August 27, 2021

Project 02 Publication

brief

The original work

https://youtu.be/61OaKZTwq5o

Sleepwalk was released in 1980 on album snap, crackle and BOP.

Artist: John Cooper Clarke

Country: UK

Genre: Electronic, Rock

Style: New Wave

Lyrics:

I can wriggle out of arrangements
You can’t pin me down
I tend to dodge engagements
I’ll see you around
Am I ok?,
Not really, no
I seem to stop and start

Anything I can do let me know
I think I’ll sleepwalk out of my heart
Sleepwalk in the daytime
Access to all fours
Sleepwalk in a straight line
Leading out of the door

Shop through city on a world of eyes
Marvelously dead
These friends of mine need exercise
They sleepwalk instead

No guardian angle intercepts the
Sleepwalkin’ kid
Who sleepwalks the fractured steps
To the sleepwalking skids

The way the private eye goes
About his ancient art.
I can do it with me eyes closed,
Sleepwalk out of my heart

Stop, look, listen to the zombie
The hoochie coochie blues
Black slacks and a crombie
Gucci shoes

A psycho stud and his steady girl
Are heading right this way
When all the footsteps in the world
Sleepwalk away

A victim of ambition
Loitering with intent
The human condition
But who knows what percent

Goodbye from me till now
I never really care
Sleepwalk anyhow
Anywhere

Sleepwalk, talk
Faster and faster
One of these talking birds
Sleepwalk away from disasters
Like they never occured

Too much devotion
Keeps me apart
Sleepwalk in slow motion
Out of my heart

In the creepy zilch of subways
The sub pedestrian plod
Sleepwalk on Sunday
Beneath the domes of God

Sleepwalk on duty
See myself in a pool
A sleepwalking cutie
Sleepwalking fool

Stuck in the afternoon
They do go on
When normal service is resumed
I’ll be sleepwalking young

Some research on John:

Punk poet John Cooper Clark was born in Manchester, England, on 25 January 1949: he first began performing his verses, supported by a local folk group called Ferret, but signed a Labid label in 1977 to release the Martin Hannett-produced single “Psycle Slut “.
Clark, with his swift verbal delivery and stinging social commentary, quickly became a poet award winner in the punk movement, reading his work as an open act for groups including the Sex Pistols and Buzz Cock: Lp, Love In Disguises, followed in 1978 on epic.
After supporting Elvis Costello – the attraction of their legendary armed Forces tour – Clark scored a top 40 hit with a single “Jimmix”.

A live CD, Walk Back to Happiness, appeared in 1979, and a year later he released his second studio film, Catch, Crack and Pop.
Although very popular as a stage performer, his records did not sell well, and 1982’s Zip Style Method was his last release for Epic.
Clark maintained a high live performance profile, but he became increasingly infrequent over the next few years, battling heroin addiction for much of the 1980s.
(He also spent years romantically involved with former Velvet Underground crooner Nico, who was no stranger to drug problems herself.
Over the next decade, Clark cleaned up his act, returned to the stage and regularly contributed to poetry journals.
Since 2000, Clark has remained relevant through various collaborations and pop culture appearances, including a live guest appearance on BBC Two’s Never Mind Buzzy Cock and a brief stint as a radio DJ on BBC Radio six.
He didn’t release another full-length album until 2016, when he teamed up with former Stranger member Hugh Cornwell to release a cover album called “This Time It’s Personal.”

After getting to know the author, I began to analyze his poems.
The poem is a punk poem that John performs by combining music.
The video below shows him in action.
Punk culture:

Punk culture, as we see it today, began in Britain in the 1970s as a musical revolt against pre-existing forms of popular music, including progressive rock and heavy metal.
In the attractions of punk culture, these pop stars have long been alienated by overly hero-worshiping idols.
Followers of punk culture developed their own style of dystopian music based on underground, minimalist rock and other musical forms.
In the field of punk rock, The Sex Pistols and The Ramons are well-known representative bands of punk music enlightenment.

Over time, punk became more diverse and less minimalist, as bands like clash with other underground influences like ska and rock and even hip-hop merged, but the message remained the same: it was subversive, rebellious and anarchist.
It draws on themes such as confronting social problems and oppressing the underclass.
Punk culture sends a message to society that not everyone is doing well and not everyone is the same.
It helps to explore the story behind the poem.

Specific events are not explicitly stated in the lyrics, most of which are about expressing feelings, and there are some interesting phrases such as Hookie Hookie Blue, the dome of god.
They may refer to or embody certain times.
To learn more about the context of the poem, I did more research on the year it was published.

I found an autobiography called I Want to Be You About John’s Life, in which he mentions the album SNAP, CRACKLE and BOP, which includes this poem, which is very helpful in understanding and gathering relevant elements.

Divergent thinking

I decided to make a photo book based on divergent words, focusing on illusion, painting and photography

Ebook stage

The Nature of sleepwalking

Freud believed that sleepwalking was the manifestation of a subconscious repressed emotion at the right moment.

Indeed, sleepwalkers have some painful experiences.

In fact, the psychoanalytic theory can be used to explain sleepwalking intuitively: when the id forces build up to a certain point, they break the guard of the self on duty.

In the face of the surging strength of the self, the self on duty can only escape regardless, there are individual self on duty was also caught as an assistant, because people’s words and deeds are the responsibility of self.

When the ID had been horsing around for a while, the energy had been expended, and the id was immediately thrown back into its cage by the ego’s watchman.

In order to avoid punishment from the superego, the person on duty does not report the situation, so the sleepwalker will wake up with no knowledge of what has just happened.

Although this explanation is almost impossible, it is logically plausible.

Work background

John Cooper Clarke is a famous Modern English poet who was very popular during the rise of punk in the 1970s.

The Invisible Girls provides background music while he recites poems.

His most famous work is ‘Ten Years In An Open-necked Shirt’.

He was often invited to recite poetry before concerts by some of the more famous bands.

This poem is a thinking crystallization of the critical period between coma, sleep and hallucination after some extreme behaviors in the low point of life.

It is closer to the author’s personality and psychological intuitive feelings and real desires expressed in Freud’s “The Interpretation of Dreams”.

The right and left of dreams are to be understood in a moral sense.

The right way is always the way of justice, the left way is the way of treason.

Walking in a straight line means not choosing to be confused.

This passage begins to show a distinction between the upper and lower parts of the poem, which are mainly the author’s hallucinations, his dreams and some of his self.

Some reflections of humanistic and social phenomena began to appear here, and at the same time, more profound meanings such as public welfare, faith and life emerged.