The R&B Feeling: The Bob Parks Story

R Feeling, disclaimer, take five!

My name is Bob Parks, and this is a story about me,

my life and various events that have come into it.

There are scenes in this film you might find complex,

alarming and upsetting, but it's important to remember that

human life is also complex, alarming and upsetting.

Sometimes it's better just to accept that bad or strange things happen.

LO-FI ROCK MUSIC

This began as a niche project destined for a simple,

unostentatious life in an art gallery,

to be enjoyed by the dozen people prepared to sit through it.

STUTTERING RADIO CHATTER

Bob was a confounding,

sometimes exhausting subject when we first met him.

Thanks, Bob. Thanks... Thanks, Bob.

The lives we lead are often intricate and multiple.

We didn't know, for instance,

whether we were making a film about an artist - more specifically,

one of the pioneers of the LA performance art scene -

or a film about a postman, or a gospel preacher...

Or a film about a man from a quiet suburb who trained as

a voodoo priest in Benin.

The human brain is tooled

to see patterns in random and meaningless data,

to join dots where there are none...

I was all, you know, up for this... Er, yeah.

..and following Bob involved many, many false starts and dead ends.

But somewhere within this chaotic assemblage of friends

and family, and experts and testimonials,

and ex-wives,

and opportunities missed,

the narrative began to assert itself,

and that narrative began in LA.

SIRENS WAIL AND TRAFFIC DRONES

This is a psycho-geographical,

rhythm-and-blues soundscape which is Los Angeles,

and this is the start of our journey, on the corner of...

What... What is this...?

Something... La Brea...

La Brea... Just off La Brea... La Brea and Detroit.

In the meantime we've found... a terrible accident.

FLUTE FLUTTERS

We'd all worked in art, but we'd never met anybody like Bob.

He cared about art,

and he genuinely believed in its redemptive power -

perhaps more than any of the more successful artists or curators

or critics that we knew.

HE SCAT-SINGS INTO THE FLUTE

These were the first scenes we ever shot with Bob.

He had lived in LA in the 1970s,

and had come back for the first time to tell us his story.

But in order to give you the proper context for all this,

we need to begin in 1947,

at 10 Argyll Avenue, Southall, Middlesex,

where Bob was born.

His mother was Marjorie Clara Park, his father Frederick Parks.

That's Frederick with a K.

It was a normal childhood, relatively speaking.

As a teenager, Bob fostered an interest in art,

and went on to study it at Leicester University, where,

in 1969, he met Myriam Morales,

a young American on a tour of Europe.

They dated, they fell in love, they married.

Eventually, in 1972, they moved to Los Angeles,

where Myriam had grown up.

Bob had a first class degree in art and was fascinated by the LA scene.

Billy Al Bengston, Ed Ruscha, Craig Kauffman,

all the bright and shiny pop artists.

But by the time Bob arrived in the early '70s,

LA was a very different place.

The performance art scene was flourishing.

The Vietnam War had reached new levels of brutality,

and LA itself was a violent, unhappy place.

These new artists were responding to that friction,

that upheaval.

Chris Burden had a studio assistant shoot him in the arm with a rifle.

Paul McCarthy was painting his body with ketchup in the name of art.

Barbara T Smith was hanging naked bodies from the wall of her gallery.

John Duncan was staging provocative interventions

on public transport and everywhere else.

And Bob was walking the streets of LA in a yellow bikini,

choreographing traumatic fits and seizures in public.

Most of them went on to be recognised as the most

important and influential artists of their generation.

But not Bob.

Robert Parks is one of those artists whose name comes up on occasion

when I'm interviewing other people about this period in the '70s

in Los Angeles.

You know, I went to his house, and it was, er, a little old house,

and, you know, he had all these eccentric things around it!

And so there's a lot of eccentric artists,

there's a lot of artists that can hardly create a sentence.

There's others that are so brilliant that their sentences are beyond you,

you know, I mean, there's all sorts of artists,

and so you can't rule anybody out, not at all.

