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}