a new year

My first thought for the new year is about place. Space. Somewhere to work in. After the totally disastrous effects of giving up my workroom for month last year, I now have completely claimed this room. No more piano, no more spare bed, no reason for anyone to come in, and certainly no reason for anyone to stay there for a week or a month!!

It makes a huge difference to the state of my mind when it comes to this work. I know that, in principle, I can work anywhere - that I can work small or large, that there are things all around me to stimulate me, and that a kitchen table can do the job. But in reality, it doesn't seem to work out like that. With the level of recurring self-doubt that I have learnt inhabits me, even if it is diminishing, it seems that it is actually very important to have a space that I can walk into that says - Look! Here you are, you art person you! Here's a bit of your mind you didn't know existed until yesterday, and over here a wee chunk of your heart, and look, here's something you actually saw in the outside world!

Instead of having to decide whether or not I have enough time to clear the table and get the stuff out, I can just walk in and see something half finished that only needs me to walk over to it and take the top off the waiting tube of paint. I have somewhere to put the board with the stretched paper that had to be done yesterday so that it was ready to paint on today. And, I have somewhere I can wander into when I have no intention of working at all, where I can sit, and breathe, and let tiny molecules of the importance of art become part of the material of my body.

Folk go to CBT to learn to how to stop thoughts and behaviours that are slowly doing them in, week after month after year. More and more, whether we read neuroscience, the daily paper, or study Buddhism, we seem to be coming face to face with the fact that we make up our lives every minute, whether we think about it or not. Having this room helps me to reinvent the world I know.

no world but this

Other worldly light

is this world

those strange angles

I can find

Where the world

lights up

with oddness

or seems

suddenly

suffused with

love or horror

with mystery

or grace

All this world

no other

And I

standing in

the middle

of it all

Of course

it makes no

sense

to say that

there is

nothing

but my

experience

Look,

see

plants and

animals

people, politics

and injustice

And yet

it is also

true

that everything

known

comes to me

through

my senses

As I

filter

story and place

making

the whole

thing

up

entirely



.

writing process

I love this description of Siddhartha Mukherjee's attempts to get himself writing....


.

start close in

Start Close In

David Whyte

Start close in,
don't take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step you don't want to take.

Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own
way of starting
the conversation.

Start with your own
question,
give up on other
people's questions,
don't let them
smother something
simple.

To find
another's voice
follow
your own voice,
wait until
that voice
becomes a
private ear
listening
to another.

Start right now
take a small step
you can call your own
don't follow
someone else's
heroics, be humble
and focused,
start close in,
don't mistake
that other
for your own.

Start close in,
don't take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step you don't want to take

every day a new day

this morning there is a moon
a moon!
above my head
through the glass
as I drink my tea

even through the window pane
without my glasses
I can see its blue bruises
violet
against the yellow circle
glowing
around its form

the moon is not the sun
an unexpected form of light

losing words

I'm losing words for all this at the moment. And losing readers, too, it seems! I was astonished to see that in the week I posted the Paul Oertel interview excerpt I apparently had 90 people come in here. I find that hard to believe.... I wonder who you people are???

Anyway, I'm slowing down towards the holidays, and reassessing the way that this blog makes me do words when perhaps I'd be better off with something else. I probably won't post much now until well until January. Or even February.

I did rather want to post the end of an interview in the Saturday Guardian  with Ralph Feinnes, in which the interviewer accuses him of being selfish for not having children. It's an interesting few paragraphs about why being an actor is the opposite. At the end of the interview, as a plane roars overhead above the caravan they're sitting in, he apparently bangs the table and says, 'it's not selfish, it's generous......'.

Perhaps I'll put more of it in here some time when words are working better for me.

secret home

I was just watching some of Rebecca's other films. This one, Secret Home, is... well, have a look ....



  

rebecca's film

My friend Rebecca is a lecturer who also takes astonishing photographs and makes films. Not many people get to see what she does.

She flew to New York earlier this year to make a film about the September 11 memorial weekend.

Here it is: http://vimeo.com/30037736