What is it for?

Just travelled back.  Being away is always a little bit tricky.  It means not having easy access to the stuff that is usually around us, the collected stuff that might become something or other, the clothes that you might feel like wearing on a given day, or to tuck into the food normally available.  Not that any of it's important really.  Being away pays for the days at home.  So I'm not complaining just stating my thinking.  It does mean that my appreciation for home is greater than when it was elsewhere but always available.  It also means being exposed to even more possibilities for making work.

I've got several bits of work on the go, photographic stills and moving image.  None of these are fully resolved yet (if they ever truly are anyway) and any one of them could continue as long I do.   Chopping and changing, rather than focusing on one thing, makes each piece (series/sequence/set) take longer to complete.   And there is always more pulling at me, wanting to be noticed and/or recorded.  So that really there are endless pieces begun and unfinished waiting for attention.

This blog is unresolved in my mind, how to make it work for me - to suit my way of working...  is it slowly evolving into whatever it might become or is it a scrambled version of my thinking?  I can't tell.   It feels strange to have something undefined (other than it's name) hovering in the background expecting to be accessed and attended to, like a newly found distant relative.   Once the connection has been made can it ever be stopped?

In my ignorance I never really considered Picasso to be that great until seeing a retrospective that filled me with awe and excitement.  His work was superb.  Every day he filled his sketchbooks/ notebooks with ideas.  Driven to produce, to explore a line, realize a thought.   Playfully and seriously.   Looking and seeing, noting.  All those thoughts expressed, made visible and so very adept at it was he.  

Each day I continue to explore the ideas in my head and those that are presented to me even just through proximity.  One that I will not be exploring any time soon (if indeed ever) was the young businessman on the escalator trailing a suitcase and singing "Nick nack paddy wack give a dog a bone..." the darn song has followed me all the way home and is threatening to ruin my slumber.

Waving about

It is always so easy to be distracted by minutiae instead of getting on with the long list of more important things that require attention.  As each day passes the more important things become more urgent, another day closer to the absolute deadline and yet they still haven't been addressed.  All the while that small insignificant stuff keeps itself at the top of the list.  Why is that?

Last night I was lying in bed waiting for sleep.  A habit I had as a child was to hold one arm straight up in the air and wave it in a small circular motion.  Back to last night, I was a bit surprised to catch myself doing it again.  It reminded me of Foxy, not the Foxy of Merrie Melodies but Wolfie (his girlfriend's mother erroneously called him Foxy) from Citizen Smith (John Sullivan) played by Robert Lindsay.  But of course I had remembered incorrectly and although it was Robert Lindsay, it was as 'Michael Murray' in GBH (Alan Bleasdale) that he had the arm tic.  

Lying there with my arm in the air I noticed it looked rather thin - emaciated even - odd indeed since normally I am more concerned with the bingo wings that appeared overnight when I reached 40.  The lack of alcohol has definitely impacted on my weight and my face looks thinner in the mirror, however the amount of chocolate being consumed must surely be reversing the effect.   It must be an optical illusion (the thin arm) or as a result of gravity, the fat slipped down to rest on my shoulder perhaps?  Sleepy as I was it didn't occur to me to compare it with the other arm - maybe I will later, for now it's far too cold to reveal any unnecessary skin.

Hibernating

HAPPY NEW YEAR.
Yes, my greeting is a little late.  Feeling oh so lethargic and have for days, were I a brown bear it might be understandable.  It IS cold, though not in here where I'm sitting looking out at the snow falling again, gorgeous fat flakes and it's hard, isn't it, to really grasp that each of those flakes are unique?  Especially once it's settled and you're crunching through it.

In here I'm wrapped up and have been ruminating on so many strands of thought, a cluster of liquorice string like (or matted hair: a beehive, back-combing gone mad) thoughts that could do with being picked apart.

Inertia.