Friends Reunited

Well, it may have taken almost a year but I am ready to listen to Tom Waits again.

But how could I have doubted I wouldn’t be - he is an artist I have never seen live but have listened to regularly for nigh on 30 years. There is no way I could live the rest rest of my life without that driving rhythm, the words that fit together like a beautiful puzzle, the occasional hint of spaghetti western, the sense of humour that echoes my own, and of course that feeling of melancholy and hopelessness that is the flipside of western living.

The way he wrings whatever sound he needs from the instruments to get the desired effect has influenced my writing style for a long, long time now - we may have never met but together we have both aged and grown wise . . .

Sorry Nicola, I'll try to keep the volume low . . .

(ps - Life is never dull when you are married to the dancing queen . . .)

We can cure you . . .

“You will get better” my doctor kept saying on that first visit, “We will cure you”. I know that he was just being positive to balance my negativity so that hopefully I would not throw myself off the nearest cliff (a possibility not as far from the truth a you may think), but afterwards as I sat in a cafe thinking about it my first thought was no I don’t want to be cured. This was something new, a part of me that had always been there but I had not realised, and I wanted to say hello first, to make friends rather than swat it like the mosquito on your arm that you kill without thinking.

Diagnosis can be a double edged sword. For some like myself it can be a revelation, suddenly everything clicks into place. I now was not a normal person who could not cope as I had always thought, but a depressed person who was doing the best he could, my past made more sense now. The danger comes if you use the diagnosis as a crutch, an excuse for not coping. I have a pregnant friend and it is amazing the things she cannot do now “because she is pregnant”. Like getting up and boiling the kettle to make herself a cup of coffee for instance! This route is to be avoided at all costs because then the diagnosis owns you, it takes control feeding your blackness as you spiral further down. No lets not go there . . .

Instead use this new discovery about yourself make friends with it understand this new part of yourself and use it, like a dog or a horse perhaps. Treat it kindly and it will return the favour helping you go places you could not otherwise get to, it’s intuition may even help you in times of danger but ultimately you remain in charge.

Having discovered all the artists that have suffered from depression, like Van Gogh I now see my depression as the artistic part of my nature pushing through to be noticed. It has made me stop and think . . . a good thing to do do occasionally I reckon.

But talking about stopping and thinking, do not forget the people around you - depression can be very inward looking and isolating but to cope you are going to need your friends, and I am so lucky to have Nicola alongside me . . .


Depression may be dark, but life will never be dull if it is part of you . . .

Van Gogh

All is green and grey today. But so many greens and so many shades of grey.

Wet and wild as well, everything above and around is moving, swirling . . . full of life.

It is on days like these that I feel I see the world as Van Gogh did.

Drawing again, at last

Sometimes you have to pay attention to what is nagging at the edges of your consciousness. And in my case for a while now it has been drawing. Or rather not drawing. Computers are great and I could not be without mine . . . but I miss getting my hands dirty and dusty and the fun of just scribbling away, the feel of chalk on paper and the sound of scissors as they cut.

So I have spent this weekend doing just that. 

Ideas

Thursday 9pm

Some ideas hang around inside my head for a long time. They will pop up every now and then and I’ll play around with them for a while. If they work they will be used or put away somewhere for later, if they do not yet work I’ll play around with them for a while before putting them away in my head again for another time. If I stop and think about it there are quite a few in there.

For example I have this obsession with making a logo with a hole in the corner - kind of like a gift tag or clothes label. It first surfaced ages ago in this logo but was rejected by Nicola in favor of another one. So back into my head it went only to surface again for another idea I was playing around with recently.

I suppose it is just the way my mind works, but I often wonder if everybody thinks this way.


This may also be a roundabout way of saying that I have not forgotten this.

The spaces we live within

Whilst thinking about the spaces between words it suddenly occurred to me that there is a space that I had not noticed before. The one that surrounds me, that I live in. I can see the cupboard on the other side of the room but I do not notice the gap in between, my mind just leaps straight to what I see and starts thinking about it. Yet, like one of those optical illusional drawings, if I stop and concentrate the room kind of flips round and I can see the space defined by all the objects around me, the space that I move in, within which I am a void.

A good few years ago an artist had the same idea I think. She would cast and make solid the inside of a room and take it outside to stand on its own. I did not get it at the time, but I think I do now.

The space between people I notice much more. If I am talking with a stranger and the conversation dies away then that gap between us rises up and I feel an intense urge to close it by talking. Nervousness or shyness I suppose because the more I know someone the more at ease I am to be silent with them.

All of this is much more obvious in a city I think, where we are all jammed so much closer together. A trip on the tube (subway, metro . . .) or in an elevator becomes a dance of sorts as well pull in our personal spaces as close as possible and squeeze around and between each other.

And there is more. Having watched this talk on TED I now discover that all that I can see and feel is only a tiny part, 4% of what is there. The rest it seems is dark matter and dark energy that has been named, but nobody actually knows what it is . . .


Life is never dull because it is so big . . .