Robert Parks did a piece called Bignose,

or a radio programme called Close Radio, where artists

dissected the medium of sound in every way that you could imagine.

So, when Robert Parks did his piece, he'd very much sort of

confound your expectation of what something should sound like.

He was...

He was...unique.

# I believe in abandon! #

The other artists that we knew at that time

considered him too far out.

# Going out with this openness I am taking a chance... #

He wanted to lose control,

he wanted to give up control and see what would happen when he did.

# I personify chastity

# All I get is abuse! #

And we began to think, "I don't know."

SHE LAUGHS "This guy is pretty weird."

I thought he was amazing.

Bob and I, after we married, had a good life together.

It was blissful, one of the happiest times in my life...

..and forever will be.

But, yeah, at a certain point, she just sort of threw up her hands

and, and when she did,

he was sort of, like, rudderless

for a while.

To be in the aura of someone of that magnitude, of that aesthetic,

such an intense aesthetic, it was getting more and more

difficult for me to stay in the marriage.

He joined the church soon after this,

but this was a period...where she left

and then there was this period of sort of...floating,

or sort of, like, moving through a fog,

and then, erm, getting involved in the church.

I don't know how he did that.

I don't know how he ended up going there.

Praise the Lord!

CHEERING AND SHOUTING

In the wake of Bob's divorce,

he began to pursue his interest in the gospel scene.

In 1974, he joined the Starlight Church Of God In Christ,

based in South Central LA.

Back in the '70s, you know,

Los Angeles was pretty much segregated.

They had the white churches, you had the black churches,

you had the Hispanic churches, you know, and rarely did they mix.

So was it odd to see Bob down in South Central?

It was odd, you know, but he felt right at home.

Everybody started calling him Brother Bob, Brother Bob.

How are you? I'm Sister Reed's son. You're little, little...

I was down here. You were never that tall!

Absolutely. He's grown a bit!

Bob liked to play the flute.

I don't remember Bob not having a flute.

And he was terrible at it, yeah,

he didn't have any skill whatsoever, and he seemed to relish that.

We, er, was hoping that he'd just, you know, er,

kind of improve upon his musical skills.

Face turned red from blowing, I mean...

It's something to watch him play.

Bob had a tune all of his own.

He could let himself go, and nobody's going to laugh at him.

Nobody's going to think it's funny, you know,

because that's just him and how he'll express himself.

I just want to PRAISE GOD!

HALLELUJAH!

HALLELUJAH! HALLELU-U-U...!

We just embraced him,

and that was, I guess, his way of

expressing his self,

so we just, er, let Bob do Bob.

# Soldier in the army of the Lord

# I'm a soldier in the army! #

UPBEAT GOSPEL

BOB SCREAMS

Bob was happy at the church, but LA is a big city,

and sometimes people fall through the cracks.

By 1978, Bob was in a much darker place.

Here comes...

Bignose.

Divorced from Myriam and isolated from the art scene,

Bob took his performance art to national television.

GONG REVERBERATES

I didn't understand that, Bignose.

Are you trying to uplift the audience?

In 1981, Bob's brother Tom came to LA.

Sensing that something was wrong, he took Bob home to England.

Back in the UK, Bob moved into his parents' bungalow in Sway -

a small, conservative village

in the centre of the New Forest National Park.

He still lives there with his mother today.

Let me help you getting up. Ooh.

Right on there.

Ohh... Dear old Mum.

Push it forward. Just pull... That's it.

We'll leave the old, erm...

Do you remember when we bought that? Yes.

The, erm, the dehumidifier,

cos all my books were beginning to warp? Yes.

So we had to get rid of all the... Yes.

It's lovely.

"MARY'S BOY CHILD" PLAYS ON A RADIO

TOY BIRD TWEETS

Push.

TOY BIRD TWEETS

TOY BIRD TWEETS

TOY BIRD TWEETS

So this is just... And I'll show you the stuff here...

These are all my books, I've got them all in chronological sequence.

Now, this...

