Pooh sticks.

New picture up today (well, it's actually been up for a day or so, but I'm kinda ahead of myself on these blogs) - kind of a (sub)urban landscape with light and shadow. Yes there's movement, yup pretty naturalistic, hint of Turner, check. Altogether I'm pretty pleased with it, not least because it did help clear my head for the oil painting that's been stalking me; but also means the week has been productive, which is useful as I'm quite excited about tomorrow. 

I have a day off, and I'm going to get up early and use it to go to another city and walk and sketch. It will undoubtedly rain, but I will find people and places of interest, and examine them in my little book I carry, before returning to complete the oil. After which my wife will return, so I'll cook something and we'll talk before bed. 

Okay, so it's not earth shattering - no balls of flaming fire; no passing of international secrets; no last minute deals to save the world economy (ahem); just a day with no real direction, a sense of whimsy and freedom, and the potential for the unexpected.

To me there is a sense of the river on a spring day: the current pulls on its own sweet way, and I am swept along with the eddies and ripples on its surface. Like playing 'pooh-sticks' with myself as the stick. 

Days like this only work in relation to the structure and repression of ordinary life; in relation to the discipline of a work ethic, with which you are able to appreciate a sense of the potential of the day. Given freedom like this when you feel worthless, or self critical, the day elongates like an emaciated hand that guides you along it's fingers even as it clutches you in it's fist.

So this is why I'm so pleased to feel the week has been productive - it gives me permission to exploit 'my time' as I want, to roam and explore what the day will bring.  

Fares please. 

Carpet Bagging.

This weekend I found myself in a forrest of carpet. Great columns of discarded fabric, the ends of which stood upright, offering great value and potential death simultaneously. Each was studded with various patterns, flecked with piercings of colour and offered to caress in many ways - from soft downiness to a full on sports massage.

We were there to investigate a new carpet of course - though it may have provided an enjoyable setting for a game of laser quest. This is for our upstairs hallway and stairs, and choose it we eventually did - after contrasting colours, deciding on textures and considering the hardiness and cost of the material. Decisions like this always present to me as upheavals - events that take away from the established pattern of life, yet this time was not the same.

Normally I would approach these excursions in a spirit of resentment, as a waste of the potential of the weekend, an infringement on my time and quite possibly my civil liberties! But in painting and blogging more I have reorganised the way I use and see time - by giving more to what I feel I should be doing it means that I no longer worry I am reducing my opportunities to be creative. True, I still find the process of sorting and deciding the exact object for purchase frustrating - I am either too concerned about its 'rightness', or unable to see its value; yet this time the idea of making the house a better place to live was something that had value in itself.

What I mean by this is that for the first time in a long while I could connect myself to the activity I was doing. This was not another person, this was not happening elsewhere; no, it was a choice I had made, and one I felt completely at home with. It was because of this that I can feel the textures, the smells and the nuances of the experience: the fusty smell of the underlay, the courseness and the softness of the fabric, and the joy in seeing the salesman nearly lose the sale through not listening to my wife. 

By letting go I can be more in the moment around me, I can engage in the world... and probably get a better carpet too. 

Don't mention the Boom Town Rats.

That Monday feeling: snuffly, muted, as though you aren't really yourself. Not quick enough, not focused enough, just a flick behind the light switch. You can't find this, that won't work; information is lost, mislaid, discarded - and you have a sneaky feeling it's your fault somehow (damned if you know how!).

For me this is exemplified by yesterday's post - a mish-mash of two ideas loosely clinging together, and obviously from different days (I do like the food bit though). Okay, I know this is coming out on a Tuesday - a day late too, but Monday - y'know, happened; so with Monday in all our minds it seemed apt. (Also with my luck I wipe this by next Monday [he shrugs], what are you gonna do?) 

My point? Mondays are a metaphor for the moments of doubt we face in life. Those days when we're not at our best, when we have to 'get by', and find a way to still do what we love. Yesterday I was 'meh', but a painting really progressed, and by fucking about with an online application I learnt loads about an email system. I also realised that I have more to say about food (but I'll save that for another time). So even in the midst of a Monday there were gusts of Saturday, ripples of Friday and droplets of Sunday.

In short even the shitiest day can have its moments. Is this such a revelation? I think not, but it is something to keep hold of when sliding beneath the quick sand of a bad day. Will it be enough to make the day 'good' - probably not, but it might be good enough to make the next day bearable, and the day after... who knows? 

