About As Far Away

I'm thinking about opposites again.

Right now, in this part of the northern hemisphere, it has been about as cold, and about as wet, for about as long as we will need to endure it. Give or take a week or so as we push clocks forward and bag those lighter evenings again, it will start to change, equinoxally (made up word, no really) speaking. I am still wearing layers - gloves, scarf, hat, boots; and just when my spindly fingers feel like icicles, the tip of my nose feels like a little cold pebble and I shake against a bitter wind, I register that there will be a day in four months time that I can't remember what it feels like to be this cold.

I photograph to remember feelings that will soon be alien. It provides good evidence of the journey, and helps paint life as it is with a balanced colour palette, rather than be sucked in by one, over-bearing Rothkovian hue. When we print in the darkroom, to make a good print we look for true black, true white, and a good range of tones in between. Thorough life well-lived has a rich range of tones just like that.

And I photograph to evidence objectively the life around me, wondering how the person in the photograph reaches true perspective without seeing what I see. Caught up in their picture, how could they be anywhere other than where they are?

This is one of the best gifts in friendship, that we strengthen our stakes for each other, pinning out the big picture objectively and remembering for better or for worse: this too will pass.


{Today's Soundtrack: Ray LaMontagne - Be Here Now}

Cross My Heart, Kiss My Elbow

Here they all are, from Spitalfields, Bristol, Hope Chapel, locations remembered, but all from the last two weeks.

Alright, so I concede that a heart in the froth of my coffee is not a scuffed sequin, and neither did I nearly step on it. Yet it arriving with me is still an accidental, timely gesture on a theme. The man who made it for me drew my attention to it as his gift to me, and while he may well say this to all the girls, amidst the entire sequin narrative it stood out like a punctuation mark at the end of a very impassioned flourish.

State of (he)art, drink it down.

{Today's Soundtrack: Ray LaMontagne & Pariah Dogs}

Lovely, Just Lovely

Okay, picture this.

I'm sitting looking up, ceiling 50ft above my head. This ceiling is pock-marked with halogen lights, many of which are blown out and blackened amongst 1950s glass lamps. However, there are hot spots of light which distract me from the brokenness. Lightness and little slices of colour, and looking along there's a scaff lattice bearing big lights, colours and industry. A flash of metal on stage bouncing the beam of a spot onto that ceiling; yes, he's the one, the man playing steel slide on his knee, it's coming from him. Hats, beards, yes, there's a look going on and they echo approval of each other this way.

From the roof hang wires, the rig making patterns in various places. A big, black curtain, or is it red, or blue? Oh, that'll be the lights again. This velvet curtain drops back behind Ray's band. He's a slender, be-hatted man in moleskin trousers and a crisp, white shirt and acoustic guitar. He is immediately wonderful as he takes his position to the side of the stage and, for once, we are able to see what all the musicians do - including drummer - while he seeks no preferential treatment. In fact, it is because he, in his competence, steps aside to honour each musician that the evening is so refreshing. Here, the protagonist stands back not needing to look for glory, requiring that those others take their places too. He rasps and sweats and sings about being, and needing, shelter, and talks about songwriters who inspired him to write at all. It was those who wrote with beautiful simplicity. He honours them too, and delights in every person in his band. Because he does, we do too.

When the Secret Sisters come along in their tea dresses and begin singing with Ray I have to coach myself to be grown up and not sob. He - a man renowned for few words - tries to explain that he wrote these songs and they didn't sound like much but when the Sisters sang along, "it was lovely, just lovely."

Right about now I feel as though I've been in a mixture of True Grit meets Prairie Home Companion, am wondering when I can move to Tennessee and can't imagine how I got to be 20ft away from Ray LaMontagne in his paradox model of passion and humility.

You throw your all into it, and let go all at once.

Unusually, there is a standing ovation for this man who takes no glory to his own heart.

I love being close up to humble people who have obviously fought to be where they are against the odds, don't take it for granted and treasure all the others around them who shine so you can too.

For all those who have a beautiful, humble simplicity, this one's for you.

"Lovely, just lovely."


{Today's Soundtrack: Secret Sisters doing Patsy Klein covers}

Two More

I did't show these before because I thought you'd roll your eyes. Sunday's.


{ST: a stuck record}

A Lamp Unto My Feet

What bright treasure is this I find on the way home from a pub quiz? And is it any mistake that the alias my team mates & I collectively rally under is 'Come Shine With Me'? I promise you, I am not making this up. It is the third sequin-heart-on-floor this week, and it's only Tuesday. Sixth in a fortnight. Don't believe me? I'll put the other ones up tomorrow.


