The first of three years of thoughts...
As I view thoughts from the last to the first I think of time, its coming and going, its standing still...
Today, across the world, in unison, at 23:59:60 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), a second will be added to our year. A moment when the people of the world will pause with single breath.
I ponder on the difference a single second makes. It is gone as soon as I speak of it, and yet, within its grasp love is felt, hope is born. A second more is all we need to change our mind, our world. I live in instant shorter than a second spreads: my place of beginnings, of endings, my choice of war or peace.
Like you, I want to be known by people I trust. I am most at ease when talking one to one with a friend.
The moment three or more enter into conversation, I protect some of what I am and become more attune to the group and its needs. I show myself less as I seek to understand, and as I interact with many points of view. With many, the moments of emotional intimacy I cherish are rare.
For me, being shy is not about nervousness or uncertainty, it is the mindful gaze on others and oneself.
Imagination: the ability to form ideas, images or concepts not present to the senses.
Imagination is the most powerful tool in my creative process, but it is also the seat of my unease. My mind rushes from one possibility to the next, from reality to dream and back again. When making art this is invaluable, but in life the propensity for my mind to take flight can lead me astray. Not a hair's breath passes between the world of reason and its rival, magic.
At times in my desire to be heard I fail to listen.
My enthusiasm can be off-putting. Conversations quickly fade if they are not in equal measure. I try not to interrupt the flow or talk too much, but my nature often gets the better of me. My silent voice is one of self-restraint in fear of loss. The less my silent voice, the more I am at ease.
If trust is in the air I sense the silent voice of someone else. Silence shared is more than voice alone.
Part of the creative temperament is a natural tendency to collect and keep in the hope something may be used or of value at a later time. Although we all do this involuntarily with words every day, some people practice and cherish their store of expression more than others.
Over many years I have built my library of words, ideas, light, sounds, textures, movement and more.
My library is not confined to the four walls of my home. It has become a pillar of my identity.
My curtains are open. I sleep so when I fall or wake the first light that greets me is of the sky.
A crisp crescent moon rises. Unhurriedly, the darkness lifts. Even now, so soon after our shortest day, the song of birds fill the air. I open my front door and walk a few short steps into the open, beautiful morning. I am in awe that such delicate creatures welcome the cold of winter with such energy and life.
Before I publish my latest work I begin my next. It is the nature of things.
Give: to transfer something to someone, or many, whether an object, feeling, or physical action.
Give once, give twice, give endless time,
Give ground, give back, give rise to thought, give nothing of yourself, give way,
Give in, give reason for,
Give now, give life, give birth, those most at peace give more.
I value honesty. There are however occasions when it seems better, for the feelings of others, or perhaps to ease my path in some way, that I deceive. It is for example not helpful that I am always honest by expressing what I think every moment, in part because my understanding and judgements change as time unfolds. The danger is, once I lie to someone, the next lie becomes that little bit easier.
It is the same for the creative process. If I settle for less because of convenience, beauty is jeopardized.
There is a place we most belong. A place we feel full with life, recharged, comforted. For you it may be the inner city, by water or wilderness. Perhaps within a building that inspires, or a room of personal significance. Whatever the place, it is likely one we wish to share with those most close, as well as a place we are at ease alone. When I face difficulty I think of this place.
My place has rolling hills, woodland, open water. A place in equal measure for my senses and my spirit.
Poetry: human language, carefully and elegantly expressed with rhythm and layered meaning.
It is no matter whether a poem is short or long, shared or kept in a private place. Whether young or old, rich or poor, the act of writing poetry is helpful and needs only one's time and contemplation.
We each can be a poet, and with poetry comes peace.
For scientists winter starts today. Although the earth is closest to the sun, it tilts in relation to it. In the northern hemisphere the sun's energy strikes the earth with less force resulting in lower temperatures. The difference in tilt (the axial tilt) between our summer and winter is at most around 3400 kilometres (2,112 miles). This relative pinprick of variation is the cause of the world's coldest and hottest weather.
It is the same for my life. When my world nears another, my centre tilts, my balance shifts.
I wake in time of darkness, when brutality seems commonplace.
Creating art is never more vital and reminds us that beauty, a correlate of love, is still present. Art broadens our horizons and challenges our firmly held assumptions. Above all, art's greatest strength is its potential to being us together.
Light is a moment we uncover over time. Peace will prevail.
I have loved movies all my life. As a child I looked forward to 'Saturday Cinema' on the TV which showcased classic films. On occasion my aunt Merlyn would also watch with me. She would often be so moved, tears would run silently down her cheek. I viewed her feelings for others as a sign of great strength. When I watch a film today I limit outward signs of my emotional response as I am viewed as sentimental. When I watch alone, those films that touch me to tears are among my most treasured.
Creative Continuity: the practice of consistent expression.
I work on a painting and words that accompany music. As I listen or read, I walk the line between trust and doubt. With music the same is true for harmony and discord as they unfold, but light is different. Even though it takes time to discover a painting, it exists in its entirety before me.
At 100 Artworks you will always see the image first, before words, then sound.
My morning begins, darkened by the mist of mid December.
Some of the most beautiful landscapes I have witnessed are defined as much by what is hidden as by what is seen - beauty seems bound with discovery and growth. When I see a painting, hear music, or read a poem, the enchantment is my ever-changing experience. Not seeing all at once I have the time to breathe, the time to be more open to those things I may not otherwise take in.
When I meet with a friend, time looses all strength to separate. We start again where we left off as if not a moment has passed.
Friendship is defined by trust. Trust that we can be ourselves, our strengths and weaknesses welcomed and expressed in equal measure. Trust is being unafraid.
Trust takes time, is lost in a moment, but when it lives between friends, all sense of time is lost.
Promise: at its best, something deeply intended with honesty and hope; a commitment to act or not to act; possessing a quality of expectation; an obligation.
I can make a promise, hear another's promise, or think someone or something has promise.
A promise seems so simple to make, so easy to break, so much for those who believe, so far from the truth, so close to the heart, a promise is sometimes all we have that keeps us from tearing apart.
I make art, more than any other reason, to return.
No matter my loss, with time, I heal... I must, to love.
With time I feel less, and at times I feel no more.
I feel less, for otherwise I would not recover from the wound of my grief. Never.
Music, art, and words soften my return to places and people that otherwise I would loose, forever.
Aleppo ????? ?ALAB: a city occupied for 7,000 years. Our place of difference and tragedy: our school, our hospital and home. Our mother, father and child. Our sister and brother. Our life-long friend and love.
To live well, to find peace, our only path is through compassion and love. Both are by our side to use at any time, in any place. No matter our pain, these actions of our better lives are bound for life within.
I ponder on the word 'wake', used to describe our emergence from sleep, the vigil held beside the body of someone who has died, and the smooth pattern on a liquid surface downstream of an object in flow.
I am awake.
I hold the feelings of my sleep and dreams close, yet out of sight. Embraced: my world unseen. With bridge from night to day, in day and night. Perhaps this is why - I wake early, quickly, and with ease.
As I work on my music I listen carefully to its flaws. Although I shape and refine my performance I do not use my computer to automate rhythmic precision. I work aesthetically rather than programmatically and experience the ebb and flow of beats first hand this way. While time consuming, it mirrors my life which is not mathematically regular. I search for the sweet spot between the flawless and the chaotic. Gentle fluctuations of rhythm, tone and pitch lay at the core of beauty in music.
With others I live well, with comfort of their moment close: I am, I feel myself once more.
Alone: the time, an endless wall of white, I search in vain for what has been and what may come,
Alone I fill this space with sound to fill the silence of my mind.
Find love for this is all there is and ever was of worth in moments of your time...
This short poem touches on the world of a lady in her nineties whom I visited each day.
As an Active Pacifist my battle against cruelty and conflict is fought with the tools of art and persuasion. That said, I see a person stripped of dignity, their life no more than a struggle to survive, and I ask what can my modest expression of art and words ever achieve?
Although climate change, war and poverty seem far beyond the scope of individual influence, they are born of the mind. The mind is our battlefield where all the now and future we ever know is formed.
As we travel online we do so believing ourselves to be largely unknown. We interact with our device or screen and sense the experience as private.
Outside of social networks our mindset online is essentially one of taking because of our perceived isolation. I ponder on whether this is why the Web is so ubiquitous, and whether the greatest value of our taking is the chance it provides in our future to give.
Birth is not easy. It is often a matter of life and death. A piece of music is dedicated to those new born in places of disaster and conflict, and for those who care for them.
Even in our most desperate times, compassion and the love of others remains the source of our strength and hope.
The Turner Prize is an annual event presented to a British visual artist under the age of fifty.
Thankfully, I will never win.
The art often follows the marriage of dubious thought and poor expression. Members of the public are left bemused as art commentators present their banal interpretations along with forty thousand pounds of prize money, extended news coverage, and certain notoriety.
As hard as I try to imagine a day without words, I cannot. Words are my most treasured tool, whether spoken, read, or thought.
Touch is my most prized sense, light my most loved, and sound my most expressive, but for all these, without words my life would be diminished. Ideas emerge and flourish only through our words.
When I ignore or fail to hear another's words, I risk the danger of silence: a world without words.
We are drawn to live performance (dance, music, spoken word, theatre, and art). We revel in our living in the moment, in its chance, of ‘being there’. That ‘one and only time’. We feed with friends and strangers. We express our feelings in a public space. The recording of a performance we have attended is a shadow of our live, unique, sensory experience.
The strength and weakness of live performance resides in its spontaneity and imperfection.
I came across a beautiful work of art that conveys an immediate impact and is wonderfully produced. I discovered it was commissioned to hook those who enjoy art and to bolster a company brand that seeks to present itself as a trailblazer of sophistication and style. Despite its undoubted attraction, I do not share art designed to manipulate affection if it is strongly associated with commercial gain.
Art is only convincing when its motive is not mired by money. In this, art is akin to love.
Craft: the practice of making hand made objects. A skill of the mind.
Crafts people are not viewed of having the same cultural or social status as artists.
Although crafts have an aesthetic quality, their products are functional rather than revealing. In the past the word craft was broader and encompassed art, science, talent, might and power. I view the care and skill of the artist (their craft) in equal measure to their ideas and expression.
Art contains special significance related to beauty or its opposite, expression, and the communication of ideas in a symbolic context. Art is purposeful.
Art is not a landscape. It is not solely an experience, nor only an idea. Art does not come into being because of its placement, nor through someone's assertion of its existence.
At its best, art reaches our hearts and minds with the same force and in the same breath.
Giving: to freely cause or allow another to have or experience something.
I find giving without desire or need of return immensely difficult, especially over time. Giving is not for the faint of heart... I ask myself: why place such importance on this path?
If I seek even love as I give, I seek to gain. Giving unconditionally is to love. Give to be in love.
It has been the coldest night of the winter so far.
Yesterday my boiler gave out so my home was without heat.
As the clear but bitter dawn breaks, the homeless and dispossessed wake. Without heat the privileges of my comfort and circumstance thwart turning a blind eye.
Without heat my heart grows strong.
Words, light, and sound.
I ponder on our core creative expressions: speech, dance, and song. Perhaps we respond most powerfully to these forms as they require only our bodies to make and experience them. We feel most alive, especially with others, when we speak, we dance, and sing.
I often fail to see what turns out to be as clear as day.
By re-visiting my work, fresh patterns, better ways of doing, and errors emerge. What I previously experienced as complete, is far from perfect. It is like walking out into a moonless night, or gazing at an ink blot: eventually and over time I start to see.
When making, patience and perseverance are among my most valued tools.
Friend: a relationship of mutual affection characterized by honesty, trust, understanding, and love.
I was fortunate as a child in having a close friend. Between the ages of five and ten we would share the world. Even though my friend died many years ago, words continue to keep that friendship close.
When alone, although my interaction with words cannot be described as friendship, each word serves to support my hope for it.
The most fun I have is with others and begins with the unexpected.
I smile, and if the fun continues, I chuckle, I laugh. When I am having fun, I have not reached the journey's end. The fun stops when the moment of pleasure is fully realized. The creative process is full with fun, with spontaneity. Its unpredictable nature, its tease and inspiration.
Young children have the most fun and from this they learn and love far more freely, far more quickly.
Home: my ancestral land; a place I was born; a place I live; a place I feel I belong; a place I return to; a place I yearn for.
The idea of home is an experience as much as a physical place.
I can be alone or at home in the company of another, in how I act, or what I do.
From time to time something is said that unexpectedly shifts my understanding of a person I know well. My moment of insight depends on a passing comment that drifts into the conversation before seamlessly moving to the next subject without note of its significance. I check my wish to ask for clarification so that I can examine the implications of what was said more carefully. Perhaps I misheard, perhaps I am mistaken. From time to time the secrets of our life spontaneously emerge.
We have resources at our disposal: personal qualities, knowledge, skills and effort. When we give something of ourselves or something we have made, and we do so outside the spheres of financial, political, or personal exchange, we risk those things we share are taken without reward or thanks. We may judge ourselves not to be in a personal or economic position to take the risk, and so we do not share. We choose to gain. We take: personally, politically, economically. Sharing at its heart is fearless.
Language: a system of communication that expresses ideas, events, emotional life, and experience. People often believe musicians make good mathematicians. I am not, and over the years this has led me to consider the nature of mathematics. In common with music, mathematics is not a language.
Mathematics is a mental activity that uses symbols and logic to model understanding. Although maths is an invaluable rational tool, it is not understood without the assistance of a language like English.
With gusts of eighty miles per hour the wooden gates break apart with a loud crack in our first storm of winter. I wake to watch nature bend the tree tops and lash the ground with rain. A few minutes more and I grab a coat and head outside to secure the open gates against the wall.
Nature is beautiful, in calm and fury. There is no good nor bad, no mine or yours. With nature we are as naked ancestor, and our humbled heart is better for it.
