My work currently covers an entire building in Marylebone, in a piece called Improving The Remarkable which was written by eavesdropping on people in the area around the building and recording snippets of comments and conversations and presenting them in thin lines of text which contain hidden codes.
A PDF of fifteen of my text works – all of these were recorded by KLK in 2011 and released in 2012 on squib-box records.
For Richard Dawkins (2010) was constructed by sequentially extracting words beginning with G, O and D from Dawkin’s book, The God Delusion. Newspaper 5 (2011) is the fourth of a set of five pieces written over two years and containing around forty-thousand words, where all five character collisions were consecutively extracted from a newspaper. Like a child in the womb, Like an enigmatic moon (2012) contains all sentences in David Lodge’s novel The Picturegoers with the word ‘like’ in them. I am my own Lolita – part I (2009) contains every single instance of ‘l, me, mine, my, myself’ in the first part of Nabokov’s Lolita. For Christopher Hitchens (2012) contains all capitalised words when they were in groups of two or more in Hitch-22, A Memoir. Madhouse Prophets And Quacks Multiply The End And The Beginning (2012), contains all occurrences of the conjunction ‘and’ extracted from Albert Camus’ The Fall, with the two preceding and two subsequent words, where hyphenated words count as one and all punctuation has been eliminated. To Bring A Monstrous Flesh Machine To Orgasm (2011), contains alliterative statements from Justine, by the Marquis de Sade. Arrows, Sticks and Decorations (2011), contains all words and numbers surrounded by punctuation extracted from Robert Winston’s book Bad Ideas? In 2009 I went through Georges Bataille’s Story Of The Eye and extracted any word that could potentially cause offence, including obvious choices like fuck, shit, arse and cunt, but also more complex words like kissing, priest, flesh, religion and church. I then kept the word either side of the offensive word (unless it was a proper noun), which resulted in A History Of The Offensive Eye. In 2008 I went through the latter part of the Marquis de Sade’s 120 Days Of Sodom, going through the six hundred passions, in four sections (simple, complex, criminal, murderous) opening up the details of each, revealing more each time, which resulted in The Story Of A Magnificent Banquet. Verlaine (2009) recorded every word used in the titled poet’s complete works that ends with the suffix –ing. In Fluffy Sparrows I extracted all words with double same letters. I like to draw attention to that which might easily be missed, not because I think it is important for it to be seen, just because it is interesting. I enjoy alphabetising, editing or arranging in some way, large bodies of work, for example, the complete lyrics of Tim Minchin, all Shakespeare’s sonnets or a complete play. In 2021, during lockdown, I wrote the music and lyrics for thirty songs which became the album “This Is A Warning And A Threat” performed by Sarah Parkin and Dominic Irving.
List of Works
The following list is not comprehensive.
[starred pieces have been performed/published]
- The Alphabetised Lyrics of Jamie T (2022) {R} {R}
- Violent Pansy (2022) {R}
- God’s A Pigeon (2022)
- A Twenty Scene Opera (2021)
- Eighteen Danger Pieces For Piano (2021)
- FIFTEEN TEXTS 2007-11 [COLLECTION]
- A Supercaifragilisticexpialidocious Expansion (2021)
- SOME LONG LONG TIME WHAT THAT THEM MAKE (2021)
- LIGHT (2019)
- I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday (2018)
- 123,442 Anagrams of MERRY CHRISTMAS (2018)
- Dots and Spaces (2018)
- We Are The Distorted (2018)
- Aching This Wonderful Ache (2016)
- David Bowie Died on a Sunday (2016)
- Alphabet Anagrams Up To Nineteen Letters (2015)
- Codes in the Koran (2015)
- Salo: 23 acrostics through Pasolini (1975/2015)
- This Is My Brain: The Alphabetised Lyrics of Tim Minchin (2015)
- The Alphabetised Bible – Part II (2015)
- The Alphabetised Bible – Part I (2015)
- Punctuation in the King James Bible (2015)
- Out Into This World (2014-15)
- Essay accompanying “140 Spectacles for clarinet, piano and silent orchestra” (2014)
- nineteen eighty four (2014)
- IS IT IN? (2014)
- War Punctuated By Peace (2014)
- This Nausea (2014)
- All of the Words Contained Within Shakespeare’s Sonnets Arranged in Alphabetical Order (2014)
