include the Mason-Dixon Buttonhole bag (the Unpattern) which resulted in a really dinky felted bag. I'm going to try the unpattern again with thicker wool. I've also got another creative film project on the go , currently awaiting finance news so trying to not put all my creative eggs in one basket. Colour Rules of Thumb I thought might give me inspiration for my bag colours - via Apartment Therapy.
As I walked around London I took lots of photos. Being on old fashioned film they will take some time to be processed (I'll have to wait for the spare cash let alone finish the roll). One of the things that transfixed me was the window displays for St Valentines Day. It seemed to me that the day was becoming far more commercial and the message it was pushing was 'Buy stuff to prove you love someone' and the relentless pushing of the it all together was also a way of saying 'the only acceptable way to be is in a romantic relationship'. So I've now got a series of hideous photos with red hearts to come out soon.
Some years ago I was moved to make a stand against the blatant commercialism and organised a Love Yourself Day at the Turkish Baths with some friends. I was moved to do it again. Last time I was able to organise massages but its the wrong day for it and too short notice. Instead I'm taking cupcakes, a flask for mint tea and I'll search out my essential oils so we can catch up, gossip and lounge. We prove love and care by spending time with people not money.
In the same way we can create objects, things, art we can create the kind of world we want one step at a time. I want a world were we value ourselves and the friendships we have so I created my own 'Day'. Its worth thinking about what you can do to make things the way you would like them to be.
Because I stayed with a different friend in London to the one I normally stay with I was able to experience a whole new area of the city. On my third day we walked to Parliament Hill and across Hampstead Heath. Filled with people 'Pretending to be in country' said my friend sarcastically, dogs, fat squirrels and even a few signs of spring snowdrops, green shoots of daffodils. We walked towards Hampstead village and ambled up and down the streets, passing Keats House and popping into Hampstead's local library. At the door of the library a large orange cat greeted us and consented to ear rubs. This is my favourite kind of travel encounter something that cannot be planned from Time Out but happens anyway.
Afterwards we walked to Berg House and looked at the reproductions of Constable's drawings of cloud scapes from the Heath.
We then warmed ourselves in a chain bookshop looking at books but didn't buy there but went onto Daunts Books and supported independent bookselling there.
The next day a sunday I did the only thing I'd prearranged in London a London Walks Tour of Old Jewish Quarter 'A Shetel called Whitechapel'. Last year I did one of their tours of Clerkenwell and was amazed at what good value they were in terms of interest and unexpected information. The walk was great despite the cold and the early start 10.40am. We left an hour and a half to get to Tower Hill Tube Station my friend saying we'd probably be early in the end we only just made it as the Tower Hill Station was closed and we had to walk from Aldgate East. We managed to meet up with all the other people who had been corralled into the tour friends of ours and finished it off in Brick Lane. Now Bengali not Jewish and had a lunch in an Indian Restaurant. Thus fortified we walked along the river and crossed at the Millenum Bridge and attempted to warm ourselves up at the Globe Theatre cafe.
The next day aware of the vagaries of public transport in London I left 3 hours to get to Kings Cross Station. So naturally I was very early I walked the 5 mins to The British Library. Oh wonderful place! Lockers for a returnable £1 coin v the £5 at the station. Went around the Writer in the Garden exhibition (free!) but somewhat hasty. There were items from both Little Sparta Avant Gardening by Ian Hamilton Finlay and Dungness by Derek Jarman. I hadn't planned to visit this exhibition but was delighted to see copies of Jarman's handwritten notebooks about gardening and being reminded of my visit to Little Sparta last year.
I have a weakness for bookshops and even worse a weakness for magazines. I went to corporate nemisis Borders on Charing Cross Road and bought £20 of mags, Utne, Shambahala Sun and others which I've forgotten. Then I went to the National Portrait Gallery to meet a friend in the lobby. Its central, always has good exhibitions and a fabulous restaurant on the roof. We met and went straight up in the lift, got a table by the window and admired the roof top view. We had coffee only being the afternoon, the afternoon tea with scones is a crimminal £14 for 2 but we got away with £5. There is a panoramic view here. I took photos but it will be a few months before the lomos come out.
We talked so long we decided not to go and see the Lee Miller exhibition which costs £7.50 to get into - we thought we wouldn't get our money's worth so instead we saw the free Frida Kahlo photographs.
We then went and met my hostess and scurried around the streets of Soho to find the Hare Krishna restaurant which is vegetarian and very cheap.
Specifically this person has followed the Circle Tube line overground and taken photos.
Occasionally it does one good to run away to get some fresh perspective and new ideas.
I went to see a friends exhibition opening at St Martins last Thursday in London. Great drama as we approached the building it was being held in (The London College of Fashion) as a man had climbed some scaffolding in Oxford St and the road had been cleared but the pavements were blocked with people gawping and we had to go the long way around to get in.
On Friday I went into the city using the bus from Highgate. My aim was the arts & crafts store Liberty's in Regent Street. I wandered from elegant room to room admiring and only succumed to Jaeger Fur Wool in the wool dept. A headache sent me in search of lunch .. too expensive in Liberty's so I started off for Neale's Yard where I knew there was an ok veggie cafe. I was able to restore my bloodsugar, and up my caffine levels. London is so hectic with traffic and people I find visiting it unbearable without well timed sit downs. I eavesdropped on conversations and drew in my journal then struggled mightily with my lomo ( they are complete pains to load film quickly) as a woman arrived with a pushchair wearing a floor lenth waistcoat hand knitted in multicoloured squares which I had to get a photo of. I wanted to see the radical knitting exhibition at the Design Centre but after scanning Time Out realised that the exhibition hadn't opened yet.
I walked back towards Charing Cross Road dipping into Stamfords the travel shop in Long Acre and then to The Photographers Gallery in Great Newport St. They have two sites on the street. One with a cafe and an exhibtion of ' Stories from Russia: The David King Collection'.
To celebrate the Russian publication of David King's book, "The Commissar Vanishes", tracing the falsification of photographs and art in Stalin's Russia, The Photographers' Gallery is presenting an installation of haunting images drawn from a discovery made by the author in Moscow. David King explains: "Like their counterparts in Hollywood, photographic retouchers in Soviet Russia spent long hours smoothing out the blemishes of imperfect complexions, helping the camera to falsify reality. Joseph Stalin's pockmarked face, in particular, demanded exceptional skills with the airbrush. But it was during the Great Purges, which raged in the late 1930s, that a new form of falsification emerged. The physical eradication of Stalin's political opponents at the hands of the secret police was swiftly followed by their obliteration from all forms of pictorial existence"."Photographs for publication were retouched and restructured with airbrush and scalpel to make once-famous personalities vanish. Paintings, too, were often withdrawn from museums so that compromising faces could be blocked out of group portraits. Entire editions of works by denounced politicians and writers were banished to the closed sections of the state libraries and archives or simply destroyed."Soviet citizens, fearful of the consequences of being caught in possession of material considered "anti-Soviet" or "counterrevolutionary", were forced to deface their own copies of books and photographs, often savagely attacking them with scissors or disfiguring them with ink. There is hardly a publication from the Stalinist period that does not bear the scars of this political vandalism. From ilikeyou
Tonight I met a couple who call their unborn baby The Beany and knew KT Tunstall...