Inside Out: with the inner surface turned outwards.
Experience is always interior. Although we often gather (or are forced) together as an event unfolds, our experience is always unique, despite our perpetual wish to find common ground.
Art, music and literature are ways that expose, express, and consolidate experience. As we share these things our tolerance of difference is increased, and we become more bound to one another.
Much of my day is spent alone. I work best alone. I am easily distracted by spoken words and music and so I write, and create images, in silence and thought. When I work with sound I hear only the music that unfolds.
Being still and alone serves to heighten my love of movement and the company of others.
It is ironic that the winner of a Nobel Prize for Literature is so inarticulate in his acceptance of it.
At the age of nine I played the piano in a music festival in my home town. To my sadness people seemed more interested in the status of those playing, rather than the music that was made. From that time I have been opposed to any form of competition in the arts. Experiencing art is profoundly personal and its value is not defined by winners or loosers, but by its beauty, message, and power.
I do not like doubt, but I recognize its strength.
I treat doubt as my ally and of more importance in the creative process than certainty.
If doubt overwhelms me, I am indecisive, weakened. Yet it so often brings me to a better place through its encouragement of candour.
The most simple questions are often the most difficult to answer. Here are two: Why do? And its antithesis: Why do not?
What I do is driven by my nature, my values, my desire, my interest, my strength, my weakness, and my judgement of risk. These are also at the root of why I do not.
If I consider these questions as ethical, I form a guide to my actions. Why do?: Love. Why do not?: Love.
I spend every day thinking about, then writing and refining a short passage that I hope is of value. At its best it reaches you, however as with anything I say, at times I am less successful.
With another, there is no greater threat to honesty than not saying, and yet I ponder on whether it is always better to say, or speak only when there is something worth saying.
I say in the quiet of my mind then set it on the page so it might by chance meet yours one day.
I have deeply held convictions about love, about our actions, and about art. I view anything I publish: every word, every pixel, every sound, as some small proof of those things I hold dear. I try, but often fail to be as careful, as thoughtful in my everyday, as when leaving these modest grains of self online.
When in the company of others I mask my intense nature much of the time. Perhaps we long for those most we trust will love those things we often hide.
I have viewed the advancement of technology as progress, when in truth it is often aligned more to power and convenience than for the greater good. When we view peace as the foundation of our progress, when our tools are used to ensure food and water, shelter and dignity, when we care for our world, only then can we consider ourselves as making progress. But what can I, one single person do?
We are all one. We are alone. When we love, something we can choose at any time, the rest will follow.
I live on a street with no lights. I like this as I can look up to see the stars.
When I turn in for the night my eyes need time to adjust to the darkness. It is not possible for me to accelerate the process of this change as I look out my window into the moonless evening. I have to wait before I see well.
Understanding, empathy and love is no different. I cannot rush these to know them well.
My eyesight this morning fails to focus on the fine details as well as it usually does. This gives me the opportunity of reflecting on how I so often take the acuity of my senses for granted.
I notice the change.
Adversity, no matter how unexceptional, can lead one to be more mindful of the ordinary and everyday.
It is not despite our differences that we are strong, but because of them.
There is no more important a time than now to express and act with every effort in the interests of tolerance for the greater good, and stewardship of the environment.
With sound and light comes doubt.
Users type text to create new vocal material and voice recordings. With AI users generate music and art. Libraries of vocal sources, sounds, and images become available for routine manipulation.
What is presented as said and seen is viewed with suspicion.
We search for truth and evidence as those in times before recorded sound and light.
I work best alone - it is my life-long practice. I am not a member of a group and publish my creative work so that it is freely accessible. As a result I rarely receive a response to those things I make.
Despite many who experience my work, I am unknown within the established art-world. Self-doubt is my constant companion in my making, and drives me to interrogate my every decision.
Not being recognized, despite its psychological hardship, can lead to building well.
I think about the nature of friendship. Of love, free of the insecurities of becoming less.
No matter what the weather of our hearts, the day begins afresh.
I publish an artwork of a non-organic being, together with my thoughts about those things unknown.
Our endurance and strength as a species is built upon our ability to see past our fear.
If we build together, make, care and love, so will the life that follows
Far from all are here online. Many are in the midst of love, close to death, on sea or high beyond the reach of signal. They are faint if known at all in this conjured place of sound and light we sometimes think as real. While I embrace a world online, I am mostly mind and still. The world of movement, scent and touch offline remains the place of gathering most, of being most, with others closer, together, far from the abstracted self possessed.
A single voice leads to change.
The change of a whisper may be modest, or if our voice carries further, it may alter the lives of others we have never met. For some the spread of their voice becomes their purpose. For others, their voice remains as if behind a closed door.
Whatever the strength of our voice, it is ours to use for good or ill. What we say, over time, we become.
As we hear our own voice our bones enrich its sound which appears far more resonant than to others.
As we face ourselves in the mirror we see our flipped features from our unique perspective.
Our normal is experienced by one, and one alone. All others hear us, see us, touch us, smell us, taste us as their normal meets ours.
Being is far from normal.
We often hold those who answer questions quickly and confidently in higher regard as compared with those who think carefully before opening their mouths. Self-assurance is valued above substance, especially when time is short, whether in a social situation or the workplace.
When we experience art, music and literature we are far more prone to question the authority and value of what is being communicated. The absence of social dynamic nurtures good judgement.
Respect: due regard for the feelings, wishes, and rights of others.
No matter what their age, gender, physical or intellectual ability, culture, or economic circumstance, respect is essential for happiness, and imperative for the creation of art about others.
In my creative work I try to find a balance between conveying the intellectual and emotional. I seem to reach closer to this goal in music and poetry but often stray from achieving this in my visual work, perhaps because painting is interpretive and its strength is not so much to articulate as to provoke, together with its appeal to our sense of aesthetic. I often present music, images, and words together so as to improve their chance that our hearts and minds quicken in equal measure.
I see my son - I cannot begin to convey the happiness that unfolds.
With those I love my world transforms.
I have mild asthma, which I view as good fortune. In the main I suffer no ill affects and lead a very active life, however dust, pollen and animal fur can at times make it difficult for me to breathe.
Breathing is such an involuntary activity we are rarely concious of it.
To not always have ease is to value something.
Today, as I walk through an open doorway I will choose to be more on the other side. Although the change may be small, all change to and by the self matters. The doorway does not need to be in a significant place, it can be the most ordinary of doorways, anywhere. The only requirement is that my intention to change is honest, and for the better.
When I consider each open doorway I walk through as an opportunity, I think and act more carefully.
Temptation: the urge to gain, irrespective of the consequence.
Temptation is something we all feel. Desire and impulse are fundamental forces in our ability to create, as well as being the drives of our self interest. Money is the most frequently used means of gaining. The acquisition of money, for work and pleasure, is aligned with temptation. When I resist temptation, my spirit and strength grows.
Texture is the foundation of human exploration. Sadly, cultural and social conventions often stifle our tendency to touch after early childhood. Adults who see tend to appreciate texture from afar, and their engagement with sculpture suffers. Rhythm is experienced by all humans, and sound is the most accessible tool to create art, followed closely by language. Perhaps this is why music and song are so popular and important to us as we silently yearn to touch.
A judge acts as an officer authorized to hear and decide cases in a court of law, decides how a person who is guilty of a crime should be punished, and makes decisions on legal matters. University College London (UCL) is one of the world's leading multidisciplinary research institutions. Work there and in other places develops artificial intelligence (AI) that makes legal judgements.
Our need to consider The Rights of Living Things is increasingly urgent as AI moves towards sentience.
The news, on radio, TV and online, is defined by its relevancy to us today. We ask ourselves are we at risk? How will this affect me or my group? Will this make my life easier, or harder? What should I be as a result of what is shown? We often need the now of news before we act.
With art I stand back from the moment. The now in art is present as a gift of the past and future.
I work on a poem that will accompany music.
My conviction has long been that art, music, and words have the potential to change our world for the better. Although we may not immediately act differently when we are moved by music, its quality of connecting with our inner space lays the foundation to do so.
Art is something we return to help shape our spirit.
I am an advocate and supporter of democracy. Democracy's purpose is to respect freedom and equality between people by providing honest structures where power is held by elected representatives, or directly by the people. Democracy encourages the peaceful transition of power between people of opposing views. By refusal to unequivocally accept the result of an election before the vote, a candidate demonstrates their unfitness to be their leader.
Tide: the rise and fall of sea; a change of state, physical or emotional; a period of time.
I ponder on the beauty of the rise and fall of water, our contact with the force of moon, the spin of earth, and pull of sun. I think of how love can be as endless in its movement dependent on another, of how I feel as creature of the shore, by nature washed between the land and sea.
I know a person whose wishes become their memories. At first, those around her felt she was playing them, but gradually it became clear that her certainty was genuine.
I ponder on how memory is as much built from a fabrication of what we hope and fear as that which occurred.
I like the phrase 'taking time', as if we can ever grasp such a thing.
Perhaps when we give over our time we afford it the opportunity to consider and care for it more, whether it be a person, place, or action.
If I do not take my time, if I do not give my time, I never quite reach where I wish to go.
One of the great joys of creating art is its safe uncertainty. Exploration's familiar companion, risk, is confined to the realm of achievement rather than physical danger. For the artist, the unknown road is full with excitement and anticipation.
As I continue work on a piece of music I listen for paths of sound that open briefly before me. I move by instinct, quickly, before the trail goes cold. My only enemy is doubt that I will hear.
A member of my family is increasingly bewildered. She finds herself more frequently in a place of mist and uncertainty. The one thing that helps to settle her is love.
It is the same for all of us, no mater what our age or home: with company, together we grow strong.
I rarely voice my political views as I try to engage with as broad a group of people as possible by exploring issues in a way that I hope is inclusive. Although my work is not party political, it often concerns itself with power and status (both personal and societal). Politics tends to polarize opinion and often forms a barrier to dialogue between opposing convictions. Art offers a context for adversaries to inadvertently stand side by side in the same room with shared experience.
Art History is no longer offered as an A Level examination in the UK. Although Art History was studied by fewer than a thousand students at A Level each year, those students shared their views and knowledge about art and culture with many more. I believe the history of art should be available as a subject for all to study. Thinking about how others experience and express the world contributes to greater tolerance and understanding, which in turn gives rise and greater chance of peace.
Although I read and understand words with ease because of their context, I have always had difficulty spelling, and find reading written music challenging. At times I simply do not see. As language is such a common skill in humans, any deficiency is often viewed of as a measure of general competence. My difficulty with the recognition of written symbols has however been immeasurably important in the way I use language and sound. Meaning and music are not defined by their aids to memory.
I work on a piece for strings and piano. The music aims to draw our attention to those born in places of disaster and conflict.
Despite the anguish brought by natural devastation and the brutality of humans to one another, new life comes into the world. Those closest during the precious moments of birth, protect and shelter those most vulnerable against the cruelty of our time.
What I know is largely hidden despite my wish and what I share. Many of my thoughts remain veiled, even during conversation with someone I care for. I make judgements about the context, then release a part of myself that I believe will have the greatest chance of understanding. Despite my efforts, I am at times self-serving.
With music, poetry and art, what I know is the better part of who we can become.
Despite the potential financial gain and exposure, I do not permit those things I make to be used with products or services. I have for example strong views against the manner in which violence is often used in entertainment. I try to be careful of where and how my voice in all its forms is heard. For this and other reasons, I do not license my music for use in advertising, games, or films.
Licensing creative content can be as easy as turning a blind eye.
Shortly after an enormous loss of life our attention is distracted elsewhere.
I return to a painting or piece of music primarily because of its appeal to my senses. I revisit a story because of its dramatic content and the way it is told. Once I return I am reminded of people, places and events that I might otherwise loose sight of. Art and objects bring us back to those things of greatest importance, despite our ease of moving on.
I respond to the moment, my moment of now.
If my feelings are roused, my thoughts, enlivened, I may act.
If I do not feel, even when a life depends on it, I do not act. Kindness requires I feel. Compassion requires I feel. Love requires I feel. To give requires I feel.
The most I give is my time. Money may be mine or another’s stored time. Give now, save lives.
When the force of nature overwhelms us, we come together. At times the scale of devastation is immense, affecting countless communities, and the impact of each personal experience of trauma lasts a lifetime. What possible help can art be in a period of urgent practical need?
Food, water, shelter, and medical care are vital for survival, together with those things that inspire and raise our spirits. Each day, somewhere, where tragedy unfolds, art has the capacity to nourish hope.
When we give, we grow. When we share, we thrive.
Art is at its best when within reach of the many.
My conscious thinking seems dominated by language and reason: I consider this relationship, that idea, event or circumstance. A great part of my thinking however is not conscious nor deliberate. At times I may be resistant in acknowledging my unseen mental processes, yet their importance is undeniable.
When I am faced with a complex creative or logical challenge, the time I allow myself to ponder and mull is as important in finding a solution, as the time I take to meet the problem head on.
All young children love to play with words, sounds, and light. They love to dance. Those who receive praise for their creative efforts thrive. Those whose efforts go unnoticed, slowly but surely withdraw their commitment and interest. For some, their need to express and their love of a medium is so strong, they will revisit a creative activity after many years. Sadly, most go on to say 'I am no good at painting', 'I cannot play an instrument', 'I do not dance'. In truth, given approval and admiration, we all can.
Artists bolster their egos by showing their work here and there. Perhaps I am foolish to pass on the notoriety and chance to increase my arts' social status, price, and cultural impact by presenting my work in galleries in Milan and Venice, two cities of cultural significance. It becomes clear however there will be little thought given to the curation of my work in these exhibitions, and so I decline.
Those things I value most in art: its ability to make us feel and think, is untouched by reputation.
My first concern is for my survival, my second is for personal gain, whether emotional or practical.
