Ivy is here

she is a writer and she has a blog.

I adore this quote from her blog

The purpose of our lives is to be happy.
—Dalai Lama


yes

yes


YES

Deadlines

are sometimes a good thing.

I'm starting another temp job tomorrow so I've got a list of things to do TODAY while I've got the time. Julia Cameron is wise when she counsels against the belief that you need unlimited bolts of time to be creative because of course one doesn't cut into it.

Crafty goodness

After my picasa strop I'd better post some links.

Angry Chicken makes me want to take up patchwork and quilting again. As I have bags of wool lurking around my sofa not a good idea.

The Quilts of Gee's Bend - inspiration from the source of quilt making.

Perhaps because there is an autumn tang in the air my thoughts turn towards cozy quilts.

Wee Wonderfuls is full of wonder crafty wonder

Naturally Nice has a great blog entry about making fabby envelopes from magazines.

Words to Eat By makes me feel hungry.

Beware Piccassa upgrades. I clicked on the upgrade and now Picassa sticks a massive logo beside each picture. Sorry picassa you are going to have to go.

temp heaven and hell

Blog silence due to a two day temp job answering phones. My instincts twitched as I went in through the plush modern reception. My instincts were right - sick company syndrome! I spent my time inbetween phonecalls jotting down figures on post it notes for various job creation schemes pour moi which would not entail temping.

However I have had heavenly temp jobs with lovely co-workers. So its a toss up.

Temp jobs don't just stimulate thoughts of escape. I've been quite creative with mine. Free photocopying... knitting a blanket at lunchtimes instead of reading 'OK'. Meeting friends for lunch. Nipping to the post office to post off video tapes. Writing notes for articles and book outlines! Do do lists for creative work out of work hours. The trick is to remember that you are 'not just a temp' have a life and soul outside of the job.

In the end I discovered a fellow temp was an English teacher/photographer so inbetween calls we strategised on how to get an exhibition for her work. Even the most dire situation can bring up gems.

But he's famous!

I've been running (up or down? I do not know) to London recently. During one trip we stopped at a restaurant and the children exclaimed that our waiter looked exactly like the lead singer of Belle & Sebastian. But that is impossible they added.

Why? I asked.

Because he is famous!

Lots of famous people have regular jobs.

But that is impossible!

I stared at them in amazement. They have met scores of people who are well-known for their creative work, but still need to keep their day jobs. I reeled through examples, and eventually they understood.

But if my kids don't get it, what about the rest of the world? This is a simple concept: fame and fortune are uneasy bedfellows. The amount of money a person earns from a book, album, or art very seldom has anything to do with the importance of the work.

from Bee Lavender

people marching to the assembly point on the Meadows. Note lack of traffic on South Bridge!

