I thought about calling this post “Letter The Right One In” as a play on words with the film I saw this morning. I am glad i didn’t. I’m actually not feeling very well so I have nothing else to say apart from the fact that I have posted No27.
I had hoped to finish my #Letter365 piece for today early enough to deliver it to the Arts Centre before the first film of From Page To Screen, Bridport’s film festival. Alas, while I have finished the piece I haven’t the time to do the envelope and photography in a stress-free way before I have to go.
So I’m off to see Let The Right One In
I don’t mean the evidence that shadow rabbits can hold credit cards between their ear and nose (see picture) but the evidence that the post box day plate for Tuesday has been “mislaid”. It hasn’t been there the last few weeks and MON is displayed on Tuesday. That’s why all the people in Bradpole look confused! Well, one of the reasons.
I got very frustrated creating the envelope for this one. For some reason the printer would not recognise the settings set up for this particular document – the ones it has used for the previous 25 days – and chose to use the settings for the other documents that were open!
It’s odd that there is a pressure in me to produce a completely new and unique work each day. While I intend each work that will be unique that doesn’t mean that I have to summon up a totally new idea each day. I have only just realised that I could work on developing a single idea over a period of time – I had already thought of doing special series, say at Christmas – and I had sort of forgotten that part of this process is the final installation, so perhaps I will do series of similar work for stretches at a time. It will perhaps be like the wave-carved ripples on the wide sand beaches, the same but totally different every day. And some days there will be a rock or a crab. But mostly it will just be the same but totally different. There again I may not do that!
I thought it would be sunny today but it turned out dull and drizzly. So today’s #Letter365 offering got everso vaguely damp in the 30 paces to the post box.
Having spent a busy day making the most of the sunshine, painting the new solar wax extractor and digging and raking one of the vegetable beds, then spending some useful time in the studio I am exhausted! Losing an hour last night probably didn’t help either. So no energy for deep thought.
I will just mention that I watched Powaqqatsi this evening. Interesting to see it again after 30 years I guess. Still stunning even though not as powerful as it was in my memory, but now we have such a deluge of visual images available to us that it is hard to remember how remarkable this was when it came out. The Philip Glass score is of course a masterpiece in its own right and certainly not just a film soundtrack. Two sections might get plundered by me for some ideas!
After a blistering performance at Bridport Arts Centre acclaimed folk duo O’Hooley & Tidow did me the honour of handing over today’s #Letter365 to Jill Beed. It’s the third time we have seen Belinda and Heidi and they never fail to delight. Tonight their cascading harmonies were tighter and sweeter than ever. I just hope whoever buys No23 will be delighted as me.
We are out at Bridport Arts Centre to se O’Hooley & Tidow tonight so I will take today’s piece along and see what happens
Jill and Dee at Bridport Arts Centre are still pleased to see me and seem delighted to receive another #Letter365 offering. We’ll see how they feel in 6 months time!
It’s interesting that Dee, who took this picture, suggested the picture should be taken from inside the office and that Jill should turn and smile into the camera (and an excellent smile it is too as always Jill). Yet when I took a photo of Dee taking delivery a few days back the most she would allow to seen on camera was her thumb!
It’s one of those things that when you read it you think, “yes that’s interesting, probably true” but when it comes down to it you don’t follow through. It was – and don’t know who wrote it or where – something like, “Accept that all those things that you think of in the middle of the night that you know are brilliant ideas but that you can’t remember in the morning, accept that really they were rubbish.”
I saw this to be useful wisdom for those nights when the brain is overactive: excited by all the brilliant ideas for brilliant things that you will create or do or think next day. Telling yourself that they are all crap and if there are really any good ones you will remember them in the morning, can help you get back to sleep, the sleep you need to have a creative day next day.
Last night after just 40 minutes sleep I was disturbed by the cats, or my parter, or a putative burglar or a good/bad idea and found myself awake for the next two hours wondering if I should risk the disturbance of recording the creative maelström in Evernote or getting up and making a calming tea whilst jotting it all down in my notebook. I did write a couple of words in the dark on a small scrap of paper – one of which was a useful memory jog, the other was a superfluous reminder of something I really would not have forgotten anyway! I did manage to tell myself that “all these ideas are crap anyway” but ignored my advice and stayed awake desperately trying to imprint my brilliant ideas so firmly in my mind that I would be able to instantly access and use them this morning.
Well, what a success! I woke to find I had clearly remembered 3 or 4 of the dozens of good/bad ideas I had had in the night. These must be the worthwhile ones! So I was quite excited to get to the studio quite early and start working with them.
The first indication that something was wrong was my lack of confidence. Instead of just wading in and doing it I decided to try it out on a piece of paper the colour of which I was unlikely to use – no way I was going to risk wasting a piece of expensive hand-made paper… Hang on! What kind of idea was it that was so shaky I wouldn’t risk wasting a piece of paper on? This was an idea that I was so convinced was interesting that it kept me awake for two hours – yet I hadn’t the confidence to back it to the price of a piece of paper! In any case, I believe what my dear friend Jill Beagley once told me, “You are an artist and anything tha an artist does with a piece of paper can never be a waste.”
Well I fiddled with this idea for about 30 seconds more before I realised that it really was crap. I reviewed the other ideas that I had packaged up from the night and concluded they were not much better.
The good thing was that this left me totally clear to approach my #Letter365 piece open and fresh. Immediately I had discarded the rubbish I knew exactly what I wanted to do and as I worked it developed a purity and clarity that almost brought tears to my eyes.
I wonder if now I will be able to remember next time that thing I read somewhere about things that are crap in the night
One nice thing for me about this project is that the content of each envelope can be completely different to what I am doing with my main flow of work, a relaxation of concentration that can let fresh, new ideas pop out. Or it can be a little detour and experiment within that flow where I can develop a different fluency and freedom with those ideas and processes. But I am not saying what is going on today!
It’s the end of three weeks of the project and I am starting to put other things in place: things like looking at this website and adding a sales facility to it; putting together the foundations of a work book that might be a saleable artwork in its own right; thinking about sponsorship and grants; PR; etc. It’s exhausting and exciting just thinking about it!