Sailor's Hand

You said to me ten years ago, "It's all just on the horizon for you isn't it?"

I said last night, "Everything's still just on the horizon."

You replied with a hearty laugh as if to say, "Yes, I know darling, but keep going."

I consider the work of your leathery hands, and the weather lines on them that say it's not always been plain sailing – you've had your eyes fixed on the horizon for seventy years now, but you do love it in your boat.

The secret really is to be happy with today, isn't it? Older, wiser, you are good.


{Today's soundtrack: Seth again. I'm captivated.}

Good Enough

That piece of text, over there on the right, about understanding things–there are some times I don't need photographs or words to understand, but for some reason am still compelled to make a picture to try and explain, so here I am with a couple of really terrible gig shots and what may well turn out to be very clumsy words! I'm putting them in because they just have to be good enough.

This weekend I went to a festival and heard some amazing live music. I watched Seth Lakeman's wild and uncontrollable energy concentrated and pushed through the robust little strings of a fiddle (pictured) while he thumped the floor and sang out to heaven, and as he made a noise bigger than massive itself I stood utterly captivated because–in visual and audio form–he was describing how it feels inside when I am shooting or drawing and lost to almost everything else.

Later, I listened in shock as my friend Harry and his orchestra played Holst's Mars and Jupiter. I didn't know he was performing that piece of music – Jupiter was my mother's favourite piece. Even though I grew up with it, this is the only time I have ever heard it live so naturally the memories came blustering in like fierce gusts of wind. And that wind blew – it blew all the sheet music off the stands, blew the unruly sound waves down from a teenage rock gig somewhere else on site, blew my hair in the way while eating festival falafels and the microphones over the violin section picked up its heavy blustering while Maddy (Harry's daughter, pictured, with Harry in the background) punctuated the score with "Daddy, I love you!"

I sat stunned in muddy grass while Maddy's mum, my friend Karen passed me a tissue, and I fumbled for my camera desperate to capture something of all this in pictures, knowing any attempt to shoot it would be hopelessly inadequate.

These pictures are rubbish, but today they are good enough.





{Today's Soundtrack: Seth Lakeman - Poor Man's Heaven}

Just say 'yes'

"The tears of the world are a constant quantity."

On Sunday, in a brief moment of sorrow I looked out at a deluge of rain–the angels' tears they were, in empathy. The sorrow wasn't long lasting, passed as quickly as the rain, but it was there so I gave it the moment it was asking for.

Some say you can't be truly transformed unless you suffer some degree of brokenness. This isn't to say throw open the doors to pain, but at least find out what it has to say and deal with it.

The enemy of brokenness is Pride, which Judgement and Criticism are constantly prodding in the back. They are there to convince you vulnerability is wrong. Be without them, they won't let you progress anywhere in your life.

{Today's soundtrack: Lamb - Heaven, from What Sound}

Rickie's Field : II

{Today's soundtrack: Susumu Yokota}

Rickie's Field : I

{Today's soundtrack: Susumu Yokota}

Corkscrew

[ in response to this morning's hair-raising shadow ]

I wasn't sure whether or not this should actually appear on the news page, but settled for posting here instead as it is a source of inspiration.

This is my hair, and it seems to be forming shape, and this, my friends, is worth noting.

The humid weather has lately, I suspect, caused a boom in profits for those manufacturing frizz-reducing hair products. It is likely the ripples will be felt as far as implementation of proposed Controlled Parking Zone restrictions, as hair across the nation refuses to be tamed and spreads rebeliously wherever there is space.

Enough is enough.

Today I visited the stylist to have highly cumbersome locks addressed. Not only have I learnt from another creative professional on her expertise and persistence in wrestling a Goliath-sized opponent, but the sculptural inspiration I am left with will no doubt feature in a drawing soon.

All these corkscrew curls make me think of wine bottles... I'm off home. Have a very lovely weekend. x

I say...

So there I was gently waking up with circles of confusion, when the shadow of my own head-larger-than-body pointed out there was no point delaying a haircut any longer:


Then I noticed–with fresh eyes–something else massive: a single orchid bloom on my windowsill, which is growing bigger than my palm. It is quite extraordinary, mesmerising and beautiful:


You can only imagine my surprise when I stepped out of the front door to find this:


I believe the young people would say, "Get in".


{Today's soundtrack: Noah and the Whale}

What's Your Beef?

'A-agony–oh, a-a-a-go-ny,' I sing to myself while waiting for my tiny, cherry tomatoes to turn red! A joyful little song, not to let actual, painful agony get the better, but we're just willing them along.

For the record, today is August 14th, and last year I had my first tomato by August 10th. By this day last year things were looking really juicy. Currently, I'm watching one dark orange cherry tom struggling to make it to this same level of rougeness.