In 1974, I think it was, when Myriam left, this is how I was

walking around Los Angeles for a year, living out the painting.

And it was about the hypocrisy of Renaissance artists who painted

naked women, fully clothed themselves behind closed doors,

so I thought, "Well, I'll be my own model

"and take it out from behind doors,"

and I got thrown out of the Museum Of Modern Art

in Los Angeles, I got screamed at in McDonald's.

If you come round here now...

So, this is when I came back to England,

when I tried doing a really concentrated picture of Mum,

which I did, I spent another year on that,

and as I was working on that, I was doing that at the same time,

which was a fantasy.

Right in the middle you can see my grandfather,

wicked old bugger, who, erm...

Anyhow, he had tempers and stuff like that.

Anyhow, I've made him in the middle.

And I've got me in an erotic position,

and Myriam in an erotic...with this thing coming out of her anus,

and a sort of flowery kind of thing...

Oh, no, it's Mum as an angelic force.

I had her in a sheet and her eyes were blackened.

This, I'll just...just show you, this is one of the ones I did...

That's another one, that's using...

And on the back of it I've got...

I traced around my mum's outline.

That's going to hang upside down from the ceiling.

This is...

This is one of Mum, her on the cross -

that's a bit of it, with that painting behind her,

so that's in encaustic.

Bob's brother Tom has travelled to the UK to visit the family,

and Bob is preparing an elaborate performance

to protest the closure of a local art gallery.

Oh, look, there's some people arriving. God!

There are going to be people there.

HE SINGS # Doopie-doo... #

Right, yeah, that's it. Now...

HE RINGS A BELL Oyez! Oyez!

Hear ye, citizens of Sway!

Proclamation of the new Bishop of Southampton!

The bastion of private ownership

has eaten away the identity of Sway!

This social tragedy is hereby expressed publicly

and mourned in the open!

FLUTE WHEEZES

What has led you to come back to the UK this time?

Specifically this time is the fact that I can, erm,

and that Miggie has really reached a stage of life

where it's dangerous to leave her by herself in the house.

Oh, the record's in the other room. I like that.

She does need 24-hour reassurance.

Erm, I'm not the entertainer of Miggie that Bob is.

Bob plays a very good role of

amusing and diverting and directing Miggie,

whereas my philosophy to some extent is to leave people to be,

and to, erm, well, if they feel miserable,

continue feeling miserable.

A MAN'S VOICE CATERWAULS ON A CD

I think Bob's determined to preserve Miggie's personality

and to cheer her out of, erm, feelings of anxiety or depression...

You know, I went... HE SHRIEKS

I would go much further than him, but at least it's somebody...

And I'd rip right through my vocal cords,

I wouldn't mess around.

..and use Miggie as a sounding board,

or a muse, to some extent,

and, erm, he looks for that function to continue as much as is possible.

Hello, hi, Mum!

Hi! Hello. You all right? Yes.

Right, there it is, Mum,

you've come all the way from Sway... Yes.

..and there it is, you're seeing yourself... Yes.

..at the Institute of Contemporary Art. Yes.

Lovely colours, aren't they? Yeah, very nice colours.

This is Mum looking at the picture.

We're going to come round and have a word with her now.

So what do you think, Mum? Keep looking at the picture.

What's your reaction?

I don't like it. You don't like it.

Do you mind watching it for a little bit more? No. OK.

Do you like the colours?

I like the colours, but I don't like anything else about it.

You know, I left for Australia when I was 20.

And it's been very much a case of Bob, Miggie and Fred

getting on with life here.

For a significant time after Bobby came back, there were rivalries

between Bob and my dad about who had

influence with me, and my father

felt his role was being usurped, I'm sure, as head of the house or whatever,

and he tried to assert himself in all sorts of ways,

which were frustrating.

Dear old Mum?

You know you've been with me with all my art.

Everything I've done.

Have you got anything to say about that?

How you feel, how you've helped me or your part that's...?

When I started going to art school, I got to be very honest, didn't I?

