nick manho

i've been reading a book about the beatles and how john and paul managed to write so many songs without getting stale and repeating the same idea like most artists do. they used a system called "random". what you do is you say the first thing that comes into your head and your partner reacts to it so what comes out is almost subconscious. it's nothing new, the surrealists had a similar game in the 1920s called "cretinisation" they would go off and catch a bus and get off when they felt like it and then grab a taxi and tell the driver to go to the train station and then get on the first train that was leaving without even knowing where it was going and continue like that, asking strangers if they could spend the night at their house, sleeping in doorways, just following their instinct and imagination without any set plan. they would go missing for days sometimes. one of the group set off on a cretinisation session and never came back. nobody ever heard from him again. now that's art.

anyway, i'm going to give you an exhibition today of how random works. i went to google images and searched for "random" and these are the first four images i could download:









now i'm going to write a song based on the four images. two verses a middle eight and a final verse.

wiggle woggle robot woman

hey, chick with the robot tits
steel legs and no zits
you da modern miss
i'd like to give ya a cyber kiss

hey chick from detroit town
why don't ya get those cyber knickers down
why don't ya flare up in the air
like a light-show over da river, there

japanese river
blue and zen
mountain in the distance
i know not when

hey chick with the grinning red head
that's my wine you're drinkin' but what the hell
love your ginger hair and sleeves to match
and i love your ginger aura, natch



there's nothing to it really. mozart, enrico fermi, and leonardo da vinci used the same method. genius is just having the time to be one.



interesting photo of a surrealist




ok, this is manho signing off for another week. tomorrow, glenn "you ain't heard nuthin' yet" cripes will be here with another in his album of the century series.

see you guys saturday.