- Clive – operatic libretto (2014)*
- having never written a note for morse code (2014)
- An Alphabeticalisation of Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom [single version] 2014* {R}
- An Alphabeticalisation of Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom [full version] (2013/14)*
- For Martin Creed (2013/14)
- I am not very good at anything (2013)
- Congruent Hotline (2013)
- For Hans G. Helms (2013)
- Article for Sound & Music (2013)
- The Earth makes a Sound (2013)* {R}
- Meaninglessness: A Scientific Discourse (2012/13)* {R}
- Carbon Ledge (2012/13)
- M Theory (2013)*
- Macbeth [a reduced version in a single act] (2013)
- Moonstruck Chronology (2013)
- This Is Flux (2013)
- Elephant Handshake #7 (2013)
- PENIS (2012)
- Heart Attack Breath (2012)
- Endless Forms Are Being Dissolved (2012)
- ‘For ‘Alfred ‘Jarry (2012)
- The Logical Construction Of This World (2012)
- My Sick Black Holes Doth Give An Other Place (2012)
- 85 Classroom Events (2012)*
- For The Messengers (2012)* {R}
- For Christopher Hitchens (2012)
- Madhouse Prophets and Quacks Multiply The End and the Beginning (2012)*
- Nas Fu Sri Nusirp D’ne (2012)
- Queer Theory (2012)*
- Like a child in the womb, Like an enigmatic moon (2012)
- A Short Talk by Matthew Lee Knowles (2011) {R}
- Caught in the Webs of History (2011)
- To Bring a Monstrous Flesh Machine to Orgasm (2011)*
- Arrows, Sticks and Decorations (2011)
- The Priest Surrendered (2011)*
- Shadow Prophets (libretto, 2011)*
- Seven Sardinian Sonata Studies (2011)
- Newspaper 2 (2011)
- Newspaper 3 (2011)
- Newspaper 4 (2011)
- Newspaper 5 (2011)
- Newspaper 6 (2011)
- Fluffy Sparrows (2011)
- Kidnapped (play, 2011)
- For all the many years that have passed away (2011)
- Sentimental Monologue (2011)* {R}
- Beginners Guide To The Theory Of Music (2011)
- Life Is Degrading (2011)
- The Hitchhiker’s The Guide The Galaxy (2010)*
- Champagne Induced Suicide (15 Mesostics, 2010)
- 16 Big Bangs For Marcus Chown (2010)*
- The Art of Walking (2010)
- A Sentence for Oscar Wilde (2010)
- Newman White Parsons Emsley (2010)
- For Richard Dawkins (2010)* {R}
- Untitled Debate (2010)
- 99 Ways to Speak the Name “Anton” (2010)
- The Thought of Suicide (2010)
- Everything’s Fine (2010)
- 50 Words About Art (I + II, 2010)
- Occupied, What The Penny Witnessed (2009/10)
- A Sign of Things to Come (2009)
- The Masterpiece (2009)
- I Am My Own Lolita – Part I (2009)* {R}
- Seventeen (2009)*
- Exhaustion (2009)
- It Rained, It Returned (2009)
- After Jeffrey Gordon Baker (2009)
- Arena From Error (2009)
- 58 Mesostics For Andy Ingamells (2009)
- Rimbaud (2009)
- Study of R.K. [person I, person II, person III] (2009)
- Gay Times (2009)*
- Four Page Text Piece (2009)
- J’ai rêvé de toi (2009)
- Old Forms Will Be Supplanted By New and Improved Forms (2009)
- The Daily Death Bell Rings (2009)
- Not After Philip Larkin (2009)
- Homage a Sam Taylor-Wood (2009)
- After Fleur Adcock (2009)
- TEXT (2009)
- Numbers Lecture (2009)* {R}
- art is contained within these one thousand two hundred and forty four words (2009)*
- 115 Events For A Windmill (2009)*
- Justine (2009)*
- I Always Thought I’d Like His Sculpture In My Garden (2009)*
- This Is Fluxus (2009)* {R}
- Lecture On Chopin (2009)*
- 255 Audience Specific Events (2009)
- 100 Events For The Guildhall School of Music and Drama (2009)*
- Verlaine (2009)*
- Untitled on Neil Luck (2009)
- Ten Text Pieces For Josh Kaye (2009)*
- Solo For Person (2009)*
- Shakespeare Sandwich, Etc (2009)
- Mr Odd Vagina (2009)
- Voices (168 poems, 2009)
- After Kenneth Goldsmith (2009)
- A History of the Offensive Eye (2009)* {R}
- 18 Reasons Why You Should Go Out Tonight (2009)*
- Danger (2009)
- Think Less (2009)
- SEVEN (2009)*
- 33`44“ for a speaker (2008)
- Writings after “120 Days of Sodom” (2008)
- Two Mesostics for Claudia Molitor (2008)
- Seven Mesostics for Neil Luck (2008)
- Sixteen Mesostics for John Cage (2008)
- Nine Mesostics for Richard Baker (2008)
- Nine Mesostics for Paul Newland (2008)
- The Story of a Magnificent Banquet (2008)* {R}
- Questions Without Answers (2008)*
- Concerning Nothing (2008)
- 820 Actions For A Person (2008)
- An Ode to a Manifesto for Sound (2008)* {R}
- 530_events (2007/8)
- Five Word Extensions [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] (2006)