The 1000 Recipies Project is sending out notebooks into the world to be passed from person to person. Each one to write a recipie in the book and then scan them to be posted online.
.. this article reminded me of one of my favourite books 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
I've been following Kate's journey as a writer and human being for a while now. She's finished revising her book manuscript ! - go here and look at the Jan 23rd journal entry.
blog postings get lost easily - go to Loobylu for oz cheer and Chocolate & Zucchini to sample one of the best food blogs.
, straight back hair, slightly pudgy, an unmusical family (one LP in the house) and look at her now ! Profiled in the Independent no less. When I met KT Tunstall aka Katie when I was 9 years old in St Andrews singer/songwriter would not have been what I would have predicted for her. Just shows you, it aint your background which makes you a creative person. So just for now give up the 'I can't paint because my mom wouldn't let me make a mess' excuse. Go and do what you wanna do.
is as important as learning when one must do something.
Michael Nobbs wrote a blog entry on giving up.
We have to listen to ourselves.
Does the doing the thing make you feel flat?, as something-that-must-be-done?, do you feel obligated?, do you feel tired contemplating it?, must you grit your teeth to get through it?, does your heart sink when contemplating an opportunity?
A good for you something may be difficult, you might even feel anxious about trying something new and unfamiliar, anxious and excited it good. Anxious and flat - avoid.
Yes avoid even if someone else says 'how exciting' - you are not them. We have to learn to listen very carefully to the 'still small voice' within which will tell us what is and isn't right for us. We have to listen to the voice however divergent it may be from our friends, family or society's wishes for us. We may even have to admit that our own wishes for ourselves are not right....
If we don't learn the art of listening to ourselves alarming things happen, accidents, bodies collapse, we enter a long arid desert of the soul, mechanically doing things because we 'must' 'should' 'ought' and we don't understand why we are unhappy.
It is easy to do something we have done before because we have done it before - it is far harder to stop doing something and instead experiment to find what is right just for you.
an interesting extract from some writing by Brenda Ueland.
we have to practice one art form in our career and nothing else. If we do more than one thing then we are a dilettante... Ian Gregory shows otherwise.
I got my copy through the post today. Been sunk on sofa reading it. Go here to get your own.
Send a Cow
Oxfam Unwrapped
Buy Nothing Christmas - including alternative non commercial and no money presents
I'm overjoyed as I've decided what will be my 'to me from me' present this year (shsh don't tell). Some years ago I found Christmas much more bearable if you take things in hand and give yourself exactly what you want instead of hoping someone will guess. It takes away the deprived feeling of giving giving giving without gettintg something back. I can't remember where I got the idea from but it might have been from an article in a magazine.
I got my idea for my present from Andrea Scher's Holiday Gift Guide. So I'm getting one of these.
Soulful Holidays for Singles is an article I wrote a few years ago.
The relentless onset of the dark has been pulling me down recently. Its pitch black at 4pm here in Scotland. I just want to curl up on the sofa with my knitted blanket drawn over me and a bar of Green & Black's Dark Cherry Chocolate.
As I looked out of the bus window and saw christmas lights in shop windows I wondered if all the hoopla is just a way of trying to chase away the dark?
In any case chasing away the dark recently has been helped by:
Pink Cashmere Gloves - Hawick Cashmere in Grassmarket
Angels on Bare Skin skin cleanser from Lush - the essential oils perk me up
Hot Chocolate with a centred friend.
Fresias
Going outside at lunchtime to store up light.
If the time of year is getting you down I hope you can gift to yourself something cheering or even better several something cheerings.
One day long long time ago a badly paid princess toiled in an underfunded arts organisation where she was expected to sweep out the filing cabinets, open the mail, process orders and do the marketing with no budget what so ever.
The organisation was also dependent on volunteer undermaids to keep the place going. One day a letter came from Switzerland from a woman asking to come and spend time at the organisation and improve her English. As was the policy I sorry the princess wrote back immediately (though probably via surface mail as it was cheaper) saying ‘come’. Some months later Elizabet arrived.* After a few weeks of observing the haphazard slightly desperate measures employed in marketing the organisation Elizabet drew the Princess aside and asked err how she’d got the job and erhum what qualifications she’d go. She was most perplexed to discover that in the UK one could get jobs without being trained for them. One could also get jobs without really being paid for them either… anyway Elizabet picked herself off the floor and as she had worked for several major Swiss publishing firms tried to inculcate the rudiments of marketing. One of the most startling facts which has stuck in my head as if branded there is this. The average return on a direct mail leaflet is less than 1%. That is you are lucky to get one response in 100. Phew! I felt less of a failure from that time when I sent out 1500 leaflets advertising our plays and got two orders back then… All to the good so began to realise how much hard work marketing is. One friend does high level networking change meetings in the disability field – will send out 100 + letters about a seminar to a highly highly select target group and will be lucky to get 20.
Now I’ve accepted that marketing is hard. I work backwards how many of x would I like to sell? Eg if I have to fill 12 places on a course I need to cart about the minimum of 1200 leaflets and place them in likely places or even unlikely places. I’ve had dreams of advertising or even word of mouth/internet taking away the hard graft but sadly it doesn’t work.
* Of course her English was perfect.
a fabulous find and an example of the joys of the internet. Lost myself in a while imagining knitting up some 'Now Voyager' inspired 1940's knits.
Moleskine notebooks are being sent out into the world and the writers/artists who use them are sending back scans. I signed up for the 1000 Jounals Project last year but my journal went missing in creative action... hope the same doesn't happen to the Moleskine.
Has a free email to notify writers of deadlines for competitions, burseries etc. Also interesting interviews and articles on the online version of the mag.
I'm prompted by two postings one at Michael Nobbs and another at Pomegrantes & Paper
So my challenge to all of you this week is to start thinking about sustainable creativity. Many of you don't need this challenge; you have it down pat and your blogs and journals glow with sketches and scarves and poems and prose. Many of us, however, need to focus on what we can do instead of bemoaning what we can't. We need to move to action before all our points of light fade out and we're left with the shadow of inaction.
