Links We Likes

www.stilldance.net Art as dance-narrative documented at its "still point" through photography.
Eeo and I were little kids together. I can count on one hand the people who created me as an artist, and Eeo is one of the best things that ever happen to me. I would not have become Toc Fetch without catching some of her energy; she is one of those rare human forces-of-nature.
Our Work comes from the same Place. (Once back in our twenties, we even collaborated on a real-to-life boy made out of sperm and a single egg, back when we believed that life would go on forever, he is our best piece to date. We titled him: The Jyothi.)
There was a time when Eeo's best Works in dance took place somewhere lost in the woods. Eeo has an affinity for physically summing up the Voice of an environment, it is awesome, as if she were allowing the entity of a glade or a configuration of the woods or a single forehead of rock to possess her in order to state the singular ecstatic I-AM of its Self. It is a wonderfully strange and original Worship. Eventually she gathered photographers to document those moments but they often proved problematic, (whose art is it?). Eventually Eeo got old and clever and began to scout and map locations, choreograph the statement, body paint and photograph some chosen dancers for each site (though ... proving-up the same problems). So ... a couple of years ago Eeo performed this work useing Anna Halprin as her dancer, few people could adapt so exactly to Eeo's vision as did Anna Halprin, the resultant body of images are exquisite and toured the US in 2001. But it is Eeo's work no matter who she works it with, it is beautiful and true.
Tap her site and see.

www.jimwoodring.com Toc and The Grand Circus Psyche love Mr. Jim and the personas of his work. If his name is mentioned, some of the voices in me mumble things like "His Holiness" and "totally cool dude" and they talk about fetching him flowers and honeyed milk for his D-light, and spreading deer skins for him to sit on. Toc himself said that he would treat Jim as an equal for which he was threatened with a beating by his Interior-Company.

"I think comics are at the beginning of an quiet change that will only be obvious in 10 more years of hindsight, and all because it is a humble art that … travels. Comics will be co-opted by art or the fip-mode because art is looking for a larger more live and direct audience." - O.D.Seeus

www.riccomaresca.com Roger and Frank run this gallery. I don't know Frank yet but hope to, he seems to be a true eccentric and my heart refuses to open for anything less. Roger, who "found" me, makes art that no one gets to see, and is very cool. While the prevailing attitude towards art is a belief in taste with a fad garnish (and the prevailing taste is a comercial trick). Roger believes in the personal Sublime (with or without a God). Roger therefore champions the "Outsider," art from outside of art, the very personal imagery of compulsion and passion, which is often the art of the lock-away, the autistic seers, and in my case the lucky twice-born fool. www.riccomaresca.com/C/ARTISTS/Contemporary/Toc%20Fetch/toc%20fetch.htm

www.possiblefilms.com Hal Hartley is a friendly god. I came away from Henry Fool feeling opened and willing towards the great syncopated dialogue of beauty that holds us. I know you know that poised and doubtless inhalation of Nothing that has just become quick with life, that rarest animal… art. Years pass and it is still so inhumanly fresh that your eyes breathe a litany, "Is it real, or is it just made of me?" The idea of triangulating your Self, is my hungriest idea. The presence of this idea makes me feel like a freak, (one of those with breathing eyes), like a skinny kid in big shorts zingy on manna, marching alone in a silent parade, chin and chest arched skyward, fist snapping a beat, up Busy towns main street. A street that is crawling with eyes, and so - stops the day. I think Hal Hartleys work is brilliant, brimming with triangulations of your Self. In the America of stimulants, subtleties are not, metaphors kill or be killed, feeling is a foreign language, story, which was once a vehicle for feeling, is, in America now, only a vehicle for more story. And all the while, off playing on his own, the lucid soul learns to speak the imagery of feeling. Hal Hartley is the good stuff, the Softdoor secret of the hive, the soma of the rite, and an honest man. And yet…"An honest man is always in trouble Simon. Remember that," says Henry Fool. .

