Sparkle

It was two hours until dawn, late summer night, this girl was cajoled into bed. Apparently I looked tired.

Perhaps, yet I couldn't sleep. To blog, perchance to dream: I wrote the following just before my eyelids drifted shut and am posting it the day after. Within this post are old photographs I had taken in my teens. I'd forgotten what "real" film looks like, warm and grainy. I'd forgotten that girl who carried a camera instead of lipstick. Quite nostalgic in an "If I had told myself this or that..." way:

A true life = clear thought.

Clear thought combined with... perseverance, which is another word for "patience in the long haul".

If one is in it for the long haul, one must hold back, refrain a little. Not jump to that first desire like a magpie meeting a sparkle in the grass.

Conserve your energy for what really matters, not just the physical reserves, but your mental energy too. Step back, look clearly upon something and think.... before you speak, before you leap... focus gently.


One of the things I have learnt in this tiny span of existence is - it helps to keep your eyes wide open, along with your mind. So, although no one might know it, you are taking it in, drinking it all in. Studying the horizon.

I've always admired the grace of animals in the wilderness, they know the above naturally. Especially cats. The soft slink of ease and languid determination. So languid that as a child, visiting game reserves abroad, I would watch transfixed if any crossed our path. Part of me would be struck by their confident beauty, the other part would sometimes think "Hurry up, please".

That second part is the one I work on... every day. For impatience can sometimes be delicious, you want it now.... you want it cartoon-fast and vocalising that releases something. The truth is, it only releases energy you could use otherwise. Observe patience as something tangible, not just an ephemeral object. Think of it as a muscle one needs to work on.

Strengthening this gives you real release. Rather than falling upon a sparkle in the grass, your thoughts and feelings share equal space, equal respect. Ultimately, you grow patient with yourself too, an unexpected gift. A necessary one.


Odd how "Go with your heart" as true as it is, is nowadays given more reverence than the brain - why not emphasise both? If one consistently goes with the heart in life, relationships, faith even - at the first sign of real trouble we hear:

"This is a recording... go with your heart" and some of us lash out or ... jump ship; it is not so much that rationality is abandoned - just that it is easier to react without thinking of the consequences. Patience is a wee casualty in the "heart only" mentality. But thankfully, it can be revived. We just have to allow both sides of our nature an even playing field.


What I find amazing is that while you are reading this, wherever you are, you have unique brain cells, synapses, emotion sparkling away inside of you, bubbling to fruition. So real, thank God and so wonderful. Everything you have just read, you have absorbed or recognized. Everything and everyone are somehow linked.

Peace,
x

Julian Beever- Optical Illusionist and good fun

This London artist makes completely flat on the ground images appear 3-dimensional, these surprising images also make one smile and have something to say.

Julian remembered his school teacher telling him that although he was a good artist, he stayed safely within his boundaries. That hurt at first and then helped define him. This humble and peaceful character soon developed into a street artist who pushed himself while still maintaining a playful smirk.



Julian begins each work with the location, think Mel Brooks's crack about the vampire's stake through the heart: "Location, location, location". He chooses busy city walkways and pavements were a) people are walking towards a well known and established gallery (Tate Modern) or more simply b) people are leaving their concrete cages for their 1pm lunch. They mill around him throughout the process, sometimes lasting days. This encourages the artist, the open companionship with the crowd. He also has to watch out for the sometimes less charming council employee who can legally order him to stop his "graffiti". This has driven many artists underground and sparked their notoriety.

Julian soon chooses the landmark or subject he will reproduce and the angle of distortion. Very important in creating an illusion. He then chalks it, think art class and Vermeer, pulling a chalked piece of string and then pinging it on the ground like an elastic. The lines are now formed which will be the skeletons of his perspective.

All the while, the idea is bearing fruit in his head and driving him, along with, I suspect, his eagerness to please an audience. This is not lost on them either as he sets up his camera (every artist should carry a camera) and examines the bare scene through the frame. Modestly, he will not feel above asking passersby to look through the lens at the chalked marks:

"Does that look like a perfect circle to you? Are those lines matching?" He will spend at least an hour(s) getting the perspective just right, enough.

Julian is a street artist although he sounds a lot like my former well spoken Geography teacher, Mr. Lardner. He draws you in, but nicely, you expect him in his smeared jeans and cap to break off and offer you a cup of tea. Instead he wields his chalk and colour, chatting away.

He does stop though to have a jibe at the Tate Modern artists. Again, as my old art history teacher did (he has struck a cord here). Conceptual art in it's, pardonez moi, bull manure sense is not "cool" with him. I must interject here that while I don't disregard conceptual art, I do find his irreverence amusing. Placing a stretch of tarpaulin on the ground to protect the work from the rain, he quips that that ought to be enough to get him into the Tate Modern.

There is something about him, his experience coupled with his very vital street art that hints at the outsider. He is not establishment, then again who wants to be? He is also not the normally praised street artist with a "hip hop, rewind, choon, selector" flair now rampant in London. If the above combination of phrases have confused you, please check out the urban dictionary.com, which deserves a post of it's own at a later point.

The one thing we need to realise about art of this kind is that it is free, it is neither corporate nor appeasing the masses, nor dumbed down. It is truly independent art. Anyone can do it! This is both expansive and down to earth. Street-level down to earth. I hope you have enjoyed this foray into Julian's pieces and that you enjoy more art in your street soon.

E. E. Cummings on a sunny day

I would like to dedicate the following post to Deirdre, who encouraged me to blog with kind words....

This poem has meant a lot to me since childhood. I illustrated it a while ago as a gift to someone. The simplistic style is reflective of the poem and the ocean which is allegorical and literal. The painting can be folded into a small card, although I now understand it's on the bedroom wall.

maggie and milly and molly and may

by E. E. Cummings

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea

E.E Cummings led an interesting life by some accounts (see his namelink); how do we know the truth unless perhaps you knew him as a friend? What is apparent is that at some point in his life he had strong principles and stood up for them, I admire that...

Merci Deirdre, bisous

Why can't she sleep?

Did I have coffee today? I think not, nothing stronger than a Red Bull.... it's never worked before. Note to self, stop buying Red Bull. Second Note to self, stop typing notes to self.

I remembered the part in Alice in Wonderland where Alice chances upon the Queen's (the one that was simply a card) subjects, who are painting the white rose tree, red - satirical and amusing, reread the book, and if you haven't already got it then go to project gutenberg and read it there:

"Would you tell me, please," said Alice, a little timidly, "why you are painting those roses?".....

So I had to paint and the result was this rather large canvas above.