Okay, even I'm exhausted by all the rhetorical questions now. Sifting through a day is often unnecessary, but when you feel the weight of doubt upon you, then you need to find the nuggets that will give you the capital to pay for another day; for another day can be another chance. 

Food fetish.

Friday: misty, drizzling, the world surrounded in thick prepcipitate; the end of the week and full of fatigue you approach the last day of work with that strange mix of dread and joy. For today you will have to draw from deeper, strive further but you will be rewarded with the holy grail of Time, in which you can be yourself.

Naturally the world will seek to take this from you, with arrangements, chores and commitments that you have or will make. Yet the time that looms in your life gives an energy to the final hours of the working week. 

The taste of freedom creates a longing: for holidays, for 'me time', for the comfort of the bed, and the call of the wild. It is a harbinger of food and drink, of festivity and rest, and not a little time absorbed in the escapism of TV or the written word.  In my case time off means time to roam - both physically and imaginatively. I like to walk, to 're-see' the space around me, to look at new places and spaces, see shapes and colours, contrasts and compliments that surprise me. I also like to walk in my mind - especially when it comes to food.

To me this is the time of year of deep bass flavours: chillis infused with coffee and cinnamon; Toad in the Hole with thyme, onion gravy and peas; stews woven through with fennel, bay and wine; oozy potatoes in a quick dauphinoise; cauliflower and broccoli in a rich cheese sauce speckled with bacon and breadcrumbs; baked apples and stewed plums with chewy rasins and the crunch of brown sugar; and soon, to the delight of my wife, mulled spices of cloves, nutmeg, citrus and honey - whether in wine or cider.

These are foods that pound thuding tribal rhythms; they bring comfort and security, yet add in flavours that provoke dreams and leaps of imagination; flavours that move from the crisp simplicity of the summer months, to the more complex and murky autumn - a time of the living and the dead, tinged with the whiff of gun powder, and the solemnity of the year's end (or in my mind Pumpkin, Parkin and (roast) Potatoes). A time of ambiguity, where we reflect on the gamit of our natures and draw upon narratives and myths that have created and ended the world, and seek to understand them further.

  It is in our food that we revel in our layers of being, so only natural that with some bacon, thyme, and treacle we also give layers to our (baked) beans.

The elephant on the canvas.

Sketching again today. Partly through opportunity, and partly because the latest painting is winding me up. It is sat on the easel with its arms folded and a look on its incomplete face that says 'Come on then!'

So I'm not speaking to it.

It's got to the stage where I'm looking and looking at it, and I can't decide whether I like it or not. So I've decided to move away from it for a bit. Some sketching today, a water-colour tommorrow, and then returning to the oil over the weekend. Hopefully the distance will let me see it clearly, and so know what to do to finish it! 

In the mean time the clarity that comes with focusing your attention on one thing, and trying to capture its essence and appearance, I hope will clear my thoughts and let me see the painting as I once envisioned it. The act of looking at the world, breaking it into proportion, geometry and sweep, of noting how each part relates to those around it, forces you outside your own concerns. It is both calming and refreshing, providing release from the looking of interpretation; which in contrast is full of doubt, uncertainty and the knowledge that you have to make a decision (often the sooner the better - although generally by the time you're at this point it's too late), making it a breeding ground for frustration.

The frustration comes from knowing that the painting is so close - having that gut feeling that it could be really powerful, and somehow complete, but that it's not there yet. It plays on my mind, becoming a mental twitch that flickers every time I glance at the the painting on the easel; it follows me like a sardonic Mona Lisa - but instead of suggesting the enigma of a half smile, this canvas gives a raspberry direct from the school yard: 'Neah-neyh, ne, neah-neyh!'

This, of course, makes the process not only challenging, but A Challenge! I circle around the room, like a boxer sizing up my opponent, establishing weak links - colour jars, line distortions, errors of perspective; preparing to engage in combat - to the death if need be (the painting's, not mine)! Yet no clear opportunity arises. Instead many options present themselves - though of course they are contrary, and drag the painting along different paths; and frankly give me a headache. 

Ultimately I will make the decisions, but the weight of it makes me feel that I need more time to fix the problems than I actually will. Finding the soloutions will induce a sense of satisfaction, smugness even, but until then I will diligently run and hide from making the important decision through a process of denial and procrastination. 

And, anyway, the painting started it! 

Our Song.