And I used to say things.

And you had a lot of shocks with me.

But you got used to it, didn't you?

Yes!

What a psychiatrist said,

it was a symbiotic relationship I had with you.

And when I did your portrait, I had to almost become you.

I think sexually, you let me do anything, haven't you?

You've never put any kind of restrictions and I think that care,

treating me with that sensitivity,

has allowed my artistic side to develop.

I think it's because of the sort of space you gave me as a mother.

It's unconditional love, isn't it?

Put it on the right speed.

MUSIC PLAYS

# But it's been a long, long, long, long, long, long time comin'

# But, people, let me tell you a change is gonna come

# Oh, yes, it is... #

Can you hear that?

You like the backing to that one?

Solomon Burke.

# I say, "Brothers, help me, please"... #

Yeah.

# But my brothers, they wind up knockin' me

# Right down, down on my knees

# There was times when I thought I wouldn't last long

# Now I know I'm able to carry on

# Been a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long

# Time coming

# But, people, let me tell you a change is gonna come... #

A big man?

Kind. Generous.

# Oh, yes, it is, oh, yes, it is, oh, yes, it is... #

He did, yeah. And he used to sit on a throne because he was so fat.

# There's been love, there's been tears

# There's been joy, there's been sorrow... #

Without his clothes? Oh!

All fat.

# It's been a long, long time coming... #

Shall I give you your donkey?

# But I'm here to tell you a change is gonna come... #

Here's your donkey.

# Oh, yes, it is, oh, yes, it is, oh, yes, it is... #

Do you remember when I bought you the teddy bear? Yes.

That's your teddy bear.

And here's your...

Do you remember the guinea pig? Yes.

Put him in there.

# Sisters and brothers are crying

# It's been a long, long, long, long... #

And Tom sent the kangaroo.

And the duckbilled platypus.

# Oh, master, a change has got to come... #

And do you remember the...

The dog pretending to be a reindeer?

Yeah.

And then the anteater Tom sent? Yes.

# Brother, will you help me, help me... #

And the little seal? Yes. The little seal. Yes.

# My brothers wind up knocking me... #

And then...

we don't know what this was called. Do you remember? Yes.

# I been so afraid of living... #

That was your little friend, wasn't he? Called Daisy.

She came to visit you in the garden, didn't she? Yes.

# Been a long, long, long, long, long, long

# Time coming

# But I know...#

They said, well, why don't you do portraits of people

at your gospel church? Which I did.

I decided I've got a year, I can do it, let the job go.

Go back to England.

Because I thought, after a year,

if I end up in Los Angeles with no money, it's not funny,

so a roll of 36 films of everybody.

With Mum, we selected the best one.

I spent a month on each of these portraits.

There's seven. There's one missing. This is Otis, my good friend.

And he played bass with my flute

and he sort of snapped me right into the church and made me feel at home.

And he was my best friend in America,

Brother Otis.

That's Sister Margaret round there.

Sister Shirley White was the one

that when I'd left church for a bit, she got

me back into it and then about three months later, she got burnt to death

in a car crash and died slowly, actually, over a couple of days.

We went to her funeral and it was in... Part of it was in Inglewood,

the service, and then it was all sad

and then we drove in a cavalcade to Compton across South Central.

Mum, what do you think about death?

# Mum's given up the will to live

# She's going to die

# Mum's given up the will to live

# She's going to die

# With all this consternation

# She'll be up there by and by... # Sorry.

# I told her she was a fucking bitch

# I looked her straight in the eye

# With anger and shouted, "I hate you,"

# After that, Mum cried

# Mum's given up the will to live

# She's going to die. #

So sweet.

Nice to see you. My brother came over from Australia.

Very nice. Nice to have you.

INAUDIBLE

May the Lord bless you.

Let me hear you say amen. Amen.

In the name of Jesus of Nazareth!

Rise up. Somebody say rise up. Rise up!

He had been bound by the gate, by the barrier for 14 years.

