Before Hindsight

Too much going on. Why am I even writing this?

Saturday, Oxford Improvisers put on a show as part of Abingdon Arts Festival. This had been arranged a while back, and I’d missed out on the original call for acts … but last Monday Chris suggested I join in with Dom’s arrangement of “Cobra”, a self-conducted improvisational “game” piece by John Zorn.

Great, except that on Thursday evening one of the key guards fell off my Sax, the C key spring jumped out, and the C stop was waving around like a little flag, preventing me from playing C, C#, D or D#. Friday morning took it to Allegro (Sax retail & repair shop) who couldn’t fix it, as needs blow torch & soldering iron.

Saturday morning ensconsed in studio, son holding blow torch in one hand, little brass clip in the other, myself with soldering iron in one hand and solder in the other. Remarkably, we fixed it, just in time to catch the bus to Abingdon.

On the way I remarked to son that I never thought of Abingdon (sleepy market town 7 miles from Oxford, best known for its pubs on the river frequented by holiday boaters) as a venue for avant-garde improvised jazz. This oversight was later justified, as there were a total of 20 performers and only 4 audience. Never mind, the music was great, and my son video’d the whole thing … will put up a link as soon as edited and posted on net.

Sunday evening, technical rehearsal for piece with Helen JS Edwards. After half an hour hoisting a 2m x 1m mirror in place, my son piped up: “look, you can do it without a mirror if you put the projector here!” … and so we could.

Problems with the projectors not being powerful enough. We need 2 projectors in excess of 2000 lumens, and the ones the art dept. have only rack up 450 … to hire would be £75 a night each … but think that Brookes University AV dept. can help.

Have now booked the swimming pool for eve of April 10th for final piece, and decided on a title: “Aquaphonics”. Details in “What’s On” section.

Last week my old friend Bruno (also improviser) invited myself and another to put something together to support his gig on April 20th. Have come up with some interesting material after watching Phil Minton’s Feral Choir (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9tLgWKvCu0).

A couple of days were spent anxting over the poster, final version was agreed, when suddenly “other” emailed to cancel his involvement. Not good. I’ll probably go ahead anyway, and try to get another improviser interested, but being one of the least accomplished musicians in the group, I’m not sure there’ll exactly be a queue to be seen on stage with me … Never mind, something will happen.

Currently sweating to get March accounts finished for computer business. Lots of receipts to put through the accounts, but hardly any invoices to send out … the price of having a creative time!

On Thursday, taking son walking in the Yorkshire Dales and the Lakes for 4 days. My knees don’t work like they used to, so doing acclimatisation training trotting up and down stairs. yesterday made 100 ascents (200 metres), tomorrow aiming for 200 ascents.

Will be walking with one of the members of the Oxford Feral Choir, so hopefully will return with some ideas for the improvised mountaineering project, which has been rather neglected since December, when I resolved to do it.

As soon as accounts are finished, rushing off to meet Helen at Brookes AV, and see if we can get the projectors sorted.

After Easter, going to have to get back to the computer work. I’ve been having such an amazing full-on creative time in the last month while business has been slack, it’s going to be a sad and frustrating April …

Have you seen the film “Awakenings”, a true story about a doctor who finds a miracle cure for chronic Sleeping Sickness victims, who all suddenly wake up after years of being semi-comatose, only to slip back into coma over a period of months … ?

Hope the funding bid succeeds – fingers crossed!

The blank canvas: what to make of it? The world is a blank canvas, and everything in it our materials. Why revert to painting if one has truly assimilated this?

In my own case, it’s simply what I love: making colourful intuitive responses.

Colour is the first problem. Anyone who has tried natural dyeing, or making their own paints, will have had great success making shades of brown, and a few yellows which rapidly fade. Crushed precious stones make good pigments, but are beyond my budget, though Rennaisance commissioners would have barely flinched.

Thus I have gained great respect for the paintmaker’s craft, and fully appreciate the importance of chemists in making our world colourful.

There are lots of ways to apply colour to a surface: oil paints, acrylic paints, cellulose paints, spray cans, dyeing and batique, chalks and pastels, collage, printing, etc., etc. I like directness, and my preference is pastels.

For this piece I want something more durable, so I’ve opted for acrylic paint.

