Andrew Middleton 2007

Hello to the various vast writhing limbs of the Kraken, and happy birthday to Russell, In Weirdos We Trust.

This is the first time I've got my act together and 4qated on the appointed day. Left two sheets of yellow A4, one:

I am the first of your line. I am the first singer, the one who invented the lyre, the one to whom Hermes brought Eurydice and perpetual guilt. I am your progenitor, I am the endlessly voyaging sorrow that is always in you, I am that astonishment from which you write in those brief moments when you can write.

from The Medusa Frequency

- under a copy of "Memoirs of a Geisha" in a branch of Waterstones contained in the vast shopatropolis Meadowhall - 'Meadowhell' to the locals - in Sheffield.

Also left this one in the cafe at the Millenium Gallery in Sheffield Town centre. It's not a particularly deep quotation, just one that makes me smile:

Working for Classic Comics wasn't too bad...it was one of many bright and tastefully decorated places in London where people can neither speak or write English and they say concept when they mean idea.

from The Medusa Frequency

plus for good measure:

Don't come the deconstructionist with me, you ponce!

from The Medusa Frequency

- which isn't a phrase you hear uttered every day.

I would have left this somewhere -

What a ponderous labour is war, what preparations must be made years and years before the first blow is struck! Decades before the first battle must the first engines of war be brought into play: the first engines of war are men and women, they are the hammer and the anvil that in the heat of their action make soldiers. In order that the dead may be heaped on the walls and roofs and in the streets and houses of Jerusalem in 1099 there must be heavy coupling from about 1060 onwards among Christians and Muslims both.

from Pilgermann

- but was afflicted with paranoid imaginings about a) a child reading it, showing it to their over-sensitive parents and outrage ensuing or b) the subject matter being misintrepreted as some subversive comment on current political events, and hence police in black with guns kicking in my door (and outrage ensuing).

I dare say neither of the above is remotely likely, but I just think that way because I'm afraid that other people think that way. Remember that artist who was arrested under the Terrorism Act for placing very unbomb-like collage artworks on a London street? The folk in charge of public and commercial spaces are (to an extent understandably) very highly strung right now, and I think I picked up on that mood. Sad, innit?