g8 sign

check out

Jennifer Louden's website

protesting baby

Faith, creativity, being in the moment and stirring the universal energies

This has just come out of having a coffee with my friend R in Starbucks yesterday.

~~~~
At the end of August at the end of my contract for my summer job I decided to change the way I normally do things - to take a leap in the dark. I decided I needed to get a six month contract to support my lifestyle. To this end I started to search for jobs and contact agencies - inbetween I caught up on my social life (neglected for two months)and tried to get a creative project moving. So for 4 weeks I've been parking myself in my producers office 3 or 4 days a week - we with the help of Google puzzle over websites in Norwegian - phone people and in all have been working hard at every contact we've unearthed to get what we need for this project. Result bugger all. Of course things really are in the early stages and I'm still hopeful that something will happen - we have to keep on keeping on. Meanwhile I'm keeping body and soul together doing some freelance work for a friend. My underemployment being a boon for her trying to finish an important component on a project she has to make some headway on. But the uncertainty is getting to me, applying for jobs, not getting them, keeping going with the creative stuff with no guarantees. Then worrying that I will get jobs but then not have time for the creative stuff. You can imagine the onslaught of niggling worry.

My friend R is in a similar position. Former burned out silk painter she took a leap in the dark a year ago after doing The Artists Way with me and committed to a year long course to train to become a freelance photographer. She's just done her last session and all the students were talking about what stage their fledgling businesses were at. The course had a strong marketing element which is great. Many former students have gone onto make good livings but fitting all the components together and believing that there will be the paying customers out there and in the meanwhile keeping body and soul together is a huge matter of faith that 'everything will work out'.

I too need to just keep on putting one foot in front of the other and to worry less about the what ifs then whats and why whats which float around in my head.

In the meanwhile all my badgering of poor producer. Yes many of my meetings with S involve prodding him. Yesterday he gloomily said he'd applied for a course in high level training / networking which he heard about in the course of our international phoning/emailing but hadn't heard back and he was sure that he hadn't been accepted. So I prodded and badgered and made him look at the websites of the other courses available (I'm a strong believer that getting yourself out there is valuable and brings returns not always obvious ones). I left him in peace to meet R. Late last night I got an email from him saying he had been accepted on the first course!

I do believe that we have to go out and stir the universal energies. This has been in fact what we have been doing this month. The problem is that you have no idea of what the results will be when you do it. I know I've done things thinking 'this will be good for me' and they haven't where as others have had amazing results. By the way stirring the universal energies doesn't seem to be dependent on the 'upbeat positive attitude' thing. Doing it anyway - that application, email, phone call is the important thing. Doing the action and the mind will follow.

Reconstructed Mind

I've found her blog again!

National Novel Writing Month

is coming in November - yes the annual write a novel in a month challenge is back!

Dawn Revisited

Imagine you wake up
with a second chance: The blue jay
hawks his pretty wares
and the oak still stands, spreading
glorious shade. If you don't look back,

the future never happens.
How good to rise in sunlight,
int he prodigal smell of biscuits-
eggas and susage on the grill.
The whole sky is yours

to write on, blown open
to a blank page. Come on,
shake a leg! You'll never know
who's down there, frying those eggs,
if you don't get up and see.

Rita Dove from On the Bus with Rosa Parks

Its National Poetry Day - if you send an SAE to The Scottish Poetry Library (NPD), Crichton Court, High Street, Edinburgh you will get a pack of poetry postards back.

Bee Lavender great name great blog.

... the future for the art world is on the land. Don your cap and get your welly boots on, because it's the farmer now who holds the key to not just the countryside idyll, but contemporary art. The future for art galleries is now to be found in the huge expanse of grain stores and byres that litter the countryside of Scotland.

More at Artwork Scotland - I'm hoping to visit Skateraw this weekend. I've had a soft spot for Mr Demarco as an ex-flatmate of mine related to me that his rather stroppy cat called Anna got fed up with her humans becoming part time lodgers at her home so she put all her belongings into a kerchief and hopped over the wall to live with Mr Demarco and seems very happy and loved.

Like artistic and literary movements, social movements are driven by imagination. I am not speaking here only of the songs and poems and paintings that have always been part of movements for political and social change, but of the movements themselves, their political ideas and forms of protest. Every important social movement reconfigures the world in the imagination. What was obscure comes forward, lies are revealed, memory shaken, new delineations drawn over the old maps: it is from this new way of seeing the present that hope for the future emerges.

Susan Griffin

Everything is connected

For you, the brilliantly obvious theme of today's solar eclipse is self-respect, which is just the miracle you need. This is the one issue on which your whole life, and all its successes and failures, have hung in the balance. It's not easy changing our ideas about ourselves. They are written deeply in our character, often below where we can see them working. Often, we don't know they're there. Yet you really are being relieved of false information that simply has not served you. And this will make room for many possibilities that serve you very well - possibilities you have never considered before.

From Jonathan Cainer this morning.

Wow ! so relevant in the past year or so I have been shedding so many ideas about myself and turning so much of my past recieved wisdom on its head. One of the big things is I've updended my ideas about money and how much I need, how much I deserve, and how much I can get. I've only just beginning to peel away the limiting views I have about money in my own personal case. What has changed me hasn't been books but actually listening and taking on board what my best friends are saying. That is that I am valuable and have value to offer. So even though I am broke at the moment I don't feel broke or as broke as I would have felt previously because I have faith that I will find the right thing to earn me a decent amount of money.

George Szirtes

the poet and translator has a blog - link from my friend R

Another writers blog Dogpoet.

lack of posts

can be blamed on 'Hello' I've been trying to finish posting my G8 photos and seem to manage to get one or two up per week.

In the meanwhile I've been busy slogging through the unattractive parts of being creative. The parts which people who sigh and say 'I wish I was doing something creative' don't want to be reminded of. In this case pouring over websites in Norwegian trying to make an educatated guess at the websites owners business and contacting them and then waiting and waiting and waiting for a response. My grumpy cynical and defeated side says 'And you know what we'll do all this WORK and then the reason why we are doing it will be taken away.'

Note to self devise a creative project which is not dependent on anyone else having to say 'yes' to. No permissions needed.

Inbetween I fill my days by looking for work, doing some freelance work for a friend, and sorting out the dreaded tax.

I've been consuming much culture recently and have decided that I need the input of the very best. Its all very well to see something and think 'I could do better than that' but its even better to see something like a magnificent meal and know its something you want to work towards.

To this end I saw 6 films by Eisenstein, Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibition at the Modern Art Gallery and reading My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk.

I'm filling myself by walking beside the sea and today after seeing to my defrosting fridge I'm going to write a wish list of things I'd like to do before Christmas. This is the time of year which most feels like a new year to me.

Jan Phillips

from nun to photographer, muscian and teacher.

people listening to speeches, music and a live link to London's concert

people queuing to get on the march

Discardia - a new holiday

On Discardia

Need some inspiration to get you through the weekend's nesting projects? Dinah Sanders invites you to celebrate Discardia, a floating holiday which, in her words, "doesn't involve obligations or expense or overblown expectations of specialness. It does not require you to interact with people whom you do not wish to interact with. In fact, it doesn't require you to do anything."

Instead, Discardia, like Apartment Therapy, is about getting rid of the stuff you don't need in order to make room for the stuff you do love. "Discardia," Dinah says ,"is the time to get rid of things that no longer add value to your life, shed bad habits, let go of emotional baggage and generally lighten your load." Happily, this iteration of the holiday runs until October 3rd.

More info at Apartment Therapy

Sychronistically enough I'd already decided to put some unwanted books for sale at Amazon

I liked the wide age range of protesters.

Welsh Dragon against poverty

Reading Frenzy

This looks like fun and while supporting a great cause (unsung heroines who keep spaces alive for artists and writers) can get a stash of reading for the dark nights ahead.

Free Film event - Ideas Factory

My friend Stuart is hosting the evening devoted to films made with Machinima technology (gaming programmes) on the 22nd Sept 7pm at the Cameo Cinema Edinburgh.

more pictures of Make Poverty History

over on Street Photography. I like this one in particular.

banners tied to railings on Princes St Gardens

the G8 leaders came on the march as well!

there in all their glory

the end of the march

sumptuous adventuring

I'd sent out an email inviting friends to go and see a film with me on the evening of my birthday.

4 people turned up but the evening was so lovely none of us could bear to be stuck in doors. We opted for a walk instead.

We went to Arthurs Seat* and walked for about an hour around its middle circumference, admiring the views to the city, sea and hills. A large fat half moon hung like in a Chinese watercolour to the East.

After an hour it got a bit chilly so we went to Prestonfield House Hotel for tea and had a wonderful time sitting by candlelight in a room with 17th Centuary wallpaper made from leather and using the pinkest powder room I've ever been in.

* a hill casually left in the midst of my city

Calling all Petes

Peter Trainer is starting a blog project called the petecollective

yay !

Laurie R King one of my favourite detective fiction writers has a blog.

On Friday I met Michael Nobbs for coffee at Spoon Cafe.

Nay !

2 days trying and I've still failed to upload my pics of the Make Poverty History march ...

tomorrow is my birthday

I used to ignore my birthday and drift along expecting 'something to happen' on it. Usually by my poor mother. Now I know this is a ridiculous atttitude to have towards ones birthday. It is up to ourselves to make sure its celebrated in the manner best suited to ourselves.

I've developed a determination that the birthday celebrations should be spread out over several days and that one should TELL people its your birthday. There is no point in not telling people and then having a strop about them forgetting. Let us give up being passive and become active participants in our lives.

So yesterday I went to Glasgow for the day - I did a whole series of activities 'just for me' lunch at the Czech Tea room (yummy moroccan soup) drawing in my notebook, browsing in second hand bookshops, browsing in gifite shops, giving myself full permission to buy magazines at Borders, very expensive cleaning cream at Neal's Yard. Finally I was fitted for two new PRETTY bras. I came home and had dinner with three friends (Roast chicken - sadly its roast chicken weather)watched a documentary with them. Today I'm off to see an exhibition with a friend, then go and have dinner with my parents (my mother has a birthday close to mine) and I've invited 10 friends to join me in watching a film on monday night. I'll go early catch a film before the one I've planned to see with them, have dinner in my favourite Edinburgh cafe inbetween.

All these activities may not be to your taste but they are to mine. Life is too short not to make the most of it.

the world's oldest photograph?

here via kottke

You don't want to have to answer to the past, right? It's a waste of time. Nor do you even feel like rebelling against the way things used to be or rejecting the stale old expectations people would like to hold you to. I don't blame you, Virgo--especially now, as you enter the frontier zone where the possibilities are limited only by your imagination. The way I see it, it's your sacred duty to shake off all the sacred duties from yesteryear as you go forth to create the future.



*

If I ever produce a self-help manual called The Reverse Psychology of Getting Everything You Want, it will discuss the following paradoxes:
a. People are more willing to accommodate your longings if you’re not greedy or grasping.
b. A good way to achieve your desires is to cultivate the feeling that you’ve already achieved them.
c. Whatever you’re longing for has been changed by your pursuit of it. It’s not the same as it was when you felt the first pangs of desire. In order to make it yours, then, you will have to modify your ideas about it.
d. Be careful what you wish for because if your wish does materialize it will require you to change in ways you didn’t foresee.

from 'FreeWillAstrology'

~~~~~

This blog has changed its purpose... bet you didn't know it had one any way? I originally started it as a place where I could direct students to interesting links. Ah ! that's why she links to things she has no interest in.... and in the long run build a market for my courses without having to do the hard work of tramping around putting out leaflets. Well obviously that didn't happen in that I found that I still had to do the hard work of putting out leaflets and never quite got the hang of promoting this blog. The only time this blog has had a traffic spike is courtesy of 'Photo Friday'!

