A late review

I wouldn’t call this a new years resolution because I only thought it up yesterday, and honestly, I am only definitely committing to it for an experimental week but it’s as close as I ever come.

 

I never learned self-discipline, so I am going to treat myself like a naughty child. I’m planning all my work activities into strict time slots and I’m forcing myself to keep to them. Will I burn off my lazy coating and rise from the ashes with a sudden work ethic? Who knows. Will I launch off into a massive sulk and flounce around my head like a surly teenager? Oh yes.…..but I’ve still done more work by Tuesday than I sometimes do in a week.

 

So for the next hour I am posting my blog. I can ramble, I can follow tangents, but it has to take an hour. Longer and it won’t go up, Shorter and I might run riot in my little bit of free time and start something that wasn’t on the list, probably cooking toast which I will then forget till it bursts into flames. Like earlier. And yesterday actually, so the form is very exact. Strictly timed, like a physical haiku

 

And that sends my mind off into small poetry, and I think about a river of stones.  I wanted to join this project. I love the idea of recording just one small, polished, observed moment every day. I’m not sure I can commit to that, but I can waste a few minutes of my blog time trying to get my own moment into Haiku form, deciding I don’t like it and writing it again the same as before

 

Waiting at the bus stop

My coffee hand cosy my i-phone hand numb

I have no email.

 

 

Selective Colouring

I am cold, and I am bored of being cold.

The colours are all wrong. Bath is more mint green than golden and the rest of Somerset has squeezed its tubes of paint away into the fog. Autumn leaves skitter over the frozen surface of the canal, and I am constantly late for work because the haw frost needs to be photographed and the icy water poked, over and over again with a long stick.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m feeling faded, so I want to look back at a bright moment. It’s late summer on Clapham Common. The sun is shining through the thin walls of the colourspace as we rush from pod to pod. We sit in the icy blue till we shiver, and then run as fast as we can into the red, where we stay until we think we will explode with rage.  All around us so called grown-ups are screaming and bouncing off the walls, ticking off the don’ts they were given at the door like a to-do list.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just when we think we are done, as if by magic a new area appears. Here the colours merge and reflect and we don’t know which mood we are in, then, just as suddenly we are transported into black and white. We run for the yellow spot in the centre and sit in that, feeling warm and optimistic. We are settling in forever, but now it’s all over. Its closing time so we escape back into the maze and claim we are lost. The worker follows us round like a disillusioned primary school teacher, and eventually we spill back out into the real world.

 

It is still sunny.

Come as you are, or wear a corset

It’s always nerve racking to contact complete strangers just because you’re interested in them and want to photograph them. It’s difficult to explain what you want from them. It’s hard enough to know for yourself, especially if your subject is famous for not liking clothes, and you’re not really one to strip back past your Victorian bathing suit. Why am I here? How should I play this? What do I want from them? The naked gardeners. Naked in their garden. Again. Is it a cliché? Running circles in my head, like a pea in a colander, I can’t decide my own mind. I hide behind my camera
I don’t know what I want so I just hope to capture them that day, with me, in that garden, in what ever they are wearing. It goes ok.
In the end though, the photo I liked was different from the others.

The naked gardeners. Formal, serious, clothed and indoors

In the same week, a fashion shoot, and a bossy web designer who wants everything cropped square. I could almost hear the neural fibres snapping under the pressure. To my credit, I stayed calmer than the field trip of schoolboys passing by on the towpath, veering wildly from embarrassment to not believing their luck and back again. Nobody drowned though, and my brain has gone up a hat size, so on balance, a success.

Everyday lives lived cleverly

I need to let go of my plans to paint the boat roof today. It was difficult at first, but I’m great at letting go. It’s following through that seems like a bit of a dark art. Luckily I have a project to focus on, and that will carry me through in times of no work or sunny skies.

This is why I allow myself to be a photographer even though I am not winning any business awards. I take photos. Sometimes I get paid. Sometimes it’s even for taking the photos. I take them anyway.

It helps to have some other reason for a project though, So I am socialising with it, building work for exhibition, stretching myself technically, and in my wildest dreams I am weighting the case for the continued existence of a gentle, diverse but often misunderstood community.

Hundreds of people live on this stretch of canal. All live a low impact life compared to the average house dweller. In a way, it’s forced on them by toilets that don’t empty themselves, power that needs to be generated on purpose and water that comes from a tank that has to be refilled,

Crime on the towpath is virtually non-existent. It is the safest place to walk, because you can’t go 10 metres without finding someone who would help you out. The towpath is clean – while people are moored there is evidence of them but they don’t move on leaving a load of trash behind. They can’t disappear in a puff of smoke, so they have to be accountable. They get together from time to time to clean up other people’s mess too

It isn’t to everyone’s taste of course. The community is itinerant. The members don’t own land. Sometimes they get together for barbeques or plays or music sessions and they do it in a public place. Many of them look unusual. They dress in colourful clothes to go to the supermarket. (Most hold down jobs and keep their children in school as well but that isn’t so obvious.) Some people would prefer them to disappear. Maybe they had a bad experience with a scruffy person once.