Loretta
~~~~
Ah heres the rub... I had a week where I did a proposal for a documentary project, taught a class, started a new job, did a morning of research in an archive (4 hour journey involved), knitted, wrote 10 postcards to friends, cooked 4 dinners from scratch, went to a 'networking' event, helped one film-maker hook up potentially with a producer, punted a business idea, tried to set up meetings re biz idea, restrained myself from killing lodger who threw away a cheque and resulted in a few hours grubbing about in a black bin bag of rubbish, took two huge unweildy bags of stuff to charity shop, processed three films, took photographs as I went about my daily life, journalled, and did innumerable hours of chat on phone and email to be good friend. Of course all I can focus on is that I've not uplated this blog since last wednesday, arranged my annual christmas event invites, or done more housework etc.
We have to focus on what we do - do. Usually when we sit down and list it our 'not very productive weeks' are filled with activity. Its time we gave ourselves credit and worked out what is a reasonable amount of creative activity to put into a week or day and what isn't. And to monitor what really isn't worth spending time on.
er... emergency!
it seems the email i sent last week didn't reach you....
so, very short notice but... doing anything tomorrow night at 7pm
(thurs 18 nov)?
for a measly two squids you could immerse yourself in the pure
cinematic joy that is whateverworks at the cameo cinema
two pounds gets you into a screening / informal interview with bafta award winning filmmaker morag mckinnon and then a couple of
complimentary cocktails in the bar afterwards.... it screams value, no?
we'll be showing three pieces of morag's work, 'hoppla!' which she
co-directed as part of her masters degree, the bafta award winning
'home' and an excerpt from the bafta award winning channel 4 series
'buried' which she also directed.
tickets are available in advance either in person at the cameo cinema or by calling the box office on 0131 228 4141. the screening / q&a will start at 7pm on the nail and will last for one hour.
remember, if you can't get a ticket to the screening you're more than welcome to hang out with us in the bar from 8pm onwards...
also, a quick thanks to our supporters: channnel 4: ideasfactory,
edinburgh film focus and shooting people.
ok, hope to see you tomorrow
richard
is a writing networking sort of group which meets at the Travers Bar in Edinburgh 1pm. Its meeting tomorrow. Email anne hay at blueyonder dot co dot uk for more info.
of How Much Joy has started a Painless Self Promotion blog ... I'm skeptical but I'm adding it to my reading list.
This website started by Alex Beauchamp has interviews with 25 women who make a living creatively.
This is very cool my best friend Rebecca Knapp (Fife girl done good!) has produced a short directed by Mike Walker which will be shown at the AFI in LA on Monday. If you scroll down the list here you can get more info about the showing times. Does God Play Football is set in South Yorkshire in the 1960's where Tommy is growing up alienated from the rest of the village as he doesn't have a father.
I'm sewing up the blanket I've been knitting since Spring. It may not be as big as I expected so a few more emergency squares are being made up to make sure its big enough for winter snuggling on sofa with coca. The uncertainty of the world at the moment makes repetitative meditative knitting a particularly attractive option.
A friend sent me this terrific article from London's Metro about a knitting circle which meets - on the Circle line!
Couldn't find it online so I copy for your delectation.
"Today's meeting was organised by Pauline Wall who's fully prepared with flasks of tea and homemade brownies. 'There is no definitive guide and no real organisation to our knitting circles. Youa re simply a knitter and you want to knit with other people who share you passion,' says Pauline. 'So you find a group on a knitting forum that suits you. I quite like the sporadic nature of our Underground meetings. People from regular meetings - such as those in bars or cafes - can drop in, say hi and then scurry back to their own lives.
The combination of women, needlework and gossip is nothing new. Stich 'n'Bitch was the phrase coined for knit-mad housewives back int he 1950's. The term as lives on and Stitch'n' Bitch is now the name of today's biggest international knitting forum. Knitchicks can be found in various forums around the world, from New York to Australia.
But why the underground? 'People come and go,' says Pauline, whose full-time job is in finance. 'You see all different types of people. We get to do as much people-watching as those watching us. But, more importantly, we have a wider audience on the Underground and can touch more people. If you are sitting in a corner of a smoky bar somewhere, you don't actually talk to anybody else. We want people to see us and ask questions.
A few stops later, as if on cue, a young Australian girl asks Pauline about her wool. After she jumps off, Pauline tells me: 'Kiwis and Australians are far friendlier than the English, who are not as forthcoming.'
After completing just one lap of the Circle line, I'm having rouble with my stitching. One of the knittes, Aneeta, swaps seats to help me.
But technique aside, I'm not sure this if for me. I'm ready to shrivel up in embarrassment. As we arrive at Victoria, the carriage is suddenly filled with commuters fascinated by our small group. In a hushed tone, I ask Aneeta if the stares bother her. 'I don't care who stares. I'm perfectly happy,' she replies, very loudly.
'When we need the loo or a fresh drink, or when we have other plans, we call it a day.' says Rachel, a fellow knitter. 'The good thing about knitting on the Tube is that, even at the start of your journey, you are already on your way home. You just have to wait for the right stop.'
Or knitting party comes to an end and I get off with Pauline at King's Cross, while the others continue on to their own destinations. Pauline explaisn why she enjoys this type of knitting circle so much. 'It's a nice, transitory feeling, You do your lap, your time is up and you move on. During that time, you are not anywhere in particular but you are still doing something you love.'
snatches
International Stitch 'n' Bitch
Get Crafty
Cast Off - a knitting forum started by Artists
Knitting for charity
I used to knit blankets for Oxfam but they appear not to be accepting them anymore - if any one knows of a UK based charity which wants blankets please let me know.
Its too easy to think that we must be doing in order to be creative. I firmly believe that the not doing times are as important or even more important than the doing times. The not doing lays down the materials (in terms of experience and maturation of experience) and the energy stores needed to be creative.
Generally we dismiss rest as being unproductive which I think is a mistake or even dangerous. I was visiting a friend this afternoon who has been laid low by flu for a week and still did not feel well and I tried to encourage her to not go back to work until entirely rested. I've pushed myself in the past to work and do and produce beyond my energy capacity and creative stores and the results are not pretty.
You have enough
You are enough
You do enough
There is only one author which I've found which has fully celebrated and emphasised the importance of rest - Robyn Posin.
As she says 'Rest is as urgent significant, meaningful, honorable and productive as any other purposeful act!'
Promoted by the Wellcome Trust - prizes are up to £2000 in photographic equipment. Info here.
Paying attention to where we are
A student complained about how awful it was to take the bus to work and not read. How then she ad to listen to the hiss hiss of personal stereos instead of burying herself in a book or a newspaper. (All this was prompted by my encouragement of a week of media deprivation to kickstart creativity as prescribed by Julia Cameron in The Artists Way)
But buried in a book or a newspaper we do not pay attention, we do not see what is around us. Everything is fascinating and what we find fascinating is the building blocks of creativity and art. If we don’t look up to notice what is around us we will miss it.