Well its September the rains are lashing down my kittens refused to leave the house this morning when they saw the wet and I'm not about to promote a class this Autumn. I've decided not to teach again for the time being. As soon as I took that decision someone phoned me from Glasgow asking me if I was going to do a course. I'm not entirely sure why I don't want to teach anymore. Perhaps because I need to teach myself, perhaps because I don't need the status of being a teacher perhaps because folding 2000 leaflets and distributing them makes me want to curl up on the sofa.

I've also changed in the last year or so... and its been hard to reconcile those changes with being a 'teacher'.

What has changed? I'm much more aware of the gaping holes within people and am so aware that people are in the mindset that somehow being creative will solve their career problems, make their mother love them and finally finally make them comfortable.Were as once you have created your thing - you are the same person with the same hang ups but you have a few songs under your belt.

Or they can't be creative because then their parents won't love them any more (pretty conditional love in the first place?)

The idea that there is the one thing you will do and be instanteously brilliant at - if only you could find out what it is. Yes there is flow sometimes but also all those shots were the horizon was wonky (not in a good way) the entire rolls came back blank and kept on happening. Things only got better after about 100 x 36 exposures...

Its hard even when you have built in support (producer) you still have to go out and push and prod to make things happen. Yes YOU have to Make Things Happpen. (I've always wanted SomeOne Else to make things happen).

Do what you love and the money will probably not flow in but you will have to work out a way to get money to do what you want. Yes you might want to do a series on Gypsies in Romania but you will also have to do weddings to support it. The time I would have spent marketing my class will be spent filling in applications so I can have a decently paid job which will give me paid holidays so I can do what I want and pay off my debts.


So my blog has turned from a marketing tool to an assemblage of links about creativity and other stuff and my photos when 'hello' allows.

Now I don't have to keep it up every day perhaps I can relax. Offf to get some breakfast.

quick round up

My friend Hendrix-Cat sang on a pop record!

I went to Skye for the night to show my friend from London the West Coast of Scotland and to take the train from Glasgow to Mallaig 'one of the great train journeys of the world'. The 6 hour trip much elivened by taking a flask to make real coffee with those individual coffee makers which you pour hot water through and 'mini bottles' ie 1/3 sized wine bottles which we knocked back in tin mugs while whizzing through the spectacular scenery. The return trip to Mallaig with an apex ticket cost us a ridiculous £35 and the ferry was £5 return and we shared a room in a bunkhouse for £14 each - great value.

If we could bottle island air we could make a fortune.

I've got photos but I've not been to process them yet.

When we were at Waverly station we stocked up on newspapers for the journey - terrified I would be without reading matter I picked up Orhan Pamuk's 'Snow' on the basis of the blurb and cover. A beautiful, poetic, haunting and political book filled with images and characters what will stay with me a long time.

I saw John Adams Opera The Death of Klinghoffer done by Scottish Opera as part of the Edinburgh International Festival. Superb and very moving.

Bicycle Film Festival

How else could one possibly go to London's first Bicycle Film Festival than by bike?
I wasn't the only one. By 7pm last Saturday the stands and railings outside the Cochrane Theatre, next to Central St Martin's College in Holborn, were chock-full with bicycles. But, apparently, this particular location is notorious for bike theft. So it wasn't very reassuring that one of the first films up that evening was a short called Bike Thief.

full article here

Official Website

I know where I am Going!

I saw this fantastic film last night as part of the EIFF Powell retrospective. About the 3rd or 4th time I've seen it. I spent my summer holidays on the Isle of Mull where it was filmed. Andrew Macdonald the grandson of Emric Pressberger who wrote it says one should never love anyone who doesn't love the film.

sorry for silence

I've been working - not on creative projects. And really when you work 12 hour days and weekends things like posting do really get dropped and keeping up friendships the little routines like swimming, decent food. Luckily it should be over in a week so my skin may recover.... in the meanwhile I re-found my lomo camera stuck it in my bag and have been taking photos again. Trying to find a tiny small space for creative acts. I've uploaded some old ones while I await the processing of the new ones.

lomo party 2 2004

lomo party 2004

quick links

Girl on a Glide

my current work

the film Festival directed by Annie Griffiths of The Bookgroup TV series. Wickedly funny and on the spot. The invasion of the 500,000 has started.....

cinema lomo

lomo glasgow

neals yard london

Serendipity

I escaped briefly from the office and had lunch at the Filmhouse. Just before I left to go back to work - I noticed the poet Gerry Cambridge. I hadn't seen him for years he told me that a new edition of The Dark Horse was out and he now has a website.

nb must write post about the importance of connectedness to be creative...

100 ideas from Keri Smith

1. Go for a walk. Draw or list things you find on the the sidewalk. 2. Write a letter to yourself in the future. 3. Buy something inexpensive as a symbol for your need to create, (new pen, a tea cup, journal). Use it everyday. 4. Draw your dinner. 5. Find a piece of poetry you respond to. Rewrite it and glue it into your journal. 6. Glue an envelope into your journal. For one week collect items you find on the street. 7. Expose yourself to a new artist, (go to a gallery, or in a book.) Write about what moves you about it. 8. Find a photo of a person you do not know. Write a brief bio about them. 9. Spend a day drawing only red things. 10. Draw your bike. 11. Make a list of everything you buy in the next week. 12. Make a map of everywhere you went in one day. 13. Draw a map of the creases on your hand, (knuckles, palm) 14. Trace your footsteps with chalk. 15. Record an overheard conversation. 16. Trace the path of the moon in relation to where you live. 17. Go to a paint store. Collect 'chips' of all your favorite colors. 18. Draw your favorite tree. 19. Take 15 minutes to eat an orange. 20. Write a haiku. 21. Hang upside down for five minutes. 22. Hang found objects from tree branches. 23. Make a puppet. 24. Create an outdoor room from things you find in nature. 25. Read a book in one day. 26. Illustrate your grocery list. 27. Read a story out loud to a friend. 28. Write a letter to someone you admire. 29. Study the face of someone you do not like. 30. Make a meal based on a color theme. (i.e. all white). 31. Creat a museum of very small things. 32. List the smells in your neighborhood. 33. List 100 uses for a tin can. 34. Fill an entire page in your jounral with small circles. Color them in. 35. Give away something you love. 36. Choose an object, draw the side you can't see. 37. List all of the places you've ever lived. 38. Describe your favourite room in detail. 39. Write about your relationship with your washing machine. 40. Draw all of the things in your purse/bag.

to be continued...

you know all the nice weather we've been having

sorry

I

decided

to

have

a

braai

at

the

beach

which

is


why

the

temprature

has

plumeted


sorry

sorry

must feed kittens so a quick post

Long but quick at the same time week since my return from London.I have a huge list of things do do and no energy to do them in.

Tidying house for a kitten visitor. Feeding said kittens who have been ill and are on a strict regime which has not gone down well.

Forgive me life seems very at sea. Expanding with possibilities but at the same time taking calls from friends who have spent their evenings helping evacuate tube carriages. Dancing between these two states is exhausting. Time to water plants, hang out washing, centre oneself with the mundane.

