Fractured or Mending.... The Dissolution of the Certainties

My father was a deeply committed Christian. He believed. He knew things. He was certain.
I am not. I do not believe. Or rather, I don't think I believe. In fact the process of thinking is a large part of the problem. It is about the concept of Faith. It is about the conviction that there is only one solution. It is about the arrogance inherent in the absolute confidence that one version is real, true, genuine (depending on evangelical muscularity) and the other is illusion, false, fake.
What at one time was called heresy before the ideals of freedom of speech or religion were discovered.

The problem is - I read books. In the process of reading I enter the narrative metaphorically. I interact imaginatively with the characters. I become involved. When I think about the book and any meanings which it may carry, even accidentally, I interpret that message. I make my own decision. In fact this is the best reason to read the book rather than watching the film. For the act of reading a book - substitute the problems of living in this modern world - participating by speech and thought and word. The modern human being is being encouraged to think for himself (up to a point). One is presented with a multiplicity of interpretations of every shade of opinion. Opinion makers varying from tabloid to television, from grapevine to graffiti, from fiction to fact, and between ideology and insinuation and information lies (possibly) the mystical new grail of the truth.

But perhaps therein lies the fundamental difficulty in decision-making. There may be more than one truth. There may be many truths. There may indeed be more than seven types of ambiguity. There may even be a single valid interpretation for each single individual. When societies were united, whether by Church or by State, by celebration or crisis, the consensual perspective seemed to be accepted (particularly from the historical viewpoint). When Henry VIII altered the goalposts he burned the conscientious objectors. When war is declared aliens are interned. The Roman legionaries on Anglesey probably exchanged few philosophical pleasantries with the Druids. History traditionally records very few dissident voices. The modern age is however steeped in dissidence. The chattering classes witter and wail and write. The media manipulate and the press pontificate. Outsiders abound even in the midst of organisations devoted to the Status Quo and they all have voices. And there ultimately is the individual, whistling to himself and playing pick 'n mix with the meaning(s) of life, the universe and everything.

He/She is now alone. Not the fearsome cold of an existential isolation but the crowded, conflicting, cacophony of a children's playground. The decisions the person has to make start with either detaching or participating from their allotted space. In other words whether to belong to a gang or not. And most importantly the question of how that gang and its members behave in its interactions with the surrounding world. I think I want to be in a gang of one. I want to be able to interpret the world through my own lens and to learn to live with this fractured image of uncertainity and relativity. This is the tolerant approach that democracy hints at, but is afraid of. This is a methodology that can make and mend the status of the individual, it will reduce the organisation of religion, education, politics, communication and employment to also-rans in competion with each other, reducing them simply to human interest stories that carry no heavier threat than choice, chance and catharsis can deliver. I would like the world to think for itself but to accept that no one perspective is absolute truth in any field of endeavour or sphere of influence. I would like the world to read the millions of narratives it constructs and to share them. I would like my late father to understand that he did, in fact, help to teach me this.

Creativitality

Lanyon Quoit (Cornwall)


Should I draw ? Should I paint ? Should I write ? Should I do what I do best ? How can I make time for these activities or any combination thereof ? What happens in the arena when I am disappointed in my performance ? Is it okay to surrender ? Who makes the rules up ? Why do I have to follow them ?

I suspect Artists might be a somewhat selfish breed.
I do what I want to. I do what I enjoy. I try not to be motivated by guilt, by the feeling that I should or must or need to do anything. This is a suggestion that hidden in the perfidy that is procrastination there might be a hidden seam of gold. In my case yesterday if the BBC 4 documentary "The Art of Cornwall" lured me away from my metaphorical easel - so be it.