{Today's Soundtrack: music round in pub quiz}

A Spacious Place

Right now, as I type, this little lump of dough is rising in a warm place. In a rare break with Sunday morning convention, I too am tucked into a soft, warm place, with my slippers on and enjoying a hush. My ribcage rises gently with air again. It has been a while.

Many of us have landed at the half term break absolutely shattered, feeling like a lump of dough kneaded and pummelled and stretched to oblivion - who's with me here?! Transmitting, creating, making, doing, studying, babysitting, encouraging, lecturing, organising, cycling and keeping on top of finances. Enough.

Just for today, how about finding a spacious place; space to breathe in and out, be still, feed, and grow?


{Today's Soundtrack: ... hush now.}

The Aspiring

I'm going to make myself vulnerable here and share with the group. Today I am sending a manuscript off to a literary agent, so begin a significant journey which may or may not take me where I want to go! Furthermore, I have started telling you a story before I know the ending – this is lunacy!

With the bare minimum research into the book scene, the picture that builds quickly is one of agents and publishers sitting amongst scale models of New York City which are made of unread manuscripts. Faced with the daunting task of sifting through overwhelming numbers of submissions, I wonder if the skills required to select words for publishing might be the same as looking at folio after folio of photographs, and in a glance apply an intuitive, fairly quick sense whether something has legs or not. Will a few printed words on an A4 sheet have enough draw in them to make people want to turn pages? 

All this in mind, advice for The Aspiring is wide ranging. It spans from calm encouragement that if you are any good you will get picked up within 12 query letters, through to striving madness involving a takeover of Royal Mail for the amount of post you can expect to be sending. I prefer calm encouragement to cynical panic, and am prepared to take the hint if, after a few submissions, nothing has happened. I'm interested to discover what happens when a regular person gets ideas in their head that won't leave them alone, sits on an allotment writing it all down, and then braves the scary move of putting it out there to see what happens.

Something about that seed talk yesterday. Okay then, off to the Post Office with my manilla envelope I go, to plant a little dream. 

{Today's Soundtrack: Rue Royale - Lunacy}

Seed Love

 

A few years ago, I became slightly obsessed with growing things from seed. I have not lost the obsession, but having moved house I have lost the wide, sunny windowsills on which to line up little cardboard pots and germinate. 

Growing delicate stuff outside is hard when you have a good old soggy west country winter to contend with, so although I have an outside space I am watching quite dead-looking containers at the moment, wondering if they will feel like waking up any time soon. And without those windowsills, I have nothing indoors to watch either. 

This is a problem! There's nothing like watching a fresh green shoot poking up at last out of black compost, just when you thought nothing was ever, ever going to happen, when you had almost forgotten that you planted anything at all. Those seeds are so tiny, like little weeny poppy seeds – how on earth could so much life come out of those? But it does.

In the absence of actual seeds I've dug up these shots from that busy seed year, and have explored giving them a new guise. The flavour of these harks towards other photographic projects I'm continuing to work on, so maybe that's where the seeds are growing this year instead.

Out of blackened, ashen earth, burned and razed to the ground, beauty comes. I'm sure someone wrote lyrically about that a while ago. Now who was that?

{Today's Soundtrack: Fanfarlo}

The Arimathean's Heart

I love you, a little bit more today than yesterday.




*
In the interests of honouring 'hearts on floor' phenomena you can read about this heart in the Nov '09 archive - three posts but read them in order (ie. backwards). And don't get cross about my terrible French. And it's a bit heavy, so maybe save it for another day. But it is a good story.


{Today's Soundtrack: stet}

I Made This For You

You are my world – blessed, meek.

Fragile hands stitch a heart
For you.

Because you are unlike the rest,
I made this one for you.

*


{Today's Soundtrack: James Blake - A Case Of You (Joni Mitchell) }

Love In

You know something? Actually, a few things?

1. Love is. Just the very fact you have picked up that pencil today means there is love in your veins.

2. You are on track. Keep going. Here and now, everything you carry has tremendous value. Believe it, and be thankful.

3. You can be strong, and brave. If there is something you have been dreading doing, just stand up, take a deep breath and do it. (I've been putting off a certain phonecall for a whole month, believing the answer would be 'no'. When I made myself dial the numbers this morning, the answer turned out to be 'yes'.)

4. There are plans out there to prosper you and not to harm you. Being available to God-knows-what so that God-knows-what has a chance to happen is what you were made for, and yes, it will be beyond your wildest imagining – that's the point! Don't be scared of letting go so long as you have all your tools and resources ready to go. (And for the record, I do believe God actually does know 'what'.)

5. You are beautiful. No, really, and I know you might not believe me but objectively, it is a fact. If you don't get that then I pray you'll get a glimpse how and why over the coming days.