Artist Residency

Edinburgh's Embassy Galleryis calling for submissions to its communitti artist in residence programme. More details at their website.

Jeanette Winterson on Frida Kahlo

We are obsessed by celebrity, alive or dead, and our determination to raid the personal lives of those who achieve something affects both men and women alike, but for women there is a special problem. Creative women in all the arts find themselves explained by and reduced to the circumstances of their lives in a way that men are not. It is a fear of genius, of a women’s genius, that no matter what we create, it is ultimately down to autobiography, the world of the very small. A sideways glance at Jane Austen, the Brontes, or Virginia Woolf, will remind you that the connections between their life and work are treated very differently to the connections apparent in the life and work of Wordsworth, Dickens, or DH Lawrence, Men, it is assumed, shape the world, shape taste, shape sensibility. Women are shaped by their circumstances and from that, sometimes, make art.

Kahlo’s intense representation of her own body put her on the side of ‘women’s work’; personal, partial, confessional. Even her re-valuation by feminists in the 1970’s positioned her as an interpreter of private experience. She was speaking to us – to other women, about physical pain, sexual rejection, medical intervention, marginalisation, family life, gynaecology. Her paintings were small in size and carefully defined by their own concerns. Where was the big wide world of her lover Diego Rivera, with his vast political murals?

Full article here.

Waiting for the London train

London Interlude

Not my normal trip.
On the train down the two minute silence was observed and half an hour before we got into London there was an appeal for anyone with information to go to the police at Kings Cross Station. At Kings Cross as I walked towards the bus stop to Highgate I came across a fenced off area which was being filled with flowers an other tributes, flags from football teams, pieces of paper, a sad one with ‘the killing of innocent people is a sin under Islam’ signed Bengalis from Leeds. There were lots of cameras and photographers milling round.
I was the last person to squeeze onto the 214 bus. Absolutely packed, we passed several busstops without stopping to the fury of the people standing there. Eventually I managed to move a bit further along the bus. As I stood there I thought about the people standing beside me, The man next to me had a staff badge from Moorfields Eye Hospital. I wondered if he was working with the victims of the bombings. Other people I eyed up and wondered if they could be potential bombers.
At Highgate I fled onto Parliament Hill. Stifling hot, the sun beat down. I slapped on sunscreen bought at the Body Shop in Kings Cross. Made phone calls home. Work quiet thank god! And I hadn’t permantly destroyed the excel sheet formulas… kitten feeder left message.. and I called back. I sat and watched life go by. People seemed more normal away from the urban morass of central London. A man with a Glaswegian accent and two young boys came by – they hadn’t picked up their fathers accent and spoke middle class North London. I speculated that the father had come south to further his career and had stayed. Two late teenagers walked by Boy ‘She’s so RICH – it’s great’. Man on mobile phone ‘I’ve got a meeting at the BBC at 12 tomorrow’.
On Friday I too the C2 bus to town. My hostess meanwhile had got her bicycle out of storage, swearing that she might be a genuine cockney but would NOT be going by underground again. About a third of the journey in a Muslim girl I would say late teens sat opposite me with a black scarf around her head. I was intent in looking out of the window – when I looked back over she had taken off the scarf and was busy putting on make up with the aid of a mirror, she then rearranged her hair. By central London she had I felt ‘de-Muslimified’ herself. A group of young Italian teenagers invaded the bus a few stops before I got off. Their teacher an anxious middle aged woman ran beside the bus as she couldn’t get on shouting ‘Pic-a-dilly Pic-a-dilly’ to the students inside. I told S about this later and she said ‘But that bus doesn’t go to Piccadilly. For all I know she’s still probably trying to track down her errant flock.
I worshipped at the sign of Libertys again then walked to Soho to meet my friend B for lunch. Afterwards I went to the Photographers Gallery and the Portrait Gallery. At 5pm I started to walk towards Embankment Underground station to cross the bridge to the South Bank. As I walked down Charing Cross Road two fire engines attempted to get through the traffic and failed. As I got to the narrow street leading towards the station I found it blocked off by police and barriers and was advised to walk along the Strand to get around the diversion. I crossed at the next bridge down and could see as I walked over the large swathe of the Embankment cleared of traffic and the jam of vehicles behind. While I was looking they allowed the free flow of traffic again.
From then on my trip was less eventful though the slowness of the transportation system in London is to been experienced to be believed. 95 mins Highgate to Westminster on Sat morning… I saw the Frida Kahlo exhibition at the Tate Modern on Friday night. It was extraordinary to see an exhibition of artworks where the artist has used pain so directly in their creativity. I reminded me about how consciously I have been avoiding this possibility in my own works. People where visibly moved when looking at the works. On Sat I met another friend B to do a walk about Shakespeare. We ended up at the George the only pub owned by the National Trust for England with the nylon 70’s carpet carefully preserved… we then went to the Brough Market to have lunch sitting in Southwark cathedral grounds. After lunch we stood for 2 hours watching The Tempest at the Globe Theatre. Amazing building, wonderful acting but my legs begged for the play to be 45 mins shorter. It was agony.

Now I’m back it feels a bit like a dream.