I suggested that the student thought of herself as an anthropologist amongst the ‘Headphone People’ taking mental notes on their customs and cultural norms. She retorted that I was far too ‘noble’ but it isn’t noble. When we dislike, resent and find dull our lives we cannot connect to our creative part. It withers and dies without stimulation.
When we are out of our ‘normal life’ it is apparently easy to find everything unsusual, fascinating and intriguing. You have seen the odd things that Japansese tourists photograph? Take tourist eyes around the life you lead.
Try This:
Pretend you are doing photo journalism essay on your life. Carry a camera with black & white film for a week and photograph the mundane, the water cooler, washing up in the sink, fire hyrants and work noticeboards.
Pretend you are a tourist – visit tourist sites in your town. Take a bus tour.
Pass time in café but don’t read, eavesdrop, write postcards, imagine the lives of the people you observe around you.
Draw your life. Take a sketchbook and a pen around with you. Whenever you have a moment, queuing, communting, a dull lunchtime, start sketching. Danny Gregory can provide some insipiration.
Make a poster of your life. Perhaps using your photographs and your sketches photocopied into a collage. Idea from Learning to Love You More via Keri Smith.
Fellow blogger and online correspondent Michael Nobbs has launched a paper illustrated blog (in olden days called a zine..) The Beany.
Bebe Oulai is running a class Thursdays 6.30pm-7.30pm at 25 Blackfriars Street, Edinburgh tel 0131 624 3777 for more info.
The Indian Music and Dance Collective presents an afternoon performance & workshop
Sunday 31st October, 2-5pm Buddhafields, 25 Blackfriars St (off Royal Mile, Eidnburgh) Tickets £7/5 (Children £3).
All welcome if you are a player, please bring along your instrument.
The Sarod traces its origin back to the folk instrument of ancient Afghanistan, and Persia, the 'Rabab'. It is a short-necked, unfretted, waisted lute carved from a block of teak. Its broad, triangular fingerboard is superimposed with a sheet of metal and carries eight main strings - four melody strings, two drone strings and two chikari strings (raised drone strings plucked frequently to punctuate melodic phrases and provide rhythmic variety) and between eleven to fifteen sympathetic strings that are tuned to the scale of the Raga in use. The strings are plucked with a triangular plectrum.
Ameen is vibrant, inspiring and the most promising Sarod player in the country Hindustan Times
IMDCOLL is also starting a new class in Sitar at the end of October. For more information on this or any of the other Indian dance, music or singing classes run by IMCOLL, please contact Dana MacLeod 0845 125 9926 info@imdcoll.org.uk
A few years ago I came up with a new word. I was fed up with the old art-history idea of genius – the notion that gifted individuals turn up out of nowhere and light the way for all the rest of us dummies to follow. I became (and still am ) more and more convinced that the important changes in cultural history were actually the product of very large numbers of people and circumstances conspiring to make something new. I call this ‘scenius’ – it means ‘the intelligence and intuition of a whole cultural scene’. IT is the communal form of genius. This word is now starting to gain currency- the philosopher James Ogilvy uses it in his most recent book.
Now I would love to be involves in making something to explore this idea- to support my thesis that new ideas come into being through a whole host of complicated circumstances, accidents, small incremental contributions made in isolation (as well as gifted individuals, of course) that in total add up to something qualitatively different: something nobody has ever seen before and which could not have been predicted from the elements that went to make it up.
One of the reasons I am attached to this ideas it that is capable of dignifying many more forms of human innovation under its umbrella than the old idea of ‘genius’, which exemplifies what I called the ‘Big Man’ theory of history – where events are changed by the occasional brilliant or terrible man, working in heroic isolation. I would prefer to believe that the world is constantly being remade by all its inhabitants: that it is a co-operative enterprise. Folk arts and popular arts have always been criticised because they tend to exhibit evolutionary, incremental change. – because they lack sufficient ‘Big men’ making shockingly radical and unpopular steps in the future. Instead the pop scene carries much of its audience with it - something the fine arts people are inclined to distrust: the secret question is, ‘How can it possibly be good if so many people like it?’
…..But I want to say that the reality of how culture and ideas evolve is much closer to the one we as pop musicians are liable to accept – of a continuous toing and froing of ideas and imitations and misconstruals, of things becoming thinkable because they are suddenly technically possible. Of action and reaction, than the traditional fine-art model which posits and inspired individual sorting it all out for himself and then delivering it unto a largely uncomprehending and ungrateful world.
There are a few recent cultural moments where the scenius process is particularly clear: 1905-15 in Russia; Dadaism in France; the experimental music scene in America through the late fifties and early sixties; the Anglo-American psychedelic scene of the sixties; punk in 1975-8 (the eclectic and co-operative nature of which is documented in John Savage’s book England’s Dreaming); and then perhaps something as specific as the evolution of ‘adobe style’ in South Western American architecture, or even the mid to late eighties at Goldsmith’s! It could also be interesting to include some scenes that were less specifically artistic – for instance, the history of the evolution of the internet. In all of these sequences, there are sufficient gifted and eccentric individuals to satisfy anyone’s hero appetite, but the interesting thing is how they were fed and supported by a vigorous and diffuse cultural scene. That’s the process I would like to explore.
Brian Eno in A Year with Swollen Appendices: Brian Eno’s Diary Faber and Faber 1996 ISBN 0571179959 Pick up a copy through your local independent bookseller or second-hand.
either my discovery of salt and pepper potato chips has made me a size or two bigger, or my pattern maker goofed on her last two assignments. i picked up my new sweatshirt/hoodie and not only was it way too tight, but the sleeves were about four inches too short. since i only have 6 days until the trade show where i will be introducing these items, i'm starting to freak out. I'M FREAKING OUT. On a saner note, after a full night of magnet making, i was able to ship most of the orders on my "to ship" pile; only those with letterpress notecards on them are still waiting to go. it was a successful friday all the way around. as the orders went out the door, new orders came over the fax machine to replace them. normally, the phone and fax don't ring at all on fridays, but today, i got six faxed orders, possibly a friday world record. three of them are already shipped, the others will go out on monday as part of my push to get every in-house order out the door before my trade show begins. this is certainly not going to be a workless weekend. i've got colloection letters to get out, line sheets to create and print, and a huge pile of paperwork on my desk that mus be gone through. sunday is scarf day at the flea market. and if i still have some energy left, cutting of the scarves, so ana can iron and glue them, for pins, on monday. i keep attempting to get some back stock on our shelves, but i'm having a hard time keeping up. we got over 8000 pins finished last thursday, by today, they were nearly gone. this is good, i know. but with exhaustion, comes frustration. and i don't remember ever being this exhausted.
This is from Pamela Barsky's great blog in which she blogs about running her business.
including one with director Anthony Minghella. More info here.
Send an SAE to The Scottish Poetry Library, 5 Crichton's Close, Canongate, Edinburgh, EH8 8DT.
