all just a distraction...

raindrops keep falling on my head...

i miss the cottage on days like this, miss the everchanging views of wet greenness and earthy soil holding growing things and the movement of flying things... nature up so much closer and i guess 'natural', rather than rows of brick upon brick that don't need the drink and in drenchedness just inspire depressive claustrophobia...or perhaps it's just me, and not the weather, that's cold and heavy...

and just like the guy whose feet are too big for his bed...

still if i head out today, my feet shall at least be dry in my new 14 hole NPS stomper boots. whether i am channelling my inner butch or skinhead remains to be seen. regardless, flares and converse do not make for sog-free atire.

nothing seems to fit...

feel like i got out of the wrong side of bed this morning... irriatable, irked and impatient..."fecked off with everything and nothing" might be the way to describe it. my bed is by the wall, and with no option to reposition, i can only hope it rights itself soon... or i do...

those raindrops keep falling...

(later)
sitting now over a mochaccino or three, head in 'fonz with ::sun kil moon:: and ::tunng:: running from my laptop into my ears and on through my veins and restoring a sense of something like contentment... my iPod died but regardless, i've listened to very little of late... i've been feeling increasingly disconnected from music, maybe because these days i don't have the daily walk to and from work, and the absence of tunage kind of crept up on me...all i know is, i'm not happy about it... i used to listen to music from morning 'til night and these days my life feels drier for lack of a soundscape... life is a less sensory experience... it seemed that living with less music (at least through the 'fonz) might open me up to listening to people more, or seeing wonder in everyday experience of the cafe and street, but i am instead only made more aware of how much banal shite people are willing to spout (rather like this i guess)... perhaps for me attentiveness to the bustle of the cafe and street is better when it's an intentional attentive experience rather than the norm...there is an introvertedness to my personality that the privacy of the personal stereo system allows for...a room of my own i can carry with me...if there is a lesson it is perhaps, if it ain't broke don't fix it, regardless of what anyone says... me and my soundtrack work well together, i write more and, perhaps more importantly, relax more inside this iWomb...

they keep falling...

so, here's an excerpt from that waits interview in ::the word:: i keep revisiting, a source of inspiration,

mick brown: "there's a wondrful entry in jack kerouac's letters where... he's in a diner in Wyoming having breakfast and a cowboy walks in - the first kerouac's seen - and he describes it as if the very essence of life itself was gusting in the door. you seem to be very alive to those kind of moments, those epiphanies, in your songs."

Waits: "well, i think once you've experienced some of those moments you try to influence them. you're always waiting for them to happen, the way cats wait for things to move around the house, you sit and wait quietly, you know. you never know when they're going to happen, and you want to be ready. i think that's what people look for in songs. i write down song titles usually, and usually something that you're going thorugh emotionally will make a particular title leap out at you. this is what my wife says - there's something that you're already working on inside that this song will be the manifestation of. now you have a container. the first thing that anybody ever created was a container. someone made a bowl to hold the water. and then they made a song about the bowl that held the water. you know, people opnly travel really with their seeds and with their songs. in bosnia, they interviewed a lot of the refugees - they'd left with nothing and they asked them what they had, and they had seeds, in their pockets, from their gardens. and their songs. that was it. once you're nourished in that most fundamental way, everything else will follow."

...a tin can is a container...

and from julia cameron, who's vein of gold has been a constant insightful companion of late while i've been developing concepts for my submissions to the ikon art exhibition in the waterfront (feb 2007) and for a collaborative installation project jayne and i are discussing for later next year...

"here is another pernicious aspect of our mythology: you are not a "serious artist" unless you are perceived, recognised, acknowledged as a serious artist. this takes the power away from the artist and puts it in the eye of the beholder... the artist is reduced to a poseur instead of having the dignity of a self determined life. in other words, we are acting the role of an artist rather than inhabiting the identity of artist as it suits us."

i had copied this quote onto the front of my sketch&ideas book a few days ago and then twice yesterday i was asked by strangers whether i was an artist. while i hesitated and stumbled a little in my response, i could feel myself internally leaning into some kind of affirmative place... i'm gonna play with an easy-to-remember clarifiying and affirming response, but the more i think about this stuff and play with it, i more and more recognise that 'artist' or indeed 'writer' is used when what we mean is "professional artist/writer"... which when it comes down to it is not really very helpful... i don't want to create for money - by which i mean i don't want to create because the end point is earning money. i want to create as an end in itself, the process is the reward, the desire to creatively express is hugely defining of who i am, that radar as chris calls it listening and reading the world i find myself in, living through it and authentically voicing what i find and feel in it... i want to create for the love of it, because it feels like living, like right now as i babble away what i'm thinking and feeling i am fulfilled in the moment, i feel contentment in my body and peace of mind...that my life is so much more happier for creating things in word and image... we can call that what we like, i don't need a label, i'm just gonna get on with living and creating as i go and just making sure i build a lifestyle that leaves time and space for creativity of all kinds...'cause if nothing else it's good for my mental health...
i've been surprised by how unaffected i feel by hearing many positive responses to ::supended like scales::...or perhaps i mean how lightly i've been able to hold that... i don't think it's my discomfort at receiving praise causing avoidance...certainly it has given me confidence to do more work for a public setting, but almost paradoxically the encouragement makes me more enthusiastic to speak with my own voice rather than tailor it to what others want to hear...to keep creating for me... which has something to do with authenticity... i think...

being creatively productive has been getting a lot easier since i
1. stopped dreaming of being a 'creator' and just got on with creating,
2. not giving a shit whether it pays, and
3. started recognising myself as being inherently creative whether anyone cares or not... i guess i'm learning how not to ask permission...

so, in order to add to the ways in which i can express myself and also because learning is something we should never give up on, i've signed up for a course in photo-intaglio and got my name on a waiting list for a longer course in a wider range of printmaking techniques, and i am considering my living options so that they can include some kind of personal space devoted to creative playfulness, be that a studio or in a house...

i was really enlivened by the new realists exhibition at the tate liverpool when i stopped there on the divine comedy tour. i felt at home, uninhibited by the work. rather than dreaming of my having pieces alongside in some 'celebrated artist' kind of way, i just thought, i wouldn't feel embarrassed putting a scribble up on the wall beside these folks... they are people, saying something, and the only difference between them and anyone else is they have been recognised by people who run galleries and sell art as being worthy of display or purchase. perhaps i felt uninhibited because for the most part this is a style of art that is as much about message as it is about the ability to use a brush in a certain way. but all over the world folks are creating and no one ever notices them. it doesn't make them any less artistic or creative. if price or public recognition is the dividing line, then i really don't care... what matters is if you are living from the heart...

i'm floating away on a little wispy cloud of ulrich schnauss... that's enough incoherent rambling for now. gonna read me some more dillard... ::for the timebeing:: is awesome and i forgotten my copy contains scribbles in the margins from david dark...

outside it's still raining... and we shall know what we wish were present by the absense we feel...

LB,x