Intuitive Response is the other problem: This kind of work can be seen as a solo improvisation in colour, though equally group music improvisation can be seen as making an intuitive group painting with sound. The processes are the same, just a different medium: Pastel, acrylic or sound?

This approach is a mish-mash of surrealism and the automatistes with abstract expressionism thrown in for good measure.

I understand it as Systems Psychology, a development of Kleinian psychoanalysis. Melanie Klein, when treating mentally ill children, often found the child was not disturbed, but lived in a disturbed family “System”. The child’s behaviour could only be addressed through the psychology of the whole family.

Within a system, each individual has underlying motives. But these are split, according to what each individual finds acceptable or unacceptable. Individuals are motivated to actualise the “acceptable”, but also, usually unconsciously, coerce other members of the system into doing their “unacceptable” bit. Why? So they can berate the other person rather than themselves.

One family member may be motivated to make, but finds imaginative creation unacceptable (because their mother or father didn’t like it). They will focus on craft, but encourage another family member to be imaginative … then criticise every imaginative thing they create.

Sometimes a whole family system will agree on what is acceptable or not, and will collude (again unconsciously) that one family member will do all the unacceptable stuff. And that family member will then arrive at the NHS “Mad”. As soon as they’re sorted out with serotonin-dopamine antagonists, another family member will go “Mad”, and so it goes on.

What’s this got to do with painting? Well, the canvas has stuff it wants to do, I have stuff I want to do, the paint has stuff it wants to do, my studio has stuff it wants to do, etc. Although I start with a vision, by entering into dialogue with my materials, responding to the canvas, my palette, my brushes, the music on the CD and the atmosphere of my studio, what comes out is very different from my guiding vision. It’s the result of the system, and the way the parts relate to each other.

These ideas quickly move into the realm of the spiritual: can the canvas, brushes, paint, studio, relate to each other with no psyche? Does the finished piece have psyche? How does that affect the way people see it? What is psyche anyway?

Audience is the last problem. Back in the 1950s when all this was trendy and cutting edge, such paintings were collectable, and the originals still are. But it’s almost impossible to find galleries that will promote new work like this (Abbi Torrance suggested one, but they promote young artists, I was given short shrift), even if one has an impeccable history of Fine Art qualifications. And even if saleable, is it the audience I want?

This painting is only one part of a process towards a greater end. The technique, and spiritual overtones which betray its modernist pedigree, are an ideal starting point for objects dealing with the sacred, and for use in sacred events … for which I do have a loyal, supportive and highly valued audience.

As a child, I saw ghosts. Not often, I must say: mostly I could just feel them, coming and going, drifting around. The house I grew up in was haunted, not one of those nice ghosts from a Disney film, where the child just has to face up to the scary vision and suddenly it’s all smiles … it was a nasty, vindictive and cruel presence thriving on peoples’ misery and anxiety.

We lived in South Devon, within walking distance of the sea. I really miss the sea, it’s a living presence with all its moods, swinging from tranquillity to fury and back, so very human, so appropriately personified as Poseidon. As a teenager I would clamber down to one of the limestone quarries scattered along the coast, and sit and talk to the sea. If there was a storm I’d yell and scream and leap around. You can’t really do that in civilised Oxford.

Some sunny weekends my parents would drive my Sister and myself to Dartmoor for a picnic. I don’t really remember the stunning views, quaint architecture, all the things that so absorbed the adults. What I took away from Dartmoor were the memories of the rocks: creased, wrinkled, indented, cracked and weathered, the forms of ancient granite from deep underground.

I found the cracks in the rocks deeply disturbing. I felt ghosts coming and going, drifting from the gnomic realm into the light and back again. I couldn’t stay long by a rock crack alone, it was too unknown, difficult and dangerous.

It was 2 decades before I read about Shamanic cultures which held cracked rock faces as sacred, because the underground spirits came and went through the cracks. Whatever the objective “truth” of such a spirit world, it is a fundamental experience of being human.

At 17, struggling at military school, I went back to some of these memories. I found I could imagine standing by one of these cracked rock faces, and when a spirit drifted through I could do something liberating: write a poem, sketch something, invent some music. It was a deliverance, and within weeks I had decided: This was what I was going to do with my life – wait by rock faces, imagined and real.

Over the years I’ve discovered that ghosts are generally very lonely. Nobody knows they’re there, nobody speaks to them. Even irascible spectres will be friendly in return for conversation – although there are always tortured souls that can only thrive on fear and distress. I’ve spent a lot of time sitting in graveyards, chatting to the ghosts. That must partly account for my melancholic disposition.

