Route 66 # 4

This is my other Hockney (see previous post). Isn't it a delight? The delights of life have been simplified somewhat by the present circumstances. Things that were taken for granted, travel, visiting friends, family, lovers, galleries, gigs, theatres, I can't remember when I was last on a train to Lewes even, it has all taken a back seat for the day-to-dayness of living. There is no other way because the option is to be reckless to others. Of course, I can take a trip in different ways. This week I have been reading, Alice of the North by my dear friend, Anne Caldwell and its about a place I recognise and yet not at the same time. The great thing about the collection is how the pages turn on surprises. "The Piano" leaves us with a picture of Mary Shelley's monster on the ice and then effortlessly slides in to "a beautiful Swedish man on the mail ship and the possibility of sex..." and then back on land with "Kippers" and "memories that stick in the throat..." I move around the shelves, randomly picking out old favourites, another dear friend, Jen Webb's Moving Targets, and "The Long Man of Wilmington" nestled alongside "Icarus" and other mythologies, having moved through the garden and basil and tomatoes and the reek of compost and blood... "Later the scent of leaves... And on and on, the shelves stacked neatly in chaotic disorder, 

Katherine Coles, Paul Munden, Philip Gross, (I know a lot of poets) Wallace Stevens, Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, Robert Burns, I don't know them, of course, but lordy, its been a journey since getting my first serious book in 1967 (picture aside). How time flies when you have books to read. Perhaps these simplified circumstances are just a reminder that the new normal isn't so bad if you just roll with it. But that means shutting out the outside and the crap that is rolling with it, people and heartache; not having live music, watching and playing, visiting an art gallery and even just strolling round to the pub with a notebook and pencil and sitting having a beer... all pales into insignificance. But och, give me back the old normal. I sang this song at Portslade Railway Roots Club the other night.

 

Route 66 # 3

 

This is one of my David Hockney's. He painted it on an iPad during a TV show and then said the first 200 people applying could get it as a free download. Needless to say I was pretty chuffed to get one and it continues to give me pleasure. Today (as I write) is Epiphany and for many it is a spiritual moment of awakening, of realisation, of revelation even. It isn't any of these things for me. Its simply a time which allows me to remember how fortunate I am. I didn't suddenly wake up and realise I remembered, it wasn't revealed to me, I already knew. That's what I think of art does, it reminds us, it speaks to us, becoming more than just the item on display. Wallace Stevens wrote, '[The artist’s] function is to make his imagination … become the light in the minds of others. His role, in short, is to help people to live their lives.' What I feel is, if an artist, be it painter, sculptor, photographer, poet or what and whomsoever, goes to the trouble of switching on the lights, at least we can work with it. So when Rilke asked, 

    Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'

    hierarchies?

I'm not so concerned by the image of existential suffering he goes on to insinuate (which I care little about - there's too many people really suffering in the world), but by the light he switches on in making me think. Well that's how I see it anyway. Have your own epiphany, ultimately it really has nothing to do with me unless you wish to use it against me.