THE SHEET WHERE PICTURES GREW

 

This is the James P D Tucker sheet where pictures grew. I discovered it upon our dad's passing and think the pictures seem to depict the lyric to a song I wrote - but as Dr. Robert says I cannot dictate that, with the sheet not being laid down by me. Indeed, it is my brother James's number, whatever the pictures represent. It would suffice for a paper on Instant Travel, I think. James was also the guy that said <BEE> might soon ensue from @ in the international language alphabet - a clever guy all round. 

DOUBLE LOVE

This photo of Dr. Calculator Ptom and myself at our first Glastonbury aged 16 in 1998 was taken by Peter Orlov - a friend. I post it because the other night I felt the presence of a supreme love, a double love, and think it was a visit from Dr. Calculator Ptom. We used to have a lot of fun - once we boarded a train not knowing where it was headed in the middle of the night in London and woke up in Luton at dawn! 

WHITE STRING AND TRICKS

This is again not one of my own photos, but is taken by Marina, on Eagle St. in Leamington-Spa. Here I am playing guitar with a mate called Max amidst a lot of white string. It's a beautiful photograph even though the string was "real." At the time, back in Cambridge, where I spent my Gap Year I was in a band called The Flood, and I went back to that zone after leaving Leamington Spa - to finish the album we were recording on earphones. Since then I have continued to write songs and have recorded 3 solo albums, all three of which can be heard as "playlists" on the Soundcloud account of John F B Tucker. One was made in a studio, another overlaying a slick, processed beat on Ableton Live with 2 electric guitars and a vocal, and thirdly there is a solo acoustic album. 

AT THE TOP OF SCA FELL PIKE

This is another one that's not mine, but is taken by our rhythm guitarist Tom Woodhall's digital camera on top of the fell Sca fell Pike. He's also in the picture because that kind of stuff is possible these days. We were in a band, called The Flood, who recorded an album on binaural earphones. It can be heard somewhere online but not my Soundcloud page - Tom Woodhall's. Looking back at my youth, recording on our drummer Niki's earphones was fun. I wrote one where I said I'd plug my senses in the mains with which the album now begins. Personally, I think it a fine piece of work. You could even say a "tron" is a point of intersection between technology and art or a post-poetic experiment with a psycho-technological edge. Missing from this photo is our bass player Paul, who neglected to come up with the band on this visit to see me in the Lakes. 

THE WISH-LIST TRILOGY

This image was taken by my mate Mike Eccleshall and sent to me from London years back over Facebook. I have actually written a lot of poetry myself and recently published 3 books with Chipmunka (the mental health publishers). I like my books to be the building blocks of a happier world. Soundcloud Rain falsifies the Nirvana barcode in music and signs it over to Anon so everyone can be involved. The Sunset Child proves the net existed in the imagination of a child before Berners-Lee invented it. Breath Trapped In Heaven lets everything apart from love poems fall away with the hope that literature has started to release serotonin. As I say they are all available online. My only problem with them is that they omit the lyrics to my new acoustic album - for I also have four albums on Soundcloud - but still I can't see myself doing a new book. I feel with this Trilogy I have done enough for now at least. There is a fourth called Brave New Tense but it doesn't appear to be the building block of a happier world, so I am not sure about it, and am yet to be convinced to publish it. 

THE SITTING ROOM FIRE

I wrote down something about the Nirvana barcode and at last put it on the fire at the foot of the fell while my mother took this photo of that fire with her phone. Now, only now, can I be happy that I truly falsified the Nirvana barcode! Even then it is my mother's fire and my mother's phone on which my mother's photo of her fire is taken!

BRING OUT THE GIMP

I made the Nirvana barcode to be the beat of 'Scentless Apprentice' by Nirvana tapped out in approximate barcode shape using the tool of the qwerty keyboard, but by now I think it more interesting to write it down, put it on the fire, and photograph the fire. Unfortunately my mother is asleep in the sitting room so I can't go in there and make the fire up yet. In the meantime you might have to have my dad's photo of me standing next to a bin on the day I got my degree instead! I got a good degree, b/t/w, and it included a portfolio taking the form of defaced bank notes in its plot, also a dissertation on the work of David Morley. My dissertation was classified as "an immanent, Kantian critique in mimicking the methodology of Morley's series of findings into itself, into the concept of art and science writing as a single discussion of perception."