It’s why I can’t live in cities – every street corner is littered with fragments of peoples’ tormented lives and fractured souls, like astral slugs writhing around and imparting their agony to passers-by.

More recently I’ve discovered I don’t have to wait by the rock face. If I try hard, I can push, wriggle, squirm and writhe my way through the crack, and fall into the eerie depths of the underworld. What I find is unpredictable – inspiring vision, painful truth, insatiable desire …

It’s hard to explain all this – many would have me interned in the Warneford Hospital, others dismiss me as a weak-minded romantic or gullible mystic. Most who understand are other artists … because this is what creative endeavour is really about: touching the mysterious and unfathomable.

It doesn’t matter whether you experience it as ghosts and spirits, day/night dreams, flashes of inspiration, streams of ideas or embodied intuition. Every imaginative, creative artist has their way of talking about it, but ultimately it all comes down to mystery.

If you’re doing that mystery, the rest just happens – the mystery demands an audience, compels the magician to seek out other magicians, obliges the practitioner to perfect her skills, coerces the enchanter to seek out knowledge …

That’s why I find the theorising, academic rigour, objective measures of quality, so absurd – a great game for art historians and bureaucrats, but fundamentally missing the point. It’s about the unfathomable: anyone doing the unfathomable is doing “quality” art.

But why are we so reluctant to say this to our audiences? Why do we write endless treatises, persistently saying it without saying it?

I’m sure many disagree, but I’m saying it: bring on the magic, the sacred, enchantment, trance, underworld, supernatural, bring on the mystery of the unknowable, and to hell with endless, futile rationalisations!

The last month has been simply amazing. After 9 months of full-on computer work, all my customers wanting major development work all at once, it’s suddenly gone quiet. Enough work coming in to pay the bills, but whole days at a time in my studio.

A couple of months ago, I asked around Oxford Improvisers if anyone could lend me a projector for some experimental video/projection improvisation. Someone mentioned that another improviser, Helen Edwards, had been talking about video and projection, so I got in touch and suggested collaborating.

4 weeks ago we met up and swapped ideas, and reckoned we could do something together. She’s an undergrad (mature student), just coming up to her final show, and this is what she wants to collaborate on … so she has to take the lead on this project. I think I’ve led, or co-led, every project I’ve done for the last 15 years, so it’s quite challenging trying not to push too hard on all the decisions … a good discipline, though: keeps the ego under control!

We’ve spent a couple of half days experimenting, and are running a “prototype” at the improvisers regular meeting on Monday, then on to the full-blown thing which is going to involve borrowing a swimming pool and a van load of waterproof video equipment. I gather it’s all sorted … one of the perks of being in formal study!

I’ve seen the AA2A scheme operating in other areas, but there’s nothing like it in Oxford, despite the presence of 2 Universities both running a full complement of Fine Art courses. So, this seems to be the alternative route: collaborate with somebody on a Fine Art course!

Other things going on:

The Oxford Feral choir – improvised voice in outdoor surroundings – has just split off from Oxford Improvisers, so my direction of outdoor multi-artform improvisation seems to be already half formed. They’re interested in the event I’m planning for which I’ve just submitted my funding application, so I’ve been able to list them as collaborators.

Still two other improvisation ideas I want to try out – one with poetry, developing some work I did 15 years ago after a meeting with Paula Claire (concrete/action poet), and one developing some gestural improvisation and combining it with video, probably another direction to take with Helen after her degree show.

Another batch of oxidising agents has arrived. If the funding bid is successful, then should be able to produce something interesting with these by Christmas. If I get a rejection first time and have to work up the bid further (likely), then I’ll have to wait for the year after … otherwise I’ll probably have to wait until Christmas 2012.

I also have a lovely idea for a gallery-based work stemming from the ritual and the stuff I’ve been doing with the sacred. I’m very excited by this even though I’ve had very little success getting galleries interested in my work so far … and it’s going to take another month or two or three to put together a “prototype”, get some stills or video (it’s kind of kinetic), and start hawking the idea round.