Willa Cline did Nawarimo last year and posted chapters as she went along. You can read them here.
Visual Arts Scotland is an arts organisation which organises an annual exhibition. If you search on the website for 'Carola' you can see my mom's pictures.
I met someone for coffee yesterday who has moved here from the States and as I tired to explain the best shopping areas and things to do culturally was reminded of things I take for granted about my city. I was also reminded about the great things to do right where I am.
Keri Smith has got a cartoon about taking a mini vacation at home.
Go to your own tourist office and browse, check out tours and places to see, also see if there are any festivals or events coming up which look interesting. See where you live with new eyes.
there is some fantastic good writing on blogs if you can find it. This post by Beth of Cassandra Pages got the tears going in my eyes.
My first - hopefully more upmarket than most. Cocktails to be followed by Cuban food/dancing.
Indiebride for the independent bride.
The Guardian has a mood poem finder.
In the meanwhile here is one by Rita Dove
The First Book
Open it.
Go ahead, it won't bite.
Well... maybe a little.
More a nip, like. A tingle.
It's pleasureable, really.
You see, it keeps on opening.
You may fall in.
Sure, it's hard to get started;
remember learning to use
knife and fork? Dig in:
You'll never reach bottom.
It's not like it's the end of the world -
just the world as you think
you know it.
From On The Bus With Rosa Parks pub by Norton
"The Script Factory is a training and development organisation which places screenwriters at the heart of the European film industry by acting as the link between writers and industry.
The Script Factory has a reputation for finding and promoting new screenwriting talent and for devising creative ways to showcase and present new screenwriters and their work, by designing innovative, accessible, and enjoyable events, courses and materials, to support writers in their journey through the industry, and assist the industry in identifying new talent. It also attracts a loyal following of cinema enthusiasts who relish the chance to get a glimpse behind the scenes of how films are made"
More info here.
because if you do you wait for ever. I can count on my fingers the number of times I've created something and it seemed divinely inspired by the muse. If I waited for the perfect moment I'd have done about 3 haikus, some needlework, a lot of knitting in the past 12 years. Instead of waiting for the gentle breeze, the hand of the muse and the twittering of birds (in the words of creativity writer SARK) I've got stuck in mostly when I'd promised something which I then wanted to get out of but I went on and did it anyway. The result, I've written poetry, been published, made 5 films, written a half dozen others, worked on umpteen films in other capacities, written articles, made blogs and websites, knitted 12 blankets, taken 1000 plus photos, journalled (a small forrest of trees have been felled), drawn and painted, collaged, learned to use super8.
So what I say to you is that if you have ever had a thought flit across your mind about trying ... oh basket weaving go out now find a book or a class and start. As for all of you who ever wanted to write a novel find a pencil and some paper becuase National Novel Writing Month is about to gear up. No excuses now this is your chance to write a short novel (175 pages) in the company of others around the globe. Do it. Allow yourself to create anyway. It doesn't matter if it sucks - get the words down and you can fix it later.
I posted about this in September during Talk Like a Pirate Day. I've found an online version which you can play if you have broadband. Its here at the Fox Searchlab Shorts.
Friday
Start with bad grace, I think ‘Whats the use?’ ‘What a waste of time to even TRY.’
Start anyway.
About 5 hours of mulling over stuff, intensive ‘googling’, finally I force myself to sit down with pen and paper to write ‘something’ ‘ANYTHING’. I scratch out a few pathetic sentences. Then I scrawl a page. Then I bake an apple/egg bake thing. Blog, email my friend at work, go outside see that my organic box has been delivered. Decided to spontaneously invite friends to dinner and make Moroccan style stew with butter nut squash. Make stew. Go back to computer write up hand-written notes. Print off document. Hide crap in living room. Clear dinning room table, turn off lights and light candles to disguise shambolic state of flat. Friends arrive we discuss document one friend disappears into my workroom (commenting loudly on the mess) commands computer re-writes document. We have a heated debate about his changes with 3 different points of view. At 11 pm two friends dash to get last bus home and my other friend cycles off.
Saturday
Wake up with a groan – I have to prepare the final document, go to the only post office which is open late on a Saturday and meet some people in the afternoon.
More bad grace re-read document. Decide to tone it down as I know the potential readers have had their sense of humour surgically removed. Go to find another image for document. Realise time is passing, email my afternoon meet ups to say I’ll be half an hour later. Try and print off document to proof read and as I do lose document. Re-write document. Try to print again the printer won’t print. (Its been behaving perfectly for MONTHS). Leave workroom encourage myself to breathe breathe breathe, and make a cup of tea. Go back to workroom turn of printer turn it on again. It prints ! Fix typos, set to print again. Find more typos, print again. Find padded envelope. Write address stick items into envelope. Try and find stamps. Flee out of the house at 1.30pm giving myself an hour to go to post office and meet friends.
Now I’m in agony that I should have done the damned thing differently. But I know I could never have made it perfect. I’m also aware that some of the things I’ve done with the worst kind of attitude have turned out to be the most successful moves I’ve made. I don’t know in this instance. I do know I just have to let go of the outcome.
Nothing like having a creative project with a deadline to make other things seem more interesting!
Crossroads Dispatches is "The generalist synthesist weblog - quite often about innovations in innovation and marketing. Juxtaposing the right brain and left. Yin and yang. Analytical and intuitive. Technical and visceral. Future and in-the-now. Intersection of technology, creativity & innovation, leadership, systems, beliefs and worldviews. Eventually, on-the-road coverage from a world journey to the emerging creative class centers of the world." I started reading and got so drawn in I'm blogging the link so I'm not deflected from what I should be doing any longer!
Go or rather run to Lidle's in Leith were Agfa colour 200 asa is £1.99 for 2 x 36.
Check out the facilities at the Stills Gallery Cockburn Street, go further up the hill to Beyond Words the luscious specialist photography bookshop. Check out one of the world's longest running photographic societies - founded in 1861! Finally check out the new JPG magazine.
The Scottish Poetry Library is running a series of events to celebrate its 20th Anniversary. South African actress Janet Suzman will be helping to launch National Poetry Day. Also information about The School of Poets a workshop which meets monthly in the library.
In the meanwhile as its such a gray and miserable day I urge you to go and wander around Kaffe Fassett's site to get some colour.
Q: Is true creativity the possession of a relatively small percentage of the population?
A: No, absolutely not. We are all creative. Creativity is a natural life force that all can experience in one form or another. Just as blood is part of our physical body and is nothing we must invent, creativity is part of us and we each can tap into the greater creative energies of the universe and pull from that vast, powerful spiritual wellspring to amplify our own individual creativity.