Today I heard a busker playing Stand By Me in the style of Ed Sheeran. He sang openly and touchingly, and the melody followed me down the street. The words caught me, and evoked a sense of longing in me, a sense of the joy and pain in that song; the need to have someone who will quell your fear, for whom you will give more of yourself willingly. I felt the song's simplicity in my throat as I caught a sob, and in my chest as I felt the absence of the one whom I love. Standing in a nook in the shops I blinked back to composure.

Music with the sincerity of feeling has always got to me. Hearing the longing of Stand By Me I immediately began to think of the song my wife and I think of as 'our song', which is I'll Stand By You  (the Pretenders original - not the other one). It's a song that follows similiar lines, it explores the depths that you can go to in a relationship, and the dark spaces that the union can help you survive. It is a a song about support, trust and ultimately acknowledging personal weakness and trading that for collective strength. It is a song that cries out for the power of love; the stuttering, gasping, snot-ridden pain that fills you in both the moments of euphoria and desperation; and it is a song of defiance and hope.

We as creatures, as individuals stumble through life, with perfection an ideal that taunts us like a spectre. With each step we realise our fragility, and come to know that our future lies both with us and as a crutch. We become truly ourselves when we give more of ourselves - trite perhaps, but a truth I come more and more to hold dear. With a chord and a note, that song, born of the industrial struggle of Detroit and the Motown era, spoke of the hope that we find in each other even in our darkest hours; our togetherness and our capacity together to stand in the face of despair. 

Manflu - ha, hump, coff!

So it's that time of year - you know the one. Your immune system begins to close down: first the tenderness in the throat, a vague throb on the palate that calcifies and dehydrates food; the the subtle pressure on the nose - enough to let you know the mucus is on the move; finally the skull begins to shrink as though the victim of an ancient death rite.

The adevent of sniffles and coughs, the development of varying forms of colds and viruses, all these add a drabness to a time of year that I love in the moments of clarity I am given to enjoy it. Too often, however, I am forced to witness these delights through the unspoken veil of self pity; the fabric of which is itchy and opaque, both provoking and frustrating in equal measure. As a result I find myself tetchy and easily given to annoyance at the smallest detail. My bloody mindedness is still in full effect, which makes me refuse to give in to the stereotype of 'manflu' however; reasoning that everyone suffers at this time of year and there's nothing anyone can do, my conclusion is that it's best to shut up and get on.

Unfortunately this attempt at stoicism (and I must emphasise that there is a massive part of me that does just want to curl up with a blanket, honey, lemon, ginger and a bucket of single malt) tends to reduce my empathy for the plight of others - from those around me who are also suffering (Aren't we all, so please just shut up!), to the world's wider problems (Yes there's a civil war, and growing poverty - but I've got a cold dammit!). My tolerance spirals down the plughole spurred by the tide of inefficiency and carrying the detritus of stupidity.

Aware of these changes to my personality I find myself even more dismayed by my inability to prevent them, my concentration worn away by my attempts not to let illness defeat me. At some point in the vortex of this vicious circle I find myself in in the clarity of its eye, and think 'Sod it!', deciding that the only solution is to give in to the internal conflict that has led to the massacre of my antibodies in a valiant defence of my immune system, before I emulate a similiar atrocity on those around me. 

Curling up, with a duvet wrapped around me it occurs that my physical problem is not the problem - nope, that's all in my head. 

A Lyrical Morn.

Early morning mist, that coats the season's greens and browns with silver; that thickens the sleepy sunlight with a veneer of translucence. This is the morning that awaits me as I leave for work, a visual pick me up, if you will, a crispness that moves from the slight chill in the air to the definition of line on trees and buildings as if caused by a charcoal pencil that cuts across the milky light.

On mornings like this I look along the metro tracks and see the to and fro of time and purpose; the appearance of the modern world from a natural calm, and the impulse to get on and ride to the end of the line. Today is a day for lyricism (as maybe my elongated sentences have shown), a day to wonder on the playfulness of light and air, and note the  wistfulness of the trees for days of youth and vigour. Indeed today I witnessed the second youth of the natural world - it's last exhilarating fling before the onset of hibernation around the corner. 

Along the streets leaves flutter, discarded from trees, yet set on their own adventures along pathways only looked upon, and into crannies mentioned only in rumours. In this light their browns are dappled with orchards and shadows of a metallic blue; they dance in tufts of wind, and huddle excitedly to discuss the new sights they witness on their journey. The sun's thin yellow waltzes over the river, picking out tide and drift, glinting with a thousand winks. The river knows it's path, but delights in its secrets, mischievous and serene. 