When I trust I increase the risk of being disadvantaged in some way. The benefit of trust is that it provides opportunities to share and grow. When art is owned, trust in its significance can be undermined or overstated by its monitory value. When I buy or sell, trust is uncertain.
Art that is free to experience does not require trust. Art that is free to experience nurtures trust.
When my 'I' is in the foreground, my 'with' is diminished.
Most often I wish to do for my self. Yet I am happiest when I think of, and act for, others. Thinking of and doing for others is far from easy as my own interests and desires demand such attention.
When I am low or ineffective, it is because I fail to focus my love on others and feel more for myself.
The great strength of art is that it provides the means for us to experience the world outside our own.
A great many things are beautiful, rhythmic, dynamic, yet do not demand our gaze beyond the moment of their presence. We have grown used to the short view. We see and hear with the attention of a honey bee - we collect as much as we can, as quickly as we can, then move on in search of satisfaction.
Art at its best, at least for me, appeals to the heart and mind. Good art demands we wait, and that we think before and while we take.
Dawn: the unfolding of something new; the beginning of an idea, or feeling; the gradual change from night until the first glimpse of sun on the horizon that announces the start of day.
I ponder on the nature of what it is to dawn. My dawning is the period before I know, before I come to understand, before I come to love. It is my jewelled journey from dark to light.
The intensity of my preparation is a quality of temperament born from my insecurity as a child. No matter what the journey or context, I am driven to ready myself as best I can. With music, art and words, this takes the form of thought, research and planning. Only then do I feel free to release my heart and instinct.
Sadly, at times my focus on consequence curtails the fleeting opportunities of chance.
Until today I have kept my feelings about our son's leaving carefully under wraps - he has been a profound and wonderful force in my life since his birth. I have always considered him a gift. I struggle not to dwell on my sense of loss. Small things set me off, the last time in a while before we do this or that, together. It is those ordinary things we share that builds our sense of love.
May you love those you meet, and meet with those you love.
I have long wished to live where the temperature never dips below 25°C (77°F). I far prefer the dry of summer to the cold and wet of winter, and yet I have come to value the seasons as the chill of Autumn takes hold.
Despite my reluctance to admit it, without change I am weakened by the comfort of unbroken experience.
I complete a short poem that touches on the first Right of Living Things:
I Am
Alive, life, I live, I make my home in this, my place of being now where all I am is known through deed and action forged in light, in dark, with others and alone. Alive I am with you in this our only present born from time before I felt or knew, yet now, in this my moment felt, I am.
Love is rare, precious, treasured. The kindling of kindness, the bedrock of wisdom.
Love is felt as well as given or received.
During times my love is forceful I yearn to do, or do. To show and share my love I make.
My acts of love depend on the strength and persistence of my feeling love.
I am lessened by the absence of love, my own or another’s. I grow only through my giving love.
Each day the world's beauty overwhelms the hate and hurt of one person to another. As humans act with unimaginable brutality, dusk unfolds, the sky grows dark, and we, those myriad specks upon the land and seas, sigh, so starts our dream.
As certain as the pull of moon we cease our struggles, one against the other. No matter what our strength we sleep, this time we share, we children of one home, this wondered earth.
I work on computers using different operating systems as each provide unique creative tools. One developed a serious problem. Some data has been lost to the wind without any prospect of recovery.
As I begin the process of rebuilding my digital environment, I ponder on the ephemeral nature of technology, and how the best means to counter its short lived charm is through sharing in the hope that some of what is done survives.
It remains a miracle to me that these gifts we call words have the capacity to change the world through persuasion and insight. Language is our most prized tool and we must use it to the best of our ability, no matter how small or large the context.
From a simple greeting to a great literary work, words provide our means to understand and build. At all times I should be more thoughtful of their use.
If someone beautiful approaches me and we begin to talk, our exchange is tempered by the potential of my desire (real or interpreted), and of their desire. Conversations are curtailed by concerns about a relationship's potential. The prospect of desire results in dislocation rather than the search for affinity.
Desire, true or imagined, so often halts the progress of friendship and love.
I find the mind is a forest of half trodden paths, often to places unknown. I begin a journey this way or that, certain of my destination, only to be distracted by a glade of interest, comfort, or modest achievement. At times I sense myself a little above the trees and glimpse the direction of several paths converging in the distance. A moment more and I am back among the dense growth of daily thought.
I write a series of ten poems that takes each right of living things as a starting point.
Creativity is stifled by indifference. If I am enthused by an idea or experience, the greatest force of nourishment is that another shares in my excitement. Perhaps this is why creative people often meet or form groups. Some gatherings require members do a certain thing, or follow a particular path before they are admitted, others are by invitation only. I have an aversion to groups because of their personal and collective politics. The cost of creative independence is the journey of a lonely path.
I am easily moved by those things I experience. I love the sight of dawn breaking, the sound of closely passing wingbeats, and the kindness of one to another. I feel at my best when I share these things. If those close do not feel the same passion, I am driven to create in the hope others will.
My level of creative activity is closely aligned with my yearning: to love, and to be loved.
Nature has no need of thought, no avarice, nor claim.
I find myself deep in unfamiliar woodland during early morning speckled light.
I sense its shallow whisper.
As wondered woodland walk, become.
On court I play my best when I move freely. When I do not think consciously, but rather let my body shape the point. I enjoy the sudden unexpected change, the challenge of a reach too far, the push of all my being to make my place in time arrive, return, and if all goes well, confound.
Watching and playing sport is often an aesthetic experience. We don't only watch to see who wins, but to also enjoy the poetry of our motion.
Although numbers do not exist except as ideas and symbols, they are exceptionally useful in marking moments and expressing a measure or quantity of something. I associate the number 14 with my sister's birthday - today. If I think of myself at the age of fourteen I consider a particular period of my life. If I think about the relationship of 14 on a scale of one to a hundred I place the idea of 14 in a context which is helpful. Although I am not good with numbers, I enjoy the thoughts they bring.
I spend many hours with a new tool I have added to my studio of creative gadgets.
There is nothing quite like the first occasion when one plays with something.
As I build I glimpse the tool's potential - everything is fresh, unknown: a journey of discovery.
As with people, being inspired on first meeting lays the seed for our return.
I amend the title and last line of the poem I wrote yesterday. The title 'Sleep' now acts as a focus for the poem and describes our physical and mental experience rather than our emotional response. I was resistant to using a repetition of the word, but now I view its emphasis as a strength that places the following words of the poem in context. The last line amendments encourage the mind to ponder rather than settle on the past. I frequently revisit my work to 'write' wrongs.
Sleep,
Where time breaks free
as breath from body-bound to air,
As day and night collide in spirit land lay softly sound with light unknown with form elsewhere,
Be of that moment rapt
and rich with strange and wondered way,
Become that realm enchantment roam embrace the dawning dream conveyed.
Family: two or more who share resources and support one another.
I have long viewed the word family as a broad description of those who find themselves together over an extended period of time, and of those who have the opportunity to care for one another.
When I consider myself as part of a larger family, one not necessarily biological, my confidence in a brighter future is restored. When I am welcomed as family I am no more alone.
My aunt with her twin sister Merlyn fostered me as a child. She has encouraged me in my creative efforts for very many years. She spent her childhood at the foothills of the Himalayas, the mountainous magical region between the plains of the Indian subcontinent and the Tibetan Plateau.
Our love of beauty remains, despite the flux and ache of age.
Enjoy 'Four Score and Ten' at 100 Artworks
I am far from humble. I state my opinions. I express myself in art and music without restraint. I care for my individuality, and yet I love those who listen, who are still while attentive.
Humility: a quality of the mind that limits the ego from adopting a sense of self-importance.
Not having gives chance for insight.
Insight is the agent of wisdom.
Creating for the artist is a constant cycle of commencement, invention, refinement, and completion.
No sooner than a piece is published, the groundwork for the next is laid.
To be well within I need to both receive and give two things: compassion and love.
When I take, or force my world on another, I become further from a place of contentment and peace.
If I receive without giving I think only of myself and grow sad. If I give and do not receive I grow sad.
Much of my day is spent in search of giving and receiving well.
I have a proving ground for my visual output and publish five artworks including With Love In Mind.
If I return frequently to a piece and it maintains its force, it may then find itself at 100 Artworks.
As with anything I feel, it is possible for the strength and character of my initial response to change with time. The same is true for anything I think, but change in thought comes to me more slowly.
As I write here, often in the early morning, I glimpse a little more of the irrepressible nature of this thing we call time. No matter what the events or strength of feeling of the day before, the day after becomes my now. At times I try feebly to freeze an instant of celebration, of laughter, or of love. Love above all as I yearn to stay longer in that vibrant and treasured place. And yet I must embrace the gift of this moment by doing, and not dwell too long on what has come to pass or what may be.
Naming a creative work is crucial to its success. A name not only identifies something, it sets up expectations that encourage me to think about a thing’s qualities and character. I use names to solidify, summarize, and to quickly identify a more complex chain of thoughts and associations about a thing. As I search for a name I reach further towards understanding the nature of something made.
On rare occasions a name comes first and all flows from it.
I cannot conceive of an idea without the tools of language or mathematics. Words convey my experiences, actions and intent, while numbers, shapes and patterns help me build, manipulate, and appreciate the universe. My most valued human skill is verbal language.
I enjoy composing: the way sounds, visual elements, or words are put together, and the movement of these into shapes and patterns to create art. Ideas, composition, and meaning are vital to my well being.
Happiness: a personal, positive, transitory feeling. More intense than contentment yet shorter lived. Less than elation yet longer experienced.
Be more than harm can touch.
Be loved and love.
Be the open arms of trust...
After completing a music composition and its performance I begin the mastering process. At this stage I am not creating new musical ideas, but shaping existing sonic materials with tools that subtly change the character of sounds. These changes may seem small: a half decibel here or the addition of a few harmonics there, but they can have a significant impact on the music’s overall aural cohesion.
In general, as with any finishing stage, a light touch makes the greatest difference.
We have a choice when viewing our journey. We can focus on the mystery and process of dying, or on the summary and present moment of our experience: life. Whether we choose to make or destroy, love or hate are actions born from fear or hope in our future: will we be? or will we not?
When life is dark it is difficult to direct our gaze other than on our own feelings and loss, and yet in these moments it is only the actions of our love for others that provokes happiness to return.
I have been completely carried away as I work on the final section of a piece of music.
Of all the arts, composing and playing music gives me the most sustained pleasure. As I listen I am swept up by the beauty and rhythm of unlikely harmonic companions. The sounds of strings and brass, of woodwind and percussion. I cannot wait to find where the end takes me, and then to share so others might also experience the sounds that coalesce into the extraordinary aural journey we call music.
We need tools to create. These might be tools within us like thought and voice, or external tools like a pen and paper. Depending on the medium, the tools will range from simple to complex, and some will be affordable while others will be completely out of reach. If tools were made available to those who showed effort and merit, I wonder what wonders would result. Some societies provide creative tools without charge for children to explore their ideas and potential. An adult's need for progress is no less.
I have started the day early ever since I enjoyed the company of my infant son who woke at dawn with an abundance of energy and enthusiasm.
I now work alone during these moments of quiet which is my most productive creative period.
This time feels like the day's spring when all is hope and possible.
Each day I stop to watch the great unfolding light. It is a good time to be.
I listen to a composer disparage a piece they have recently completed as nothing but a show of sentimental nonsense. He is proud of his ability to manipulate the listener’s emotional response.
Knowing this, my intellect and heart run dry. If however I hear a piece without knowledge of the person who created it, that same piece could do what all good art can do and move my body and mind.
Art may be full with soul and beauty, despite the originator's lack of genuine intention.
I ponder on the image of a swan dipping its head in search of food. Perhaps seeking fresh perspective is as much a part of our nature and as crucial for our well being as the swan's urge to hold its breath.
As feathered monarch robed in spotless white,
As sparks of spirit slide then drop once more into this sea of life.
I find it important to vary my creative activities during the day so that the space that creeps between the gaps of what I see and hear fills me with fresh perspective. My eyes and ears need change to work well. This morning was full with the discovery of sound, my afternoon is spent uncovering light.
One experience is nourishment for another.
A social network asserts that anyone on the planet using its service can be connected with anyone else on its network in an average of under four steps.
The implication of the 'degrees of separation' is that we live in a world where we are all a short distance from one another, however this fails to consider: choice; social and economic status; gender; culture; location; belief; and degrees of liberty. Our distance to many is still so great…
Music retains its force within us, even when we are unable to remember or think well.
I watch as a young boy with severe learning difficulties stands beside me and is transformed at the very moment music enters his world. I am taken back to my own childhood when I loose myself playing piano for countless hours as the canary my father gave me sings at the top of his voice beside me.
Music is made. By self, others, or another. As it becomes, it goes. Like life its nature is to change.
I share music and art that I love. At times I come across a piece that is lessened by the originator's decision to link to products and services they wish to sell. The piece can no longer be enjoyed innocently as it is reduced to being a financial vehicle.
Using art as a promotional tool undermines its integrity and impairs its impact.
In my work I communicate with developers of creative products and services. If I judge a tool can be improved, I make contact and give my feedback. I might not hear back, but more often than not I do.
I have observed three areas of resistance to positive change: denial there is a problem; a lack of commitment to making something better; a culture of poor support and communication.
Perhaps at times we are too close or have invested too much in something to admit its deficiencies.
My son has enjoyed thinking and writing since he was a young child. He is a writer and philosopher. He thinks and acts with care. A new adventure begins. I am over the moon.
Good news is personal. It feels, personal. It is something to celebrate. It is good, and new.
The best good news I have received has been about those I love.
Soon I will know. My life will be full with hope and expectation, or uncertainty.
Time is nothing more than an invention of the mind. A tool of little insight that serves the ends of others. As time is of our own making, we choose to live within its arbitrary boundaries, or breath outside its realm, unfettered, free and full.