But when God touch him that day, he jump over that gate.

That gate will not keep you bound anymore.

You're going to walk today in the name of Jesus. Somebody praise him.

Hallelujah.

# Amazing Grace

# He's the greatest one

# Forever the same

# He rolled back the water

# From the mighty Red Sea

# He said, "I'll never leave you"

# Until Judgement Day. #

APPLAUSE

Today, we're glad to see Brother Park

and all those who have come along with him.

But to see his mother and we want to let her know

that we appreciate her coming today.

Can you give her...

GOSPEL SINGING

Praise God, bless all the ministers.

Thank you so much for this opportunity.

I'll just tell you a quick testimony.

I don't know if you know I've been suffering for anxiety for 30 years

and I've been to psychotherapy, I've been to groups, I've been...

It's been on and on.

What happens, I get these 25-hour rages, I get very...

I'm a pacifist, I don't like physical violence, but vocally I get

very violent and Mum's received it all her life for the last 30 years.

She's just taken it.

And it's gone on and on and on and six years ago,

Mum said, "Let me take your anxiety on, Bob. Let me take it on myself.

"And I'll take it when I die, I'll take it with me,"

and the blessing is that when Mum dies, Mum's going to take

the anxiety to God and God is going to know what to do with it.

God will know how to dispose of the anxiety

because I believe in God and I want to give one quick song, if I may just before.

And it's an old pop song, Stand By Me.

Can you do that, Sister Carol?

# Doo-doo-doo, doo, doo-doo-doo... #

# When the night has come

# Doo-doo-doo

# And the light is dark

# And the moon is the only light I see

# No, I won't be afraid

# No, I won't shed a tear

# Just as long as you stand, you stand by me

# And darling, God, darling, God

# Stand by me, oh, yes, he'll stand with us

# Yes, he will, yes, he will

# Oh-oh-oh. #

Hallelujah!

Brother Park's mother don't have to take anything

because God has already got it.

Say amen. Amen!

I want you to stand to your feet and point to Brother Park.

Brother Park, if you trust and never doubt,

God will surely bring you out.

Somebody say...

In the name of Jesus, deliver her...

Hallelujah! Praise God. Hallelujah. Praise God.

Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Thank you, God.

In Jesus' name. Thank you, God.

In Jesus' name. Thank you, God. In Jesus' name.

Hallelujah. Somebody give praise.

APPLAUSE AND SINGING

Yes!

Yes, Lord!

I can make a cup of tea.

I wouldn't mind one. OK. Half a cup.

I've got to boil the tea. Let's see what we can do.

I won't be long. I'll keep on coming out.

Is it... Ooh! Can I get my mum a cup of tea?

So...

We'll get home about 5:30, six. Will that be all right?

You're quite flushed, dear old Mum. Am I? Yeah.

I think in the whole time I've lived here,

no next-door-neighbour has ever introduced themselves, so this is an absolute first here.

Oh! I had a note put through my door this morning saying,

"Your rabbit has been seen at number two, four and six."

You are number six, aren't you?

Yeah. Unless they've just seen it, perhaps, in your garden. Maybe?

But I just wanted to say hello. Hello. It's the first time...

Forget about the rabbit bit.

It's the first time a neighbour's ever...

Oh, well, it's nice to meet you. I'm Jodie. Bob.

I've got two little boys, we live up on the corner.

Just moved in there now? We've been here for about four months now.

Still kind of newish. Lovely. OK, I'll see you about, then.

You certainly will. It's nice to meet you, Bob.

I'll look out for your rabbit. Yeah, if you come across a brown rabbit.

OK. Thank you. It's all right.

I've just...

I've just killed my mum in a car crash.

So we're waiting to hear the outcome of that,

whether they're going to press charges or not.

The maximum will be six months in prison, but they don't think

there's any chance of what-do-you-call-it service.

The policeman who's now the liaison says

he thinks it's punishment enough with having done that.

We were driving and there was a bend and I just remember waking up

and seeing sort of a lumbering noise

and I must've just blacked out from the impact.