More spaces

Saturday 8.06pm


I talk too much

Quite soon I’ll be doing a presentation to a group of people. It is part of a job interview and I have never done anything like this before. The thought is both scary and exciting - I’m quite looking forward to it. Now because it is something unknown, all sorts of thoughts are constantly going through my mind about what may happen. And these thoughts are also colouring what I see around me. For instance we went to the movies today and saw “Night at the museum 2”. Having not seen the first one I wasn’t sure what I was in for but it was great much better than I expected and well worth seeing. Aside from the film itself, and Amelia Earhart’s tight trousers, I found myself listening to the actors and the way they spoke and presented the script. And that is when I realised - I talk too much.

As you may know I love lettering, but just as important as the letters themselves, what makes them beautiful is the spaces between the letters and words - the way they all fit together. And today I finally saw that it is the same with speaking. The shape of the spaces between the words are just as important as the words themselves. It is the spaces that give shape, texture and colour to what you say.

So I’ll be trying to talk less from now on. And thinking about it this will have another benefit - the rest of you might get a word or two in as well . . .


Life is never dull when you have new challenges.

Make things

I don't know about you but I have various areas in my life that need to be kept in balance - money, family, work, that sort of thing. One of them that I find often takes a back seat is creativity. I need to make things and if I don't that need grows and niggles at me until I do. Sometimes though I am too busy to realise that things are out of balance, I just feel wrong or out of sorts. And just lately that is how I have felt . . .

Updating the look of my soup blog has helped but when I read this by Pherenike it just struck a chord deep within me - this is what I need!

so here goes . . . . I will make something and pass it on to the first five people that comment on this post and agree to the following -



1. I make no guarantees that you will like what I make. Whatcha get is whatcha get.

2. What I create will be just for you, with love.

3. It'll be done this year (2009).

4. I will not give you any clue what it's going to be. It will be something made in the real world and not something cyber. It may be weird or beautiful. Or it may be monstrous and annoying. Heck, I might bake something for you and mail it to you. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure!

5. I reserve the right to do something strange.

6. In return, all you need to do is:

7. Post this text on your blog and make 5 things for the first 5 to respond to this.

8. Send your mailing address - after I contact you.

Trust

Sunday 4.08pm

Since I gave up thinking about the technicalities of music and concentrated on just listening, I have discovered a lot more interesting sounds in the guitar.

Dawn Chorus (and cat legs)

Thursday 2.30pm

It is 5.30am on a Spring morning. The sun is rising but hasn't yet made it over the horizon, the sky is grey and the air has a chill to it here in the garden but it is not unpleasant. A new day, my day off so there is no pressure. The rest of the family is asleep apart from the cats who have been fed and are out here with me ears twitching. We are surrounded by sound.

As you may have realised, I am a very visual person. My head is full of pictures. When I talk my hands move to describe what I am saying into the air between us. And if you talk to me I construct a vision of what you are saying and then describe it back to you to check that I have understood. If I want to remember something I'll write it down or draw a picture. I see the patterns, colours and shapes around me, first, before anything else.

But when it comes to relaxation, then music and sound is much more important. When I look at something, my brain is full of questions. How did they do that? Why did they do it like that? How would I have done the same thing? But music cuts past all of that, going straight to my emotional core which seems to be just below my breast bone, in my centre. Poetry too does this for me, evoking feelings rather than thoughts, but music is quicker and more direct. To me, modern living places too much emphasis on thinking, we need to make time for feeling as well. It would make us all more balanced people. Those few minutes spent outside in the morning do it for me.

Jack Johnson says in one of his songs "You don't always have to hold your head higher than your heart."

I like that.

Ink

Monday 7.40am

When I was younger, ink came in hard glass bottles with big black shiny plastic tops. It was for fountain pens but you could also draw and paint with it, and this is what I did. And just for fun if you dropped some onto wet paper the ink would spread through it separating out into it's different colours like a bruise. Ink came in different colours of course - blue, black, red, green and brown I think, and also one called "blueblack". This was my favourite. Black was just black, a little plain and a little flat whereas blueblack was blacker than black, such a deep, deep indigo that you could stare into it forever and never see the bottom. Since then if I can I will not use straight black as a colour, although this is much more difficult now with ballpoint pens and inkjet printers. The slightly off colour that can only be got by doing things by hand gives life and vibrancy to what is created, your eye is drawn into the colours and kept interested. Like notebooks in the computer age there will always be a place for the handmade.

Blueblack is also the colour of the sky just before the sun comes over the horizon in the morning.

It's all in the details

Sunday 8.52pm

I've never quite got jazz. Some of it I enjoy but then, especially with the more modern stuff it goes somewhere and leaves me behind. The musicians obviously hear something I cannot. And so it is with experts in any field. At some point they become so deeply involved in their subject that they move beyond what us mere mortals can see or understand. I see glimpses of this in my own specialities. I can diagnose the cause of your toothache just by talking to you, sometimes even by just looking at you. The difference between me as the dentist, and you as the patient is that I see the whole picture. I see the cause, what led up to it, the immediate and long term treatment options along with the risks and benefits of each, and more importantly what needs to be done to prevent it happening again. And yet still people complain about my consultation fee because in their words I "did not do anything". They just don't see what I see.