I wait.
I draw my two previous thoughts together and publish these along with an image.
As I gaze at the delicate lines of gold and pale yellow that reach and swirl in the darkness, I am struck by how language is so utterly insufficient in capturing sensation.
We see and think with the same cells we were born with. Although more may be added through our lifetime, our other cells are in a season of constant renewal.
The gifts of sight and thought are our most ancient and prized...
Why I value beauty : I am hard wired to be attracted to those things that bring nourishment and comfort in nature - the blue of sky and water, the green of vegetation, the white of summer cloud. I find delight in texture and line, in sound and thought. I feel a person as beautiful as much as when they give, as the sight of their form and timbre of their voice.
Love, distinct from desire, is aligned with beauty.
As I continue to work on a piece of music I consider the absence of sound. Silence in music is different than negative space in the visual arts. Silence is akin to stillness. Negative space, the area around and between the subject/s of an image is crucial in composition. It can also be the focus of an image. Negative space is not however the absence of space. Silence is quite rare in music as we usually hear related or new sounds after a note is played. Silence is not heard as negative space is seen.
Since boyhood I have always loved gazing up at the vast sea of stars. I watched the Perseid meteor shower in the early morning as the teaming spine of the milky way stretched far beyond. Every few minutes a streak of light shot across the sky. Along with this dance of primordial dust left by the comet Swift-Tuttle, three mysterious spots of circling light were caught by a thin patch of cloud towards the north east at around forty degrees. I only have my memory and my thoughts of this to wonder with.
When I am witness to hurt and pain I have a choice: I can turn inward and focus on my sadness, or I can use the force of strong feelings for the greater good.
It seems part of the purpose of sorrow is to prepare and protect us from future risk, but it can also be a catalyst for change. I can at any time choose whether that change is for the better or worse. From my sadness I can build or destroy. I choose to build.
Some people make art to praise a person or deity, others use art to express their experiences or to comment on the world. Creating art can be a source of nourishment, an act of therapy, a vehicle of hope, an activity that provides purpose and nurtures self worth, a social tool that seeks to change, or an exploration of material, idea and beauty. Art flows from many ways of being.
Finding a clear voice requires the constant attention of our inner ear, and the will to listen.
Each time I eat bread I am reminded of the earth, seeds, sun, and water. I think of how, when I offer bread to a friend and those I love, it becomes far more than something only my body enjoys.
The generosity of sharing bread, the simple pleasure of giving nourishment to another, leads to simple positive outcomes: a smile, and before long the start of a conversation, and with hope, eventually, love.
Perhaps we are drawn to the poetry of motion as it allows us to prepare for fight or flight.
I do not dance anywhere near as much as I would like to. I am self conscious, and yet as I dance at a celebration I know it does me good. Later, as I watch from the sidelines, I am struck by the expression of joy uninhibited dance evokes in those watching as much as those moving.
I long to dance, especially with, but I can only do so when completely at ease, and easily with love.
My need to unravel what is in front of me has been a part of who I am since early childhood, when I understood very little about the difficult events in my life. At times I wish I had no need to interrogate each and every experience, but there is no denying my nature. I cannot help but think and counter hurtful passion. My instinct is to understand, my efforts, to create accessible, poetic, works of art.
It is my life’s adventure that I try my best to bridge the void between one world and another.
I listen to the quiet sounds we make. Those that otherwise are filtered from my focus or distraction:
The sound of breath, of tendon stretch,
Of touch as cloth on skin shifts softly as the voice of body beats.
Within this place of multifarious delight,
With thought and spirit calm in readiness for life, with love ignite.
As figures pass and feelings swell like waves upon the shore...
Much of art tries in vein to express sensory experience. The qualities of life we feel appear so simply, and yet the moment I attempt to capture even the most straight forward of my collisions with the world, like walking in the sand, I loose all but a glimpse of the subtlety and strength of my encounter. As I walk I not only feel the soft warmth of countless grains, but you with me.
Enjoy 'Walking With The Sand Between My Toes' at 100 Artworks
Life is all we ever know.
We may be close, be saddened by, or even wish for death, but it is life that moves us from one moment to the next. Life is host to the joy and struggle of day and night. Life where love resides.
Be present in this moment I call life. Taste its fortune, sing its rare and transitory chance.
I ponder on whether love is more than thought, whether love exists outside my own experience.
Love requires another, and yet I can be in hope for love and act for this when very much alone.
Love seems as much the search to be 'with', as my action and feeling, both to my senses and my mind: with understanding, with appreciation, with another: with those things I find beautiful.
I fall in love with selfless acts as much as any wish or gift of touch, given or received.
I enjoy the sights and sounds of a festival, nestled within the arms of red sandstone cliffs on the Jurassic coast of southern England. Crowds of young and old flow onto the long esplanade with their song and dance as the sea washes against the pebbles and sand. Some play, others watch and listen, all celebrate what it is to be together in the open sea-salt air…
With, in peace, the best of life is made.
I make to move others to thought, emotion, and action.
Someone may listen, look, or think, but rarely will art, music, or words achieve lasting impact. Most often when experiencing art something will happen for a short time inside the person, yet have little or no impact outside their inner world.
The point of any art-form is to cause something to happen. The more that happens, the greater the art.
As I ponder further on the reasons for rarely representing people in my visual art I think about the difference in nature between words, music, and light. Music makes most people feel more than think. Words do both. Visual art is interpretive and appeals to our sense of beauty. In a work of art, when a human is placed in isolation or with others, all our mental energies focus upon their relationship/s with objects, landscape and others. When people are absent in works of art we consider the wider world.
I have always found peace when in the presence of nature, whether the soft buzz of a bee that works as the day breaks, or walking in a landscape of hillside, water, rock and sky. There is not a moment, not a breath of nature’s beauty that I do not long to share.
In contrast to my music and words which are presented alongside my art, it is curious that so little of my visual work directly represents people, despite it so often being about them...
After settling on the overall feeling I wish to share, I work on a piece of music by making decisions about what sounds I will use. This contrasts with writing when the choice of words flows as one with the moment of composition. With music, the sounds assert the character of the work at an early stage, and although I might add or remove instruments, the tonal palette remains much the same. I do not use instrumental templates as I want my creative journeying to remain unbridled.
Sleep: that place beneath our surface that shapes our sense of self.
Sleep, our mystery of wandering soul where freedom, love and fear find voice.
Dream long and love the sweetness of enchanted night...
There are moments when I sense the goodness of life, of landscape, and the breadth of human potential. These rare flickers of beauty and light occur when I set my own interests aside and think only of others. When I love.
I am happiest in those brief periods of clarity before the I returns. The I that yearns to share that place.
I am most with when my love is untroubled by what I hope to gain.
Peace: the experience and idea of freedom from harm in body and mind.
Make peace with your family, your friends, your neighbour, and perhaps most importantly of all, with your enemy.
I work on language that is read alongside an image and music. I work slowly on each word. I value the craft of taking time. Being in the midst of uncluttered moments helps me unravel the wonder of instinct which plays a large part of my creative process.
Words do well to mean what I feel and think. Once written, like art and music, words take on their own life in the minds of others. On the page they are but lines and arcs. They become again, only when read.
Love is an act of care and attention for others, is thought, felt, and given without need of return.
I ponder on why I try so hard to express the positive, no matter how dark life can feel. Perhaps it comes down to my search and hope of and for love. At times love is far from easy to give or receive as it is so intertwined and often confused by the obstacles of desire and insecurity - what we wish for, or whether we are wanted, or unwanted. Making art is a way to love unconditionally, and an expression of hope.
Those who come here often know my passion for the value of art which I view as essential in our search to understand and appreciate ourselves, others, and the world.
Art as a product that is sold is limited in its reach as an emblem of social status, an investment, or a thing of pleasure. In contrast, art that is experienced freely is open to the curiosity and discovery of all.
The songs we sing freely and together are of greatest value.
During times of cruelty and confusion a piece of music, a painting or a poem can take us to a better place. Those things we build give shelter.
Art can be our sight of dawn, the touch of wave against our skin, the sound of skylark high above. Art has the capacity to bring pause and comfort to our unrest, and it is this that gives reason to persist in its making.
The most inaccessible and remote places on earth are adversely affected by human activity.
I share my thoughts about our neglect of the earth at 100 Artworks.
Each day I am presented with choices that, cumulatively, have the potential to make a certain and positive difference.
Although my primary concern is for my own survival and well being, I often fail to recognize this is best achieved through the broader care of living things.
Humans are often obsessed with comfort and conflict, and ignore the cumulative damage caused to this place I call home.
I turn my attention towards the earth.
Around six hundred million people tune in at the very same time across the earth. We are enthralled by a spirit of exploration, by great risk and vulnerability, and a sense of being present in this great adventure, together.
I publish an artwork on the 50th anniversary of when humans first walked on the moon.
Relinquishing power, whether personal, at work, or held by the state, requires confidence and courage.
I am strengthened by tolerance, understanding, and love. When I am tolerant with my family, friends, and with those I work with, when I seek to understand them, I begin to love. I forge contentment.
I do not hold peace is nurtured, nor defence strengthened, by the development or maintenance of weapons of mass destruction. The world is not made safer by my ability to kill.
Although The Rights of Living Things affirms the right to self protection, this right is not unqualified.
My threatening your family and your community in the event you attack me is never acceptable. The use of a nuclear weapon for example is indiscriminate and catastrophic to all life. Self defence can only be justified when proportionate. I am an active pacifist and I will always advocate conflict resolution, whether personal, between larger groups, or nations. With love, peace of mind and body shows itself.
Hope: a positive quality of the mind that anticipates the future with optimism.
'Hope' is a short contemplative work for piano, woodwind, and strings.
Hope, even when fragile, is a gift that helps us face, then shape the world.
Making is an act of defiance in the face of threat, despair, and violence.
The creative act is in open resistance to wherever malice is found, whether cruelty or destruction of the mind or body.
In times of hurt and harm, making, no matter how modest, brings comfort and hope.
Make conversation, write a poem, start a tune with head or voice. Become the strong.
Feeling love without desire is nothing but good.
Acting with love without desire is nothing but good.
Feeling and acting with love without desire may hurt someone you also love, as they may wish love remains exclusive. They may want our greatest feeling to be singular, unique. This is not love. I think about the nature of friendship. Of love, free of the insecurities of becoming less.
I spend much of my days lost with sound. I look up and already it is the evening.
I take many weeks to create a few minutes of music. It is possible to compose far more quickly, but not if I am to maintain my balance between doing and listening. I take my time. In this I am less likely to loose sight of, less prone to overlook the sounds of time's most precious and mysterious gift: life.
Loosing time I find with life my only reason: love.
Privilege: a special right, advantage, or immunity available only to a particular person or group.
I was born in a country that values freedom of speech and action. I was encouraged to learn and find my own path. I was given love, enjoy good health, shelter, food and water. Although at times I have had very little money, I was never poor. I am in a position to create public art which I view as my responsibility born of privilege, as much as my pleasure.
A composer makes choices about what sounds are heard and when. To have a chance of doing this well I have to feel at ease, free, balanced. Listening carefully during this time is akin to love as my whole being is immersed in a sea of discovery. I trust my instinct that guides my hand to hear those things ordinarily hidden from view.
Moments of beauty are best shared, and it is this that helps bring music into the open.
I must feel to make, for creating art of any significance flows from an open heart.
To build with sound, words or light I easily fall in love: with people, with place and nature, with the compassionate actions of others. It has always been the same for me.
The peril of an open heart is that sadness as much as beauty and joy are constant companions.
Power: the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behaviour of others or the course of events.
Politics: the use of power by one person to affect the behaviour of another.
I view the arts as fundamental to the good health of human society. Art, even when its affect is limited to the field of our pleasure, is a political act: art transforms us, if only for a moment. I ponder on the strength of art's greatest potential to be the seed of positive change.
I ponder on my next. Without my next I am only what has been. I want to be what might become.
I return from a road trip that began in the gentle and rolling South Downs of England and took me to the extraordinary beauty of the Lake District, then on to the cities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, and York.
As with all journeys, life is never quite the same on my return as the experience of unaccustomed landscape leaves its mark. Time passes. Soon, my return is long ago. What might, becomes.
Art, literature and music encourage us to re-visit experiences, events and issues that we otherwise too easily grow weary of.
Violence, human's greatest weakness, cannot be opposed with logical argument alone. Violence must also be fought with those imaginative things we create with light, sound and words that inspire peaceful resolution to conflict.
As a child I often searched for flint tools in the fields around my home. People occupied an area not far from where I live over two million years ago and I was hungry to find something that I could touch that linked me with those earliest of Stone Age makers. This exploration was and remains magical to me.
My childhood journey is one in search of common ground, of belonging. With many, with one. A voyage that I continue.
I wonder through exquisite galleries of glass that welcome the light of wooded parkland. The Burrell Collection is an eclectic and inspired gathering of art and objects.
We keep the treasures of our past so we may touch the lives and beauty of otherwise forgotten times.
As I walk and gaze I discover a little more about myself, about the world, and what I most value.
When I look or turn the other away in times of difficulty, whether it be as commonplace as a personal disagreement, or as profound as the taking of life, I am diminished.
With distance, detachment comes easily.
Taking part, sharing, building, is for the strong. Be one of these mighty, and flourish.
I grow numb with every scene of tragedy and carnage that unfolds.
The greater the cruelty, the less I feel. My heart begins to close with self protective instinct as we journey to the verge of unspeakable brutality.
With one or many, love is most at risk at our place of poisonous detachment.
If the world were black and white,
Yes or no,
Right or wrong,
Nothing would be far from true,
You would love with I and all would be for one.
I visited an ironmonger that first opened almost two hundred years ago and traded during the life and times of William Wordsworth. The store was a treasure trove of tools that created countless objects long since used then discarded. The memories that flow from this place are as vibrant as the lakes, clouds and fells of this beautiful and loved Cumbria.
