So keen to embrace creativity, passion and enthusiasm – whether in business, travel, writing or any of my interests. Grateful to some new friends who are showing me so much about how this process works, and how to nurture and respect the creative spark in so many parts of our lives.
Great session this weekend with Wendy Ann Greenhalgh using art to inspire our writing.
Very enjoyable 3 hours – including three guided exercises as we moved on a journey from lyrical and figurative art to complete abstraction – creating drafts for a Flash piece and two free form exercises to develop further.
I really enjoyed this – in a basic sense this is very similar to how I work with my own photos to get creative writing started – but on a very different level in terms of the art work involved and the great guidance offered by Wendy.
Just need to turn those drafts into at least one article to publish – two weeks to go!
Exciting news – but poignant and sad – my Ménage à trois in the bathroom has been successfully brought to a conclusion – but sadly all of the magic – as well as the spider and much of the conversation – has gone.
This sounds a bit like a Burgessian introduction to a blog – so to explain.. I have always been bad in the bath. By which I mean I can’t stay in them for longer than a few minutes – which means my expensive organic muscle repairing whatnots are largely wasted. This is a shame, because my bath has jets and foam and all of those things. Plus music.
Recently – by which I mean months – the tedium – and hence the length of the bath – has been reduced/increased by the participation of a very large spider and a plastic duck, the former voluntary and the latter not so much.
I say voluntary – the truth is that the spider likes being in the hole where one of the jets is, so every time I have a bath I carefully wash him ( or her ) out, rescue it with tissue – and place the tired thing on a shelf to recover. This has been going on for weeks. For some unknown reason it will always slide back into the bath after a few hours ( I assume – I have never seen this happen ) and be ready to repeat the exhausting journey the next day.
The fascination for me has been that out of the corner of my eye I have increasingly been convinced that the duck is happy to be put in the water – it smiles – which of course is completely silly. I never really paid this much attention – just a peripheral vision trigger, sub conscious response kind of thing – but I have been gradually talking to it – like “Yay – there you go”… bob bob smile smile … “Too much foam? Jets on or off do you think?”
I did the other day have an extended conversation, asking it whether it was happy because it could see the spider and therefore felt less likely to be grabbed, although to the best of my knowledge spiders don’t hunt ducks and this spider I absolutely know is as even worse swimmer than I am..
So my point is that today I felt that this strange triangle of relationships needed resolving. The spider was easy – I carefully took it outside and installed it in a crevice in a garden wall. I will regularly check for updates. The duck, however required a more painstaking analysis.
And this is what I found.
The duck smiles when you put it in the water because it goes from eye level – on the shelf – to below eye level – in the water. And their beaks are cunningly designed so that when seen straight on they look a bit lost- but from slightly above they are quite obviously thrilled with life.
Here :
Bemused DuckHappy Duck
It’s the same duck [ Borges would love me ]
So what I desperately want to know is – did the toy companies plan all of this?
Another short project – this time to take images that have interesting textures.
I really enjoyed this.
The walls of Seville are filled with texture, so that is where I found most of these images in a few hours of pleasant wandering about in this great town.
In just a couple of hours I found so many images and places to get me thinking.
So many times, if I want to capture images I just need to get out there. Travel of any kind is so stimulating, and there’s nothing wrong when a very short train ride can provide the same kind of response as an international flight..
I particularly enjoyed taking the featured image for this post. Some free runners practising created this opportunity when the woman appeared in the distance.
Was in a noisy pub in Brighton this evening and took a few minutes out to look for images where you wouldn’t normally expect them.
Juxtaposition is a good one to look for – here the light behind the wine glass offers a commentary.
Maybe the lamp shade also encourages you to make assumptions as the viewer – is this a basic kind of place where both the lamp and the wine could do with upgrading?
Sometimes you just get stuck in the wrong place with the wrong camera, but if you take enough shots and enjoy the experience you can still capture images that connect emotionally with what you are feeling.
So here’s my effort from a couple of evenings ago. On the White Night Festival in Seville, I went to a great Flamenco performance – and only had a pocket camera – but actually I quite like the results.
They are of Carmen Iniesta Iniesta – an amazing performance – and all completely free. It took place in the Palacio Marqueses de la Algaba – a 15th century site with the most gorgeous inner courtyard, high arches and a haunting echo to the wonderful singing and guitar that accompanied Carmen.
As someone who knows nothing about Flamenco it was interesting to sense the conversations between the dancer and the musicians, it seemed to me to have a sense of improvisation and dialogue which was very open and fascinating.
All in all a great experience, and made a wonderful diversion from my continued Tango lessons with Joao Alves.
High Resolution Images are located on Flickr here.
Just a huge shout out to Cedar Lake as a fantastic company of amazingly talented dancers.
Yet again a wonderful selection of pieces this evening, some superb images and just outstanding ability from the company.