All these creative activities I feel are intertwined. After all they do originate from that same dark cave - somewhere in my seething little cerebrum. The ways that they are linked is the interesting concept in a world rapidly becoming networked up to its armpits. I read a letter from Robert Genn and it leads me to a writer (shamefully) I've never heard of, and I search the writer out and the work reminds me of another writer. That is ; in Mr Genn's contemplation concerning the artistic banishment of the blues a quotation by the writer Annie Dillard : “You need a room with no view so memory can meet imagination in the dark.” strikes a resonant chord. I am reminded of Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own" in which the necessities for artistic creativity are mused upon. Reading that online leads me somehow to the other side of the equation. The sacrifices that an artist makes in the production of his work. Family dynamics and obsessional drive somehow point me to the portraiture of Lucian Freud and from there to the Paint as Flesh connection with Jenny Saville. The fizzing of these ideas keeps me awake until six am in the morning (luckily accompanied by a very fine England cricket display down under).

The point is that this movement between word and image, between the historic and the contemporary, between the deliberate and the random is itself a creative imperative. It is a journey that in itself is enjoyable and in its documentation can lead down assorted different and diverse directions. If that journey in turn creates something new and you enjoy that creation that is all the motivation and validation that is required.

How Exley Avenue Lost a Mural and....

What could have been.....

At the end of the cul de sac on which I live is a large and extremely boring grey concrete wall. It measures approximately 30 feet tall and 60 feet across. A while ago a few of us inhabitants on the avenue decided that it would be an ideal site for some kind of beautification. No firm ideas : just vague hopes. Interested parties were consulted and meetings were announced. Some people were enthusiastic and motivated and attended. Many were apathetic and did not. Any prospective art work would need, we realised 100 per cent approval and tolerance as the work transformed the wall. To cut a long story short it never got off the metaphorical ground. Hostility was muted and polite but nevertheless it was enough to spoil the party.

At one meeting several books of art graffitti were produced to show more extreme forms of wall-covering. "Graffitti" or even nowadays "Street Art" are not however terms to make the more conservative brethren amongst the avenue forget property values or automatically embrace a culture of artistic adventure. Whereas Ben Eine or Banksy or Roadsworth have achieved acceptance within areas of the art world outside the north of England critical acclaim would not necessarily be bestowed on them by the folks of Exley Avenue. They could, of course, really like concrete. Or really distrust Artists.

Of course I had a plan. I always have at least one plan. I wanted to create a Trompe L'Oeil effect. I wanted to make the cul de sac into a road. To fade the grey tarmac into moss, grasses, undergrowth and a path seen through to a country trackway. To change the Urban of the real into the Rural of the imagination. To have the trees in the distance fading into greyness, their boughs interlocking to encourage that sense that here, there, was the road not travelled.

If I had to demonstrate the beauty of this type of art I would recommend not the art versions of shock and awe, the patron saints of taggers but the narrative illusionism of John Pugh and I am not for a second suggesting I could create anything as fine as his masterpieces. The idea however still exists and now it is documented in cyberspace. The question becomes: How to persuade people to decide on Art in their environment rather than the merely utilitarian. I even made the point that if it was unsightly or somehow offensive a decent coat or two of battleship grey would assuredly bring back the beauty of the concrete wall. It is possible to live with the wall as it is but it is not strictly necessary that it always stays the same. A future artist is equally entitled to suggest his cunning plan and put that to the vote. Even if that obliterates my work. The point is that if Pope Julius II had decided to go with the flock wallpaper and said no to Michelangelo then the Sistine Chapel might also now be a road not travelled, an artwork that exists only in the mind of its potential creator.

Perhaps, in the middle of the night, with a stencil and an aerosol I could make a start....

Show your working out.....

They used to say, back in the days of Oxford & Cambridge Examining Board GCE Mathematics (1973) that the student should always show his working out. To demonstrate that he knows NOT just the answer but HOW to arrive at it. Strangely enough I suspect the same concept might and should apply to drawing and to painting, perhaps to all Art with a capital "A". I have always (and mistakenly) treated my sketchbooks as the repository for artistic greatness. In this I will keep all of my DaVinciesque studies. A masterpiece on every page. I start with perhaps 80 pages and, in turn, each drawing goes either "a little bit wrong" or "I'm not happy with that section" or "Just crap from the start". Tidy boy, neat boy, Perfectionist (?) boy. So I tear the page out. When the sketchbook is finally the size of a handout leaflet I discard it or hide it or conveniently forget about it.