I hear your voice, I see you dance, the sound of stream on hill, the wind, your hair, your sunlit skin.
I, like each and every one, experience the world uniquely as it pours inward through my senses.
My thoughts and feelings are mine alone unless and until I share some small part of me.
Sharing is our only hope to meet, grow and prosper, for I am an island as I cast my line of words, light, and sound onto the open water.
We share a breath of all things dark, In this our time of loss, With sadness spent, With silence, Still,
A tempered thought for those whose warmth will never more find light,
The laughter of their day, The beauty of their night,
As we are left alone to work the soil of our unrest,
Fill, fold the world with love in honour of their life be blessed.
Another yields their life in terrifying and violent action. Their belief is that their sacrifice is imperative for those who remain, and that through loosing their life they will be rewarded in a higher place. They view their goal as morally irrefutable, and that any method of achieving it is ethically acceptable.
Life is our most precious gift. I do not hold the ends justifies the means. Our greatest strength against bloodshed and brutality is to meet it with relentless and overwhelming resistance, peacefully.
My ninety five year old aunt who arrived in England in 1948 and who worked in the country as a school teacher all her life, told me she is worried she may be asked to leave. She like many who reached these shores to make a home are fearful for their future.
My voice is in the service of the disadvantaged, the exploited, the underprivileged, the unloved. Art is the treasury of our best and worst, but perhaps art's greatest value is that it can lead to change.
I work on a music composition.
Hope is among our most important states of being. Hope often resides beyond reason yet gives us reason to continue. When hope is removed we are lost, alone. When given, hope brings strength and purpose to our world.
Although I am at heart a hopeful soul, at times I have absolutely no idea why :)
With choice I can turn away from those things that make me uneasy. This springs from my need to protect myself, my inclination to avoid risk, my hunger to survive.
When I find a place of comfort, I am resistant to change. Comfort of my body or mind, comfort in my relationships, comfort in my work, in my beliefs both true and false.
At times I fail to learn because of my resistance to meet the disagreeable head on.
Alone, I come to know the nature of my love.
With you, I am with love.
Love is real when felt, alone, or with. When acted on. When hoped for. When lived.
Love as friend, as family, as stranger lost or found, as all the world, or only one in all the world can be.
When we see the largest creatures on earth, helpless in shallow water, we pause.
As I gaze upon the artwork 'Whale Song' I ponder on the immense distance between my life on the surface and those of our aquatic kin.
There is no sound, yet in our heart we hear the call of deep ancestral song.
I turn inward.
Words I hoped to share remain unread. I loose a little of my translucency so others do not see my inner world. I pretend. I say: all is fine. I find my shell.
Pretence is the tool of those uncertain of their love.
As love returns, so the casing of my world falls, and I will make again.
For all its flaws, the European Union seeks to protect the environment, the rights and freedoms of its citizens, and values peace. We are always stronger together. I voted to remain for three reasons:
1. The Environment is best cared for when working together.
2. Human Rights are strengthened through ratified agreements between states.
3. Peace thrives through international co-operation and union.
Sky and clouds cross political boundaries with ease, are beyond the reach of money, and open to everyone who is fortunate to be able to look up, no matter their difference, their ethnicity, economic status, culture, creed, gender, or age. At times with lightening force, at others feathered frozen white, we meet their gift, we drink their water, fresh, our body made of little more but this our sky and cloud.
Ineffable: an experience that words cannot adequately express.
I hope to infuse a flavour of spontaneity in my work.
Many of my compositions begin as improvisations: I have an idea then allow my instincts to take over as I create an initial sketch. I use this foundation as the basis that I build upon.
In art, music, and literature, the unpredictable is as much a pleasure as a place of unease.
Our days are full with time.
Time: the movement of our lives, the secret of our sleep, the mystery of our memory.
Without time we could not dance, nor sing, nor tell the stories of our age.
Time is change - one moment from and to the next, the force we sense our life is lived within.
With time we heal, we hope, we love.
I hear the song of my friend of many years. That such a fragile living thing, a blackbird, can live through season upon season, through storm and snow, through the dry hot months of summer is as much a wonder to me as gazing up towards the canopy of a giant redwood tree.
Blackbird perches outside my window where I work at dawn. His tune transforms from one year to the next. I have come to love this change rather than yearn for the song that filled our past.
We share a breath of all things dark in this our time of loss,
With sadness spent, with silence, still, as we are left alone to work the soil of our unrest.
The laughter of their day, the beauty of their night.
Fill, fold the world with love in honour of their life.
Following on from my harsh criticism of yesterday, those who present art and hold culturally significant and privileged positions should be honest, articulate, and open. In my experience only a minority fulfil these duties. The directors, curators, and administrators of art galleries are wooed by artists and their representatives who are understandably reluctant to be critical for fear of being ignored or ostracised.
Constant flattery and feigned respect leads inexorably to stupidity and arrogance.
Nonsense: spoken or written words that have no meaning or make no sense.
I am continually exasperated by the absurd, inane ramblings of those in positions of influence within the contemporary art world. I listened as the Director of Tate Modern sought to subvert the responses from members of the public who expressed thoughts about three works dubiously presented as art.
The empty rhetoric of collaboration, pretence, and avoidance often fills the air of those promoting art.
Wherever and whenever humans come together there is music. From the gentle song of a parent to their sleeping child, to the sounds that mark our resting place, music is part of the fabric of our lives.
We can each make music, we can dance, and in the past and in some places this remains so, but for many, music and dance is left for others. Find your voice, perhaps at first in practice and private space, for with others, when we sing we find our strength.
An idea is the fuel of change, but change only happens when ideas move a person to act.
No matter what my circumstance, my flaws and failings, my happiness or sadness, my speed of mind or body, the choice to do good is always present. I can change for good, do nothing, or choose to harm. It may seem the smallest choice of mind or body: a kind thought towards another; taking a moment more to listen; giving a genuine smile. Each moment is my choice to be, my choice to make.
My enemy is violence.
Some are so fearful of difference and weak in spirit they take what is most precious from us: a son, a daughter, a brother, a sister, a mother, a father, a friend or soulmate.
In times of tragedy I stand firm with the conviction that peace will prevail.
Three reasons why the arts are important to me:
1. Art is an expression of love. Love of people, place, and living things.
2. Art leads to change. A Change of heart, action, or intent.
3. Art is the treasury of our best and worst.
As birdsong reaches high and sings the morning into light.
The music and art 'So Far' emerged as I pondered on the space that separates one from another.
Perhaps distance is to being close as darkness is to light.
Without the counterweight of distance I can only see so far.
I value the world of my dreams where I spend such long unremembered hours.
In dream I come to know people and places full with movement and colour that are not present in my waking life. Every now and then I recognize someone I have only met before in surreal and unusual adventure. These magical and familiar souls, who seem at first to fade from view, remain strangers to my daylight world, and yet they stay within me, unknown, unheard, unseen, until we meet again.
There is an inner space where I become most ready to create. It is a place unseen, of listening, of heightened sense and open landscape. I cannot rush towards it, nor demand its presence. This delicate, ephemeral place of making can easily evaporate with the trivial distractions of my life. It is a place only reached when I am not the player, but the instrument. A place where the 'I' gives way and doubt retreats.
Music is always and only of the present no matter when it first became. It matters to my now. It matters to your now. I listen to a piece of music and I am moved beyond words, but no matter how sensational music is, how much it affects us, when alone, its power is only for its moment.
Once music’s time is past it quickly fades from the heart. Only when I hear music with a person, in a place, or as an event does music retain its significance beyond its time, and passes into memory.
If I believe something I have created might be of service to an organization that does good work, I contact them to say that they are welcome to use what I have made without charge in whatever way they wish. I also make it clear I am happy to remain anonymous. I never hear back, perhaps because the organization is suspicious of my motives and judges I seek publicity or self advancement.
Giving is not always straightforward in a culture that views interactions so often as transactions.
As I gaze at black and white photographs I ponder on how often the reduction of something allows us to view the beauty of it more intensely, or in an altogether different way.
Despite my love of colour, its absence can be a revelation.
Recognizing the efforts and actions of others is crucial in building a good society.
Far too frequently I fail to appreciate the achievements of those I meet, despite my belief that when recognition is aligned with kindness, its potency is amplified.
Wherever I interact, online and off, each hour, each day, I must try to take better advantage of the opportunities to thank and recognize others.
I count myself fortunate in having mild asthma which occasionally surfaces when I have a cold or I am exposed to dust. Without this experience I would have likely undervalued the ease of breath I generally enjoy, and may have felt less empathy with those whose lungs are weak. Breathing is our arc of movement, from our first cry of breath to our last. In music arcs are closely aligned to that we do alone and in love with others throughout our breath's journey.
Whatever I create, the tools I use define the scope, exploration, and outcome of my work.
The process of writing by hand is so very different than using a keyboard and technologies. Hand writing is slow, but because of this, the mind wanders along an alternative path.
When I am at the start of something new I re-visit my store of tools in search of an update or substitution. Perhaps I should also consider not to have might be just what is needed.
The Staircase' as narrative, cypher, mystery.
The staircase: a place both private and social, of going, of coming, of transit.
With art we step with each emerging thought.
Once upon a wave to those left loved and far off shore,
In sight of start this
day your end,
Your light now new with water, one,
Small moment, still,
As children sent with hope and song.
I cannot imagine the sadness that families and loved ones experience. So many die needlessly in their search for a better life.
Our ability to recover from trauma may also be at the root of how we so easily ignore or place those most difficult things to the back of our minds. One of the most important roles of art, music and literature is to keep us from so easily forgetting...
I am easily distracted :) Shine a light on something new and I head towards it like a moth to the flame.
Distraction is my two edged sword. On the one hand it takes me away from what I am doing. On the other (and why I embrace unanticipated interruption), distraction is a dynamic force of change that brings new ways to understand and be. I place equal value upon seizing the moment as my being completely focused within the moment. Often times, being mixed up can be a pleasure!
I burn to understand what people think and feel. This may have arisen in equal measure from the uncertainty of my childhood experiences, as much as from an over curious temperament. My need to know is often thwarted by a social strategy that is the single most effective method to counter the unwanted or uncomfortable advances of another, and that is to simply ignore them. If I could browse these libraries of neutralizing thoughts I would find much to learn from, and even more to feel.
An artificial nervous system for robots is being developed that feels pain. As we approach the moment when non-organic sentience emerges we should consider The Rights of Living Things.
Although pain alerts us to danger, both physical and emotional, and is crucial in our development as well rounded individuals, we should be mindful of our actions so that we avoid being the cause of pain as best we can. When I do not feel pain, when pain is remote, I easily ignore it.
I have an artwork that I have decided not to publish. I am happy with the composition, texture and colour, but a gesture could be interpreted negatively which I do not want. I have to start over as I am too far down the road to backtrack. After living with a piece for a few days, uncomfortable questions about how it could be viewed sometimes emerge. This begins as a faint voice from within before growing into insistent criticism. The path to completing well is as much about doubt as confidence.
I have always enjoyed play, activities we engage in for enjoyment rather than for a particular outcome.
Play often has a practical purpose, at least for me! Being playful is invaluable creatively, socially, and psychologically. I continue to be struck by how often play is not viewed of as a 'serious pastime' and often frowned upon by people in positions of influence and authority in the workplace. Whatever my occupation, when I play more my competence and happiness increases.
There is an intensity and ambiguity to the close encounter of a portrait that leaves us with a palpable experience of the person. We must feel their presence as we approach and gather in the work. Although people are often central in my words and music, they more rarely feature in my images. I view the visual representation of humans as intimate acts of trust, thought, and respect.
I value making over destroying, hope over despair.
I hold myself back from expressing my darker experiences. I try to find the positive from those times. Why?
As with most every why, there are a mountain of reasons, but above all, darkness requires light to comprehend. Light, from its faintest hint, to blinding bright.
Money provides a means, albeit illusory, of expressing our personal worth. When our wealth is judged by economic success, when our work pays well, we demonstrate our ability to meet the needs of ourselves and those close to us, we feel reassured, satisfied. We strive to gain or protect our financial wealth at the expense of all else. Those who accumulate financial wealth seek strength, confidence and security, yet these things are only found through the giving of love.
My feelings about rain change depending on my level of physical comfort. Even though I realize rain is essential for life on the surface of our world, I generally far, far prefer being dry. When rain is absent for any length of time however, I begin to yearn for it...
It is raining today. The plants and trees love this, but the light is dull and the temperature has dropped. Rain is my constant reminder that life requires at least some discomfort for it to flourish.
I would not live well alone.
I may not live at all for long alone.
Love with requires I seek more than for myself.
Love with requires I give more than meets my eye.
Living long together, with, sustains life’s pleasure.
I spend many weeks completing a piece of music. My time is devoted to final preparations. To making good. It is the day before, full with promise and hope.
I gift my work to show its value is not bound by trade or economic activity.
Over time, with time, in part, my hope is that acts of sharing encourage others to pause in their taking. In their seeking only profit or exchange.
I use tools that allow me to optimize and refine the recorded music I have composed and performed. The most important part of this mastering process is an effort to 'listen innocently'.
Whether it be a painting, writing, or music, familiarity easily leads to blindness of those strengths and weaknesses that might be glaringly obvious to someone else. Perhaps this propensity to blindness is also true of my experience of person and place. I must better see as new in my everyday.
When we are in the sole company of another for any length of time, we may resist their kindness as we make judgements about their motivation and intentions. I wonder how much good is lost by this. When I show kindness, things can get complicated as the recipient may ask for more than I am comfortable giving. Perhaps we are well aware that with kindness comes risk, and because of this we should view those who are most kind as showing most courage.
Although there is often great beauty in the discovery that defines the creation of art, it is not enough to sustain me through to its completion.
To finish well in what I make I need to feel.