www.xericfoundation.com Here is the monastery on the Green Isle during the dark ages. These guys are worthy of (alpha-prime-disperser) Heaven! … Big-big thanks to Peter Laird's Xeric Foundation for covering all those feasts. Good-on-you! They are very cool to care. There are surprises yet in the world. (And …why are they the only ones doing this? It is a very good question). So lift your liquid as I propose a toast to the kindness of kingly Hearts - of patrons who remember that art is a thing that has no value - in that it is the measure of value.
(But only a King would know that).

www.lightspeedpress.com "Finder" by C Speed McNeal is one of the few comics I look forward to, not with just interest but with eagerness. Speed McNeal is full of good thinking beautifully disguised as story. This is a comic by a woman who loves… and is so full of savvy kindness and slippery Eros that she is a friend to Lower Utopia everywhere.

www.lambiek.net A house of blue cyber-skins. In the Veda's the general consensus among the old fellows is that the Absolute is blue (mandalakaram! drink-up everyone!) And now my Self has arrived in Amsterdam before my self, quite fitting (he does all the work anyway). Thank you Margreet. This is a beautiful site, an encyclopedia of comic makers. Go and see. Very cool. www.lambiek.net/fetch-toc.htm

www.team-alternator.com A brief clean-sweetness like that crisp air in the Woods after rain …more please.

www.belleandsebastian.co.uk I am devoted to the Irie-sublime: of-course-you-must-eat-everything-on-your-plate but life is positive … if you are staying. Belle and Sebastian is so breathable, ( meaning: you don't feel constricted and crushed by climbing into the tiny space of some of the music you pass by in the daily world ) and sometimes, (which is more than three times), I imagine that you might like it too (projection maybe?). They are a Glasgow band who has, as I read it, purposefully maintained a low profile. They all have day jobs, one is a janitor in a church, one plays for the local symphony orchestra… They are young but their sense of "the song" as a beautiful breathing entity is there, and tends towards a kind worthy-sweetness. Their lyrics are direct (and never say anything that makes me feel embarrassed for them …which is how I feel towards most of what I hear in the periphery). Even better, I find that their ideas are good (functional) moving towards the sublime (as a direction in the soul), and yet in this they don't shy from the dark. They drop hints of Christianity but only in so far as it leads to a philosophy of goodness. They are still young enough to tell stories of life during school, about the rareifaction of individuals, about alert images, and all within a playful air of gender ambiguity (as I prefer to breathe, as if all things have souls), but always they are aiming towards love (that brilliance idea). It will be interesting, because of their careful awareness, to watch them becoming more and more conscious as they get older. I hope you like them, but I know how personal music is ("the heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of"), so don't feel two-ways if you don't. Your pal … Toc

www.marsimports.com If you are looking for odd comics and want to find a calm non-aggressive site that does not beg and yammer with commercialism (from the bully-big-boys) this is a good place.

www.westfieldcomics.com I began buying comics in small candy and stationery stores in the 60s. You'd always hope to get there soon after the bundle arrived so you could choose the least damaged comics because the outer ones were always seriously chewed by the bundling strings. The first totally-comic store I ever went into was Robert Bell's in Brooklyn. My Pop drove me down to the city where I blew 250 bucks from cashed savings-bonds Aunt Jos gave me. Years later comic stores began; the first one I found was in a converted one car garage in Port Angeles Washington with a naked 40 watt bulb, where I traded drawings for my first issues of Cerebus and Starstruct. Comic stores have grown little beyond this ambiance; unless you are in a big city, they are generally creepy, airless, always smelling like rancid lunch, and stocked with 99% superhero reruns ("…nothing personal, Batman, you know I still love you"). So for almost 25 years I have ordered my comics from the catalogue of Westfield, which is now online. They are kind and polite and their catalogue will not assault you (…thanks for that).

