Large rugged white rock. Stands solid. Two figures, one male, one female. Gently entwined heads touching, almost asleep. Their bodies naked. The man's right arm stretched over his head and his face resting on the woman's flowing hair, which spreads throughout the rock. Her arm blocking his legs and her right leg curled upwards just tucked behind her left ankle. Smooth polished bodies sculpted in to rough chipped white glistening marble.
Where did the stone come from?
How did he make the shapes of the bodies?
How is the stone so smooth?
Why are they naked?
Who is the woman?
Who is the man?
What is their relationship?
Are they in love?
Have they kissed?
Are they asleep?
Why is she blocking him a little?
When did they live?
Why do they care for each other?
How long did it take to make?
Why is it here?
Were they real people?
Are they fantasy?
Do they exist?
Why is it unfinished?
Why are only half their bodies showing?
Was it sculpted from memory?
Who was it for?
Where was it put when finished?
Why is it so famous?
Does the artist like it?
How do you lift it?
Is it very heavy?
Is it cold?
Does it feel hard?
Can i have one at home?
Why does the stone glisten?
Why do i like it?
Why is the man floating?
Why is her hair so long?
Does he love her?
Will they always be close?
Will i ever know?
Juliette Llewellyn
16.08.07
The Davies Sisters Exhibition: National Museum of Wales
http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/106/
Saturday 18 August 2007
Friday 17 August 2007
blue notebook
feels like an essential part of an ongoing transformation process.
lists and jotted ideas as they come to me
the size is important as it forces me to condense ideas to a few most important words
i began carrying a small notebook about four years ago as i found myself frustrated and tired from repeating ideas over and over in my head so as not to forget them.
sometimes a phrase or idea or memory or new understanding feels intensely important at the time and i feel such a buzz of excitement when i make a note of it - though on reflection at calmer times it can lose its urgency but at other times i am delighted to be reminded of a certain train of thought and may go on to expand on it further.
when i started carrying a notebook i was seeing a psychologist and i found that after stirring up thoughts and feeling with him new understandings would occassionally occur to me at unexpected moments and it seemed useful to capture them - mainly for my own use but sometimes as an area in which to start the next time i met up with him. i suppose i sort of saw it as my ''homework'' and feel i was continuing to ''work'' on things in between sessions to make as many useful changes as possible as speedily as possible. although at the time some notes seem essential i usually find that i absorb the insights over time and can end up feeling fine about throwing used pages away.
i suppose in a way it feels like a friend to confide in at any time i sit and think and feels like a symbol of trying to make positive changes, depending on myself rather than always needing someone else involved in the process.
sometimes the actual process where i put ideas into solid words has been essential as it can make me focus more clearly on choosing each word and phrase carefully and in doing that i have sometimes made exciting new links on the page as i make notes.
lists and jotted ideas as they come to me
the size is important as it forces me to condense ideas to a few most important words
i began carrying a small notebook about four years ago as i found myself frustrated and tired from repeating ideas over and over in my head so as not to forget them.
sometimes a phrase or idea or memory or new understanding feels intensely important at the time and i feel such a buzz of excitement when i make a note of it - though on reflection at calmer times it can lose its urgency but at other times i am delighted to be reminded of a certain train of thought and may go on to expand on it further.
when i started carrying a notebook i was seeing a psychologist and i found that after stirring up thoughts and feeling with him new understandings would occassionally occur to me at unexpected moments and it seemed useful to capture them - mainly for my own use but sometimes as an area in which to start the next time i met up with him. i suppose i sort of saw it as my ''homework'' and feel i was continuing to ''work'' on things in between sessions to make as many useful changes as possible as speedily as possible. although at the time some notes seem essential i usually find that i absorb the insights over time and can end up feeling fine about throwing used pages away.
i suppose in a way it feels like a friend to confide in at any time i sit and think and feels like a symbol of trying to make positive changes, depending on myself rather than always needing someone else involved in the process.
sometimes the actual process where i put ideas into solid words has been essential as it can make me focus more clearly on choosing each word and phrase carefully and in doing that i have sometimes made exciting new links on the page as i make notes.
Monday 13 August 2007
Blogger's block?
It's not easy to get into the habit of sharing our ideas on a blog, even a private one like this, but I just came across http://www.lifeclever.com/10-tips-for-beating-bloggers-block/
I haven't checked out the list of resources yet - it's a little late for that at just gone midnight, but they look intriguing...
Enjoy!
Michael
I haven't checked out the list of resources yet - it's a little late for that at just gone midnight, but they look intriguing...
Enjoy!
Michael
Thursday 9 August 2007
Extract 2: Ghost Writing - Hilary Mantel
'...For some years i lived in Africa, in Botswana, and people there used to say that to see ghosts you need to look out of the corner of your eyes. If you turn on them in a direct gaze, then, like Eurydice, they vanish.