The ambulance came, so I was getting Mum out

and they helped me get her out and then got to the hospital.

There was a four-hour wait,

so we were in line and when I went

to talk with her, she was in a different kind of state.

And then they came back about ten minutes after and said that

she's dying and I went in and she was pretty cold.

These are all for the funeral.

I'll get the poem. It's a poem I read to her.

"Soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left earth,

"and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten.

"But the love will have been enough;

"all those impulses of love return to the love that made them.

"Even memory is not necessary for love.

"There is a land of the living and a land of the dead

"and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."

I'll keep a couple of these rows for the...

That's where they're going to be...

If the thing here, they could just be behind me here

just in an arc around behind me.

INAUDIBLE I don't know, let's just see. OK.

ORGAN MUSIC PLAYS

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our service.

It's a service of thanksgiving for the life of Marjorie

and it's lovely to see you all here as friends from the village,

friends from over the years and family members, as well.

Lovely to welcome you all here and it's lovely to have

a contingent from the Calvary Church of God in Christ.

I think in Tottenham, is that right?

Mum was a good and gentle woman.

Bob and I have had the privilege to support her in recent times

in the ways that she supported us as children.

The sudden death took us by surprise, especially Bob,

who was with her at the end as a source of comfort and reassurance.

The circumstances of her death were unusual, but it all worked out

in a way that was unforeseeable, but gentle, peaceful and loving.

Marjorie was a good, much-loved and appreciated mum.

# Tempted and tried We're oft' made to wonder

# Why it should be thus all the day long

# Farther along we'll know more about it

# Farther along we'll understand why

# Cheer up, my brother... #

You should never say bad things about the dead.

She's dead - good!

God has lifted her.

He's taken her up. Praise God!

Bless His Holiness. Hallelujah!

Jesus is here with us today.

Marjorie is here with us in church

and I want to give God the praise and the thanksgiving

and the hope and the charity and everything

he brings for us here today.

Jesus died that we might live!

Marjorie died that we too might live.

She wants us to live.

OK, now, I've forgotten the next bit.

I want to do this little bit here.

Oh, yeah, I know.

I want you to turn round to your neighbour

whoever it is - male, female,

young, old, good, bad...

LAUGHTER

..ugly, beautiful, anything like that...

Look them in the eye and I want you to give them a great big cuddle.

A great big cuddle.

Everyone next to you, whoever it is, give them a big cuddle.

This is what Marjorie would want.

OK, now, she liked me to sing this song,

so, choir, are you ready? OK.

# When the night has come

# And the land is dark

# And the moon is the only light I'll see

# No, I won't be afraid

# No, I won't shed a tear

# Just as long as you stand

# You stand by me. #

Jesus would want this.

Jesus wants it.

Yes, he does. Yes, he does.

Yes, he does. Yeah!

APPLAUSE

After the funeral, Bob and Tom travel to Canvey Island,

where they'd taken holidays as children.

I haven't done this since I was a kid.

I've got to do this.

Oh, no!

Oh, boy! I feel sick now.

Canvey was where my mum's father and mother had a little cottage

and my mum used to come here before the war and during the war

and look after her mum.

For us, it was escape from school and mundane things

that it was just...

Well, I think Bob has said and I agree,

that it was her idea of paradise or heaven.

Total paradise.

I think it was a lovely childhood.

We had a happy family, Mum was saying, up until the point

where we went to grammar school

and Dad could act like a father figure, be a dad.

They were probably the happiest days of our lives, I think,

when we used to come here.

Today's such a great day. It is, it's a beautiful day.

Can you play the song from three years ago?

What the Snowdrops On The...?

I can't remember the words.

Some... Someone was dying.

I know, it was my mum, wasn't it? Song...

Yeah, I know. It was a good one, wasn't it?

Steven asked if you want to play it again.

I can't... Let me have...

I'll have to have a think.

HUMMING

Oh, dear.

That needs the blue brush.

