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.

CanCan

Some days I wonder about the human race.  Are we here to hinder one another or are we here to help each other? 

There appear to be some people who seem to take great delight in just making things harder for everybody else.

Train ticket collectors for example.  Not the ones who go through the train checking or selling tickets - I generally find them to be ok.  No I mean the mean ones standing at the gate in full regalia.  When their uniform has gone to their head.   Isn't it a given that when travelling - a person is often a bit stressed, with crowds to fight through, bags to (wo)manhandle,  trains to catch, connections to make (other trains to catch).  Stifling, sweaty, dirty airless air to negotiate.  And then you get to the gate, the collector is talking with a colleague and pretends not to notice the queue forming and finally: "You can't use this ticket before 10.30" or "Just you wait a moment" or "Where's the other part of your ticket" and "Why don't you just lick my boots and then I might let you through" (I made that up).

Anyway they are can't people.  I met another one today in a charity shop of all places (usually they are brilliant people) - no I was not buying the duck.   I tried to buy a collection of piano music using a £2 coin given to me by another charity shop (still not the duck) - the lady wasn't having any of it "I can't take that it doesn't look real - it's too shiny".

My parents are brilliant - "there is no such thing as can't" we learned early on (go back to previous post of Seven Sisters 'Exfoliation' - they were used to the underground looking like that - ticket collectors were pleasant, friendly people then) and they brought us lot up to be fairly decent people (no easy task).  However, I discovered that in their younger days they'd gone to Paris and to the Folies Bergere.  Hmmmm.  I have a superb pair of brass theatre glasses given to me by Mum that I am convinced still has one of Dad's eyelashes glued to it from that time. 

Josephine Baker in her banana dress probably wasn't there then as they are not THAT old.  Although she might have been because she was definitely a can person.   Ms Baker was a tour de force in her time, apart from working in the Folies Bergere and Vaudeville she was active in the US Civil Rights Movement, was given a Medal of Honour for her work in the French Resistance and was adored by Picasso, Hemingway, EE Cummings, Alexander Calder and Castro to name a tiny few.

Just up the road at the Moulin Rouge the CanCan was in full swing.  It wasn't just the absinthe, they also had their own spirit.  No Edible Panties needed there.