At times these feelings are my own, they arise from my life. At others, they are for an/other/s.
Creative action, at least for me, is compelled and nourished by com/passion.
On a far off arm of the milky way galaxy, we live as few have chance to do..
I imagine a world that discovers complex life is unique to the earth for ten thousand light years in every direction. With the advent of artificial consciousness, humans can, for the first time, work towards a common goal. Their time of conflict is over, and their time of love has begun...
There is a part of us that remains unseen. For some this part is more than for others: memories, thoughts we keep to ourselves, or things we do alone. We wish to share, we need to share, and yet something of our unseen always remains our own. We protect and defend these private moments of our life from the gaze of others. The unseen makes up the mystery of our lives. We feel it in others. When we watch films, read books, view art, and listen to music that touches this place, we know it well.
The idea of the future is different from one person to the next. From me, to you.
Tomorrow: an idea of what may happen, full with practical and emotional consequences.
I spend a great deal of my time anticipating, predicting and planning so I am prepared for differences that may come my way, good or bad.
At times I get so caught up in thinking about my tomorrow, I fail to live as well in my today.
I view the artistic expression of a child as equally significant as that of a person who has reached their centenary. We all have the potential to express ourselves with movement, sound, light, and word.
Art is not defined as a public object of importance. Art requires no more than to be a creative expression of special significance that is experienced. Art may be recorded in some way, or performed.
You can be any age and produce art that connects, moves, and enriches.
This morning I watch a tiny bird puff up its feathers in sight of the early sun and survey the world from the very tip of a holy tree that stands a short distance from the front of my home.
I wonder at how such fragile things are driven to greet the morning with such sweet song.
Small, as moment of my breath against the day, as single line on finger print this moment into mind.
Stay, this while when you are hear within, as shallow soft and gentle beat of wing.
Optimists have a propensity to resilience and hope, especially in the face of adversity and failure, from which they try to learn. Despite experiencing the same intensity of disappointment, pain and suffering, rather than anticipating the worst, the optimist will seek positive change.
Optimism is the wellhead of our creativity and holds that the search for value and meaning, even in those darkest times, gives life purpose.
I photograph a plant. The sky is overcast, and although I enjoy strong sunlight, at times there is nothing better than the even wash of cloud cover to best show the subtle beauty of a wild flower. I find plants in their natural habitat are generally less brash and delicate in form as compared with their cultivated counterparts. The unwanted weed inspires.
Photography helps me see what movement often obscures.
'Real': genuine, existing. Not imitation, supposed, imagined, nor artificial.
Everything we touch, everything we see, hear, taste and smell takes time to flow before it is realized. All we experience is imagined as an imperfect echo of those things 'out there'. We comfort ourselves with the fiction that this now is real. As I dreamt last night (and only for that time), to my surprise I knew, and long before, all detail of that vibrant, real and other world.
My private life stays with me at all times: off and online, with others, and alone. Especially alone.
My inner voice is fragmented with thoughts that dash from one to the next. It is playful, fearful, hopeful, unpredictable. When I am with friendship, with love, a little of its voice is freed.
I share small moments of my private life with those I trust and hope to trust, and when I do, it is as if I give my very breath. With love, as one, my private life gives way.
A man falls silent and alone.
For those, like the man I knew, who find themselves surrounded by life, yet unable, unfortunate, or unwilling to welcome its company, their passing is remembered with sound and light so they do not fall forever from our view.
Listen to 'A Short Lament For A Private' Man at 100 Artworks
Life, this moment of our here and now,
This place of all we ever are,
Of time we do and share in this our touch of present near and far.
With grace, with hope, with peace revere this gift of sound and light,
As once we play upon this earth with all that is with love unite.
Enjoy a story and picture book about how the sun and moon save the earth.
Perhaps our need to nurture lays at the heart of listening to, reading, and making stories. Nurturing ourselves, and one another.
Saying words out loud, repeating them, whispering them, transforms them. Words become within us.
I did not know my father well. Although we rarely spoke he told me stories of his brutal and adventurous youth. He drew solace from country music and alcohol in equal measure. He died when I was in the US in the summer of 1984. My last memory of him is as we shook hands and I left for my flight. The tears that welled up within him as we parted have always remained with me as a measure of the strength of his unspoken love. This was the first and only time I saw him cry.
My greatest challenge is to make, then give without desire or need of return. When I create and publish my work, there remains a part of me that is hopeful, perhaps needful for a response... I try to quell this desire in an effort to direct my focus away from myself. It is difficult as my sense of self-esteem, my self-importance informs my confidence to start, and then to do, and yet I sense I will only know peace when I give unconditionally, which as I understand it, is to love.
I imagine gazing at a small square of earth from above in the year 2045. Among the emerald, ochre, sapphire, and textures of life, I make out what appear to be objects, symbols, and built structures from an earlier time, barely seen. I think of how, over time, nature reclaims what is taken, no matter the damage caused. In this newly made world, the harm of humans is quenched, and life is given chance once more to find its place, together.
I work. I am focused, intense. I hone in on a task that involves listening to subtle changes in volume and rhythm. This requires my complete attention. There is no room to think of anything else.
During periods of extreme concentration, when I push my mind over long periods, my head heats. Taking rest is like switching on the fan on a hot summer’s day. Boiling over serves no one.
The mystery is that rest for me is doing something different, yet equally engaging.
Overhead, a red kite soars. A crow half its size rattles, caws and clicks as it charges towards the invader to drive it from its territory. The kite's mate eyes the scene from far above. She swoops to join the contest. The adversaries pitch and roll in the still air. The kites speed away in tight formation, wings bent, they rush against the cloudless sky. In England, crows are the largest cause of injuries and premature deaths to birds of prey. I question my instinct, especially when I sense its certainty.
Although I am bound by time, qualities exist outside of it.
Time is the apparently irreversible idea, experience and measurement of events - past, present, and future. There are however many qualities that are unconstrained by time: for example, love, compassion, hope, grace, and beauty. Perhaps life is only experienced as whole when we embrace within and without this place we call time.
The room where I work has a large west facing window. I forget the pleasure of early morning light far too easily, for each time I experience it I am surprised by its beauty. Strong sun strikes the budding branches of ash, sycamore, chestnut and apple blossom against the clear blue northern sky. Crisp shadows heighten the textured tree bark as the experience of near and far is contracted as if I gaze through a child's 3D slide viewer. I remind myself to listen more than hear, and to look more than see.
I gather my thoughts as I might the parachute seeds of a field of dandelion in the breeze on a summer's day. Some fleetingly float beyond my reach as my attention is momentarily captured by their flight, others slip from my mistimed awkward grasp, and those lighter than air, delicate, embryonic plants that come to rest in my palm do so more out of good fortune than skill or purpose. I cup my hands in hope that one may remain as I head for the stillness of my inner space.
Although music is sometimes used to support ideas, positions and narratives, music is not a language. It has no grammer nor meaning. It is experienced differently from one person to the next.
Music can touch our very core and allows us to share a place in common during, before, and after our time, yet once its moment of being is done, its movement past, music does not stay long to stir us into action beyond its present. We turn to language as the agent of our change.
Money has been used by humans as a means of exchange for around seven thousand years. Whatever its strengths and weaknesses, surely money is here to stay. If I believe money not only stifles our potential but is at the heart of so much waste and suffering, what is the alternative?
Money is a substitution for trust and honour. I work on the publication The World Without Money where I present an idea(l) of what is and could be, and the places today where money has no hold nor sway.
Money is an idea - it cannot exist without agreement. Money stimulates self-interest rather than cooperation. Money's greatest shortcoming is waste. Countless people work in competition for the same end. Precious lives are spent doing things that have little personal relevance, while those qualities of greatest value are often ignored or remain undervalued. I look forward to a time when humanity casts aside the shackle of money and begins its more worthwhile journeys of discovery.
I easily forget the care of our world and others as I focus on my immediate concerns.
On Earth Day I try to be more mindful of my actions that, cumulatively and with others, have a positive or negative affect. Each day I cause change. I choose this change through what and how I eat and drink, by my use of energy and water, and what I choose to say. On every day I have a choice to love.
Small things add up. We are the sum of small things.
I work best when alone yet so enjoy the company of others.
I give myself time to play and ponder in search of moments to begin.
When alone I listen most intensely. With another such invasive force can lead to dislocation.
I wish most to begin with as it offers most comfort and pleasure. I wish most to be with, and yet...
When my 'I' is less visible, when my sense of self less insistent, I find a place and peace to make.
The day before I publish there is nothing but hope.
The day after is often full with doubt and worse.
A day more, my dream returns.
Come dance this day with sound embrace,
Our journey start as one revealed,
With love, respect and grace before this moment new and we with song depart,
With touch our wistful gaze conceal.
I have completed a piece of music and start another.
I intended for the music to be longer, but the more I listened, the more it became clear the work could stand on its own. I am often surprised by moments of realisation that a composition is fully formed. There are always many minor improvements to make, but the music’s form and character is clear.
The decision to stop making is essential when creating art. Not doing is at times a non-rational choice.
Every couple of days I feed wild birds that live in the hedges, shrubs and trees that surround my garden in southern England. Wood pigeons, collared doves, blackbirds, song thrush, sparrows, green and gold finches, blue tits, wrens, robins, yellowhammers, and on occasion, green and greater spotted woodpeckers - all visit at this time of year. I witness the variety and wonder of flight every day - if there is one ability I would love that I will never posses, it is to fly.
As I work on a composition the nature of its character changes from a bold, quirky waltz to a more delicate plaintive dance. This transformation arises from the nature of chosen sounds and the work's form, rather than through any predetermined ideas I might have.
I listen to accidents of time and search for those unpolished yet beautiful sounds, full with personality.
My pleasure is often in the shaping of the imperfect.
An endless wash of dull grey cloud covers hour upon hour. I think about why I so dislike the monotony of an overcast day, and how strong light and vibrant colour transforms my mood for the better.
I resist uniformity, whether sensory or social. I am hard-wired to do so.
My enchantment is with change and difference, the engines of life.
Time is life - I cannot conceive of existence without the journey.
By giving time to anything I hand over a precious moment of my being. I easily forget this. I am frequently distracted. Why devote time to the creation of art? Apart from the desire to contribute towards a better place, what drives me?
No matter the beauty or the sadness of a moment, it is, becomes, far more, when shared.
We pour our energies into the creation of digital content, and yet these efforts will be lost over time without a self-sustaining archive that saves what is best. We store our words, images, sounds and numbers through reproduction from one short-lived medium to another: magnetic tape, drum, tube, core, RAM, disk, drives, and holographic memory. When our data survives like the cave paintings of El Castillo, our efforts will reach beyond our shores, but for now our city world is built on sand.
As we breathe, as we work or sleep, in love and pain, sound is my constant companion.
After spending hour upon hour on my work or in silence I will often take the five mile trip to my nearest town to hear the stream of lively speech in the street.
My greatest contentment is in the company of another's voice.
I ponder on the idea of the flat two dimensional plane.
The Euclidean Plane is an idea. It does not exist as an experienced place. It is an area of width and length, but with no height at all, none.
Art sets the mind at play to explore a place both curious and beautiful.
Much of my energy and attention is spent laying the foundations for my next piece of music. For me, this is an intuitive process as much as a rational one. I might listen carefully to numerous recordings of a viola as I 'aurally search' through the instrument's qualities and refine my choices about its use and potential. I might stand still in woodland as the sounds of earth and life flow through me. During this journey I am continually surprised by the beauty and character of sounds that, at first, I fail to hear.
Online or offline, body and mind, head and heart, rational, spiritual.
Without balance I fall.
I have been unwell for five days. It is neither serious nor chronic. Being unwell gives me the opportunity of seeing the world differently. It encourages me to consider how others in precarious circumstances are coping with this same level of discomfort. If I move my focus away from my body, I experience things in a new light. I hear differently - the sound of early morning rain is an unlikely pleasure.
With moments of unease my understanding grows.
A 3D painting in the style of Rembrandt is created without human thought or touch. Art through Artificial Intelligence. Before long, 'an original' painting and a 3D print will be visually identical. It’s line, colour, texture, shape, form, pattern, and composition. The same will be for all we see, hear, and touch.
The art-market sells on the bases of a work's originality and exclusivity. This changes everything.
The Profit of Art is not in its economic value...
Every day I receive news that encourages me to grab the latest version of this or that. It might be hardware, software, or a service. The improvements might be in what something can do, or how it does it. Updates appeal to my sense of avoiding risk. Perhaps a security or compatibility fix, an invitation to join with those who enjoy the best chance of doing well, or a subliminal warning that I need to remain.
Updates of products and services I already own feed my desire and fear of change.
Friendship does not exist alone. Its nature is to be with. Its love is satisfied without desire.
Friendship is recognised by its quality of strengthening mutual worth and confidence.
A friend responds when asked to with action, open thought, and feeling.
The honesty of friendship is to embrace its love with open arms. Fear plays no part in it.
Without the willing and frequent actions of love, we are no more than the hope of one for another.
Words shape my world. A short sentence gives meaning and purpose to my life:
Love without desire nor need of return.
Seven words, simple to understand, so difficult to achieve, yet the foundation of all happiness I feel.
I enjoy a concert of Edward Elgar's The Enigma Variations, an enveloping, beautiful, and poignant orchestral piece. I am struck by how still the audience sit when listening to 'classical' music in a concert hall. I hear music and my first impulse is to move.
At times, social constraint limits the richness of our experience. I listen to 'Nimrod' once again - music that moves my spirit, my body, and that gifts opportunity to move with others.
For those who see, an image demands attention, more so than any other medium.
Although my emotional response to visual art is not as intense to me as music, I find light and its uncovering of form beautiful, and with beauty comes great pleasure.
With words with or alone, written, spoken, heard, understood, unknown, their shape, their length in time becomes their ease, their hope or pain in mind, the enchanted journey of and for their meaning.
