From the wilderness into the wasteland

Not to coincide with ‘the role of art in music on 6 Music’ or Jeremy Deller’s musings on Warhol’s ‘Art Factory’, I released my new single Take the World this week.  This, like all the other musical output I have created, is released under the band name – Armchairanarchists and is available to listen to and download on all on line digital portals. (I have attached two links at the end of this blog) There endith the self-promotion!

I have been creating music in various forms for 35 years and you could say, what’s the point, who listens to it? Well, to quote Noel Gallagher (who incredibly was recently a guest on Desert Island Disc’s – read into that what you will) ‘If you can make music you should’. And so that is what I do but, what has changed in those 35 years, is the ability to create music to a high standard in your own home and release this work via the internet. What started 35 years ago as an angry post-punk 20 year old who could hardly put 5 chords together playing to tiny audiences in pubs, arts centres and colleges now at 55 has a world-wide audience.  I make no money, but through on-line radio over the last three years thousands of people all over the world have heard my music, some have even become fans!!! Madness!!!

So, the question in my last blog was ‘Is the creation of art enough?’ The answer to that is, yes. As, although my life has been pitted with disappointments I have always been at my happiest when I am creating (or drinking or just being with my beautiful patient wife), be it music, art, video, poetry, or just making or repairing things, even helping others to create through teaching. For me the synthesis of creative intellectual thought and practical making is a true joy and a challenge. And I must always remind myself that to have this opportunity, whether I have calved it out for myself or not, is a unbelievable privilege.

So all….Go forth and create!!!!

Link to single:

http://www.cdbaby.com/AlbumDetails.aspx?AlbumID=armchairanarchists3&_ga=1.251781705.1589986287.1440594518

Link to simple video for single:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQtZylSnsjk

The factors that allow art to be selected for competitions, art galleries and public spaces seem to be somewhat abstract and arbitrary, especially in my case (but probably many others as well).  As when fellow artists, artist models and members of the public view my work in the studio there is in general a bit of a loss for words when I explain the struggle to get the work shown or excepted anywhere.  This is of course the ‘struggling’ artist’s lot and we should no doubt be grateful to have the opportunity just to create work; as it is the creation of the work that is most important! Or is it? Whether age and a CV that shows an artist’s exhibition history with a huge gaping 18 year hole in it are factors, who knows; maybe the work is just not right at the moment, maybe I’m trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole and I just can’t see it. Whatever the case and whatever the truth I returned from holiday a week ago to find a raft of rejection e-mails.

However, whilst in Scotland we came across an Andy Goldsworthy public art piece in the Forresty Commission area at Cairnhead (north of Dumfries) and the hills surrounding. This work has links across the globe where, as I understand it, there are similar pieces in places where native Scots emigrated to. The work consists of a set of stone arches, the first emerging out of a renovated croft (picture attached). So, why bring this up? Most of the time this work is unseen, forgotten a work that needs to be found; it is not presented. I am not commenting on its merit, worth or its place as art, but it seems this type of work is more about the creation than the outcome or the acclaim, and it is this which I took from it.  A poem to finish this blog written outside the croft…enjoy and feel the history.

the silence in this stones

cries foul by which they speak

that line of lived souls whisper

such histories that none can hear.

red cracked sandstone arches false

freedom by which the valley calls

in centuries each effort lost down

in death, never thanked, profit taken.

then high (ho silver lining) did southern

uplands sing, by call of hawk, in

race of grass, through hissling trees,

but that’s all well now; good and gone.

Mark Carr 2015