checking in

Still here... working like mad, appear to be developing RSI. Interesting that inbetween working at a mad pace I've been able to keep pushing forward my current creative project. One email at a time. One contact at a time. Reading an application guideline or even simply just printing it off. Small steps towards things. Its not even that I'm amazingly gungho about it - often I despair and think 'this sounds like pants who would fund this' but just because you have these kinds of thoughts doesn't mean you can't keep on putting one creative foot in front of another.

~~~

Off to London tomorrow. Have a major terrorist incident must travel. Its a family tradition. We took to the skies after Lockerbie and 9/11. I'm going by train and my aim is just to connect in with friends who live in London.

home made lemonade

Its so hot I just made some

Ingredients
lemons
water
sugar

Method
Squeeze lemon (s) add water and sugar to taste. Refidgerate

Danny Gregory on Drawing

Dear H______:
Think less. Draw more.
When you draw a thing, see it just as that. Not a head, not perspective, not crosshatching, just pure observation as if you've never seen it before. The more preconceptions you bring to the drawing, the shittier it will be.

Clear your mind, and start drawing what you see. Start anywhere. I tend to start in the upper left hand corner because I am right handed. I move across observing, recording, until I get to the lower left hand corner. Then I am done.If my subject is sufficiently complex, this will take me a half hour or more. I go as slowly as I can stand to go. But I don't know how long it is usually; my left-brain has no sense of time. As I draw, I avoid evaluation. I avoid thinking of the purpose of the drawing. I avoid commenting on what I am drawing, even in the quality of the line.

I am empty and the drawing fills me up. Drawing is meditation, not production. Drawing is entirely in the present with no attempt to create context.Do not think about style. Add shadows as you see them. But better to avoid shadows all together and stay engaged with the contours of things. When you have done that for months, even years, then add shadows and crosshatching (My pal, d.price has been drawing for a dozen years. Only on his trip to New York last week did he decide to start concentrating on the effects of light. He still almost never uses color). For now, none of that is important.

What matters is to see deeply and let your hand respond.And if you start at huge length before you draw, you risk becoming bored, or forming mental notes, theories, ideas about what you are seeing. The reason to let your hand and pen take over is to shut the hell up, silence the internal voice, the endless chattering of the mind, the distractions, the pointless pontificating that insists on meaning for the meaningless. The moment does not need meaning or context. It just is. Drawing is about reaching for pure being. Not making pretty pictures to put in frames and on websites.

The world doesn't need more pictures. It needs peace and connection. It needs people who can accept reality and don't feel compelled to control their environments.

If you can look at a boot, at a rotting apple, at car's worn tire, at an old man's foot, and see it for what it is, without value or judgement, can see the beauty and particularity of the thing, you will find peace. You will avoid being covetous. You will be happy with what you have. You will accept others more readily, will see the sunshine on a cloudy day.Life is a wonderful business, though fools blow up London tube stations and sell each other crap and waste time with gossip about movie stars.

If you can draw, you will always have a place to go that is beautiful and honest and true. As you sit in an airport you will find pleasure in the folds of a crumpled lunch bag. As you bide your time in a doctor's waiting room, you will find peace in the arrangement of the shadows on the wall. Even without putting ink on paper, you will be able to slip in to Drawing Mind.

The point is not what your lines look like or how accurate your crosshatching might be. The point is not the drawings on the page or the pages in the book. The point is not the opinions of others who love/hate/ignore those lines you made on the page. The point is not the money you make selling your work to galleries or publishers. The point of practicing your craft is not to rise in the rankings of those who draw. It's not to have your style dominate (sorry, Dan!). The point is to more easily gain access to the moment, to the deeper more peaceful recesses of your Self. The point is to live as well and as fully as you can today, right now, whether your pen is in your hand or not.
The point is to See and to Be.
Your pal,
Danny

I'm still around

Life has been very disrupted in Edinburgh due to the sporadic demonstrations/bomb scares/security lockdowns. Working beside the Japanese Delegation hotel hasn't helped either!

In between I've been working hard, playing hard and rescueing kittens from toilets. I'm meeting my producer this evening to talk budgets and strategies but first we go and walk on the beach as the weather is so gorgeous. I'm determined to work, be creative, and enjoy my life. Also moved up the agenda is finding more ways of being involved in the work to create political change for the better. Going on the Make Poverty History march on Sat was very life affirming. Whatever the outcome of the G8 I am buoyed up that there are so many people who care and will keep on caring.

Meanwhile the next issue of The Beany is out.

photo friday - used

Win free e-coaching from the Independent

by Fiona Harrold

Did you see me on telly?

I was there

Tired feet from queuing, thirsty, we should have joined the ice cream queue before joining, a little sunburned but a good day.

Ruminations

I've been trying to upload some lomos of the view from EH1 (RIP) where I met my friend R regularly for some months last year to do the Artists Way together. We met last night at a different hostelry and had a great conversation of which I wish I could remember more!

The salient points were 'taking responsibility' instead of blaming external factors for roadblocks to our art. R is in the middle of a creative form change. I just feel I'm in the middle of a creative stagnant pond. Much of the pond is of my own making and I need to stop creating monsters of bitterness which lurk under it and see the lillypads to make a very long extended metaphor. Which leads me to 'bitterness' and 'bile' of which has been washing over me lately. All to do with a political situation which I became embroiled in quite a long time ago but events seem to have conspired to bring out all the pain/anger/bitterness that was associated with it once again. Of course this situation is harming no one except myself.

R was wonderfully patient listening to my muttery grouches and magically through conversation taking apart the situation and her clear eyed outsider view I could see entirely what harm I was doing to myself and how a practical plan of action to take my attention away from them and instead to direct my attention to my centre, my world, my creativity was needed. By the time we parted were were joking about setting up a new agey workshop for releasing our most bitter and resentful parts of ourselves. We thought a bonfire on a beach, followed by dancing and toasted marshmallows afterwards to remind ourselves of the forgotten sweetness of life should do the trick.

~~~

I'm just in the process of moving from one job to another - my upcoming job being much more intense than the one I'm leaving so blogging may become more erratic.

close High Street Edinburgh

paying rent with love?

via Crossroads Dispatches

Make Poverty History

On Saturday 2nd July my home city is host to a huge gathering of people showing their support for the Make Poverty History campaign. (www.makepovertyhistory.org)I'm going up to a friend who lives near the Meadows where people are assembling on saturday morning.

She's been emailing me about making banners.
There is of course the perennial favourite:-

Down With This Sort of Thing

other suggestions include

Ferrets against unfair trade rules (my friend is kept by ferrets)

Kittens against poverty

Ladies Knitting Circle Against Poverty

Make Fair Trade Tea Not War Against Poor

Any other suggestions gratefully recieved

All Things Sweet

I've just read Chocolate & Zucchini's report on eating sweet things in NY - I'm sorry I'm going to have to cut short this posting and go and get something to eat!

Werner Herzog against Cinema Verite

Minnesota declaration: truth and fact in documentary cinema

"LESSONS OF DARKNESS"
1. By dint of declaration the so-called Cinema Verité is devoid ofverité. It reaches a merely superficial truth, the truth of accountants.

2. One well-known representative of Cinema Verité declared publiclythat truth can be easily found by taking a camera and trying to behonest. He resembles the night watchman at the Supreme Court whoresents the amount of written law and legal procedures. "For me," hesays, "there should be only one single law: the bad guys should go toj
ail."Unfortunately, he is part right, for most of the many, much of the time.

3. Cinema Verité confounds fact and truth, and thus plows only stones.And yet, facts sometimes have a strange and bizarre power that makestheir inherent truth seem unbelievable.4. Fact creates norms, and truth illumination.

5. There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such athing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and canbe reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.

6. Filmmakers of Cinema Verité resemble tourists who take picturesamid ancient ruins of facts.

7. Tourism is sin, and travel on foot virtue.8. Each year at springtime scores of people on snowmobiles crashthrough the melting ice on the lakes of Minnesota and drown. Pressureis mounting on the new governor to pass a protective law. He, theformer wrestler and bodyguard, has the only sage answer to this: "Youcan´t legislate stupidity."

9. The gauntlet is hereby thrown down.

Werner Herzog

from D-word

Summer Pudding

Summer has landed a little late somewhat of a skid on touch down but definatly here. I'm going to a garden party this afternoon and I'm taking Summer Pudding because well it really means summer...

Recipe

2 x punnet of strawberries
2 x punnet of raspberries
1 x punnet of nectarines
caster sugar to taste
white plastic bread one loaf

I bought what was in the shops but red currants, black currants and white currants would have been good also mulberries.

Wash and hull strawberries, wash raspberries, wash and chop nectaries. Put into large pan with lid add half a cup of sugar. Heat until starts bubbling.Test for sugar add more if you want. Don't over cook so the fruit entirely loses shape. Cut crusts from bread line bottom and side of a bowl medium sized. Take as slotted spoon and spoon the fruit into the lined bowl. Top with more crustless bread. Find a plate slightly smaller than the diameter of the bowl and weight it down with cans, bottles etc over night. Retain the juice.

Serve by turning out onto large plate, pouring over reserved juice and adding cream.

more on Guerilla Gardening

from Tree Hugger

I have to say the idea of guerilla gardening does fascinate me even though I only tend a few containers. I had the idea of guerilla windowbox gardening. There are a few places I see with low windows around the city which I think could be improved by a windowbox. But perhaps arming myself with nastursium seeds would be easier!