When things are going well like this, when life is flowing, I’m full of ideas and I get some of those rare moments of feeling like I’m flying … then I start getting a sense of foreboding …

Many artists I know have this: There’s always something round the corner to knock us out of the air, stop the flow, stifle the fire – illness in the family, eviction from either home or studio space, some financial crisis (e.g. van self-destructs), relationship crisis, jury service, a sudden death or suicide, car accident, house fire … we all seem to live so close to the edge, especially older artists, just hanging on in there by our fingernails.

Here’s one of my favourite passages from Joni Mitchell “Song for Sharon”, off Hejira:

A woman I knew just drowned herself

The well was deep and muddy

She was just shaking off futility

Or punishing somebody

My friends were calling up all day yesterday

All emotions and abstractions

It seems we all live so close to that line

And so far from satisfaction

The box of pyrotechnic chemicals turned out to be a customer’s computer equipment, wrongly delivered. The chemicals took another 2 weeks.

More hopeful, got some flames, but still problems: The flames blow out easily, and don’t progress quickly enough.

This needs serious development time, which I don’t have. Next step: apply for a grant, allowing me to take time away from the computer work without getting into debt, or folding the business.

A few phone calls to the Arts Council point me to “Grants for the Arts”. Am reminded quickly that the funding culture has changed radically in the last decade.

In 1991 I perseveringly read the Arts Council policy document, and was gratified that multi-artform and experimental work featured as priorities, leading to a 20k grant in 1998. In 2000 I laboured through another dense ACE document and found that policy had swung to prioritising quality and high-performing individuals. Then the kids arrived and it all went dark for a decade.

Anyhow, I find “Quality” still tops the agenda. This is difficult: objective “quality” is something I’ve never focussed on. But in the application form, I must convince ACE of the quality of my work, and I don’t have a good starting point for this.

Paul Ackerley, (ACE South East combined arts) was very helpful, citing “quality of the idea”, “quality of the research”, “relevance”, “connection to wider contemporary practice”, “membership of a (more a less formal) peer group”, etc. The kinds of things that get discussed at length on these blogs.

My first reaction is: of course my work is quality … This is all about “Artistic Integrity”, stuff that’s all second nature: Of course my work is relevant, otherwise I wouldn’t do it. Of course I regularly discuss my work with my friendship group, that’s one of the joys of it! Of course I’m connected to wider contemporary practice (though I could be more connected), I couldn’t practice in a cultural vacuum. Of course I research my work thoroughly … I find work based on ignorance really annoying, I don’t want others to react to my work that way. Of course it’s a good idea, otherwise it wouldn’t be inspiring.

Surely artists aren’t doing irrelevant self-obsessed work without research, friends, gallery visits or reading AN or other magazines never thinking of their audience? ACE certainly think they are. But there must be many more people like myself who have taken it all so much for granted, for so long, that “That’s what being an artist is all about” that we seldom bring it to consciousness.

My second reaction is “Oh ye gods, how on earth do I go about demonstrating this in the required 2500 word grant proposal?”. In this blog alone I’ve written half that amount discussing the finer points of “Relevance” (and reaching conclusions that might not please ACE).

There are also problems with my peer group. Some artist friends I rarely see, but we discuss our work intensely in the few hours we spend together each year. Others I see every week, but we seldom discuss our work.

Should I include “Da” (first syllable of DaDa), refugee from the Exploding Galaxy (1960s artists’ commune), occasional member of the Incredible String Band, who spent years homeless by choice but whose extraordinary constitution keeps him alive and doing despite everything? Should I present as that radical?

Should I include Psychedelic Harry whose (possibly drug-induced) paranoia renders communication impossible for months at a time, and whose practice is frequently interrupted by spells in the Warneford Hospital? Is it good to be seen as that mad?

Should I include my collaborators in other art forms, musicians, poets, dancers? Should I include specialists in my subject areas of interest – psychologists, religious studies experts, environmentalists, anthropologists? If I include everyone and their expertise, the list alone will come to 2500 words.

I’ve hacked the application, rehashed it, précis’d it, hacked it again, finally given up with a mish-mash of 4000 words, hoping that more information is better than less. When I’d finished it had grown from a simple pyrotechnic development project to a 10 grand research, development and production proposal. But it is a true reflection of my artistic vision, an expression of integrity … Contrary to my usual cynicism I still hope that integrity (and the enthusiasm and inspiration that comes with it) carries weight when making applications.

6 weeks for a decision, I’ll post it here.