Eye on the sky

You can't help but breathe more deeply underneath the swaying rosemary at the allotment. It smells so great as you brush past purple arms to fill watering cans from the water butt.

If you look down as the water level glugs down a bit, in that lovely silvery bit that's been sitting for a week catching the sun, here's what you'll see. 

Designs that reminded me of textile prints. I thought it was the kind of patterns little creatures make with busy trails. But then I thought again.

Does this battered old rain catcher have a secret talent? After spending years eyeing the sky, is it a huge pinhole camera?!! 

Black on white in a little square book

It's been a while since I've written here, but you know how it goes. Sometimes life just sweeps you up in its arms. Busy times. My main concern has been how to get enough sleep! Anyway, here's something new I've been up to lately.

Sue from my meditation group has been making an alphabet inspired by Zentangle and when I saw her work, I was absolutely stunned at how gorgeous her little pieces were. No doubt about it - I wanted to have a go. I knew I had a little square sketchbook waiting for such things and home, and so I literally ran to it and picked up a black pen.

This is what happened next. The first piece I tried seemed to dance across the page, surprised me with a mysterious little foot up near the top left hand corner. (Who drew that?!!) So that was it, I was hooked.

And I keep being surprised by the geometries and strange forms that emerge when I'm in some day dreamy kind of state.

Most days I sit for a little while out in the garden or on the beach and let the black pen doodle away in my little book. It seems to give me a breathing space from all the other stuff. Bliss.

Greening

So, finally, I've started getting my hands dirty this year. Here's the newly weeded rhubarb. It had boldy ventured forth early in the new year before the big freeze and we thought we might never have seen any shoots again. But here it comes. The plates are ready and waiting.

Late late late, I know, but we finally got the potatoes into the ground. Fingers crossed they haven't lost the plot while they waited way too long for the ground to warm up, casting out shoots in egg box trays. Hope they're enjoying their first days of dark, underground.

Great to bring leeks and purple sprouting broccoli home and to check the progress of another crop which somehow survived the Winter harsh. Broad beans, drinking up the sunburst that has blessed us briefly this week. Don't ask me how they survived. 

Another great read

That time of year again. World Book Night aims to give away thousands of books to people who might not otherwise read. And I'm one of the givers who get to give brand new books away.

I have to admit, I was spoilt for choice as to what to choose this year. There are so many good reads on the list. In the end, I went for a book that welcomes readers with open arms. It's also one that had me laughing out loud.

Alexander McCall Smith now has 13 volumes in this international bestselling series and is still going strong. I love the quirky characters, especially Grace, the agency secretary and also the snapshots of life in Botswana. These are charming and heartwarming books and they will be in your library. So, there's no excuse for giving one a try.

Happy World Book Night!

***
Gremlins seem to be eating up the links in my post.
Let's hope they give up soon, so you can get more info.

Maybe

4am, I was listening to the roar of high tide. Wild phrases surging onto land, washing into heaped stones. The dawn chorus sounded frantic, wind-wrecked, ecstatic. Rush hour traffic was outplayed by sea surge and gale. I opened the curtains. Gold on blue. 

I've been waiting. Too much time indoors through a cruel Winter has left me ragged round the edges. My creativity has been a caged bird, reluctant to sing. 

The back door sways wide on the hinge. I let the garden run through the house, muddy feet, leaf litter, wild sounds that call me, wonder if maybe.....this is Spring.

The view from the bridge

The broad curve of a shallow estuary is carved by tiny waves drawing every kind of S. Distant hills, snow-capped, shoulder in on both sides. Watercolour paper is left white above the pinks and dull blues of another county, another country. And all you want is to be walking a ten mile beach with no particular place to go, except being there. 

As the train grinds through the last few miles, that feeling of being back lurches inside you, except you know you have carried this view with you since last time, since forever, know that you are never without it. 

Hundreds of miles away, you look down at a city street, notice islands in the bay of worn-out road paint, plan your next trip back.

Space for a gathering

Sand mirrors are optimists. They find blue in grey skies. 

Steep shoulders of stones are swept neat, higher than you've seen them. Acres of loose cobbles try to keep you away. Flint fists rock under your heels, make you awkward as you slide. Every footfall a percussion, a collision. Sudden shifts and scree-falls tell every stone that you are still upright. You want to meet the dark reflection that won't let you go, let the only sound be how the wind sculpts your back.