Not everybody will get to that level in their chosen field of course, that stage where you do not have to think things through - you just feel the answer, you just know. Nicola has it in computing, she sees things that I just don't, and like jazz probably never will. 

We all see things differently, something

that is easy to forget. For example I took

the picture above, I wrote the words,

chose the typeface and put the two

things together. But what really makes it work for me is the way I have got the flower petals to sit around the "s" in soup, linking the two paragraphs and tying the words and picture together. Just this one detail makes all the difference.

Life is never dull when you can look at it through anothers eyes.

(That typeface is a condensed Gill Sans, by the way - if you click on the top picture you'll see it better).

The Bigger Picture

Thursday 3.32pm

I was stacking a load of firewood recently when I discovered this on the side of one. Like a Chinese watercolour landscape of bone white trees in a marsh, it reminded me of the scenery at Tokaanu wharf when we were on holiday there.

Sometimes it is amazing what you see if you just take the time to stop and look.

Tagged

Saturday 7.20pm

A hamster in life's cherry bowl

Well, Pherenike has tagged me with this :-

1. Write your own six-word memoir.
2. Post it on your blog (and include a visual illustration if you’d like).
3. Link to the person who tagged you in your post.
4. Tag five more blogs with links.
5. Remember to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play.

And as someone who cannot resist a dare ( as long as it does not involve cruelty to anything ) I had to have a go.

It is not easy - sum your life up in just six words. But after two days and (one nights sleep) I feel I have caught the spirit of my place in the world. Should I explain it ? . . . . nah, I'll leave that up to you.

And who am I tagging ? Well two people I think ( it seems the five are not compulsory ) - Nicola, and Keriann.

Hello

Due to popular demand (thanks Nicola, Keriann and Katherine) I have returned to blogging. Well I would if I had anything to say !

A whole flock of black swans seems to have flown through our family lately and they are still coming. All this has stressed my brain out so much that all higher functions have shut down. ( you may have noticed that mens' brains go on stand by if not constantly stimulated )

So I am off to read Eating for England by Nigel Slater.

In the meantime here is some music that fits my life perfectly at the moment - happily surreal but with an underlying feeling of mild panic.



Picture is by Nicola of me modelling the outfit I need to wear for my life at the moment

More about art

Sunday 4am

While everyone can draw, you have to want to do it. And I think that depends on your personality type. We are all a mixture of course, but often one type seems to predominate. Like I said I am arty - I have to draw, and if I cannot or do not, the urge to do so becomes stronger and stronger and I begin to feel frustrated and trapped but do not know why. Other people are more gregarious. They love to talk, are good company, they remember your name and birthday, but paint a picture ? why would you want to do that when you can go out and buy one ? My middle son is like that. Recently he was ill and stuck at home and while I can quite happily spend hours alone, he wandered aimlessly around the house, complaining of boredom but really just looking for someone to talk to. Some people are musical, some are sporty and express themselves through touch and the physical side of things. Having written this it seems to be all to do with the senses, so there must be people out there who work through taste and smell - the cooks and wine buffs amongst us. I know we each have different learning styles as well - visual, auditory, spacial etc which goes with the above and if you learn in the way that suits your style you will learn much easier and faster. But if you want to try something outside of your natural abilities, why not ? - just go for it. People will laugh, the teacher may ask you to leave, but so what, that is more a reflection on them than you and once you have had a go you can continue or do something else. Ballroom dancing, that is what I would like to try. I wonder where Nicola left her shinpads and safety boots . . . . . .

Drawing

Sunday 3.20pm

I am quite a visual person. I draw. I have always drawn - pencils, chalks, paints even scratched into stone, and I do not think anything about it, it is just something I do. But people say to me " you are lucky, I wish I could draw " But they can. Everybody can draw, you just look or think and make the marks. Really, you can. It is not the drawing that is the problem it is that your idea of what a drawing should be is out of step with what you can do. There is no point in looking at a beautiful painting, comparing it with your own doodles and giving up. You forget the hours, months, years of work that came before that picture, some artists paint the same thing over and over, think of Monet and lilyponds. At exhibitions I love it when the artist has their sketch books on show, I love to see how an idea developed and the work that went into the final product. And i bet you anything if you ask the artist they will not be completely happy with their creation that we think is wonderfull. Ok, some people will just pick up a pencil and sketch something wonderfull but it is like that in everything, some people are naturally skilled at some thing, the rest of us have to work at it. I play the guitar but I will never be a guitarist, I just do not have it, but it does not stop me - I like the sound of the notes and the way they fit together and follow one another and thats what makes me happy even though after 25 years of playing I cannot play a whole tune ! So if you want to draw, just do it. Don't be afraid of what others say, does it matter what issues they may have, and why should it affect you, drawing doesn't hurt anybody ( unless you stab them with a pointy pencil of course )

Confidence is the key. The older I get the more I realise this. My new motto - " Don't be afraid to fuck it up "

These thoughts were inspired by my lovely new header picture which is bases on a photo of the view from Perfume Point, Napier by Nicola.