After Rites

The Wolfson exhibition came down on Saturday. My son helped pack it all away in our van. Now – on with the subject of the blog: “What Next”.
The last 3 weeks has been full-on computer work, 6 days a week. This week I’ve just got half a day’s work, so am catching up on essentials, like van maintenance. Spotted antifreeze on the ground where it’s been parked – needs a new radiator. Must fix it before next week, when we’ll be camping in Devon. In fact, need to get it fixed before Friday, when I’m taking my exhibition to the Tavistock Clinic, London.
Fix the van myself or take it to a garage? Checking the Haynes manual, I could spend a day on this. Though the job is simple, there’s a lot of jacking up and easing fragile things apart. It will take a garage a couple of hours, and if they break anything, they’ve got spares. 2nd phone call lucky, they can order the radiator and do the job on Thursday. Let’s hope they’re not bull-s******g!
The Tavistock Clinic, NHS centre of psychoanalysis, has an exhibition space, though not open to the public. They like my work, it has a psychological angle (I exhibited there in 1997). This time I’m seeing the exhibition as a targeted marketing opportunity – therapeutic ritual is on the periphery of psychoanalysis, so maybe some teaching work could come out of it?
Feeling a bit down today. Just discovered the Tavistock picture rail is 10 inches higher than the Wolfson rail. That means re-stringing all 55 items, which will take me the best of a day … since I’ve got computer work tomorrow, that means today. Since I’m taking the kids this pm and evening, that means late into the night.
Monday, went for a long walk in a local nature reserve. I sat down and listened to the Spring birdsong. I started feeling myself dissolve into my surroundings, stress trickling out of my muscles. Wind thrashing the newly green trees, clouds cascading across wild sky … so overwhelmingly beautiful.
This is where my work starts, my deepest roots. Whatever next, this is the place I come back to.
Well, not exactly, because there’s people too. Although I’m no extravert, I have a great love of people.
People are dreadful. As Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrate, dump people with no authority structure, and they start kidnapping each others’ children and shooting each other. There are many people who complain incessantly about the actions of the police. Over the past few years I’ve enjoyed saying: “Why don’t you move somewhere there are no police, like Iraq or Afghanistan?”.
But people also have the most amazing potential for creativity, positivity, self-sacrifice, altruism, expansion … and this is where the inspiration really kicks in – drawing the hidden best out of people, finding the deepest beauty of nature, and bringing the two together. This is fundamentally what all my work with ritual has been about.