Janet Evanovich: Author as Businesswoman

From failed author to media magnate: Janet Evanovich is using a creative approach and good old-fashioned common sense to market her bestselling books.
While her success speaks to her tenacity and devotion to family, it owes as much to marketing prowess. When fans, impatient for her next novel, began asking her to recommend other writers like her, Ms. Evanovich hired one instead. Thus began a separate line of paperback romance-thrillers with Charlotte Hughes as co-author and St. Martin's as publisher. Four books in that series became best sellers. [...]
Ms. Evanovich plots her first week of promotion to include book signings at big stores that report their sales to publications that publish best-seller lists. As in past years, the publication of the new Stephanie Plum novel will include a Stephanie Plum Daze festival in Trenton, the setting for the novels. Featuring live music, food, a character dress-up contest and historical-society tours of Trenton sites mentioned in the series, a festival on June 25 is expected to attract several thousand fans. Barnes & Noble will be there selling books.
Her approach is refreshingly non-egotistical, don't you think? Evanovich doesn't seem to see the "working writer" as an artiste, but as a businesswoman.

From Rebecca Blood

An Artist who became the mayor of Tirana

He remembers hearing a saxophone for the first time. Saxophones were banned in Albania, which may be why the day a school friend whispered, “Want to see a saxophone?” is as memorable to him as the day he saw his first nude drawings. He says that the sound of that saxophone—a few notes, played in his friend’s attic, with lookouts posted on the stairs—was “like a strange amplification of the miraculous,” and started him wondering “why all these beautiful things were bad.”

Edi Rama returned from a life as a left bank artist in Paris became Mayor of his home town and started to attempt to transform it. One of his first acts was to get coloured paint and cover over the decades of communist concrete. Full article at the New Yorker

Jill Sprecher: As brave as they come

She was mugged and owes thousands of dollars, but film director Jill Sprecher still got 13 Conversations to the screen.

Sprecher is one half of a team that has been dubbed "the Coen sisters"; sister Karen writes and Jill directs. She has a Wisconsin twang similar to the one heard inFargo, and which is apparently a very amusing hick accent to your average American. After a provincial early life, she escaped to New York where, after a spell in film school, she became involved in the production of two classic New York movies - the trippy Liquid Sky in 1982 and the gay rights saga Stonewall in 1995.

So why is this talented New York director now living in LA? The answer has everything to do with 13 Conversations and the enormous personal debt she built up while making the movie. This is no Darren Aronofsky/ Kevin Smith story about making your movies on your credit cards and then becoming famous. Six years on, Sprecher still owes $150,000 on her plastic. It seems you can direct movies with Toni Collette and Lisa Kudrow (Clockwatchers) and McConaughey - but that doesn't mean you won't end up penniless.
Amazingly, Sprecher doesn't feel her story is especially unusual. "I think it's the norm, outside the Hollywood system," she says with a laugh. But the production history is terrible, I say. The idea of 13 Conversations came directly out of Sprecher being brutally mugged twice and nearly brain damaged. The day before shooting started she lost important financing and had to sign away nearly all her rights, despite the best efforts of producer and REM front man Michael Stipe. Sprecher never got paid for directing it. The budget kept getting cut during production, with her cinematographer Dick Pope (Vera Drake) having to do the job with a handful of set lights.

Just after she sold the film one of her close friends died in the 11 September attacks, and she felt guilty she hadn't invited him to Toronto, thereby saving his life. Distribution of the film was affected by 11 September. Having gone to LA to edit it, Sprecher couldn't actually afford to move back to New York. If ever a film has laboured under a curse, it has to be 13 Conversations.
She's still surprised, though, when people think 13 Conversations is a dark film. "We thought it was upbeat." She laughs wildly. "It gets the reaction according to the viewer's own outlook - if you're pessimistic you see it as gloomy.

More from The Independent

Land Art

Links from the Land+Living blog

Fete de la musique

The French Institute is having its annual Fete de la Musique. I've been before its a great evening.

Re-enchanting the city

From Treehugger

After the reenchantment of our knickers comes the reenchantment of a more exterior kind. To be specific, the exterior world that is our urban environment. Clare Cunningham is as similarly disillusioned about the bleak appearances of our city streets as her fellow Eco-Design graduate Anna Hillman, whose Amazingness project we wrote about last week. While Anna produced a book highlighting details of nature which surround us each day, Clare has chosen a different way to redress the problem of being cut off from nature in our cities. She has identified common eyesores on our streets, such as discarded old rotting sofas or abandoned shopping trolleys, and transformed them into beautiful verdant objects. The old sofa has been stripped down and reupholstered with hemp and sewn with grass. Soon this will be a beautifully green and comfortable community bench. The abandoned shopping trolley has been transformed into a mobile garden – planted with gorgeous flowers that would brighten up anyone’s day making them grateful, not resentful, that someone left it there. Clare is also aware of the often harsh nature of graffiti and advertising billboards on our city walls. She offers an alternative with her ‘green graffiti’. Using a solution with moss seeds, motifs can be painted or stencilled on to walls. This moss graffiti will not only grow green and luscious with time, but will also bring new softer textures to our streets – enchanting indeed. ::reenchanting the city

High Street, Edinburgh

quick links

I like - great blog

Barbara Scher see below

Planet Sark

Apartment Therapy - I know I don't have an apartment in New York but I surf by and live vicariously at least once a day!

Jamie Oliver - whatever you think about him ... great recipies for jaded cooks.

Robbie, Editor (L) Stuart Producer(R)

This is a photo from way back in winter when I did a shoot on my favorite beach in Edinburgh for a documentary pilot. Ahhh you were wondering weren't you if I ever actually produced something creative... Since then I've been knee deep in working for money, making several adjustments in my life (realising I'm not such a hermit after all) and becoming mummy to two kittens. I had a small supper party last Friday to introduce Frieda and Diego so some of my closest friends. Stuart came along gamely despite being allegic to kittens then had half a glass of wine which reacted badly with the anti allergy medication he had taken. But inbetween being very rude about kittens and cats he improvised a kitten toy out of some string and elastic he'd found in my kitchen. Anyway this is a round about way of getting to yes I've been very busy in the flow of life but really I have to get down to doing some creative work. Not only that its the kind of creative work which is not ladi la let my creative side come out and play but the making of a budget. Yes creativity also entails doing things which are frankly DULL. So time to surf away from Blogger print off some budgets and start playing around with figures. I also have to acknowledge that being away from this kind of stuff for so long has meant I've built up a small reservoir of fear about doing it. The only cure is doing it and doing it regularly.

So Stuart I will do that budget and I'm very impressed by your knowledge of Napoleon's resting place.

Are you the only person in the world still to read the Da Vinci Code?