I was attacked by a seagull at the age of 6. It tried to steal my chips and it scared the life out of me. Since then a few others have shat on my car, but millions of other seagulls have left me alone. I still feel a little rush of fear when they circle me though. Should I be allowed to start a cull?

Feed Yourself

One of my problems with regular blog writing is that I’ve always seen myself as someone who doesn’t have ideas. I want to be one of those people with a flower garden for a mind, who just reaches in and plucks you a bloom, but instead of fertile earth my head is always filled with dust. Call me purple fingered but I’ve only just found out you’re supposed to feed plants…. So having spent a few weeks burning the image of my own belly button onto my retina, I decide to go into the outside world again and eat.

In Brighton during May, there is an open house trail. All kinds of people put up exhibitions in their homes. It helps if you can at least pretend to be interested in their artwork so you feel less guilty about your nosiness. You can tell so much about someone by poking around in their bookcase whilst pretending to look at a painting. Sometimes you get to hang out on their sofas. Some of them live in buildings you have before only dreamed of going into. Some act like guards at a museum, some like friends are coming round for tea.

At embassy court it was difficult to pretend I was there for the holiday snaps. I ended up buying a postcard out of guilt because I had drunk in so much of their sea view I felt like there wouldn’t be enough to go around. I felt like a flighty lover just using them, entranced by their bay window and their curvy door but turning over at the end and falling asleep.

Some people squeeze the artwork in amongst their own possessions. At one house I found myself gazing at a melamine tray in the kitchen, absorbing it, trying to take in the deeper meaning. Some clear the whole place out and paint the walls white – I wondered how they lived for the rest of the week, where they kept their possessions. My favourite houses sat us down and fed us tea and let us pretend that we were well connected, our phone books bulging with names

For a while it’s as if the whole town belongs to you and you are welcome everywhere. You get annoyed with the closed houses. You want to knock on strangers’ doors and ask them about the plants in their garden, and what its like to live in a tic tac box. – Little white houses jumbled into every spare inch, facing in every direction as if they are way too cool to look out to sea.

painting by numbers

Clichés are supposed to be things that are so true they get overdone …but not only is that a cliché in itself, there are so many exceptions. Cameras do lie, all the time. Money makes you happy, and it turns out you actually can judge a book by its cover. Maybe someone could tell this to the clipboard lady in the back of my head.

She’s standing there with a child development chart and she’s measuring me against it.

9 months – utters first word. (tick) Can speak in sentences by 2 years (tick) 7 – starts pushing boundaries (tick) 30 – realises the world doesn’t revolve purely around her (could do better. See me) 40 – has own home, good job, partner, kids, (oh, cross, cross cross! Bring me a new red biro) You’d think the clipboard lady would resign but she just stamps around.

I’m starting to bore myself so I resolve to notice the outside world more. It isn’t all about me.

A perfect moment on the motorway. Blackthorn clouds line both sides and I feel like I am flying a small plane. The runway stretches ahead of me.  In the distance, the belching chimneys of the terminal – Slough

A man outside a coffee shop laughs as he loses his helium balloons to the sky

A duck swims past, it’s wake the letter V

An old man compliments me on my roof garden and thanks me for being there. He’s same man who, 6 weeks ago, told me my plants had seen better days. He doesn’t recognise me.

Leaves starting to appear, softening the stark V’s of the branches.

A formation of birds fly by in the shape of a V.

A robin’s footprints in the dust. V V V V V V V

She’s right. I really could do better.

And focus. and focus. and focus.

I’ve been reading Leo Babauta recently. I admire his style, but I lack focus. I need to call the zen gardeners in to rake perfect white sand over the writhing mass of monkey limbs.

Sometimes I try to practice but it’s like being a child on a merry go round. The surroundings whirl and mix like paint and every so often I catch the frozen image of my mother’s waiting face. I try to lock onto her with my eyes but just as suddenly she is gone.

I sit in the coffee shop and try to focus on the heat of the mug, the way it burns into my icy fingers. Calm. And I do like that lady’s coat. What am I gonna wear to that wedding? Can’t afford to buy a new frock.  I must earn more money! Why don’t I fulfil my potential? I do too many things. I spread myself too thin. I need to specialise. I need to focus. Oh….