The whole process of creativity is like that. The writer often doesn't know, consciously, what gods she invokes or what myths she's retelling. Orpheus is a figure of all artists, and Eurydice is his inspiration. She is what he goes into the dark to seek. He is the conscious mind, with its mastery of skill and craft, its faculty of ordering, selecting, making rational and persuasive; she is the subconscious mind, driven by disorder, fuelled by obscure desires, brimming with promises that perhaps she won't keep, with promises of revelation, fantasies of empowerment and knowledge. What she offers is fleeting, tenuous, hard to hold. She makes us stand on the brink of the unknown with our hand stretched out into the dark. Mostly, we just touch her fingertips and she vanishes. She is the dream that seems charged with meaning, that vanishes as soon as we try to describe it. She is the unsayable thing we are always trying to say. She is the memory that slips away as you try to grasp it. Just when you've got it, you haven't got it. She won't bear the light of day. She gets to the threshold and she falters. You want her too much, and by wanting her you destroy her.
As a writer, as an artist, your effects constantly elude you. You have a glimpse, an inspiration, you write a paragraph and you think it's there, but when you read back, it's not there. Every picture painted, every opera composed, every book that is written, is the ghost of the possibilities that were in the artist's head. Art brings back the dead, but it also makes perpetual mourners of us all. Nothing lasts: that's what Apollo, the father of Orpheus, sings to him in Monteverdi's opera. In Opera North's staging, the god took a handkerchief from his pocket, licked it, and tenderly cleaned his child's tear-stained face.'
Taken from Ghost Writing - Hilary Mantel
Guardian Review 28.07.08
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/edinburgh2007/story/0,,2136374,00.html
The whole process of creativity is like that. The writer often doesn't know, consciously, what gods she invokes or what myths she's retelling. Orpheus is a figure of all artists, and Eurydice is his inspiration. She is what he goes into the dark to seek. He is the conscious mind, with its mastery of skill and craft, its faculty of ordering, selecting, making rational and persuasive; she is the subconscious mind, driven by disorder, fuelled by obscure desires, brimming with promises that perhaps she won't keep, with promises of revelation, fantasies of empowerment and knowledge. What she offers is fleeting, tenuous, hard to hold. She makes us stand on the brink of the unknown with our hand stretched out into the dark. Mostly, we just touch her fingertips and she vanishes. She is the dream that seems charged with meaning, that vanishes as soon as we try to describe it. She is the unsayable thing we are always trying to say. She is the memory that slips away as you try to grasp it. Just when you've got it, you haven't got it. She won't bear the light of day. She gets to the threshold and she falters. You want her too much, and by wanting her you destroy her.
As a writer, as an artist, your effects constantly elude you. You have a glimpse, an inspiration, you write a paragraph and you think it's there, but when you read back, it's not there. Every picture painted, every opera composed, every book that is written, is the ghost of the possibilities that were in the artist's head. Art brings back the dead, but it also makes perpetual mourners of us all. Nothing lasts: that's what Apollo, the father of Orpheus, sings to him in Monteverdi's opera. In Opera North's staging, the god took a handkerchief from his pocket, licked it, and tenderly cleaned his child's tear-stained face.'
Taken from Ghost Writing - Hilary Mantel
Guardian Review 28.07.08
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/edinburgh2007/story/0,,2136374,00.html
Extract 1: Ghost Writing - Hilary Mantel
'I have written a memoir called Giving Up the Ghost, which is about my own childhood, but also about my ancestors and children who were never born, and about the ghosts we all have in our lives: the ghosts of possibility, the paths we didn't take, and the choices we didn't make, and expectations, which seemed perfectly valid at the time, but which somehow or other weren't fulfilled. I describe ghosts like this: "They are the rags and tags of everyday life, information you acquire that you don't know what to do with, knowledge that you can't process; they're cards thrown out of your card index, blots on the page."
As a historical novelist, I'm a great user of card indexes. I like to write about people who really lived, and try to wake them up from their long trance, and make them walk on the page. When you stand on the verge of a new narrative, when you have picked your character, you stretch out your hand in the dark and you don't know who or what will take it. You become profoundly involved in this effort to clothe old bones. '
Taken from Ghost Writing - Hilary Mantel
The Guardian Review 28.07.08
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/edinburgh2007/story/0,,2136374,00.html
As a historical novelist, I'm a great user of card indexes. I like to write about people who really lived, and try to wake them up from their long trance, and make them walk on the page. When you stand on the verge of a new narrative, when you have picked your character, you stretch out your hand in the dark and you don't know who or what will take it. You become profoundly involved in this effort to clothe old bones. '
Taken from Ghost Writing - Hilary Mantel
The Guardian Review 28.07.08
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/edinburgh2007/story/0,,2136374,00.html
Friday 3 August 2007
Inspiration everywhere, if we detach
A battle was raging all across the playroom. Transformer robots clashed on the ground and in the air as the commander, grandson Sandro, marshalled first one side then the other, changing tactics depending on where the combatants ended up after each sally. Now and again, he would stop the action to explain patiently to me what was happening. The sides were Goodies and Baddies, of course, and the Goodies don't always win. However, although people were being zapped, powed and destroyed all over the place, everyone recovered in time for the next battle. No bodybags here. Intrigued by his even-handedness between Goodies and Baddies, I asked him which he was, Goody or Baddy. With one of those withering looks that only a five-year old can produce, he explained, “Neither. I'm not here!”
How about that as a slogan for a writer! “I'm not here!”. Totally involved in the plot but detached from it as well, letting the characters build the action and writing down their fascinating history as it unfolds, building the tension by accepting that the Baddies win for much of the time!
And it's great to know that he isn't a committed goody-goody...
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