6. Your being deep down beautiful means that unjust things of this life will not have the final word. You have to believe that too, even if you don't get it in your head.

Come on, treasures, you can do it. You are beautiful, you have love in your veins and there are some amazing things waiting to happen if you can hang in. Love is in every day and I for one am not going to sit around doing nothing on that.

That's all I have to say for today.


{Today's Soundtrack: The Bees - Every Step's A Yes}

Sweet Disposition

Tell me the truth about love.

Surprised by myself that this year, unlike others, the approach of St. Valentine's Day comes with a gloom about it. Usually it passes fairly unnoticed, as it is after all a commercial invention and — as my newly married friend puts it — a false idea about romance as if to make an excuse for not being loving every other day of the year. He says, "Everyday should be Valentine's Day," and follows up with the fingers down throat sign language.

On one hand we all know St. Valentine's Day is a manufactured twist about love in order to push material ideals, and that actually it creates a gulf between men and women. Women come to hold increasingly high standards for this supposed evidence of love, where men feel pressured into making a performance out of this evidence. It is a tricky escalation in opposing directions. We would like to stop this.

On the other hand, for those of us who may have not been in a relationship for quite a while, this day comes along as a little barb, and it snags. Ouch. My gloom this year is about that, simply. If your being solo has been the case for some time, if you live on your own, that day can be a milestone that reminds you quite how long you have been doing things without a team mate. If you're feeling a bit frazzled, I'm with you.

And then I remember my friend with his nauseating comment and wonder why is it that I appear to be waiting until 14th February to find evidence of love? It is in every day. If someone makes me a cup of tea, this is the love in every day. If someone gives a few kind words, this is love. Really, it is that humble.

"Lighten up," I tell myself, "and stop giving love such a bad name." (No, Bon Jovi will not be today's soundtrack.)

'Oh tell me the truth about love.' 


Thanks W.H.Auden. A few years younger than me when he wrote his questioning words in a confusion about how on earth to define love, but never once did he refer to a heart-shaped chocolate box. Prickling hedge or soft pyjamas, every day is Valentine's day.

A sweet disposition will see it, a hard heart will not. 

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

Pulling Focus

"I do not run aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air."

1 Corinthians 9:26

•

Whether or not you know where you see yourself in five years time (a question that seems to have cropped up a few times this week), it is still possible to be focused in your life. Do you find that the people who ask that question are very tidy people? Yes, me too, and good for them. It must be lovely to be so well arranged and have plans that are immune to sidewinds. (Interesting, there is a vicious wind out there today.)  Does your lack of answer for the 'five year plan' question cause you to feel inadequate or unusual for not hitting immovable specifics? Don't feel that.

Can we attempt a reframe? Perhaps more important is to be able to define your values. It's about naming the things that you pursue whatever the circumstance.

Maybe it would be more helpful to ask this:

What is it you are fighting for?

If you can figure that one out, you have all the battle plan you need to start pulling focus.


{Today's Soundtrack: Laura Marling - I Speak Because I Can}

Creating Conversation

There is a restaurant in Pittsburgh, which is trying out something radical in order to create conversation, according to a report on BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning. This restaurant serves just one dish from a specific country for one month, then changes to another dish from a different country for another month. Each dish is wrapped in paper printed with facts and quotes about that country, for example, Afghanistan, or Venezuela. The people serving the food know about these facts, so when a customer reads and comments on them, they are able to engage in a meaningful conversation about that country, its culture and its politics. The idea is to spark chat and discover truth about the difference, rather than make ill-informed assumption about our neighbours in the world.

Do we not do that already over food? Apparently not, according to the critics of this project who claim that our cultural dietary requirements actually drive us apart. This is sad, isn't it? That they have no desire to get beyond the outskirts and pursue common ground. The woman cited as a critic in the report described cooking for her Muslim friends, her Jewish friends, claiming it impossible to cook for all of them together because they make it difficult for her by having their parameters. (And she calls these people 'friends'?) What she actually says is that our free will makes her notion of community complicated. She is advocating that we all do things in the same way she does, according to her choices, in order that we can break bread (leavened or otherwise) together.

Yes, community is complicated, but we are richer for that. Wouldn't the world be dull if everyone agreed with you? What kind of monster would I be if everyone did life the way I said they should? Would not my narrow experience stifle you all and bore you to tears in seconds? Difference makes the world go round, and yes sometimes it's tough to find the meeting point but that doesn't mean we don't even try in the first place.

Good work Pittsburgh!

Go on little angels, go out today and create conversation.


*
Tunes today are a compilation of the Soundtrack discoveries I've shared over the last couple of months. You lucky people.

{Today's Soundtrack: Today's Soundtrack 2:11}