lovely bespoke wallpaper  design as a reminder.

Side two features a somewhat androgynous looking lady with Lord Byron’s poem ‘She walks in beauty’ as the background text. Apparently Lord Byron went to a ball and met his cousin by marriage, Mrs Anne Beatrice Wilmot, who was in mourning and wearing a black dress set with spangles and next morning he’d come up with what is widely regarded as his most famous work. Inspiration can strike at strange times it would seem. Once you’ve combined that with our jazzy striped background then you’ve got another certified id-iom piece.

Painted on a 60cm x 40cm wooden panel with id-iom’s patented ‘hang either way’ industrial look picture hanging system. She’s sure to brighten up just about anywhere she’s hung. Drop us a line if interested.

Cheers

id-iom

Lady Garden

Ladies and Gentleman may I present to you this season’s newest debutante – Lady Rosamund Garden of Brixistane. Lady Garden can be seen hanging out at all the finest soirees and elite celebrity events. She’s even been spotted on the catwalk at London Fashion Week.

We haven’t done much outdoor work yet this year so thought it best to remedy that with a quick paint in the yard to acclimatise ourselves to the brutal February conditions. Lady Rosamund Garden is the dubious result. She has poetry in her hair and a little bird that roosts in her elaborate floral headpiece. Whatever will she turn into next?

Cheers

id-iom

Paid in full

It’s funny isn’t it? I’d say I wasn’t really a fan of poetry (although there are exceptions) but I can probably sing you hundreds of rap songs and whilst it’s debatable that rap and poetry – whilst sharing many of the same attributes – aren’t the same thing for the sake of a shorter write up they may as well be. And one of my favourite musical poems is Eric B & Rakim’s ‘Paid in Full’ from their eponymous 1987 debut album. So here’s a little homage to that paean to urban survival featuring a ‘stick-up kid’ and his face of grim resolve. As Eric B and Rakim so eloquently put it:

So I start my mission, leave my residence
Thinkin’ how could I get some dead presidents
I need money, I used to be a stick-up kid
So I think of all the devious things I did

I used to roll up, this is a hold up, ain’t nuthin’ funny
Stop smiling, be still, don’t nuthin’ move but the money
But now I learned to earn ‘cuz I’m righteous
I feel great, so maybe I might just

Cheers

id-iom

Sir Skellington Win

This is the tale of Sir Skellington Win,
who lived up a tree and was incredibly thin.
He constantly told tales of sorrow and loss,
yet somehow still thought that he was the boss.
He had a hat made of glass and two hairs on his chin,
and whatever he played would invariably win.
Apart from love where he was a loser,
even through fantastical tales he could never amuse her.
One day he was walking in his armour of tin,
and happened upon a lady stuck in a bin.
She really was making such a din,
that he could do little but stare and take a sip of his gin.
He took his bottle and looked within,
and could see the reflections of his favourite kin.
With this bitter thought he came to see
that thinking in rhyme was incredibly twee.
So he helped the lady out of the bin and she was very grateful. And that was that.

Can you tell I’ve been having some trouble with today’s write up? If you think you can do any better then i’d suggest you take up professional poetry as my effort is surely gold star standard for an under 12?

Cheers

id-iom

Title: Sir Skellington Win
Media: Spray paint and screen print on slate
Size: 46 x 31 cm slate
Please email if interested

Futility

Futility

It’s the weekend at last and day 3 of our Yuletide Fundom Demolition Sale!

Today’s offering is Futility and is based on the poem of the same name by Wilfred Owen. I reckon that it must be my favourite poem. I would be lying if I said I had studied much poetry and can still remember this from school. I think the fact that i can remember it verbatim must mean that it has struck some kind of chord with me. It’s about the life and death in the trenches of France during World War One and the futility of the whole situation. According to Wikipedia it is ‘a departure from his usual style of including disturbing and graphic images and instead has an oddly soothing feel to it’. Whilst not knowing his usual style i can only agree that it has a somewhat soothing feel to it.

An unique A3 screen print with stencils and hand finishing. Here’s the Ebay link – http://goo.gl/73fVt Let the bidding commence!

Cheers

id-iom

Poet Mouse loses the plot…

Poet Mouse loses the plot…

Poet Mouse knows it was National Poety Day just the other day but he doesn’t care right at the moment. Despite the fact Poet Mouse has a gargantuan lexicon and a great knowledge of poetry both contemporary and classic he is still subject to the same earthly needs as anyone else. And when he gets hungry he gets cranky. Here we can see he has eschewed the lofty world of words to let rip with the Mouse for something like ‘snack time!’ (which doesn’t translate well into English) as he spots a tasty beetle to assuage his seemingly bottomless hunger…

The pink room at the top of House of Pain(t) is currently the emptiest in terms of work we’ve done (probably because of the number of stairs you have to climb to reach the top of the house) but we have still have a few days left before demolition so we’ll hopefully get this room a little more completed before the wrecking ball moves in…

Cheers

id-iom

Related articles

• Poet Mouse on the Olympics (thisisidiom.wordpress.com)

Poet Mouse on the Olympics

Poet Mouse on the Olympics (grey)

Poet Mouse on the Olympics (yellow)

Poet Mouse on the Olympics (all 4)

Poet Mouse on the Olympics (back detail)

We had a little competition a while back to guess where i’d borrowed a quote from and so we needed to come up with some prizes. As i’d been rather taken with the Olympics as a whole and with Team GB’s performance in particular I thought what better than a small tribute to the endeavours of the multitude of sportsmen that have kept me entertained over the past couple of weeks. So here we have Poet Mouse expressing it in the words of Armand D’angour in his new favourite poem – An Ode to the London Olympics 2012.  Three of these will be winging their way to the lucky recipients in the next couple of days and I can only hope they like them…

Cheers

id-iom

PS – If anyone’s actually wondering what the answer to the competition was it was ‘The Young Ones’

Related articles

• Boris Johnson to recite new poem for the Olympics in ancient Greek (guardian.co.uk)

Poet Mouse

The Poet Mouse

“This street will become a shrine, and punks and skins and rastas will all gather round and hold their hands in sorrow for their fallen leader. And all the grown-ups will say, “But why are the kids crying?” And the kids will say, “Haven’t you heard? Poet Mouse is dead! The People’s Poet is dead!”

And then one particularly sensitive and articulate teenager will say, “Other kids, do you understand nothing? How can Poet Mouse be dead when we still have his poems?”

This is what will be said of Poet Mouse in coming years but whilst his work lives on he will live in our hearts…

There we were, just minding our own business, when we hear a series of barely audible little squeaks that were somehow coalescing into intelligible words right in front of us. After casting round we found this little fella reciting Tennyson’s ‘The Lady of Shalott‘ to us. Once he’d finished we had a small chat and he said he was an urban poet but due to his diminished size had a bit of trouble getting an audience together although he had some fantastic material. I can only hope he gets the attention he deserves. He was a very modest and friendly fellow so keep your eyes out for him, till next time my friend…

I’ve started today’s post with an (altered) quote that I feel is particularly relevant to Poet Mouse. A prize to anyone who can tell me where i nabbed it from…

Cheers

id-iom