Run-offs. Rivulets. Sketches of deltas and estuaries. Etch-a-sketch grit that falls into creases. Upturned shells. A gull struggling with a live starfish. Left behind after the sweeping, a line of stones on a rise of sand.

Black dots swarm closer, outline the shape of bigger beings. Gather into rising clouds that storm and fall away.

Another March hare

Tomorrow, I'm going to be playing as part of another March hare crossover. The idea behind these gigs is that each set segues into the following one, so the performers and artists involved can share the performance space as a one-off crossover adventure.

Looking forward to mixing ideas in those shared moments. No idea how the running order might go, or what some of these other performers will bring to the gig. All very exciting. Going to be trying out a set of sketches that need such a performance space in order to move forward.

Crossing over are - The barrow boys, someone called Annie Kerr, Sunsets over Whitehawk, Kiersty Boon and Pivorting rivetts.

So, if you're in Brighton and fancy an evening of interesting sounds, please come and join us at The Coachhouse, 22 Walpole Rd, Brighton, BN2 OEA

Clocks

Just for an hour, I hid out of the wind bite, lay down close to the waves, let the sun take a good look at my face. And I dozed off, listening to one of those tides that snatches a rope through shallows like a lasso trick flicking carefree speed across a mile of beach. A white rush headed West faster than the traffic caught in ice melt on the top road. No clock to watch, just for a while.

And those precious moments would have been the highlight of my week except for a concert on Saturday. 

We were still setting up when the audience starting coming through the door at 6.45. They snapped up the final tickets and the door was closed on the rain and packed the place out with a buzz I haven't encountered for a long time. Something I only realised then, that I've been missing for too long. 

And people sat in absolute quiet concentration and openness as the first piece burred and whistled into form. Radios that hadn't wanted to play together in the rehearsal started the show. And I was left wondering about how this piece sounds different in every part of the world and then felt sad at how one day, digital radio will make this piece impossible to play. It struck a chord with me, as someone who used to seek out foreign radio stations in the dark. 

One of the aspects of John Cage's scores that appeals to me is that although there are carefully set-out performance rules and strict time-frames, there are usually chance elements as well. So it was no surprise that the string quintet "5"came together differently to how we have ever played it before. It had been very different each time. What blew me away, is that in a piece where we all have to watch the second hand of a clock measure out the sections to exactly five minutes, I hadn't heard it as beautiful before. It had been an oddly dark mystery to me until that performance. And this time, each section of the piece had my ears nearly dropping off in curiosity.

My 4'33" poem seemed to hang in the air with echoes of street noise and rain and the high jinks of Saturday night in the middle of town. Exactly what I had wanted to convey. And the crumpled page that I cast onto the stage was swept aside by the arrival of the amplified broom. Set to the highest possible volume, it reminds me of a mix of nails scratched down a blackboard, metal grinding and screaming on a rusty fairground ride. I know - it sounds terrible and it just makes me laugh out loud!

The hypnotics of prepared piano took us to the other side of sound. And the chamber choir brought a sense of sacred space back before the final flourish of the exactly 40 minute long Atlas Eclipticalis. It can be played by any combination of instruments, conducted by the clock-like geometries of slowly circling arms. Tonight was for 2 violins, 2 cellos, double bass, flute, clarinet and trumpet and 2 percussionists. And again, I'm sure it was the attentiveness of the audience that helped transform this piece into something stunning. 

When I look back at my score, it maps out a very different territory for me.

And an amplified broom

Please click on poster to read

Coming up tomorrow in the wonderful acoustic that is Brighton's Unitarian Church - music for prepared piano, string quintet, choir, poetry, massed radios, percussion ensemble, chamber orchestra and the moment I can't wait for - a piece for amplified broom.

Really excited about this gig. I'll be playing violin in the string quintet and chamber orchestra and also reading one of my poems that's inspired by John Cage. 

It's great to discover that so many people want to come and join us. It has almost sold out. Don't wait to buy a ticket at the door because you'll probably find yourself standing outside in the rain. If you want to come to this concert, BUY one now!