So I like to do encaustic because it's the most permanent

form of painting there is.

What I'm representing here is that moment of traumatic impact,

then the bags are going down.

Up to that I was asleep,

and after that I was unconscious just for a second - a split second.

So that's what I'm representing, just that moment.

Having laid his mother to rest, Bob was flourishing.

He was making art again and, for the first time,

a respected institution had asked to show his work.

He'd dedicated the exhibition to Marjorie

and had been working on a new painting

depicting the accident and its aftermath.

So, it's like the gap between his painting and his performance.

I've got all the quotes, it's really good, of what my mum said

over the last four years.

They are ever so good.

Mum says when she dies,

"Something will be released in me that's special -

"to be able to express that specialness in my art."

"17th June, Mum thinks I've created

"a magic garden here in Sway.

"1st July, traced round mum for the second study for the crucifixion.

"26th August, Mum's scared of going blind and deaf.

"18th December, Mum sees her work done now.

"I have achieved the crucifixion.

"3rd March 2010,

"Mum says I should never phone her if I have the chance to have

"a hot chocolate with a pretty girl because she's on her way out.

"4th February, Mum's worried about my skimpy running shorts.

"5th June, Mum wants it to end - not to go through another night

"like she did last night again.

"10th November, Mum told me I'm the only person who's loved her

"for what she is.

"3rd March, Mum died yesterday.

"28th, Mum is my soul."

The show was a success.

He'd finally been recognised by his peers.

But the gallery was full of portraits of his mother.

Right in the centre, a photograph of her on her deathbed

surrounded by Bob's handwritten notes

penned immediately after the accident.

# Change is gonna come

# Oh, yes, it is... #

"..Parks preaches a philosophy of the ecstatic -

"a shattering Hammond-soaked testimonial that draws on

"gospel-inflected sensibility

"he calls the 'rhythm and blues feeling'."

This is the first review that I've ever read in an art magazine,

so it's the first one I've ever had in my life

and I've never read anything like this.

"Reappearing in many different guises,

"Parks's recently deceased mother is a pivotal figure.

"She died in a car accident earlier this year,

"in which Parks was the driver.

"The fatal event and its emotional repercussions were recounted in

"a disquieting triptych

"that comprised of Parks's handwritten account

"penned immediately after the collision.

"It's an intensely powerful work.

"Surveying it felt disconcertingly intimate, even voyeuristic."

And right at the end, he says,

"And The Heavens Cried - an apocalyptic vision

"fit for the most arresting solo exhibition

"I've seen this year."

So that's wonderful.

'It's my fault.

'I killed my mum.

'I didn't kill her on purpose but, you know,

'you can say that God works in mysterious ways.

'She certainly wanted to be dead.

'She was fed up with being alive.

'So I think, in a way, it was merciful.'

So this is the tree that killed my mum.

So it wasn't me, it was the tree.

She loved trees. She used...

They're very open things and...

# Thank you, trees. #

The tree doesn't feel guilty at all.

HE HUMS

'The '60s was about the sexual revolution.'

I believe this decade will be about death.

And...

..Mum's left me some sort of a legacy.

She's given me this gift through her death

of having the freedom to explore what she more or less

sacrificed in the last third of her life for me.

I think Los Angeles could act as a catalyst

to spark off, I guess, this gestation...

These 30 years of gestation.

Um...

It's like bringing...

It's like bringing the thing full circle.

It's like...

Almost like a canvas...

Finishing a painting.

Everything I've been through with Mum

is tuned into the vibe of LA.

My belief is, if I bring that back,

it will complete Mum's life and, in that,

complete my own life.

It's for a performance I'm doing. Oh, really?

Have you got one size bigger, too?

This is the biggest size that we have.

This is 24 by 36.

That's the one I want.

Yeah.

Christ, is that heavy?

Not really. That's cool.

Right, let's get the sables first. OK.

To honour his mother,

Bob had brought her ashes back to LA for a final performance.

He was planning an elaborate ritual

and, as part of this process,

looked for advice from one of LA's many Hispanic spiritualists.