Why am I so hard on myself ? Why do I never finish a drawing ? Now and only now finally, I realise in ART it is the working out that matters. The process of drawing. The rough sketched outline is fine. As the shape is described by the objects around it the lines firm up. The various lightly adminstered pencil strokes show where the hard line actually IS. Perhaps only for that split second before the light changes or your daughter knocks over the still life so carefully assembled on the table. But it was and is right. And then finally, you realise what does it matter ; because the NEXT drawing will be even better. As I draw, as I paint, the process becomes more familiar and comfortable and you realise you are AN ARTIST. Or perhaps somebody tells you and then, for no apparent reason, you suddenly believe them. To recapture that feeling, that worrying but exciting stress that you find in struggling determinedly to work something out, you, the artist, know that you will need to attempt working in a different manner, new, or a different medium or stand still. Repeat the same style. However I want to progress my work towards ......what..... and that is the final question. Why do artists do art ?

It is not like in the maths exam where the correct answer achieves the reward. For the artist it seems that it is the process that inspires us. It cannot be for riches or fame (although some artists do manage this). It can't be for the sociable comradeship unless you can share an easel. It is for yourself. A selfish reason : and of course, others may also like your work and that may validate the artist's existence. I paint primarily so that I can be somebody else. When I work with my sketchbook now, I am seeing the world in a far more detailed and interesting way than when I was younger. I am going to fill sketchbooks with my own perspectives on that world. I want to look. I want to be free to view the world sideways in my own way. The artist feels he has a vision and he is fighting to put it on paper, or canvas, or board. To sculpt that vision, to capture it in his viewfinder. I believe in making a mark and drawing in deep breaths.


Note : Due to (at least) two years of cheating in Maths I was put into the top set. Where being a genius I was supposed to take the exam early and pass and go on to Advanced Mathematics. I (of course) failed. Then failed the re-take. I passed it (scraped through Grade 6) the next year from the bottom set. I never showed my working-out because there was none.
Post Note : I now have a calculator,

How to index your life...

Once upon a time it was a running log. Then over a period of that same time it became a journal. And now it has gone online but only inasfar as it is then printed off. It remains a book. Solid, paper, tactile, humane. It contains quotations, postcards, ideas and random thoughts. It aims to be a resource and an ally, a confidante and a vent, a repository and a to-do list. The question is "How to index it ?"

At present I rely on my memory to avoid repeating myself. Words that I stumble across which make me stop and think are written down but how long is it before that same word again strikes me as fascinating (again) and I repeat the process ? In other words "What is the attention span of this journaller ?" Similarly in wanting to connect keywords and ideas together beyond the linearity of a narrative - of what comes next - I want to create a more flexible circling index. I want to show what references Joyce's Ulysses with Marilyn Monroe, to Norman Mailer, to Jerry Siegel ; and whether such a transition is found only in my own personal cerebellum and whether the journey is worth the price of a ticket. I want to find the entrance into my own head and navigate its tunnels, galleries and balconies. I want to examine it's architecture, it's archaeology and it's history and along the way to contemplate other writers, thinkers and artists who have made the same journey in their own fields and in their own idiosyncratic styles.

My journal aims to be a road map, and a commonplace book, an anthology and an art gallery, an abbreviated encyclopedia and a frustrated dictionary. It wants to be everything and nothing. It wants to answer questions and question answers. It wants more than an audience of one but it wants to to remain private. It wants to be famous and anonymous. I want it to say who I am and who I am not. I want it to say what I like and what I don't like. I want it to tell one truth but also to show the other millions of truths that exist out there. It aims to be "The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady" without being a diary, rural, female, or Edwardian. It is "The [ ][ ] of a(n) [ ][ ]". It aims to be open to the reader, provocative to the browser and to be everything for the writer. It aims to be the wor(l)d. Last. Mine.