So it seems we're not actually so far off harvest, even though it's been so very chilly these recent days (anyone else found themselves defiant about putting the heating on?) and a little warmth would help ripen things up and get this party started. (And thanks, yes, before you ask I do get out, often.)

Because it's me, and because I'm in a season of patient waiting at the moment, I can't help reading into this and let it shepherd me into greater patience! But I am a bit jealous of my friend Esther's amazing beef tomatoes–pictured. Beef. Isn't that a great word?


{Today's soundtrack: Various film clips as the boys are working up some pitch ideas into a storyboard - Space Odyssey, Armageddon, Monsters Inc etc. That, and my phone ringing: my sister's home from the States!}

Silver Stream

What does this summer bring?

A dark trail into the woods – coming into an empty clearing, a fantastic architectural experience, as when you walk in to a huge cathedral (Grace in San Francisco, for example) and it practically knocks you backwards and pulls the air into your lungs...

Slipping along the rushy river in small boats: a soft, shining, metallic gleam to everything and then the electric flash of a kingfisher charges across your bows – this is a secret worth knowing. Big, chunky, dark branches and their satisfying reflections in the stream, and a discovery: when everyone has turned their backs, this is where all the bees have gone!

It's all very well craving big blue skies and smouldering days lazing around in lush green meadows on soft blankets, but this summer things seem to have turned quite silvery and shining instead. When things emerge differently to how you wanted, consider that want and need are two different things, and mustn't be confused. This doesn't mean you are without your treasures.


{Today's soundtrack: Hem - Half Acre}

Leafy Equality

Remember the Circles of Confusion last May? This view has the same effect, always to arrest those thoughts for a moment and mention that it's worth letting go of your hang-ups and control mechanisms because–no matter now much you try to avoid it–we all overlap, are all connected, and all drink from the same cup. Look at them all, the fragile little leaves. Yep, they're like us again.

Leafy equality, necessarily so. Even with the strongest will in the world, even if you pretend you're in it alone, you're just not.


{Yesterday's soundtrack: the wind}

Wall Hanging

Patience, patience, patience.

If you have a look at my news page you'll find out what the *amazing* thing was that happened over a year ago... a public art commission which came as incredible redemption in the direct wake of having all my kit stolen, which happened slightly more than just over a year ago. It has been an incredible journey through this and back again, though not quite yet out the other side. The original timetable set installation last September, but as things rolled out it has been pushed back, and back, and back again, then once more. Something this big and exciting is very difficult to be patient for, but I think I'm learning...

Waiting is one thing. Being patient is another, and a friend recently pointed out that patience–as opposed to merely waiting–involves wisely applying hope to the thickest disappointment to assert that you know that rubbish is not the final word (my disappointment here being related to the robbery, and also a craving for completion on this redemption story).

The more you practice patience–they say–the more you'll be able to apply a defiant, tenacious insistence for a great outcome – the best. It seems though, sometimes you need an extra big, black-belt lesson in patience via some highly demanding set of circumstances, but you must keep going because without it, nothing will ever change.

I remember saying on the day after the shoot for this project, I felt like I had set out to sea in a massive ship and had sailed so far I couldn't see land in any direction, so just had to keep on going. I don't know what else to say, except that while I patiently wait I could look at this particular photograph for ages, so it has come to help somewhat.


{Today's soundtrack: Lighthouse Family - Gonna Get Lifted, at Bristol's Balloon Fiesta... I know it's bad, but it's tradition.}

Depends on how you look at it

{Today's soundtrack: Lamb - Fear of Fours}

Rhythm

People sometimes ask me, "Oh, are you religious?"

My reply is usually, quietly to myself "Mmmm, not really." Out loud I just say yes.

Lots of people are religious about lots of really regular, quite dull things - facebook, soap operas, football, bowel movements, etc. People are religious about some really important things too, like switching on the national grid in the morning.

That people ask me if I'm religious as if it's an accusation I find ridiculous, want to hold a mirror up and suggest ten different ways you could ask me the question if only I thought you may stick around long enough to hear the answer.

I can't really describe how I understand God because I don't understand. I am not religious in any way, shape or form over a thing that has no shape or form and about which I am always struggling to discern the way. Do I believe God's there? Yes. Do I pursue God? Yes. Do I do anything that could be described as ritual to help me keep up pursuit when words run out, or the spirit is weak? Sometimes. What things? Things that have rhythm and repetition, and probably require me to stick at it longer than five minutes if any kind of breakthrough is to be achieved. Is this religious? No, I don't think so, it's more devotional, and this is why I picked up the guitar again after fifteen years, threw it in the car on Tuesday morning and took it to the menders.

I need to make some devoted rhythm.


{Today's soundtrack: Feist}