What is the importance of history ?

No look, listen ere's a good'en. How many folk singers does it take to change a light bulb?

6; one to change the light bulb and 5 to sing about how good the old one was!

Well today I have just about finished preparing the cartoon for this project and I have orderd the tiles. It is something like 11 months ago that I went for the interview. Tommorrow I will have to re-organize my workshop and prepare things to accomodate it, something I quite like doing. It is exciting to start, at long last.

I also wanted to tell you about what I had read Frederic Jameson said about History: That a defineing sense of postmodernism was the disappearance of a sense of history in our culture, a pervasive depthlessness, a perpetual presant, in which the memory of tradition is gone.

Blimey!

How do you like that? Its blown me away.

Of course as soon as you mention things have ground to a halt, then today I have had the conversation to start work on the revised drawing I think I called it no.9.

Its the biggest mosaic I made in over ten years. Logistically challenging. I will enjoy starting this. Cartoon preparation tommorrow.

I want to show you my favourite bit. I also used it in a little logo I made aswell.

'The councilors have agreed the design, I will discuss it with you soon, I bet your wondering which one'.

Correct….So where has this project gone to……nowhere yet.

But other projects have moved along a bit and I noticed something when preparing for them.

Where do you look for your inspiration? Google, your book collection, films, libraries, music? well yes but. Generally speaking I look backwards into history, then go North, South, East or West.

The co-ordinates for the inspiration for this project are:

time in years -0943

direction SSW

distance 50m

No seriously history provides so much, yet I find it difficult to explain just how much. Even the medium I will be working in is totally geared for a long life. It may well still be there after I have died and the town is again undergoing another change. Art really does record and provide information and inspiration for the future. Just that it is so hard to see and understand that. Tacit knowlege of society in an artist added together with a long time gap ……thats part way to a description.

So awake late with a cough, sorry for being cross just before xmas.

I have now reworked my design as requested. Again the commissioner just pushing me a little further than I would have gone.

Does my laziness show? or is it some kind of complacancy?

The latest blog at the top of the pile was asking about art in the current economy? It made me realise I only work for money. I will have to work for nothing if I want to explore my own inner world. Something I should have done by now? Get paid to explore your own mind…is that what artits do?

Anyway I did'nt come here to talk balkolcs about art, I came here to share something writen by M.C.Esher in 1945 pertaining to reality but hitting a button for me about history.

'Which reality is actually more powerfull: that of the present instantly absorbed by our senses and discernable, or the memory of what we experienced previously? Is the present truly more real than the past?

……..er no, perhaps the past is more real then?

Dont ask Foucault, Derrida or Jean-Francois Lyotard because you wont be able to understand a single word and you might get confused.