As a culture, we tend to define creativity too narrowly and to think of it in elitist terms, as something belonging to a small chosen tribe of "real artists." But in reality, everything we do requires making creative choices, although we seldom recognize that fact. The ways in which we dress, set up our homes, do our jobs, the movies we see, and even the people we involve ourselves with—these all are expressions of our creativity. It is our erroneous beliefs about creativity, our cultural mythology about artists ("All artists are broke, crazy, promiscuous, self-centered, single, or they have trust funds") that encourage us to leave our dreams unfulfilled. These myths most often involve matters of money, time, and other people’s agendas for us. As we clear these blocks away, we can become more creative.
Read more of the interview with Julia here.
Quentin Blake children's book illustrator is a supporter of this campaign to get people drawing and looking. BBC Radio 4 had an item on it in Front Row arts programme with presenter Mark Lawson being sent to try some drawing which he'd last done aged 14. I was so intrigued by the descriptions I went to look at the results. At the same place you can play the feature on Real Player. I loved that Quentin Blake's parting advice to get better was to 'practice'. I started drawing in a very undisciplined with way a class last autumn and then each time I sat down in a cafe I started drawing tablescapes of cappachinos, sugar bowls, cruet sets. At first they were heinous but you know something? After perservering over a few months they are recognisable and have a certain wobbly charm. I love that I can flip open my moleskeine and be reminded of a lunch in 'Spoon' or 'EH1'
I'd wanted to join a bookgroup for ages - mostly after hearing the uproarious noise from when my mother's group was in residence. I also needed to get over my fear of reading novels. I saw an ad for one and joined reckoning it would also do me good to meet some new people out of my normal circle of friends. Its taken a while but I spent last night discussing Magnus Mills The Restraint of Beasts - a Withnail & I like black comedic book. If you miss the pleasures of reading and would like to have space to discuss books I highly recommend joining a group. Bookslut has guidelines in its usual inimitable way for starting a group.
Toni Morrision didn't publish her first book until she was nearly 40?
We are indoctrinated into believing that success must come early ... bombarded by the phase 'new young talent' well what about waiting to actually have something to say?Article on Morrison at the Guardian.
Shivermetimbers!
The Return of Peg Leg Pete
Ahoy there, me Hearties.
Shiver me timbers, this ‘ere be Sunday the 19th of September in the year of two thousand and four, an’ it be International Talk Like A Pirate Day an’ all.
Yaa-Haaaarrrrr!!!!
So we be ‘aving some tasty news for yer landlubber lugholes.
Scotland’s premiere poignant piratical palaver, THE RETURN OF PEG LEG PETE, ‘as been a-gatherin’ in the booty, me beauties.
OOOOO-AAARRRRRR!
Our swashbucklin’ chum ‘as been tipped the wink that he be set to swag OUTSTANDING ORIGINAL ACHIEVEMENT award from the scurvy bilge-rats at Frederick Festival Of Film in Maryland, USA on this very evening.
AAAARRRRRRR!
An’ that not be all, I tell ye!
Since setting sail, our wee sea shanty has bagged the AUDIENCE AWARD from the Down Under Film Festival in Australia, and BEST NARRATIVE SHORT from the Minneapolis/St.Paul International Film Festival in the USA. Petey-boy also blagged a BEST OF FESTIVAL screening at the Weiterstadt Open Air Film Festival in Germany.
Precious booty indeed.
We thought e’d like ter know.
David ‘shiver-me-timbers’ Cairns
Nigel ‘pieces-of-eight’ Smith
From Keri Smith
how to be a guerilla artist
Guerilla art is a fun and insidious way of sharing your vision with the world. It is a method of art making which entails leaving anonymous art pieces in public places. It can be done for a variety of reasons, to make a statement, to share your ideas, to send out good karma, or just for fun. My current fascination with it stems from a belief in the importance of making art without attachment to the outcome. To do something that has nothing to do with making money, or listening to the ego.
My first experience with being a guerilla artist was in my first year of art school in a class taught by conceptual artist Shirley Yanover. One of our assignments was to create some form of graffiti in a public place (we were allowed to choose the were and how). We went out in groups of four, (two lookouts, and two painters), and proceeded to make our mark on various blank walls across the city. The experience made me terrified and exhilarated at the same time. I wrote quotes from various authors along the bottoms of buildings, on phone booths, and on the sidewalks. I remember the feeling of daring as we sprinted away from unsuspecting police officers.
Now I am not necessarily advocating that you do anything illegal or potentially life threatening. But there is something wonderfully sneaky about leaving some form of art in public places. I like knowing that at some point in time someone might receive a little surprise in the form of a random message from a stranger, or a doodle in an unexpected place. I remember there used to be an artist in Toronto who would bolt text books and old phone books to various things. It became a personal quest of mine to find them all, and I always felt so excited when a new one showed up just under my nose. Experiment with your own ideas.
Possible Formats
1. Sidewalk chalk
2. Sticker art
3. Flyers/posters (see "make a flyer of your day" at http://www.learningtoloveyoumore.com.
4. Journals (pass it on)
5. Zines
6. Object leave behinds (money, gifts, junk)
7. Notes (slogans)
8. Graffiti
9. Book inserts (library)
10. Book leave behinds (bookcrossing.com)
11. Letters (possibly love letters to strangers)
12. The age old 'message in a bottle', or a balloon. Or if you are really adventurous you might be drawn to carrier pigeons.
Potential Ideas for subject matter
-any form of artwork (drawings, collage, doodles, paintings)
-recipes
-photos
-good luck charms
-fortunes
-quotes
-variations on a theme
-many guerilla artist are politically motivated and find that being anonymous allows them to be more controversial or extreme with their message. Popular with activists.
Be sure to check out the full blog as the comments have great suggestions as well.
Check out her blog. Full of beautiful photos and writing.
In 1977 a misfit called Gary Wilson pressed 600 copies of a homemade LP then vanished. The LP called 'You think you really know me' slowly because a cult underground hit. Eventually a record company decided to reissue the record but had huge difficulties finding Gary Wilson who had to all intents and purposes disappered. He was eventually tracked down working as a clerk in a porn store.
Now there is a documentary about the mysterious album and its even odder creator called You Think You Really Know Him - the album has been reissued and even Gary had broken down and got himself a website Six Point Four.
I found the story of Gary in Dazed & Confused when bunking off from work. What the cool thing about it is that its message is 'do the work anyway'.
Treehouses... did you know they aren't just for children?
Here's a site for a treehouse builder in Scotland.
Wanted ! Short films, videos and animations
Silver Saucer- a new opportunity for students and indie film makers to have your work shown in alternative settings. Winter 2004/2005. A series of screenings in and around Glasgow.
More sheds shedheaven
In Coldingham in Scotland there is a line of beachhuts around the bay all painted in different colours and in Russia they have dachas and in Denmark people have summer huts and in Britain allotments and gardens secret sheds. What we need is £500 a year and a shed of our own.
