Composition : ii

Reflections on this ocean of thought: twisted vines and curling shadows, the tangle stops me going under. Surface patterns have a buoyancy of their own.

{Today's Soundtrack: PJ Harvey - We Float}

Composition

Something got me thinking, that between the surface of things and the sound of things and the way they are both noted, maybe there's a correlation. I've been thinking this for ages. During supporting studies for the Angels project (click on 'galleries'), I lost myself in these thoughts without realising that's what they were. Life superceded, and conclusion decided to hold off for a while.

The great thing about living in a big little place is that just doing the day to day, you get to meet some really interesting people. So it comes about that I am sitting in a coffee house with old friend Stanton Delaplane and new friend Richard Barnard, chatting graphic scores, and more specifically, Cornelius Cardew and his score, Treatise.

It's perhaps the single most inspiring thing I've seen in ages. At this point, my head starts to explode. I am so inspired I can barely sit still, and need to start making pictures pdq. As for the boys, they are already talking gig dates.

On the basis that you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, I've started noting some ideas using basic in-camera compositions which work on their own here. Storyboarding them, they start telling me things boldly, in the way that a good narrative structure may feed off itself. They also speak in panorama, reminiscent of Koudelka's 'Chaos'. When I start layering these up, I have to apply my most professional skills to not fall off my chair in giddiness, but you'll have to wait for those ideas!

There is an ocean of thought here. I feel as though I'm 5 years old, skimming stones.

{Today's Soundtrack: The Temper Trap - Conditions/Sweet Disposition}

Keep Moving

Getting a big, bad blue door feeling again today, and although it seems far too hot for anything in life to be acting like winter, there seems to be some discrepancy between dreams and reality at the moment - dreams one side of the door (the other), and reality this side. On a good day, narrowing this gap is our joy. On a tired day, not so.

This morning I woke too early from a dream where I was pulling a series of crux moves on a sea-cliff climb. This is wild - I haven't climbed in months but it is one of those dreams that feels hyper-real - physical, emotional, spiritual. The climb is getting steeper, then overhanging, and I am having to move really slowly and carefully so the rock doesn't spit me off, every fibre of my being poised and balanced. All I can do is focus intently on these critical moves, and because of that forget my camera is casually slung over a shoulder. At one point I hear a crash and think I have dropped it. It isn't the camera, thank God.

Keep moving, I coach myself.

Not hard to interpret this one. Yet another hardcore climb was all I was given to do with life for a while. It is all I have to comment on. I was worried about losing my camera. I didn't lose it. I have my story, I have my tools for telling that story, and I have woken up.

Big, bad, blue door feelings seem to happen at the start of most new ventures, just after the first cleanly optimistic stages as reality of what's actually involved kicks in. For artists, writers, musicians, this is familiar ground.

Must remember there's light the other side of the door.

Keep moving, I coach myself.

{Today's Soundtrack: Rue Royale}

Love Come Rescue

This thing of beauty appeared on a beach a couple of New Years ago, and I've been gazing at it ever since. Tide swills in, and out again, leaving tiny feathery fibres meshed perfectly together and clinging firmly to grains of sand. Why is it so astounding? Maybe it's because when I think about the ocean, and think about this tiny, delicate object, it is ridiculous to assume something like a feather would hold its ground in such a picture of serenity against ferocious, turbulent, winter surf. But it held, and so might we, and be more beautiful for it.

I think this is the art of being still, contemplatively speaking.

{Today's Soundtrack: Athlete - Black Swan}