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What Aristotle Did On His Holidays

I’m suffering from Blog Withdrawal Symptoms. As soon as the site is back up and running, I will post, then gasp with relief. Having done this writing at least once a week for the last 3 years, having it pulled out from underneath me feels awful. I seriously think the effects of this downtime on the serial, obsessed blogger has been underestimated. A-N should have set up a 24hr helpline or something!

Anyway…

If it had been up and running, I would have written this. Well I did write it, I just didn’t post it, well, I did, but only just, and not at the time. Timey Wimey…

Artist statements…

I am crap at them. I seem to manage a sort of “What I did on my holidays” crossed with “What Aristotle did on his holidays”. Given this, and my hatred of arty bollocks, I end up deleting, copying, pasting, and starting all over again.

What I have taken to doing, and she doesn’t seem to mind, (or at least she hasn’t said so yet) is I write what I want to say, in all the aforementioned awfulness (I have had to swallow any embarrassment out of necessity), then send it to Franny Swann.

What I would love to be able to do, is write Artist Statements like I blog. But can you imagine what that would be like? Look at the last sentence in the previous paragraph for goodness sake!

Anyway… Franny seems to be able to filter all the dreadfulness through her brain, and write it how I should have written it in the first place. I re-do it a little, so it is my words really, but it is the tone and structure I don’t seem to be able to do. My English teacher would be horrified, but my MA tutor wouldn’t be surprised at all. I think I have worked it out though, I think I know what the problem is. I think it is because I can’t be arsed. I can’t be arsed to apply my brain to something I am perfectly capable of doing. Part of me thinks it is false, pretentious and well… bollocks. But I need to be able to do this. I need to be able to do it unassisted, and get where I want to. I haven’t had enough practice at it. Because I am old, people expect that I can do it efficiently and succinctly. I don’t have enough experience. In my practice, that doesn’t show (I don’t think). But it shows in my statement writing. So, one statement at a time, Franny is teaching me what I should already know, so the join doesn’t show!

Thanks Franny!

I’m supposed to be writing a proposal, but a little tweety bird told me the new site was up and running, so I abandoned that to come and explore.

I have been writing while the blog has been down, so over the next few days I’ll post those one at a time…

It all looks great, and it’s good to be back!

Rethink, U-turn, reassessment, or indecisive grasshopper… call it what you like.

In a previous post I said I had some unfinished songs, waiting for me to find a way to use them, then they will get finished. I think I’m going to change my mind and finish them, the thinking being, how will I know how to use them if I don’t know what they are yet?

It’s like saying that an idea of something in my sketchbook won’t get made because I don’t know what it will look like. I always just keep going, just make it, and think about it later. I have confidence in my making process when it comes to the visual… so why not this?

Last night’s circle was great… another collaborative session with Nicki Kelly… she writes great songs, and she seems to be quite pleased with me not following the rules, because I don’t know they exist! Last night I just wished I could sit up to the piano and show her what I meant, what I heard. I patted the rhythm on my leg, and sang. Actually, what we get as a result is something totally unexpected. She didn’t play what I could hear, but she came up with something completely different, dark, moody and magnificent! I am very inspired by her. I am thinking I should learn to play the piano, but part of me quite likes the fact that I can’t, and that these weird things happen in translation because I don’t know about the “should”…. My voice, which isn’t anything to write home about, goes to places that I see. I do “see” a song, feel where it is going. In the blurb for this blog somewhere it says I use songs as images. I wrote that three years ago… It seems a little prophetic when I read it now. Maybe I can’t see the wood for the trees… it’s been staring me in the face for three years and I’ve been ignoring it?

Anyway, the upshot of this rambling is, I have decided to dedicate some time to this. If I finish the songs and record them in a half decent fashion, with a mic at least, rather than singing in the vague direction of my macbook, I might more clearly see how I can use them.

http://www.soundcloud.com/nicki-kelly-songwriter