Never fear... a version is online at Here Be Monsters

The laughing girl with the dancing mouth and smiling eyes ran ahead of him towards the looming majesty of the Great Pyramid. Jack Kirk ran after her but, his feet sinking and slipping in the hot desert sand, no matter how hard he tried to catch her, she remained just out of reach.The Sphinx looked on inscrutably.Kirk felt the warm winds of a thousand years blow over him.Straining every muscle, he reached the smiling girl with the laughing mouth and dancing eyes, the girl he loved, the woman of his dreams. Just as his fingers closed upon the fragile Egyptian muslin of her haute couture Prada blouse, the smiling girl with the dancing feet and laughing nose dissolved into a dark mist that his hands passed helplessly through. He had lost her. The girl of his dreams. The woman he loved. He had lost her again. A toothless crone selling plaster pyramids by the side of the road cackled. Kirk felt her contempt burn into him like fire.

If he gets 40 comments he's promised to post chapter 2

Barbara Sher's 'Subsidy to the Arts' v All or Nothing fallacy

Dear Barbara
I just saw your television program on PBS and I was really inspired by your speech! I am a 34 year-old woman with a dream(actress). I am 5'-0" tall and avarage looking and a single mother. I am struggling to make a living and when I tell my friends my dream, they just say "it is only a dream, you have to look at the reality!" I am also an artist and tried my dream in art, but all I have achieved is being poor! I am now in a crossroad (my parttime job ended this week) and I am feeling frustrated because of my failure to achieve my dream.I want to change my life for myself and for my son. I already know what I am good at but I just don't know where to start! I am very unhappy and it reflects on my child's behavior....I don't have supportive network of friends and I don't know where to look for the supportive ones. I truly think that what you do is inspirational and is helping many people to reach their goals. But I think that what I am facing is a very challenging one.Would you help me? I am willing to do anything to change my current situation. I am ready!
Patty
Hi Patty. First, stop telling your friends (and family, if they're not supportive either) about your dreams. Turn every conversation to recipes or politics, or better yet, ask them about themselves: 'Have you lost weight? You look fantastic!'. They'll forget all about you in no time.
Next, go directly to my Bulletin Board at http://www.barbarasher.com/boards/ and take these 4 steps:
1. Look around. Read what people have posted in a number of places so you'll see what an unusual community this is. You'll find that the people on my board are astonishing. They're knowledgeable and generous and supportive. You will be surprised and impressed when you go to my Bulletin Board. I am.
2. If you like what you see, register and spend a few weeks helping other people. Then you won't feel like poor Patty, you'll feel like a smart, helpful person yourself. And that's how you'll be seen by others on the board, too.
3. After a few weeks, go to the forum "Wishes and Obstacles" and start a topic to help you find the right kind of job in your location. You'll get great suggestions every time, usually within a few hours, always within a day or two.
4. Then head over to the forum called "Informal Success Teams" and see if you can locate a free support team in your area or on the phone so you'll have some supportive people to talk to. If you're ready to start taking weekly steps towards your goals, go to www.shersuccessteams.com where you'll find the local registered Success Team leader and can sign up for an 8 week workshop with a trained leader and about 5 other members who are also ready to get into action.

Okay? Now let's discuss the nemesis of all dreams, the All or Nothing fallacy.The people on my board and in Success Teams understand that there are perfectly realistic ways to get the part you love of any dream, often right away. But they're rare. In this world it's all too common to run into the conviction that going after any dream is always a huge investment, a life changing gamble, do it all the way or don't do it at all.

"You can't make money at what you love!," is the shape it usually takes. "Give up art, acting, or whatever you love and get a job."

If there's one thing I wish I could change it's that automatic, knee-jerk reaction that slams the door on dreams. Why is it still here? Somebody's not paying attention. All around you people are doing what they love most, and they are not starving to death. Go to an art or acting class and get to know the other students and you'll see what I mean.

Everyone must have money to live. Everyone must do what they love. But why do we assume that those two need to be one? Who said you must make money at what you love? Almost all of us have to work and do what we love on our own time, often for years, sometimes forever. There's nothing wrong with that.

You can even create a relatively successful career on the side if you find work doing something you're clever at--programming, organizing, writing, communicating, gardening, selling. Just make sure the people don't drive you crazy and the job doesn't take more than 40 hours a week.
And call it "A Subsidy to the Arts."

Because, even if you eventually succeed at what you love doing most, it won't fall through the window because you had positive thoughts or said the right mantra. It will be the result of having done what you love for a long time, often years, until you're smooth and sure-footed at it. That means you have to start today.

If you just thought something like, "Oh no, I have to wait for years before I'm successful!" think again. Imagine how heavenly it would be to engage in what you love part of every day, to get better and better at it until you are an artist who is worthy of the gifts you were born with.
It's your happy task to develop your gifts. Unless your gifts are in business, you shouldn't subject them to the marketplace. To earn money you have to please the people who could buy from you. Artists aren't supposed to please people, they're supposed to make the best art they can. When you start getting your sea legs, you'll find that you're always way ahead of the fashion of the day, and only a few people will understand what you're doing. If you're an artist, you're exploring and learning and taking new paths. You'd never let a buyer control you. That's a contract with your soul. Don't break it.

Okay, time to swing into action: start searching for a job where the people are reasonably nice and where you're doing something you're good at that's not too boring (but has nothing to do with acting or art). It's worth trying to get the right job.

Just think of how much better your life would be if you had a tolerable, even pleasant job and a happy, creative, exciting life too! No All or Nothing. Just All and Everything.

If your child sees you happily doing your art after work and on weekends it will be very good for him. Set up a nice "studio" in the corner of your room so you can make art whenever you want. Then turn the rest of your space into a little private theater and put on plays with your child as audience--starting tonight! Maybe one day he will be your co-star.

Try going to a park or in front of a museum on Sundays and do wonderful mimes (with your son, if that's an option) and start showing off as soon as possible. Get to love your audiences if you want to be a good actor. Maybe you'll get some money in the hat, at least enough for a nice hot fudge sundae for the two of you and you'll be teaching your great child lessons about how to live a good, fun and productive life.

At the very least, take a minimum of 5 minutes every single day to use one of your talents in a way that makes you very happy--even if it's only to close your eyes and have a perfect fantasy.
Start on that dream at once. Start small. Start now.
That's an order.
"ToughLove" Barbara

From her e-letter

(Barbara's book Wishcraft is excellent and well worth seeking out)

Pittenweem sign 2004

Following on

being busy is a form of laziness

How to be idle

I had lunch with these French people who said, “Travailler moins, produire plus.” In other words, the less you work, the more you produce. And certainly in my own experience—even in the really good jobs—a lot of the day is just spent sitting there, staring at your screen, pretending to work, checking your emails, on the phone to your girlfriend. I realized I’d rather work hard for two or three hours in a day—which was the only real work I was doing—and then bobble about the rest of the time, in the park or whatever. I’ve found that there isn’t any correlation whatsoever between the hours put in and the quality of what comes out. Most of the Beatles’ songs probably originated in about five minutes. Often, the things that a lot of work has gone into have been incredibly bad because they’re over-worked.

Interview with Tom Hodgkinson in Mother Jones.

I can fully concur. I've had a wonderful weekend starting with a surprise 70th birthday party for a family friend with people coverging from the north, south, west and east to make it. I've caught up with people and sat outside sipping tea and getting sunburn. This was followed up by the arrival of two kittens when I got home. I will try not to be a kitten bore but idling on the sofa while watching two kittens playing has got to be the best way to start your day.

bus stop by moonlight - lomo

Molly Gordon - Artists, Marketing is your job

'I recently received an email from an artist who thanked me for my work. She went on to say, "I will agree it sounds very tempting but unfortunately its impossible to find the time and money to do a study on how to market oneself. Especially when every moment available is spent doing the work you are best at."

