I say yes.  Let's do it.

No, I don't want to live like that either but look- I've got a new idea. Not about how to live (out of ideas there) but about this blog- which hasn't been exactly buzzing recently. Thus the long gap...

But how about we play a game? I'm going to post three pieces of writing. They could be a sentence, a paragraph or much longer. I might type them or write them out a la Three Books and then photograph them, but whatever, I'll post them here. In response you give me three images. They can be old or new, doesn't matter. The only rule is that they are an honest response to the text. And in response to those three images I'll give you three new pieces of text. And so on, till we get bored or figure out it's going nowhere.

Just writing about stuff doesn't really seem to be working, and my website is going live soon (!) and I have a blog there for that anyway. What I've always wanted to do with you is a project, a dual thing, and equal thing that is about words and images.

What do you say??

So much

I don't want to live in a world like this.  I feel like I have so much to say but can never find the right words.

No Title

At first all I see is the sweetness. The two together, the peace and intimacy that I so wanted when I was single. The idea of the other half, different but the same. The absence of loneliness. It makes me think of two things in parallel, the time of our twenties, which longed for such a partner, and the sweet time before there were children (and before the fear that there might never be children). The light is so warm. The world seems very complete. The balance between the little conker animals on their matchstick legs and the symmetry of light, the window for one, and the light from the window on the wall for the other.  The unfocussed branch (is it eucalyptus?) at the top matches the little bit of gubbins on the surface at the bottom. It’s a peaceful image, where the static of time is inviting rather than oppressive.

But then I noticed the faces on the animals. The one by the window looks like the Roswell alien. Which is funny at first. But the other one is more skull like. Actually, it looks like Munch’s screaming head. It’s unnerving, in such an intimate image, and now I find it hard to look at anything else. The still image has become a moving one, with its own before and after, innocence and experience.

You see how neatly I am moving from you to me, from still images to moving film. Maybe because I am trying to shape this into a story. And there are so many stories that could come from this picture. I bet in one of them those little match-head feet are going to ignite. But I don’t have a story right now for these little creatures. Actually, stories are a little elusive at the moment. Maybe, between projects and tied up in endless practicalities, all I can do at the moment is look.

Can I have something else to look at?

Mortmere

How is this world for you?

Mortmere in Hackney

Hey Sue-

Strange but kind of satisfying that we didn't get round to mentioning this project when you came round on Monday. I like the idea that is exists only in itself- only here in this space, like an imaginary world. Christopher Isherwood, with whom (as you know) I am currently obsessed with, created an imaginary world called Mortmere with his friend Edward Upward. They would write stories, or parts of stories, and leave them on each other's desks to be read or completed.

So- if you still pop in here once in a while, and if you have the time (ah....time....) can you make a picture of our imaginary world? If you do, I'll write a story about it.

Tx

NO ESCAPE

I like the Dante...

I can't manage to post a video clip. We may have to get together for this... 

I wanted to put up the one of the sign outside the studio, in that beautiful and slightly home-made typeface, which says:

TO ROOF ONLY NO ESCAPE

Which I've always found so strangely touching, and which links in so well to all the lost paths. Like the lost path of being a full time artists because I am being an almost full time mother.

But that's cheating really because when I wasn't a mother I wan't exactly putting in the full days at the studio, and I sure as hell wasn't winning the Turner Prize. And anyhow, the work I've done since the children, though SLOWER, is so much better than the things I was making before that my chances at the prize, though pretty small, are probably bigger, apart, of course, from the fact that I'm getting too OLD...

Not that I actually care about prizes. I mean, I CARE, of course, but I don't really care. I care more about making work that I like. I care about getting that out somehow.  I really care that James and the kids are all right. 

I do care about whether I'm an artist or not, and thinking about that as I struggle to publish the books and deal with the lost negative issue.  Am I an artist if I keep making things and the things are good but they don't get widely seen outside of my own circle? Christopher Isherwood defines  an artist as (and I don't have the book here so I'm paraphrasing, I'll post the accurate quotation soon) someone with a disinterested desire to entertain. Now, I think I have that- I'm interested is success and audience but their consistent refusal to arrive don't stop me making more things. But then again, Isherwood could have been wrong.

Isherwood in interesting here, on this project, for two reasons. The first is his decision to make his undisguised contemplation of his own life the basis of his art. The second would be his disinterest, bordering on contempt, for children and family life.

So you're right. If we say this is art, then it is.

Maybe it's ART like this:

                  DO                            ES_I                   T_MATTE

                  R_                             I        F                          _

                S    O                          M      E                          O

                N    E                          _ THI                            N

              KS _ IT'                        S    _                             A

              R          T                      _      I                             F

            _               I                     T        _                         W

            O              R                    K          S                       ?

Or maybe not.

I agree with you about the fonts. Lets keep it how it is for the moment.

I LIKE this, even if it isn't art.