A JARRY!

To John Madera [never sent]

BIG OTHER

Dear John

Let us engage here with JARRY the noun – not the name. The man? A talented [fɛ̃ də sjɛkl] performance artist who never really got the gig that would get him on Late Night Live. While he was alive. Alfred Jarry died young. Happily for us his thoughts made sense (and mind shaping non sense) to others. His audience and their audience(s) through time since. Celebrity was his ~ with one foot in the classics, the other trapped in the adamantine mechanics of Progress. Luckily immortality is not of the flesh but rather memory.

Having said that Jarry’s fame is disproportionately small to his influence if six degrees of separation is considered. But then Absurdity is not a thing it is in the mind’s eye of the beholder.

*

I’ve been a keeper and reader of some of Jarry since around the time that the Theatre of The Absurd in translation was following French film and dragging itself to Melbourne. Enough introspective retrospection – I now (at 71) see the pattern. Kelvin clear. Alfred Jarry is Faustroll. FAUSTROLL is a JARRY. I too am a JARRY!I didn’t however die at 34. It is double then Nothing for me … I became a designer illustrator. That operated compatibly with advertising and full time teaching till 2008. See the summary document from that year here. Fifty screens in 5 minutes

Click to access twcvwipaugustx_sssc.pdf

THE SHAPE OF WORDS

An Aside in two acts.

Starring in order of appearance

Mr.THOMAS EDISON

Monsieur ALFRED JARRY

Senor LEONARDO DA VINCI

A NEOLITHIC ARTIST

Docteur FAUSTROLL

(Theme)

ACT 1

THOMAS EDISON : SHAZAAM!

ALFRED JARRY : HA!HA!

LEORNARDO DA VINCI : PRESTO!

A NEOLITHIC ARTIST : (GUTTERAL?) TRANSLATED: WHAT?

(Theme)

ACT 2

FAUSTROLL (interjecting) : Looking back is what I do best. The longer I live the further I can see.

(Theme)

Since 2008 I’ve continued to teach and pursue personal projects, pro bono – if published. Just being a JARRY. My geographic world is finite although far greater than when I was born; now encompassing Britain, Western Europe, the Mediterranean, Thailand, Malaysia, Melbourne, Victoria and even some other parts of Australia. My imaginable world is however infinite. Always has been. Fed by an Empire childhood I am language led in my thinking and a child of the internet. In 2010 I started a four year tour of my imaginable and geographic worlds discovering Kuching Sarawak. The blog NEHWYREVE runs as a record from January 2010.

I have decided an illustrated edition of the OPINIONS is urgently needed for the 21st Century. And you are the first to know.

It will appear pro bono online. Book by book. A subscription case set edition of 8 seperate books will be available after 8 months, or 8 years.

This my modest aspiration.

An oʊˈmɒːʒ ?

I can imagine but won’t propose here ways that MyProject might mesh with the engaging Recovery Project article by Christopher Higgins on the newly published translation of OPINIONS from October 2009 . The article prompted me to order the now arrived book.

John I would like to invite you to think about what/how I might contribute to the ‘recovery’ of Jarry’s example for another audience, from a better informed position as to my bone fides and perhaps get back to me.

This will get you into NEHWYREVE.

https://anthonyfward.wordpress.com/

This zodiac project is a contribution to a three book set working with two other imagemakers/writers under the banner of the INDIGO DESIGN NETWORK.

There are more text based projects in my Behance Portfolio.

This letter has been a pleasure to write. Thank you for the motivation. I sincerely hope it carries enough weight in the maelstrom of your everyday to be well thought of. As a beginning I’ll be reading the text and developing images during two weeks in Borneo in a fortnight.

AFW

Thank You ~ Melbourne

http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k113964m

Parva velut limax spreto Remora impete venti,
  Remorumque, ratem sistere sola potest:
Sic quosdam ingenio et virtute ad sidera vectos
  Detinet in medio tramite caussa levis.
Anxia lis veluti est, vel qui meretricius ardor
  Egregiis iuvenes sevocat a studiis.

Small as a snail, the remora is able by itself to stop a ship.

It’s disdainful of the force of wind and oars.

So some petty circumstance can check in mid-career certain men who are, by genius and by virtue, headed for the stars.

Likewise a tormenting law-suit, or a passion for a prostitute, draws youths from their distinguished studies.

https://www.mun.ca/alciato/f083.html