Shedista! Shed Lovers of the World, Unite!
Author: Mark Mackintosh
Take it to the streets: a veritable shed revolution is brewing. And it won't be televised. Rory Day sheds some light on the matter.
Across the globe, shed lovers - aka sheddists or shedistas - are strengthening their efforts to promote global shedderdom: a shed for every person on the planet. Their starting point, as with so many lofty causes these days, is the Internet. One of the command centers in the worldwide sheddist web is shedheaven.com, run by Rory Day. We caught up with him to talk revolution (tell it to your mama).
So, Rory, who are you and what's up with this shed heaven thing?
I'm a wandering Scottish shed addict who landed in Amsterdam a few years ago but regularly takes the Easyjet home. When I was working in Russia a few years ago, I fell in love with the Russian home-made holiday house or dacha. I was lucky enough to have access to a bit of hillside in Argyll on the west coast of Scotland, where I bashed one together. It was a little self-built miracle. I haven't been the same since.
Please delight us with a concise history of sheds, the watersheds in shed history, if you will.
Ah, how pleased I am you asked! Well, let me see. I suppose that except for the cave, the shed was probably the first human dwelling. It was probably somewhere in Africa or maybe Mesopotamia - the plans will have started out as something ambitious in corrugated iron on overlapping planks with a 2 inch by 4 inch frame and maybe a transparent roof section to let the sunlight in. Heavy foundations, half doors, fancy things like that. But with the lack of Builder's Merchants in those days it is likely they ended up with a pile of leaves on some sticks leaning against a rock. That's the thing with shed building; you can start anywhere you want, and the likelihood is you're only going to get better. And the rest is history, so you should probably ask a historian.
What are the main shed art forms/building techniques around the world?
Well, unlike human evolution I believe sheds were born spontaneously all round the world, fully-formed out of what was locally available to build with. For instance, on the North American plains, with a shortage of wood and plenty of buffalo hide, the tipi sprang up - a top shed. And in Asia it simply had to be bamboo-based, probably with banana leaves on top. In the far north the first shed was an igloo; in Mongolia a ger or a yurt, using lots and lots of manky felt. In Britain everyone (including the animals of course) chilled out in big round thatched houses with fires in the middle.
There have been some big leaps since those days, of course. I think the roof of the Dutch Barn roof was one, and it influenced American architecture hugely. Corrugated iron, the main ingredient of the modern shanty town, was another. Ashphalt and rolled felt roofs revolutionised the garden shed. And bitumen, a lovely sheddy smell that they should bottle.
Is there an international sheddist conspiracy in the making?
I think conspiracy might be too strong a term; it's more like revelation leading to revolution. People, particularly hairy people, are increasingly remembering their shed pasts and yearning for the simplicity that comes with building your own place and hanging out in it. I believe it's in the genes (maybe it comes with the hair), which is why the bitumen BO spray would be such a winner in the shops, if a little tough on shirts. Also, it might attract the wrong sort of person, but then again...
People are getting sick of things like plasterboard, building regulations, net curtains, carpets. They want a wall you can nail things into without a care, and floors that can be hosed out if you make a mess. Somewhere to put old tins of screws where they feel important. A place for old windows. Sheds are very inclusive and very recycle-friendly. They occupy the middle ground between the modern home and the landfill site. And more and more people are tapping into the shed subculture, so it's just a matter of time before everyone will experience the zen of sheddism.
More on the Zen of Sheddism here
Interview with Julia Cameron
Samuel Bercholz: Your work is nominally about creativity, but it seems to be as much about tools for spiritual growth. What is the connection?
Julia Cameron: People often say to me, "Your book is a Buddhist book," or "This is a book about mysticism, really, or this is a Sufi book." That is probably because creativity is a spiritual path, and at the core of the various spiritual paths are the same lessons. For instance, I recently read Thich Nhat Hanh for the first time, and I found myself thinking that he sees the world with an artist's eye. I think that's because he is very heart-centered. Even though we think of creativity as an intellectual pursuit, in my experience creativity is a heart-centered pursuit. We actually create from the heart. I think it's interesting that the word "heart" has the word "art" embedded in it. It also has the word "ear" embedded in it.
So both Buddhism and creativity involve the art of listening to the heart. That's where the creative impulse arises from. That's why I cannot distinguish between creativity and spirituality. When you're practicing creativity you become a grounded individual, and that communicates the universal.
I've been a writer for more than thirty years, and the issues that arise in the creative practice are the same kinds of issues that arise in a spiritual practice. You get to look at your insecurity. You get to look at your inquisitiveness. You get to look at your fantasy that a satisfied desire will lead to satisfaction. As near as I can tell, this is what happens with a grounded meditation technique: you go through all of the shenanigans of the restless nature of the mind and what you are left with is, just be. Out of being, things are made. So creativity is the act of being.
Read the rest here
" . . . you are all original and talented and need to let it out of yourselves; that is to say, you have the creative impulse.
But the ardor for it is inhibited and dried up by many things; as I said, by criticism, self-doubt, duty, nervous fear which expresses itself in merely external action like running up and downstairs and scratching items off lists and thinking you are being efficient; by anxiety about making a living, by fear of not excelling.
Now this creative power I think is the Holy Ghost. My theology may not be very accurate but that is how I think of it. I know that William Blake called this creative power the Imagination and he said it was God. He, if anyone, ought to know, for he was one of the greatest poets and artists that ever lived.
Now Blake thought that this creative power should be kept alive in all people for all their lives. And so do I. Why? Because it is life itself. It is the Spirit. In fact it is the only important thing about us. The rest of us is legs and stomach, materialistic cravings and fears.
How could we keep it alive? By using it, by letting it out, by giving some time to it.
We have come to think that duty should come first. I disagree. Duty should be a by-product. Writing, the creative effort, the use of imagination, should come first, - at least for some part of every day of your life. It is a wonderful blessing if you will use it. You will become happier, more enlightened, alive, impassioned, light-hearted and generous to everybody else. Even your health will improve. Colds will disappear and all the other ailments of discouragement and boredom.
Now, you see, I have established a reason for your working at writing, not in a trifling, weak way, but with affection and endurance. In other words, I want to make you feel that there is a great intrinsic reward to writing. Unless you feel that you will soon give it up. You won't last very long at it. A few rejection slips will flatten you out. A few years of not making a cent out of it will make you give it up and feel bitterly that it was a waste of time.
I want to assure you with all earnestness, that no writing is a waste of time, - no creative work where the feelings, the imagination, the intelligence must work. With every sentence you write, you have learned something. It has done you good. It has stretched your understanding. I know that."
