Conversations with myself

Well it’s still raining and I’m sitting here with yet another cup of tea to warm me up, Assam this time and I like it, it’s a good strong tea. This time I have some homemade cookies to help, don’t I feel smug, well I would if I hadn’t left them in the oven 5 minutes too long and there a bit crunchy for my liking.

My parker was looking worse for wear the other week so I treated myself to a new one, thank goodness I did. Trust me you can’t beat a parker for this kind of weather. This morning in the playground it was so cold, even the mums who are too cool for proper coats looked like they were struggling.

Anyway, I need to get some paperwork done this morning, I’m looking in to the history of a local Park, I’m going to be a resident artist there and we are looking to do some workshops. I’m meeting with some of the committee and some councillors to look at what we could do, so that’s me for the next couple of days.

It’s a really nice park and my girls love playing there so this is a really handy project. It all came about from a conversation with one of the mums at a kid’s party, we talked about my art and I said that I wanted to do a residency in the woods and park near the school, lucky for me she is on the committee and it spread from there. They have been trying to ignite the park a bit more, they had done some public art but didn’t know which direction to go from there and the council had ring fenced some money so I suggested an art residency and gave them some ideas of things we can do.

It’s funny where a conversation can take you. That’s why I love them so much.

Where has all this rain come from?

As I sit here, eating my Weetabix and cradling my tea, all I can think of is where has all this rain come from?

I live in Manchester, an area well known for its rain and yet it seems to have rained not stop for a long time now. Even my 6 year old asked when is it going to stop raining.

What’s causing all this rain, is it just normal and we are just noticing it more as it’s on the news or has something changed?

I’ve even just googled it, why is it always raining at the moment, apparently according to the Daily Mail, yes I laughed to, there are atmospheric rivers causing so much rain. You can have a look here if you don’t believe me:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2214192/Sc…

But I did find a fascinating web comic:

http://alwaysraininghere.com/

It’s worth a look, it’s a bit back street, but I liked that someone was creating it and people liked it, it made me feel better. It even made me quite like the sound of the rain on our roof.

I do love the creative world.

Spectrums

I was searching for an image to explain spectrums and I found this great blog science defined. Within the site I found a great image which I used in my a-n blog, however I started to read the blog that the image came from and within it, it discussed that we have only three types of cells that detect colour. One detects red, one detects green and one detects blue and that these are the main spectrum colours, they create all the other colours in our mind. The blog even discusses that us artists consider the three primary colours to be blue, yellow and red, he’s not sure why and nor am I.

To read more have a look on my conversation at:

http://fracktions.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/spectrums…

So far I have found a mountain of information and a mountain of views and this subject is a huge conversation. But what troubles me is that not many people are having this conversation. It seems that there are many conspiracies, theoretical ones as well as real ones and this stops people from being able to discuss the real issues that our society is facing. For me I feel that the issue is that nobody trusts anyone, people ask questions but do not believe the answers, people give answers but do not trust people with that information and so give false, misleading or over complicated answers.

The emotions involved in this conversation are so sensitive, they stem from peoples believe systems and experiences. People are fearful of others, there is very much a them and us world and so mistrust and lack of understanding of other people become high motivators of people actions. These problems are not just part of this conversation, but, a part of every conversation that isn’t taking place in this world, this country, this area, this society. If you do not trust or understand your neighbour, your government, your council, the people that surround you, then what are you both, you will always be opposers, never able to work together for the greater good, always feeling that you have to fight the other for what you believe in.

What does this mean for our society, if we are always fighting at the different ends of the spectrum then how can we work together to do what is right for our lands, our people, our services, our future. The answer is we can’t. As I ponder these questions I will continue this conversation, however, I am starting to understand where this art piece is taking me.

http://fracktions.blogspot.co.uk/

My second visit to Barton Moss frack off camp, Thursday 6th February 2014

This time I took my camera, I wanted to visualize how I saw it, the people and the things that had some impact on me. What I saw was again something that hit me as something bigger than myself. Everyone that was at that site had a reason to be there, their emotions were very high, be it scared, excited, frustrated, angry, upset, confused, all these emotions had a point to make about the whole story.

I am still unsure as to how I feel about the fracking, part of me is still very wary of it. Each time I look up different view points or talk to new people my feeling change and vary so much. When I talked to my friends about the site and the issues that I have witnessed and been told about, they questioned it, we talked, we laughed, we argued, but we all agreed that there was so much unknown, so many different view points that it was hard to make a decision on how we truly felt about it. This made me see that this may be how most people feel see fracking, it is something on the news or read about but they cannot connect it to them.

Some people just don’t care about the fracking, they feel that it has no impact on their everyday life, some say ‘the government wouldn’t let it happen if it was that dangerous’, others feel that it’s a good idea, they say ‘we need fuel and this is an easy way of getting it’, many say, ‘I just don’t know enough about it to be even able to have an idea of what’s going on’. others think, ‘the camp is full of trouble makers who can’t be bothered to get a job or live the real life’. All these comments ask more questions than answer the problem.

There are many sides to this debate, as far as I can see, there is no good or bad sides, just people, people acting in ways in which they think is right for their view point. There is just too much going on at once, like so many things, the morality of our country is being questioned by both sides and both are using that morality as their standpoint. What will happen in the future of the fracking in our land, I don’t know, but I know that this conversation has not even mid way.

What is good is that the more we talk about it, the more we have an open conversation about it, the more people can make an informed choice on what will happen to the land we live on. Then we can all work together for the better and everyone can see why this is an issue not about fuel but about our morals. It is about the morals of every human, not just the politicians, how we make decisions and how we support our people to be involved in that democratic process.