People at the head of an organisation insist that once a thing is published, it should never be amended except in exceptional circumstances. This results in a clash between my creative desire to constantly improve, and the corporate concerns of control, reputation, and legal challenge.
We should always make better, and if necessary, acknowledge the changes. Literature, music, art, research, and good journalism have been updated as new editions since their very beginnings...
Only rarely am I enthralled by a lengthy piece of music from beginning to end - my moments of pleasure are more usually tempered by periods of anticipation. Although large-scale artworks are undoubtedly enriching, small works can be equally satisfying.
When something is not so easily given to academic study or critique it is often mistakenly viewed of as less significant. Small and large does not however equate with better or worse...
I listened as a viola sounded one brief musical phrase. I was deeply moved...
At times there are no words but sound,
To touch what lays so close yet often veiled,
The beauty of the bow on string,
In place of hurt with love prevail.
Acts of creativity are essential for humans. When we devote time and energy into making something, the products of our efforts are not only shared, the art, images, movements, and ideas we create have the potential to transform us so we more easily bear the love, pain and suffering we experience.
An act of creativity may be as modest as a conversation, or as ambitious as a work of art.
All humans are creative, although some become more practised than others.
Music can be emphatic without being explicit. Its energy and persistence can convey the energy that characterizes what it is to feel alive. It does this in part through its ephemeral nature, through the shortness of its breath, the strength of its sound, and the breadth of its highs and lows.
I sense a night full with fire and rhythm, a forceful, effervescent dance. A declaration. An affirmation.
Many libraries of art, music, and words are digital. These reside in unknown data stores in far off places where trillions of connections rush to reunite us with those things that interest us. This data I value is however ephemeral, short-lived, remote, and soon deleted. I seek it, receive it, absorb it, then move on.
The painting that I see, the musical instrument I hear, the printed book I touch and read, I experience more generously by my body than the riches of a digital realm. They are more real outside of me.
The idea of self springs from our notion of identity - what I have been; who I am; what I could be. The 'I' is the changing face of me. At first it seems I know what 'I' means, yet considering the 'I' for even a short while throws up countless questions. My struggles surround 'my' desires. I am most content when working creatively out of love for others, and yet 'I' yearn to share this journey. This hunger gives me purpose - I value my 'I' to increase the chance, if only for a moment, of becoming, being, close.
As well as publications that are clearly attributed to me, I also publish anonymously. This allows content to be experienced as more potent and compelling, however people can also be cautious or suspicious if the originator is not made plain. Is it best to know who created Be Free of Violence?
As I work on a publication, I am at once torn by the desire to share, yet mindful of sharing at the right time, and in the best way.
Each year in March as I work at my desk I am transformed by the sound of early birdsong. One particular blackbird has a distinctive call I have grown to love. Out of nowhere, and after months of quiet winter, their song fills the air once more.
I am struck by how one bird will listen and pass on the songs of another - we humans are not the only species with an aural tradition...
I publish a poem and artwork about loss.
I wonder why the focus of my expression takes nature as its starting point. Perhaps it is that we need the distance and abstraction of metaphor to speak of those most fearful things. Perhaps it is that nature is so far from our place of cruelty.
Our confidence is in part built from the reassurance of our capacity to 'make' money. Those who are lower paid are sometimes viewed as 'worth less'. How much money a person generates is however largely a matter of good fortune: our birthplace, the love and care we are given, our physical and mental capacity, our temperament, gender, education, culture, religion, and health. The ability to acquire money from one's efforts is often erroneously perceived of as an indicator of personal worth.
Since childhood I have always been at once fascinated and mystified by time.
One of time’s most curious qualities is the length of 'now'.
Do I experience a brief plateau that defines the present? Or am I only ever conscious of my past?
Time is broader in the experience of living things than a simple line from before to the here then after.
This now may never end.
We share millions of images every day, some that move as time proceeds, most that stay the same.
A touch on the phone, a click on the mouse, a swipe to upload.
There is no greater chance to be heard in this cacophony than for me to more carefully consider the subject, composition, and manipulation of the images I publish.
A still photograph or artwork is like a poem - if I give it time, a wealth of feelings and thoughts will flow.
I add a final line to the short poem below. It seems fitting as the poem (my thought) is about how expression, communication and touch is never in isolation, but rather flows, from one moment, one day, one person to the next.
If we fail to speak of language lost and touch of no not yes.
If I do not express today,
My tomorrow will be less:
The otherwise of choice,
Of
seldom sought and wary voice,
Of
language lost and touch of no not yes.
When making I am troubled by decision, and indecision.
As I make I meet my uncertainty.
With uncertainty comes wisdom.
Doubt in what I do creatively is necessary, and in my conduct, vital.
With doubt I have the opportunity to revisit, to make better.
On any day of violence, the overwhelming majority of the peoples of our world yearn for peace: with family, with friends, with workmates, at home, abroad, but most with those we have no peace with.
As I come to know of cruel and brutal acts I become more determined, more resolute, more relentless in my efforts to counter conflict through my creative efforts.
Be in no doubt, peace will prevail: between one and another, between one another.
My creative output is disciplined by my desire to ensure my work is equally accessible to people of any age, culture, faith, or circumstance.
Art confined by economic access limits its scope and ambition.
The imaginative challenges and rewards that flow from creative restraint gives rise to greater opportunities that encourage positive change.
I have never been able to work when music is playing as I am immediately, irresistibly, and utterly enchanted by it. I cannot help but listen to its colour and form - whatever my current focus.
Music is transformative, it is for me an experience of departure from the ordinary to the world of the mysterious and beautiful.
When felt, music is the closest abstract art that holds the same in heart as love.
Art has the potential to reach the unexpected in unpredictable ways.
Alone and with others, music helps me rise above my ordinary. It places me alongside another, no matter their difference. Music moves me from my place of being - at least for the time of its present.
Without a title music has no shared meaning. Language moves music from the indefinite towards idea.
Listen to 'In Search of Peace' at 100 Artworks
The online network that allows automated systems to exchange, manipulate, and present digital content will be the context where artificial consciousness first becomes known. The Web has changed human history and is far beyond the influence of any multinational corporation or nation state.
Today is the Web’s birthday, when well over half the world’s population of humans have access to it.
My choice online is to listen, learn, and contribute, positively. Be the difference, for good…
As I work on a music composition I frequently consider what the piece might be called.
The search for the title of a work helps reveal its nature, whether it be an image, text, or music. Most often, my naming of a work is my final act of completion.
The search to name unfolds identity and sets the mind at play.
I ponder on the three spheres that inspire me to create: people and self; those things that interest me; and the physical and abstract forms that I find beautiful. I would love to spend my days connected with the first of these - the personal world, but I would soon miss the worlds of the intellect and aesthetics.
Perhaps the appetite of inspiration is by its nature a moving enchantment.
Days of doing rush as roaring wind and waterfall.
Days of doing nothing spread as still and silent lake.
My childhood from the age of three and a half to adulthood was spent largely in the company of four woman: my two elder sisters and two aunts. I have loved, and always will love the company of woman.
On this day, international woman’s day, I set aside time to discover writers, composers and artists that I should know far more about, and of how I act towards and think of woman.
Woman, the beauty and fortune in my life.
I enjoy a warm and comfortable home, good health, and eat well. I own creative tools that allow me to express my self, and the means to publish my work.
Two thoughts arise as I imagine the tipping point when I have no material need:
· Hardship is a requirement of empathy and expression.
· Creativity is enhanced by practical constraint.
The fourth Article of The Rights of Living Things asserts the right to act, communicate, or think as we wish as long as we do not place others in imminent danger.
Without liberty to speak I become as a caged bird, longing for flight.
I can be silent, or sing to be free.
When together, I am as much the expression of another's nature.
When alone, the full force of my nature is revealed.
Flowers transform us. They take us to a different place, far removed from the ordinary. Perhaps their nectar and promise of future fruit appeals to primal triggers within us.
Giving flowers is an act of love, sympathy, appreciation, and at times, self-interest. If possible, it would be better to share a flower in its natural setting. That would not only reduce the waste of commercial production, but may be received as a more potent gesture of kindness.
With: united; possessing something physical, psychological, imagined, or spiritual; in the company of.
Within: with and in; having the quality of; the limit of time, place, idea, or experience; where something exists physically, psychologically, or spiritually.
With sound we meet with voice and thought that moves the air as wing with flight.
My son reaches out, in, and with the world.
I do the same in the certainty our paths will cross with more to share.
I miss him from my every day.
Love is as maple seed, carried by the wind.
Parting is our nature, as sun and moon to sky.
I inhabit a place of ease. I am not subject to oppression, prejudice, or intolerance. I am free.
In this place it is easy for me to move the disadvantage of others away from my view. It is easy for me to ignore the harm of earth. To live a quiet life of little consequence. To be out of sight and out of mind.
With such a life of comfort, love recedes. My take is more than give.
Be not silent in this place. Give more no matter what or no return, for love protects and fuels the heart.
When the sky is clear I turn my face towards the great ocean above then close my eyes. I wait one minute, and in this short time I imagine the beauty of that blue.
No matter how hard I try, I never fail to be utterly unprepared for the experience of opening my eyes once more.
We sleep. Each day we inhabit the known and unknown territories of our mind.
I often wake, clear with thought from my concealed contemplation - it seems our ability to reason is not an island state of consciousness. At times my waking state can touch my place of dreams.
My emotions travel a winding river through the nations of my being.
I am, like you, one united states of mind.
We experience symmetry as an intensely attractive force. Our enchantment to it extends from the physical world to art and ideas. Its appeal to my heart is as much as to my mind.
I write this forwards, I read this backwards, I ponder on question and answer, of time and deed:
I did eye peep noon peep eye did I did eye peep noon peep eye did I
Naivety: lack of experience, wisdom, or judgement.
The assertion of naivety in discussion to counter a view is a failure of thought and expression. It is a means to undermine or dismiss without argument or evidence. An easy, lazy, feeble claim. A brick thrown threw the window of reason. I say this to myself: with differences of opinion, take time.
Examine experience, wisdom, and judgement, consider each, think on each in light of what is said.
Ideas hold no more truth or use when one pays for them.
Money is the child of our distrust and insecurity.
Without money we would no longer pursue economic stability or wealth. We would find meaning through those things of greatest value: love, compassion, hope, community, and beauty.
Money, that spurious measure of importance, is the widespread cause of our diminishing potential.
Around twice a week for four years I pass a dog on my way to town and stop a moment to say hello. The Alsatian would look up but remain unmoved. Today was different. For the first time as she noticed me from a distance, she wagged her tale and approached me enthusiastically. At that moment, and from that moment on, we became friends. We are of no threat to one another. Trust feels good.
Trust can take an age before its gift.
Stamina: sustained, determined effort.
No matter what my talent, instinct, skill, or knowledge, none sustain my making as persistence.
Creative stamina is an essential characteristic of the fertile artist, whatever their field of making.
Creative Stamina: the unending drive, will, and need to make, despite sustained failure, weakness, obscurity, loneliness and isolation.
At the moment I seek to know, I treasure those things I cannot explain.
Too little mystery, and the world is less: a place of a to b.
Too much mystery and I am overwhelmed with apprehension.
Mystery shapes the richness of my day.
Your mysteries, my mysteries, those things unknown between us, let free the wish to know.
With language, my hardest challenge, and greatest pleasure, is to say something, simply.
With love, give. Grow.
I have been an avid gatherer of tools all my life.
I am equally excited by a pencil, or a digital tool that allows me to manipulate sound or light, language, or a musical instrument. I try to learn about one tool every day as my knowledge is slight. Tools provide the means to make, and I would be lost without them.It is your right to explore your creativity, nurture your potential, and benefit equally from cultural, scientific, and practical achievements.
Each article of our clothing informs others of our voice as much as the language we speak.
The headscarf not only offers practical protection from the elements, it carries social, cultural, and religious significance. It can be a sign of the wearer’s modesty, or their commitment to a particular way of life. A show of difference or solidarity. A comfort, or challenge, to myself and others.
The 'flow' is when one is fully immersed in, and completely absorbed by an activity. The body and mind work seamlessly towards a goal as the ego and sense of time are placed to one side.
I have been fortunate to experience the flow when playing sport, music, creating art, and writing. My whole being: my senses, intellect and emotional state, attends to the matter at hand.
The greater my focus, value, and relaxed effort of doing an activity, the more likely I become the flow.
I value three things above all else: love, compassion, and beauty.
By beauty I mean those qualities of form, structure and composition that bring me and others pleasure: in those things we make, in those acts I observe, and in the world I experience (all of nature).
While love and compassion are good, beauty is not necessarily so. As someone who uses beauty in their work I therefore have the responsibility to consider its use in light of love and compassion.
As far as we know, humans are the only species to think about the future. It seems however we generally consider the consequences of our actions for our own interests before those of others.
Humans will only flourish, perhaps only survive, once we place others before ourselves. I remind myself, Be Kind to a friend, a colleague, a stranger, or a member of my family today, and tomorrow I will feel the strength of what it is to give.
It is important for me that people have the same access to those things I make no matter their age, gender, their ability in mind and body, where they live, their economic circumstance, or what they believe. I make for those who experience the world as I, as much as for those who do not. For those who share my values, and those who feel contempt for them.
I make for the chance for anyone to meet my world as they experience, act, and think in theirs.
We may be in a private or public place. We may be in love, have loved, or wish for love. It may be that others have shown us love.
Whatever my personal circumstance I view this day not as the hope for romance, but as a window of opportunity, a speck of time in which I choose to declare my feelings and thanks to those I love.
Come close my heart, and love.
The original meaning of the Latin word 'sanctuarium' referred to a sacred place. We now use sanctuary to describe a refuge from pursuit, persecution, or danger - both physical and psychological.