The cup burns, but inside my skin is still freezing cold. I try to concentrate on that feeling, and I watch the rain. Cold and wet. It falls on that cute puppy.  I’d quite like to get a dog, but it wouldn’t be fair on the dog. I’m out too often. I do too many things. Why do I do so much? Why do I never finish? I get too distracted. I need to focus…

And the cup burns into my fingers. I watch the rain. I try to concentrate on the way it drips, the way it splashes, you know, like those photos of milk droplets. Some day, I’d like to do one of those photos. I wonder if I’d need any special equipment. Probably just lots of light and patience. How would I secure the flashgun? I wish I hadn’t lost its’ little stand. Why do I always lose things? I don’t pay attention.

By now the cup is no longer burning. The coffee is cooler than I like. I drink it anyway.

rummaging for similarities

There are so many millions of separate things in this world, we could never keep track of them individually.  So our heads become like sorting offices. The workers do overtime shuffling through endless information and throw it, almost arbitrarily into pigeonholes.

For a start, there is us, and the people like us, and then there is “them” the other people. At any point these “others” might barrel off explosively, surprise us by jumping sideways off the path. We want to separate ourselves from them.

So we mark ourselves out, draw lines around ourselves using arbitrary physical objects and lifestyles. We display our personalities in the hope that our tribe will gather round and protect us

For the sake of simplicity we also conveniently forget that we are all pretending to be one person when in fact, in our heads, a million different voices are shouting at us. (more thoughts on this here.……. and also here.  My most disturbing aspect is a perfectionist for whom I can’t do anything right. The most annoying thing about her is she is absolutely correct about me)

Inside even the most scary or outrageous character is an ordinary person, and there is a spark of the fantastic in the most ordinary life. That’s why its so compelling when different layers show themselves., It’s a ballerina in hobnail boots, a tattooed lady in a demure lacy dress. Its why I thought this was the best thing I’d seen in ages. (Its picture 7 in this gallery… I can’t find a way to link straight to it)

It’s also my excuse for being so nosy. I want to check it’s not just me.

Playing God

Trying to learn something new is uncomfortable. It makes your head feel tight and it highlights the things you don’t know. Remember the first part of your life where you waited and dreamed of the time you would suddenly be an adult, with all that knowledge and certainty? Anyone reached that stage yet?

It’s possible to simulate it by having strong opinions and voicing them confidently, which works particularly well if you are in a position of responsibility, an expert. I tried this route with flash photography. I used to teach my students the limitations of it to stop them firing it off in the middle of a dark field hoping it would illuminate like sunlight from all sides but I didn’t ever stop to explore the creative uses of it. I didn’t have to. I am a natural light photographer, and an expert at reacting to the way things are.

But I read the hot shoe diaries recently and my brain expanded uncomfortably.

Its great when you come across a scene that is lit just right and you have your camera there and you take the shot and it is perfect, but how about the buzz of putting the light exactly where you want it. Playing god with the sun. Your critical mind is doing the job it was designed for.

But it’s a balance, trying to put the inner critic to meaningful work. Once I’ve switched it on I risk it getting crazed with power, yodelling and bleating whenever I try anything new.

Switch it off and I’m smearing words all over the wallpaper with my bare hands. I will get told off, as usual.

Into the void

Bobo

I’ve always seen myself as someone who doesn’t have ideas. I just stumble around. I’m occasionally lucky but I don’t fit my imagined profile of the “creative type” (discussed here by Pie Bird )

Its probably a hangover from studying painting when the star student was someone with lovely clean finger nails who sat around emailing conceptual installation plans to outside contractors, but I think it’s a common enough belief -  that true creators have fully formed ideas popping into their heads whilst the rest of us have to make do with just carrying on a conversation or doing something because its funny or silly or matches the wallpaper.

Increasingly though, I wonder if that’s a myth, and whether in fact, it’s  the seemingly random that best expresses our wild creative forces.

I used to like to start drawing before I had the idea and just let it come in its own time. It wasn’t a popular approach though – “like a rorsach inkblot (they accuse)…you just scrawl something and then decide what it looks like later….” (20 year old Vik, shamefaced, searches her brain for ideas but there’s a constant chipmunk karaoke going on in there)

A few years ago, at a festival, I met a man who made beautiful sculptures of horses out of old wire refrigerator shelves. All he could tell me about his process was – I just think “horse” and then I bend it however it wants

The same thing worked for me last year when I made Bobo the owl. Amazingly you can weld cutlery together with the same attitude as you would work with a piece of clay, but you really have to relax….,

In photography it relates to the moment where you lose yourself completely in the way something looks

Its terrifying to press the shutter or start to write or fire up the welder before you know what you’re going to do. It’s the Yves Klein style leap into the void that contacts a part of your brain that can’t speak to you directly. It doesn’t have to be a visual art form though, some people live their lives like that.

I wish I could say I’d been distracted by lofty thoughts like these last night when I mistakenly filled my car with petrol but that would be a lie. I was singing along with the chipmunks.