- Brenda Ueland
If You Want To Write
From Whiskey River
The Year of Sleeping Dangerously
Those bouncy 'lets just all go and follow ones bliss' books can be pretty terrifying but I stumbled across the website for one author Tama J Kieves author of unbelievably enough This Time I DANCE! How one Harvard Lawyer left it all to have it all but she won me over in an extract from her book.
" After I walked out of my hight paced, breathless career I funtioned at what seemd to be two notches above the living dead line. I waited tables, bought groceries and fed my cat. But I slept for what seems to be unnatural numbers of hours. My mind revved up like an eager sports car engine racing the need to create a new and improved life. But I found my physical self dragging around the apartment in slow motion in my underwear in the middle of the day and then taking naps to recuperate. I felt like a beached whale hungering for the sea. I ate bagels and cream cheese and leftovers, and lunchmeats instead. Guilt took finky little notes about my attraction to the refridgerator and read them over in my head.
It didn't take long before I found myself haunted by ratling questions and rude images of wsting away in oblivion while the rest of the world drank lattes to go. Would I just extist in limbo now> Was gazing at my walls for hours 'following my bliss'? just how much could I eat anyway? And how would I pursue "the hero's journey." if it tooke me three hours to get up and bursh my teeth?" "Oh, this is great,"I thought "I've wrecked a Rolls Royce career so I could grow as wide as a Buddha and contemplate the daisies on my quilt.
...Months down the road, my grieving and self - exploration gave way to curiosity and wonder. The naps with a life force of their own ended. Stabs at creativity and expression began. The juice returned and the breath-stealing adventure before me unfurled its shapely red cape. I have almost never felt as small or lost since."
Jeanette Winterson on creativity and the meaning of life.
~~~~
If pills are not the answer. What is?
I don`t have the answer, but I have noticed a few things as I have been up and down the world: ONE: People who complain that life is meaningless, are not prepared to find meaning for themselves - they expect it to be automatically present. Nothing of value is automatic or inevitable - it has to be dug out, coaxed, sought, and when found, celebrated. It may be that creative people understand this, because for us, working at the problem of meaningless, is in itself, meaning. Working at the creative problem brings satisfaction. It may not bring happiness, but it fights despair.
I do not know what is THE MEANING OF LIFE, if there is one, but I do know that making something worthwhile is satisfying. We have to find what it is that is worthwhile to us, one by one, each to each, and then give that something proper space in our lives.
For some it may be children, for others, the pleasures of a real home. Real work is enough for many people, but those who don`t have real work, something else must be found. The key is to find it, and to give it everything. `No one can be happy or fulfilled or whatever word you want to use, unless they have something they value at the centre of their own life.
Inevitably, the sense of a venture greater than yourself brings meaning. A selfish life is never a happy life - and famed so-called selfishness of artists is really a misrepresentation. If the work you do affects other people in a positive way, whether it provokes thought or allows imaginative change, then that work and its pursuit has nothing selfish about it. The truth is, that when we fulfil ourselves as human beings, we give something back to the collective.
Of course, there are plenty of people who claim to be fulfilling themselves while giving back nothing. But let`s not waste time there.
In between bouts of viral near-death, I went to Munich to see Deborah Warner`s RAPE OF LUCRETIA by Benjamin Britten. It was a revelatory piece of work, because it went deep into ideas of suffering, betrayal, and the brutality of war. Watching it, thinking about it, it seemed to me yet again that art forces us to grow. Growth is painful, necessary, but art makes a space where it can happen. There are people who find opera the most redundant of art forms, but nothing is redundant unless the human imagination can no longer find a foothold there.
For me, art is about finding a foothold. It is often a steep climb, but the rock-face we are scaling is ourselves.
All the art forms offer a way into and up through the self. Opera, when it works, combines the force of music with the power of theatre. When it doesn`t work, it is beyond belief bad, because the force of the music is lost. We have to be very careful about blaming the piece of music for the faults of a production. A reason to keep going back to opera re-staged, is to be sure we are finding the music again and again.
The same applies to theatre - is it the text or the staging? Great plays can withstand all kinds of interpretations - just as music can. The challenge and pleasure for us as an audience is in re-visiting the places that we think are familiar, and finding that they are changed. When that happens, we change too.
I hope some of you are going up to the Edinburgh Festival this year. I shall be appearing on Sat 21st of August at 11am, in a tent somewhere. Come and find me if you are around and about.
August 27th is my birthday - which is always a great celebration for me, though as last year was The Rolling Stones at the private London Astoria concert, I`m not sure what I can do this year to improve on that.
For Leos and early Virgos, all, Happy Birthday! We deserve it. If you are a Leo, buy someone else a present on your own birthday, and if you are a Virgo, buy yourself a present - or better still give yourself a present. Vow to make the thing you really want to happen, happen.
Meanwhile, our impossible Prime Minister holidays with Cliff Richard in Barbados, and wonders why he is becoming a joke.
Still, this is the season of summer charity. Pour a glass of pink wine and forgive - if not quite your enemies, at least the people you find ridiculous.
From Jeanette Winterson's site
How to be creative - the 14 rules of Hugh Macleod
via Loobylu
So you want to be more creative, in art, in business, whatever. Here are some tips that have worked for me over the years:
1. Ignore everybody.
The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you. When I first started with the biz card format, people thought I was nuts. Why wasn't I trying to do something more easy for markets to digest i.e. cutey-pie greeting cards or whatever?
(more...)
2. Creativity is its own reward.
You never really reach your goals. By the time you get near to fulfilling them your criteria has already changed. Which is why by the time the world recognizes your genius, it won't seem very real.
3. Put the hours in.
Really its worth checking it out.
Lomo down under
One of the things I did was indulge my photography habit. I took about 12 rolls over the month I was away. I've processed 8 so far with 2 coming back blank - its always a bit of a lomo lottery. I'm beginning to understand more of its foibles - one of them being winding on. About 2/3rds of the way through my trip the front part of my camera became seriously shoogly and loose and the shutter started to stick and I was manually opening it. I went online and found Just Shoot the centre of the Australian Lomographic Society and Lomo Shop. I wrote down the address and thought it would be an epic journey to find it (I'm map reading impaired). Then one evening I passed the shop - sychronicity ! It was infact a bare 25 mins walk from my hostel. But it had slightly odd opening hours.... However I managed to go there show a lovely woman called Karen the appalling state of my Lomo. She gave me gratis 2 special Lomo screws and the address of Five Star Repairs in the State Theatre Building and told me to tell them she'd sent me.
Everyone has a sneaking fascination about the workspaces of writers, painters and other creative people. One of the disappointments of my trip to Australia was that I was unable to visit the Brett Whiteley Studio which was near to where I was staying. I'd read that it was closed until 2 days before I left but when I went around there was a handwritten notice saying it would now be closed until July. Brett Whiteley was a leading Australian artist until he committed sucicide in his 50's. His life history easily consumes most myths about the artistic life.