www.golite.com My pal Arebear and I love religiously the deep inhuman woods, the Birthday House of animals, but to really feel the woods you must go silently and stay silently and above all be able to move like the human animal that you are, thus you must … go-light.

www.cursorarts.com I for one cannot stand to have a commercial in my Room-box, on my clothes, or on my "C-box." These things are extensions of my self, of MY world, and I refuse to be made an advertisement for care-less-corporations. Plainly said, I work intimately with my C-box and my Norp (camera) doing shoots and mapping out my stories, so the constant environment of my C-box must be owned by me alone. This cottage company, Cursor Arts, has created a cheap and very functional icon forge. And this is ...thank you.

www.booksontape.com If you have never had a book read to you, then you won't understand what wonderful depth of feeling is offered here. Even more than comics, "Readings" are a very little recognized art form but some performances are true moments and will open you. The Cunning man read by George Guidal. Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man read by Donal Donnelly. The Stand read by Grover Gardner. A Star Called Henry read by Roddy Doyle. Slapsticks read by Dan Lazar. The Deptford trilogy read by Dan Lazar. Razor's Edge read by Frank Muller. These are exquisite experiences.

www.recordedbooks.com As above so below

www.blackstoneaudio.com As above so below

www.scottmccloud.com Hurray for Scott McCloud and well done. The conversation of comics begun.

si.arrr.net Secret Idenity Comix. I am very humbled to be thought a friend by such a direct and honest voice. Go to, and if you are willing you will recognize a friend, too.

quimby.gnus.org/warehouse Chris Ware: Eccentricity as an art, beautifully sad. A comic co-opted by art. One of the few.

www.drawnandquarterly.com It seems Chris Oliveros has been pointing this publishing company in the direction of comics-as-art-form (...without hedging) since it began. D&Q publishes some really good stuff; it is the site for Max, a comic maker from Spain who is a god (small g), David Mazzucchelli whose simple stroke and ambiance is breathtaking, Adrian Tomine's minutiae's of love, Debbie Dredhsler's absolute quirk, and Carol Ann Tyler's language of feeling. Good stuff all around.

www.bugpowder.com/lexikon/ghermandi.html This is the only site I could find to flash her work. Francesca Ghermandi is among the single handful. Her work is so necessary it breathes.

www.paulpope.com Paul Pope is Neon. I love his work (though I'm not that interested in the things he seems to be obsessed with, I still love his obsession so I gather everything he does), but he is a singular phenomena, autonomous and self-effulgent. And I wish I could refrain from using the one word he draws from his audience, that one word above all others that describes his reality, and that word is …cool.

www.builttospill.com One of the greatest love songs ever (says me); Ancient Melodies of the Future, track No. 8 "You Are." This is great stuff…more please.

www.ishmael.com Hello Daniel Quinn from Toc Fetch! I have just discovered you … in my world. I am wonderfully nervous, feeling like something huge and live is passing behind me underwater where I thought I was alone. Cool!
I've had a copy of the film "Instinct" for a couple of years. Alone I would watch it every so often just to reconnect with a-feeling-of-belonging that it offers somewhat left handedly. It is funny that it took me so many years to imagine that whoever wrote the story must have this same feeling-for-the-world offered in other stories. Minutes after I drank this understanding I arrived at your website, and now I have read "Ishmael," and "B." …Wonderful. I have all sorts of complements for you jostling inside. Thank-you for presenting such excellently felt Images-of-ideas in story. You have wonderfully elucidated all the things my intuition only allowed me to feel but not say (I suppose to avoid "the nillistic registration marks that would scare the skin of my heart," [and to be honest … the truth never stopped a fall before] Hi-ho). I am so glad to hear from you (in your work), and I am glad you are here also at this end of time. Your pal ...Toc

www.elizzycline.com Soon-come site. Elizzy is my web designer. My pal. Mom of the Hollybean. A-bunk-e of Camp Climax, and Den-mom of Lower Utopia. My pal. ecline@ulster.net