I can relate. I spent eight years trying to make a living selling my artwork. I vowed that I would not fall into the starving artist myth. I applied my business experience to present myself and my work to the world in the best possible light. I succeeded in getting a good deal of national recognition for my work, but I never turned a profit.

As I look back on that time, I see that I was so busy "trying" that I never examined the assumptions underlying my notions of selling art. Here are a few doozies:
1. Work that takes a long time to make should command a higher price in the marketplace. (Command? Who was I kidding?)
2. Unique pieces should command a higher price than production work. (There's that word, command, again.)
3. My work is valuable because... Fill in the blank: I use traditional methods, my pieces wear better and last longer, I use the finest materials, etc. (Bottom line: I should get paid because I am proud of myself and I work hard.)
4. My work is valuable because it comes from my soul. (And that has an economic value to whom?)
5. My work is valuable because I take risks in making it. (Ditto.)
6. I should be compensated for doing what(ever) I love to do. (Right. The artist as fascist.)

It never occurred to me to check out my assumptions because they made so much sense. I didn't even know they were assumptions. Still, by some grace, I eventually had the thought, "Where is it written that because I choose to invest a lot of time, energy, and resources in art-making, I should be paid and paid handsomely?"

Yes. I know. Art is important. It has the potential to challenge, reveal, reconfigure our ways of seeing and making meaning. Art can seed war and peace, aspiration and despair, exaltation and profound doubt. I don't know that there is a higher function in society. To perform this function, art must be encountered in public or in private. A work of art is not complete until it is experienced by another human being, and getting art in front of other human beings often entails buying and selling.

The fundamental values and assumptions of the marketplace are not impressed with art's sacred functionality. Once submitted to the competing forces of supply and demand, art must make an economic case for itself. In this arena, the soul of a work or the vision of an artist are subjected to a quite soulless analysis. What's in it for a buyer? Is the valuation appropriate? How do we know? What can a buyer expect from owning the piece, and is the value likely to increase or decrease over time? We can moan about the unfairness of this until hell freezes over, but for now, that's the way it is.

Given this, it would appear that the job description of an artist is not only to make art. They have the additional responsibility of making their work visible, accessible, and attractive to appropriate audiences in the marketplace. Therefore, promotion is not a departure from artists' real work, but an essential part of it.

Life is not fair. (That's right. You read it here first.) Promoting art (or anything else) can be hard, and the money that we're told will follow doing what we love is not guaranteed to arrive in our lifetimes. Earning a living doing what you love is not a birthright. Artists make art; they may or may not make money. An important corollary is that income from art sales is an inherently crummy measure of artistic success. The yardstick for economic success calibrates an entirely different set of values than that for artistic excellence.

Artists face some very real challenges when it comes to promoting their work. Instead of approaching these challenges as a victim, face them as an advocate for the work that you hold sacred. Observe the difficulties dispassionately. Learn from every experience of confusion, discouragement, or rejection. Take on the mantle of an advocate, not only for art, but for the millions who (knowingly or not) long to encounter it. Attend to your heart and listen for the purpose behind your art-making. Listen carefully for the difference between the impulse to create and the compulsion to gratify your ego. While I have nothing against a gratified ego (perhaps you've noticed that I like to keep mine happy), I prefer not to let its insatiable appetites run my life.

Last, but not least, consider disentangling making art from making a living. Let go of the notion that artistic success requires that you earn your living from your art. There are many ways to share your creativity and skill outside of selling your art. Getting a "day job" may enrich your art by releasing it from the web of commerce. "

Pearls of wisdom from Molly's Newsletter.
U.S. Library of Congress ISSN: 1530-311XUnless otherwise attributed, all material is written and edited by Molly Gordon, MCC. Copyright (c) Shaboom Inc.(r) 2005. All rights reserved. Visit our extensive archives at www.mollygordon.com .

At last summer has arrived

I walked on the beach last night hence last photo and had to water my containers. Up to this date mother nature has done my watering by her frequent showers.

Eco Wools from Tree Hugger.

Portobello Beach

Manifesting a great summer

'The summer is approaching and I am reminded of a great exercise I read in a Rob Brezsny horoscope several years ago. He told the reader to write an essay from the future entitled, "What I did during the summer of 2005 that made me a better, smarter, happier person."
{Well maybe it didn't say 2005, but we will} Then he asked you to mail it to him with a self-addressed stamped envelope and he promised mail the essay back to you at the end of the summer. It was like your very own transmission-to-the-future time capsule thingy.
It was so powerful for me to do this. When I received the letter back I was shocked that every single item on my list had come true.'

Andrea offers to recieve your letters and post them back. More info at Superhero Designs

Saving ourselves from freezing

Evelyn Rodrigues from Crossroads Dispatches on keeping the heart open.

Nicolas Roeg on accident, chance, serendipity and the fourth hand

I've never storyboarded anything. I like the idea of chance. What makes God laugh is people who make plans.

If we're supposed to head for the beach to shoot a scene where a pair of lovers are taking leave of each other, and she gets up and walks off into the sunset, and they pass some other happier people on the beach; but if when we arrive there and it's raining, the assistant director would say, "I know, get the camera out". Because that chance is telling you something. They'd planned to say goodbye on the beach, it's raining, and there's nobody on the beach. There's a fourth hand, telling you something better.

More in the Guardian

Female Nomad

Rita Golden Gelman got divorced and decided to change her lifestyle. Her website is a fascinating delve into writing and travelling.

Discovering where you live

I was in London a few weeks ago and had a wonderful stimulating time. Came home felt a bit flat and remembered that lots of people come to where I live and have a fantastic experience. So I went on line found out about the Scottish Literary Pub tour. I emailed about 12 friends inviting them to meet me on Friday at the Beehive Inn. In the end about 7 of us set off in the company of assorted Norwegians, Americans, Canadians about 30 in all. We had as they say in Scots a 'rare' old time. We ended up chatting about differences in English & Scots language in a hostelry nearby the end of the tour and parted late on the evening, promising each other we would try and find more fun things to do together.

Poet and Farmer

A FEW weeks ago, Scott Chaskey, poet and farmer, was hunkered down in his favorite garlic field to get out of a chilly wind blowing off the ocean. The sand was warm between the perfectly tilled rows of green garlic stalks, mulched with a soft blanket of shredded leaves. Mr. Chaskey calls them "green sail masts," and so they were, all 20,000 of them, sailing down this two-acre field.

more here

How not to buy happiness

fascinating article

The Value of Failure

Friday 24 June 2005, 11.00–18.30 Tate Modern London
Success dominates universities and cultural institutions. No projects are funded unless success is guaranteed in advance. But we learn little from success, whereas failure can show where the true path lies. This event invites, among others, Stephen Frears, Tilda Swinton, Hanif Kureishi and Alan Yentob to examine the value of failure in a variety of creative and administrative contexts. This symposium is organised by the London Consortium for its tenth anniversary, in conjunction with the New York Public Library, where a second event on the same topic will be held later in the year.

An intriguing idea but tickets are rather pricy.