Music has the potential to pause the hardness of our heart in times of violent change.
I loose all sense of time when composing music - an irony as the medium requires time to experience it!
I wonder whether part of my absorption is as a result of my creative method. I am not a theoretical nor analytical composer, but rather allow my aesthetic instinct to drive my choices through spontaneous performance. I refine these gestures meticulously, all the while sensing the music’s immediate shape, changing textures, and overall form. It is this that swallows the hours whole.
Art is my place of creative discovery.
The open and free exchange of ideas and art provides the most freedom to flourish.
When I restrict what I give, and this sometimes seems necessary in a world where money is the dominant means of exchange, I dilute the force and reach of what I offer.
My greatest strength comes from giving, far more so than from those things that I receive.
This is a true story: a man walks into a movie studio and lies about what happened. A film gets made and the titles roll: this is a true story.
The phrase 'true story' in the opening or promotion of a movie is always a negative for me.
Although there can be as much truth in fiction as that which is declared as fact, truth is often far removed from memory or the reporting of events.
Tell me a thing should be approached one way and I will invariably consider why, and whether it is possible to approach differently. This can be exasperating to those who know me, and so I have learned to quieten my nature when in the company of others.
It is not always wise to unpick the cloth others have so carefully woven, yet the curious mind cannot help its need for discovery and clarity.
Hidden in the word earth is art. I listen to sounds that arise as words do ideas. Words alone and isolated are weak, their strength is in their meeting and meaning.
It is in coming together that value arises, as sounds do in music, light in art, and as communities: of humans, and other living things. The earth is our place of coming together, of voice and song.
Architecture plays a significant role in our state of mind as we move and interact outside and within it.
Architecture is functional and restricted by practical constraint. I do not view architecture as art, despite its sculptural qualities. Art's primary purpose is to express, and examine ideas and/or relationships. Architecture's primary purpose is to host things (people and objects). Architecture is akin to design where a great deal of creativity and aesthetic judgement is used to serve a practical purpose.
The commentary To Be, A Human, And Being is published at The Rights of Living Things.
This contribution considers all life as subject to rights, whether plant, animal, human, or emerging artificial sentience.
Perhaps our resistance in acknowledging the value of non-human life is that we must act without thinking primarily of our own advantage, but rather of our collective interest.
The arts have the potential to reach inward as they not only reflect those things in us that are clear to others (our outward gaze, our look, our speech and actions in the world), they also appeal to those things we keep hidden, are unaware of, or rarely approach. A short poem written as a line of words:
My skin: of peanut husk, of brown oiled olive wood, the age of old. My inner world: of flight in clear blue sky and shoaling sea, of love for more of life, the crash of citrus wave between the you and me.
I experience the world in dream and disconnected thought.
At times I try my best to string together ideas that flow from one to the next so that I and others might understand. I call this being 'rational'.
Although I use reason to understand, I come to know with more.
I cannot search with reason why to love, who to love, why I love. Life is felt as much as thought.
I gaze at art created by children. With the guidance of their teacher the group studies an artist whose work acts as inspiration for their own creative efforts. Once the works are complete, photos are taken of them and shared with others.
The act of sharing is as important in nurturing a love and participation of art, as the creation of it.
I am most at ease when I share as an act of love, rather than as a means to benefit myself.
Beauty sustains me. I stand outside my home and look up at the countless dots that prick the night sky. I love that sky. Perhaps its beauty is as much in its difference to daylight, as its quietly changing form and immense scale.
The beauty I enjoy is conditioned by my nature, my culture, and those things I have experienced. Beauty is only found in the present where my life is forged.
I dedicate a poem to those who lost their lives in the Aegean Sea as they fled the horror of war.
I was moved to write as events are soon and sadly forgotten. Poetry leaves an open door to return.
Words, through their permeating quality, can lead to change. The act of writing is an expression of solidarity, and of hope.
We forget easily so our lives are not overwhelmed with joy and sadness from the past.
At times however we try our best not to loose the memories that makes us whole: we keep small somethings of our love, hope, and pain. I keep more than most: a pine cone from a giant redwood, a pebble from a crashing wave, the feather of a songbird.
Those objects, words and art that we hold close become the emblems of our life.
One of the great challenges I try my best to meet is to express myself clearly. Most often I fail.
Language is perhaps our most mysterious tool of expression, and my most treasured. Unlike any other medium used to create, language is not defined by its medium. It can be recorded on a surface, presented aurally, visually, or through touch, yet its essential quality, meaning, remains the same.
Through language we build our worlds of one.
As the stone washed by river, time will glaze the rough of old.
I am captivated by brief stillness and its companion, silence. Both qualities are so rarely experienced over any length of time as life is commonly known by its movement and sound.
Words in air, on surface or mind, are absent in the sharing of silence. Become wordless.
With someone trusted, loved: be silent, still. Being in the fullness of stillness, of silence for more than one minute in the company of another, is extraordinary. Without saying, be with.
On discovery that tax payments over a ten year period are vastly lower than they should be, a media item appears that highlights the company's 'Cultural Institute' in an effort to soften public attitudes.
Even when related non-profits and corporations are separate legal entities, they come into being for the same purpose: profit.
When together, whether personal or in a group, common purpose is defined by those with most control.
A 'fine art' photo of a potato was sold for one million dollars.
In response I share my artwork of a violin made by the hand of Antonio Stradivari.
The value of something is often far removed from its place or price.
Enjoy 'Stradivarius Liberatus': free to view yet never heard
I cannot contemplate a world without touch, both in its giving and receiving. My next most crucial sense is sight, despite the importance of music in my life. All three senses play a part in beauty and the arts which are vital to me, unlike taste and smell which I could live, reluctantly, without.
Isolation is used as a method of punishment that denies or limits our senses. At a different point for each of us, sensory deprivation crosses the boundary into mistreatment, and worse, torture.
I am not good with written instructions as I do not remember lengthy procedures at all well. I am wired to learn through observation, through listening and play, three areas that are not at all straight forward to measure or evidence.
Play is my most effective tool, however many mistakenly view play as a counterweight to work, while I view my most serious work as play...
I consider the second article of The Rights of Living Things: that peaceful coexistence does not only relate to humans.
The declaration challenges us to respect the importance of all living things, and to act in ways that provides the best chance for life to flourish on our fragile world. Although this requires immense effort and creativity, this also provides us with an opportunity to cultivate our common purpose.
I have long been fascinated by the way sound, light, and meaning transform one another.
Sound, light, and meaning, move, all at different speeds.
The speed of sound being the most easily felt and understood, and meaning, the most elusive.
The speed of light, while very fast, allows the mind to settle, and this pause gives rise to thought.
Together, in words for example, sound, light and meaning combine: the movement of my world.
My thirst for more than meets the eye is driven by my need to understand, my yearning to know. You may feel this same thirst not only satisfied by sense or body, but also by the heart and mind.
This cryptic place where I reflect on the why and how of things.
The more I view, my view becomes my more.
The more my inward gaze, the more I burn within to share the more of who and what I find.
With short hours of daylight the weather turns. I am surrounded by the bitter chill and frost of north.
Low temperatures keep me close to home. In the past, especially in the evenings, being inside during the long dark winter meant more time for conversation, reading, and rumination. By the past I mean to say before my days online where I am easily lost with inconsequential distraction.
Now, online, wherever I roam, in every time and season, the silence of my contemplative winters retreat.
I ponder on the nature of inhibition and how the expression of love is often constrained in public.
In a long and warm exchange I witness someone with severe special needs hold, then kiss the hand of a person who helped her. The person who kissed seems far closer to happiness than those who are harnessed by social timidity. Their generosity overcame the hesitancy of love that often confines our interactions. When I restrain myself for the sake of what others may think or judge, I limit my love.
I frequently come across ideas masquerading as art. All too often this 'art' presents a simple thought that hides behind the rhetoric of a 'personal artistic vision'. In truth these ideas are often no more than undeveloped, embryonic concepts.
Thoughts are the stuff of dreams, and their value is incalculable, but they do not in themselves cross the boundary into becoming or being art...
A single line of thoughts is expressed here each day.
After three years I return to what I think of as the start. As with all beginnings it is dependant on a time before. The first of anything requires I know it as new, and to know as new I need to know my past.
What I and you may feel as fresh may be felt by another as familiar.
When making art of any kind, I reuse, I make new. My every start: abundant with what has come before.
Thanks: appreciation of, and gratitude for the in/tangible.
Three years and I complete the cycle of these words. I begin, again, yet this start is not the same.
As moments pass they leave their mark upon me.
As I return, to ideas, to beauty, to love, I am new, as you become.
The nature of life and art is its start, its end. My great fortune is to be with, time, and again.
· With every word: refine, make clear.
· Record each phrase that settles here with with honest voice and heart.
· Present each character that falls upon the page beautifully and with care.
· With thought and art, magnify, intensify, lay bare.
· Make known today my shadow and my light, my world that comes what may.
Three years, in this place of thought, a page remained unseen, untouched, despite its easy reach.
In wait for one in five, million, souls. Perhaps it may be you. Year one, year two, year three, and then...
Each day I hide from view those parts of me that long for light. To hide, as much with love or hope, as with the claustrophobic fear that no one shares my view. For few and rare: the curious mind awaits.
Here, hear my voice, speak one word before its end, this day of celebration, when you and I first meet.
Dreams are not rational, but real as hope and love...
I know you well as you do I. I live a life with you, away from my awake. And in that life I love, console, find beauty without word, our world of dream. I know you well as you do I my dream.
Dream more than sense can know or thought can understand. As dream in dream we live our lives.
As with night and day, there is the dawn and dusk, when dream and waking life in moments touch.
Some say humans exploit almost exclusively for their own benefit. Their self-interest and desires drive them individually, in groups, and as nations. It is said self-interest leads to innovation, and competition, to improvement. Some believe personal relationships are defined by what will be to their advantage.
When I act this way I am neither happy nor content. When I do or make for myself I am not sustained.
Pleasure, no matter how intense, is brief. Life is long. Kindness calms my loneliness, and love, my night.
You have travelled from across the sea. We meet. I have not seen you for some time. You are beautiful, yet remind me of my mother who has just died after her battle with despair. I am unsettled and keep this to myself. You tell me of the dark forces that have raged within you and ask we start over. I say that I cannot, but not why. We part. I turn away. I think of you each day and how I could have loved far more.
Forty years pass and still I think of you. Romance is but a single grain upon the shore of love.
Art is made with the need to express. When everyday communication does not adequately convey what I feel, think, or sense, art's interpretative nature provides opportunities for people with different experiences, feelings, and thoughts to approach. Without art I stand apart: I am not whole.
If you feel something deeply, as important, write a poem. Take an hour, a day, a week, take time.
Powerful affecting art can be made by anyone, although some would have you think otherwise.
Damaging something so large as the earth takes a great deal of persistent harm and neglect.
Human short-sightedness defines our relationship with the earth. To live well I must counter my preference for short term gain, my instinct to merely survive the day, individually, and collectively.
Small things matter. A single bee has little impact on the world, and yet together, bees pollinate the crops that human's eat, and without them, we die. I easily forget the nature of my strength to act.
I am lost for words, struck down by heavy hand on street, floored from the daze of disbelief that hate, hurt and insult become so common place, that anger at our differences in mind and body break and set us each apart, with shout, with chant and bitterness, laid bare the danger of this day.
My fight and strength is more than fear and pain can crush. More than threat, enmity or rage.
With kindness quell the brute, disarm, with love expel.
Before I do or do not, two forces act within me: the first derives from my intuition and instinct, the second from my understanding and reason. Put simply: I struggle to reconcile my head and heart.
Take choosing words. My first call to write arises from feeling. Once I have something on the page I spend my time trying to understand what it is and how I have come to feel. Both forces pull, push, and interact. The same is true when choosing light or sound in art and music, and when being with.
Light is a moment I uncover over time, in time, with time.
Light moves quickly but its speed is bound by time and gravity. Speed is bound by time and gravity.
To move from one place to another requires a body. I think of a momentary pinprick of light. The smallest something with substance I can imagine. Even this is bound by and exists in time.
Not bound by time, without body, that moves freely: love. I love those near and far in time and place.
Although I use technology to create and publish light, sound, and ideas, my digital is not my analogue.
Each day I live, at least in part, without a trace of the digital world. It is in this silence from screen and speaker that I have the chance to sense most in myself, with others, and the nature of the world.
When I am still I have the chance to listen, and when silent, the chance to think. During my time away from technology I feel without restraint, I am not led, nor binary. I am free to be. Human.
Humans are expert exploiters. To live we make use of the land, air, and living things.
We take advantage of resources for our need, desire, and personal gain. We exploit natural, psychological, private, public, technological, cultural, and synthetic resources.
Work continues on the harvesting of human organs grown in animals. I am an animal.
To live well I must respect the land, air, and living things. What I take and give is what I will become.
My breath rises, falls, rests, then rises once again. As long as I live, movement is my companion.
I think of the prospect of never dying, of being able to experience and consider without end.
Love is known by being with. All those I love would pass away. All pleasure, pain, happiness and fear.
The passing of beauty and the certainty of loss would be no different. I would come to be alone.
Let me start with a thousand years, no more. The oldest trees can live five times as long.
I start work to end.
As with much of my work Think This Today is cyclical, and soon, I approach its beginning. As I become increasingly aware of this, my view of what I do here changes. I ponder on its value, and approach each thought in a different light.
Three years is time enough to return and make new, both in receiving, and giving.
Liberty: being free to live without fear, risk of harm, or repression.
Freedom: to act and think without restraint in mind and body.
Innocence: freedom from guilt, real or imagined.
Liberty is a principle that may be upheld in society. Freedom is apparent through personal experience.
Liberty can only be enjoyed with freedom and the presumption of innocence.
Listen, look, and think of Liberty and Innocence at 100 Artworks
Voltaire