Abstract Paintings Are Go

I am beginning to work on a new area for me. I have finished two abstract "paintings". I still haven't managed to use any colour but a style is appearing. It demonstrates perfectly the anal-retentive, obsessive-compulsive side of my creative mind. Ideas are beginning to flicker through my mind constantly : being changed, adapted and mutating. However, alongside this, so are critical musings on the work. Why does this occur ? What makes me question why I do something instead of just doing it ? Is this my inner critic justifying the artwork ? Is it my psyche feeling threatened and therefore defensively pre-empting the world-wide discussions of the pieces ? When I collect enough work will I have to build the gallery, design the catalogue, pour the wine or will I settle for simply being a library assistant with a black pen.

At school in my art classes the focus was always on the figurative approach with the hyper-realism of an almost photographic perspective towards creativity. This was, I now recognise, because essentially we were aimed at passing particular examinations. It was not Art intended as a career and definitely not as a life-enhancing aspect of everyday existence. Even the careers which I was directed towards, and advice was sketchy to say the least, took more notice of salary than satisfaction and left the arts and humanities students to either teach or be taught forever.

I have repeatedly tried to do portraits and landscapes never finding the results to be either what I expected, or of sufficient quality to even merit keeping. There was always the nagging thought that a camera could do the job far better. So, at what point did my attitude to Art and Creativity begin to mellow ? From where did my symbolic muse suddenly appear ? That quiet little voice that persuades me I am on the right lines is also the voice that reassures me that even if nobody else ever views the art I know it is developing. I visualise a strange hybrid art form - part book part painting - born out of Blake and the illuminated manuscript and infected by Rothko and the Letraset catalogue. It will try to link the literature I love and admire with the art that inspires me - It will play games - sporting with the obscurity and the complexity of a Joycean narrative with the Northern philosophies of Roy Clarke and the late lamented Alan Plater. Like Joseph Cornell's boxes it will include the whole world of one man's interests and hopefully be of interest to more than that same one man.

R. I. P. RBP

Robert B. Parker.
Born September 17th 1932 Springfield, Massachusetts
Died January 18th 2010

I have grown up with Spenser. I remember the power of the early works. I delight in the wit and humour and intellectual rigour of the later books. I relished everything about the books. Even as the critics levelled their charges I bought and read and kept the books. To me Parker's creation of Spenser and the characters around him carried an intense meaning that sums up how I interact with literature and life on all levels. I would sit with Spenser at his desk, with a glass of Irish whiskey looking out of the window. I remember Paul Giacomin, the boy who shrugged. I remember the shock as Susan left him. I appreciated the total self-awareness and intensity of emotion reflected in the words and the meanings behind the words.

When John D. MacDonald died and Travis McGee departed to that great Marina in the sky I felt cheated that there would be no more in the series. With Robert Parker I feel grief of the same ilk but also a sense that the characters cannot die. I don't mean for a resurrection of RBP the franchise or an attempt to turn a doodle on a deskpad into the unfinished work that is reminiscent of, but not quite, the genuine article. I mean that in Spenser, Hawk, Vinnie, Jesse, Sunny the images survive in the mind. They live on, and of course so too, does Robert Parker in that sense. I always wanted to read his PhD thesis and perhaps his publishers might consider that but above all I will miss the chance for Spenser and the rest to live their lives on. I would have liked to carry on living with them all instead of having their existences paused with that sense of anti-climax. I could use any number of quotations from the books that might seem apt for this sad occasion but I remember with particular fondness "Early Autumn" where Spenser is teaching Paul how to live, indeed how to survive by himself, in himself, yet at the same time demonstrating the type of relationship that underpins all meaningful human interaction. Parker helped me to understand these type of ideas within the same framework as other great writers from the very highest canons of world literature. For this, Robert, I am grateful. When you're milling around up there explaining to your friends (who made the journey sooner like Robert Urich) what you had envisaged for Spenser and Susan and Pearl (the Wonder Dog) I hope you will feel the love and affection in which you were (and still are) held. I pass on my commiserations to Joan and say thank you for her husband and his work. I raise my glass in salute.