The haze gives the horizon an ethereal feel, making ship yards and factories burst with the glow of faerie realms and the promise of new quests. Across the sky streaks of cloud overlap with the pathways of aircraft speculating a tick-tac-toe of the skies. Around me streets and allies begin to wake, as the sunlight scurries then creeps along the terraces, playing hide and seek with the shadows.

The air is full of the exhale, of the pause of divestment, ready for the slow drawing in of the day's events and the nourishment they may bring.  

Bits of Beard in the sink.

I hate cleaning. I don't hate cleanliness, but the tidying and the cleaning - nah, that's a pain. I think I resent it most because I always leave it to the last minute, so not only is the activity frustrating, but it is compounded by a lingering sense of guilt that I should've already done this, and especially that I should do this as I go along and then wouldn't end up in this situation.

Inevitably this state of mind is exploded by some catastrophe at this point - such as the agony of a stubbed toe, the calamity of dropped washing, the last straw of a foot in the cat bowl! All this is generally enough to ignite me from a normally laissez-faire apporach to housework into a full-on firework of hygiene perfection. 

I find myself cleaning places I have come to think of as contained ecosystems, breaking the sancity of grime in order to establish my colonial bleach as viceroy over the territory. Not only that but I become a parody of a Camp Commandant, stamping about the house alternately muttering and bellowing about why things haven't been moved, or why I always have to do certain jobs (Knowing full well that there are many, many jobs that I never do, that's not the point however - I always take the bin out, which is much worse... ahem.)?

The act of tidying and clean always stimulates my primate brain, and the act becomes territorial - at once about outside impressions, but at a deeper level about marking out the boundaies of my dwelling. It is odd to think that hoovering and polishing is in many ways the human equivalent of flinging faeces around to establish scent. A side effect of this is a strange resentment that grows if other people don't realise the clearly regimented domestic system that is established in the house (and changed each time we go through this process - after all you don't expect me to keep to it, do you?). Leading to the bizarre situation of my affront at the misplacement of a plate in the cupboard; a plate that would normally consider its home to be a subterranean cavern at the bottom of the sink. 

Such diplomatic incidents are normally rectified by a swift interaction to replace the offending item - often in the hope that the demonstration of the error will correct future mistakes. 

Having established that the interlopers are not a threat, however, this behaviour is revealed all too clearly as ridiculous. At which point my sparks falls to the ground and my inner sloth re-emerges and allows me to relax about the situation... a little too much for my wife's liking. Thus I lie, knowing the inevitable chaos that will occur at the next nearing of a pack or pride, but happy in my state of squalor. 

Oil and Water.

Today saw a return to oil paints after a prolonged stint working in water-colours.

Now, although I enjoy waters, they make me think a lot more - each brush stroke has a greater impact on the overall piece, and it really helps if you can see the highlights from the beginning. There is a sense of immediacy, of capturing the moment, that water-colours can give you that is demanding and relentless; mis-step and you lose the moment forever. 

With oils I feel I can relax, I can let my brush drift, follow paths of whimsy and generally enjoy the freedom to roam. Now this may also be something to do with the difference in the space available - by-and-large the oil paintings are twice the size of the water-colours. The result is that the brush seems to imitate Julie Andrews at the beginning of The Sound of Music  and dances and whirls in the expanse of a vast landscape.

Oils can vary in texture so much, from loose streams and rivulets when mixed with turps, to oozy, slippery mud slides when applied neat or with a knife. The sensation of the application requires a dialogue with the medium, guiding it on the canvas, yet listening as it suggests line and shade. I tend to mix colours on the canvas too, which also supplies a delight in the emergence of a palate for the painting, which is not always what I envisaged at the start.

This is not to say that there is a simple opposition betwen control and freedom in the two mediums. No, it doesn't work that way. Water-colours are, for example, much more spontaneous - able to capture reportage much more powerfully, and can generate a wonderful sense of the wind in the landscape. Whilst oils are more considered, but better suited to the emotional drama of the scene - look at Carravagio, look at Bacon and Van Gough; this medium gives the depth and intensity of a moment. 

If water-colours are of water - translucent and made to traipse delicately in the air, then oils, with all their viscosity and sheen are of the earth and bring forth the fire from its depths - or words to that effect.

Anyway after a couple of weeks thinking in terms of long washes and tiny etchings it was very nice to return to thick impasto applications and fluid sketching at arms length. The painting may still be shite, but the process is a joy.