We can read your palms of your hands.

We can read the cards. Do you do astrology? Of course we do that.

And we can also do a cigar.

The cigar will tell you which way you've got to go,

because the cigar will talk to the angels and to the spirits.

Mm-hmm. Therefore, we can put you on the right track.

He's the master.

He's a very spiritual man. Yes, absolutely.

He can talk to the dead

and bring you the dead, and he can communicate...

I work different spirits. "I work different spirits."

I was driving a car. HE TRANSLATES

I crashed the car...into a tree.

My mother died.

I killed my mother...

by accident.

Now, I want this to be

my praise to my mother

for saving my spiritual life.

HE TRANSLATES

In here, I have my mother's...

My mother's...

It's cremated.

I want to mix...

Make a cross of your paste.

So, how do I make the dough?

You can buy one sack of flour,

say about a pound, pound and a half.

One pound.

Plain flour or self-raising? Exactly.

Plain flour? Plain flour.

OK.

Come this way, please.

Repeat after me.

En el espiritu de mi madre...

In the spirit of my mother... In the spirit of my mother...

..nunca para deja mi...

..will never let me go. ..will NEVER let me go.

Ni un momento!

Not even a second! Not even for a second.

Como el poder de Dios.

By the power of God... By the power of God...

HE CONTINUES IN SPANISH

..it will be with me into the rest of my life.

It will be with me

for the rest of my life.

HE HUMS

See, the Mexican Day of the Dead,

food gets put out

and the spirit comes down

and they take the essence,

they take the flavour, out of the food.

Here's Mum.

The little bit I left...

Well, in you go, Mum.

The whole of Mum.

HE EXHALES

HE HUMS

HE HUMS

HE GRUNTS

Get some...

some real... HE GRUNTS

INTERVIEWER: How does it feel?

Yes.

I like to get my hands...

Getting in touch with clay again, I like it.

But that's the last of your mum.

Who knows? There's little bits here.

I've got to get all the bits.

That's the last of Mum.

Actually, it's not the last, cos I'm going to bake her.

Yeah, but, you know,

this process is the last of Mum.

Really, it's preserving Mum.

It's not saying goodbye to Mum, it's...

There it is.

INDISTINCT

Here...

Here are my pencils.

So...

Then I'm going to use this and nail it,

so it becomes a Russian cross

cos I have that cross motif there.

Then I get my little men going.

This is Khmer Rouge.

It's like a visceral thing,

just to bring the whole thing and

take it out the pomposity of ritual,

as practised historically,

and into the everyday.

Like a game.

A game that is played by rules and that's real.

So, it's not posing.

BEEP

It's been doing that all night.

It's devotive offering,

the art object

becomes metaphysically charged...

cos she's actually there.

I mean, literally, her bones that have been cremated

are literally there,

so her physicality is literally there. It's not... You know.

So, this is a visual manifestation

of the underpinning philosophy

that makes Los Angeles unique,

that makes my creative search unique,

that makes Mum's life unique,

ie she died,

took my psychosis with her.

I'm able to use my art now -

whereas, for 35 years,

I've had an audience of one.

Don't touch me.

Don't leave me.

Kiss me.

Heal me with your loving power.

Come with me into your world,

into your arms.

Don't leave me. Not now.

Now that you've given me so much of yourself to love.

Now that you've shared with me

that which I have never found in myself.

HE PLAYS QUIETLY

HE PLAYS LOUDLY

AIR RASPS

HE PLAYS

HE WAILS

HE CHANTS

HE ROARS

# Bignose doesn't get on in life

# Bignose doesn't get rich

# Bignose keeps his identity

# That's the dream it won't ditch

# Bignose tries to feel everything

# Bignose doesn't succeed

# Everything isn't anything

# Cos I'm only a weed

# We are all poor and struggling

# If we'd only be true

# Don't resist, don't be powerful

# This concerns me and you. #

That's the first two verses.

CHEERING

APPLAUSE