Thank you so much for taking your work outside of the States.
Also appreciated the chance to ask the company questions after the show. Alexandra Damiani answering questions form the audience
It is such a recharging experience to watch such talent at work, it makes me refocus on my own small creative ventures, and to get out there and dance.
As well as in my working life, where the challenges of building an IT business have always been clear and considerable – I have been getting involved with some major projects in my personal life – a couple of really big mountains to climb.
Firstly I am now about 30,000 words into my first novel. As a newbie 30,000 seems to me to be a great many words – even though its only a third of the way there. Once you get to that kind of size, if you stop for a couple of weeks you have to re-read pretty much the whole thing just to remember what on earth is going on.
Secondly I am learning Tango. Anyone who hasn’t tried would probably just think ‘So what – it’s a dance – just learn the steps.. ‘ or something similar. But in reality learning Tango as a beginner – especially for the guys, or “leaders” as we are somewhat ironically described as – is mind bogglingly difficult.
These kind of big project undertakings need different skills – a different level of dedication. Persistence. The ability to keep going when it gets tough, when you lose your confidence. The enthusiasm to keep finding the time, to keep practicing even when you don’t feel like it.
They also teach you about yourself – if you are writing or dancing Tango you are exploring your own character and thoughts – a humbling and fascinating process of self discovery. A process that is facilitated by the music, your partner, or by the creativity of the act itself.
Coincidentally I started them both at the same time – February – and so I am now celebrating 6 months of trying. 6 months of not giving up, of having faith, of trying to keep positive and enjoy all the learning experiences that these kinds of undertakings always confront you with.
The challenge now is to start the process of doing them at a higher level than simply awful – so with some basic level of skill. My problem is that I genuinely want to be good at such enormously difficult things, and rightly or wrongly a part of me absolutely believes that I can be. Yes it may be a fantasy – but what fun to really, truly make the effort, to discover more about myself and my limitations.
Whatever the outcome I am so glad that 6 months ago I started both of these ventures – they have given me so much – and even more thrilled that I am still hanging in there. The weirdest thing is that I have even more energy for them both than I did when I started – that seems to be a characteristic of these kind of complex subjects – they are open ended and you get out of them as much as you put into them, you can never master them and for that reason they remain always fascinating and motivational.
They inspire you in a way that simpler, more achievable interests never can.
So good to be back in this welcoming, warm and friendly city – already so full of memories and always offering images of the kind of urban art that I so enjoy trying to capture.
I am thinking about what motivates me to take certain images. There are very obvious themes – on this trip so far there is the obvious attraction to street art:
And then the general urban shots :
People of course, but again always in a more urban setting :
But in a way the images that give me a lot of satisfaction is where I find a particular scene that sets itself up for framing a person. So I have selected two of these in this post.
The skill becomes one simply or patience – just waiting for the right person to walk into the shot. They are a nice combination of a statement without being at all posed – at least as far as the subject is concerned.
Just finished a bank holiday weekend dominated by the rare sight of the sun, and more importantly by a 3 day tango festival at Ardingly.
I spent the days in workshops – although not enough as I am too much of a beginner to be allowed into most of them – and the nights at two Milongas. I only took my camera for a couple of hours – too busy dancing – but here’s a few shots.
I thoroughtly enjoyed everything about the festival. The workshops were excellent and if the music in the main milonga ever got too conservative – which for me it did on Saturday – then there was a small room playing Nuevo, which was great. The Sunday Milonga featured Otros Aires, and that was indeed a party atmosphere playing just the kind of faster Milonga style that I love messing about to.
Because I am too much of a beginner to do the kind of classes I would love of the 6 workshops I attended 3 were actually about the music – how it is structured or how we might respond to the various rhythms and pacing that are in the sounds of Tango.
My last workshop this afternoon – “Using Phrasing, connecting to the music and each other” – at which these two main images were taken, really summed up so much for me. Tango is a dance, it isn’t a mathematical formula or some kind of exam. Learning yet another step in a wooden, recipe style – oblivious of the music – isn’t why Tango has really caught my imagination. Yes it is challenging and interesting to learn new figures – but it seems to me that Tango is about connection and expression and the complex messages that exist so naturally in powerful, emotional music. Tango gives you a vocabulary for a deep conversation, but in the end it is a dance and it really should be enjoyed as such.
Of the wonderful professionals that were there Dario and Clair – featured in these two photographs – captured that intensity of connection and celebration of each other and the structure of Tango more than anyone I have seen. On the featured image they are taking the first step to the music to show our class such a simple phrase – yet the expression of radiant hapiness and playful celebration is so totally genuine. In the main photo they are demonstrating how to vary the pace of one of the most basic moves any beginner is taught in their first lessons – look at them – such intensity and celebration of each other and of Tango.
