Funeral Blues

(I first heard this in one of my favorite movies Four Weddings And A Funeral... and i had a conversation yesterday that made me think of it... watch the video of John Hannah speaking it in the movie... its very very beautiful)

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

W.H. Auden

Sanved, Kolkata

Now working with Darpana and doing some amazing work...

http://kolkatasanved.org/index.htm

THE JERWOOD CONTEMPORARY MAKERS SHOW

'The most satisfying thing a human being can do – and the sexiest – is to make something.
Life is about relationship – to each other – and to the material world. Making something is a relationship.
The verb is the clue. We make love, we make babies, we make dinner, we make sense, we make a difference, we make it up, we make it new….

True, we sometimes make a mess, but creativity never was a factory finish.
The wrestle with material isn’t about subduing; it is about making a third thing that didn’t exist before. The raw material was there, and you were there, but the relationship that happens between maker and material allows the finished piece to be what it is. And that allows a further relationship to develop between the piece and the viewer or the buyer.

Both relationships are in every way different from mass production or store bought objects that, however useful, are dead on arrival. Anyone who makes something finds its life, whether it’s Michelangelo releasing David from twenty tons of Carrera marble, or potter Jane Cox spinning me a plate using the power of her shoulders, the sureness of her hands, the concentration of her mind.
I have a set of silverware made by an eighteenth century silverworker called Hester Bateman, one of the very few women working in flatware at that time. When I eat with her spoons, I feel the work and the satisfaction that went into making them – the handle and bowl are in equal balance – and I feel a part of time as it really is – not chopped into little bits, but continuous. She made this beautiful thing, it’s still here, and I am here too, writing my books, eating my soup, two women making things across time. I feel connection, respect, delight. And it is just a spoon…

But the thing about craft, about the making of everyday objects that we can have around us, about the making of objects that are beautiful and/or useful, is that our everyday life is enriched.
How it is enriched? To make something is to be both conscious and concentrated – it is a fully alert state, but not one of anxious hyper-arousal. We all know the flow we feel when we are absorbed in what we do. I find that by having a few things around me that have been made by someone’s hand and eye and imagination working together, I am prevented from passing through my daily life in a kind of blur. I have to notice what is in front of me – the table, the vase, the hand-blocked curtains, the thumb prints in the sculpture, the lettering block. I have some lamps made by Marianna Kennedy, and what I switch on is not a bulb on a stem; it is her sense of light.

So I am in relationship to the object and in relationship to the maker. This allows me to escape from the anonymity and clutter of the way we live now. Instead of surrounding myself with lots of things I hardly notice, I have a few things that also seem to notice me. No doubt this is a fantasy – but…

The life of objects is a strange one.
A maker creates something like a fossil record. She or he is imprinted in the piece. We know that energy is never lost, only that it changes its form, and it seems to me that the maker shape-shifts her/himself into the object. That is why it remains a living thing.
Of course it is possible to design an object that will be made by others – but that is an extension of the creative relationship, not its antithesis. It is the ceaseless reproduction of meaningless objects that kills creativity for all of us, as producers and consumers.
But are producers and consumers who we want to be?

To make is to do. It is an active verb. Creativity is present in every child ever born. Kids love making things. There are different doses and dilutions of creativity, and the force is much stronger in some than in others – but it is there for all of us, and should never have been separated off from life into art.
I would like to live in a creative continuum that runs from the child’s drawing on the fridge to Lucien Freud, from the coffee cups made by a young ceramicist to Grayson Perry’s pots.

We don’t need to agonise over the boundaries between ‘art’ and ‘craft’, any more than we should be separating art and life. The boundary is between the creative exuberance of being human, and the monotony of an existence dependent on mass production – objects, food, values, aspirations.


Making is personal. Making is shared. Making is a celebration of who we are.'

~ Jeanette Winterson

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Someone in my life is reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery right now and thought this excerpt may mean something to me... she was right. so hear it is... yet another fragment to add to myself.

"....Theo might want to burn cars some day. Because it's a gesture of frustration and anger, and maybe the greatest anger and frustration come not from unemployment or poverty or the lack of a future but from feeling that you have no culture, because you've been torn between cultures, between incompatible symbols. How can you exist if you don't know where you are? What do you do if your culture will always be that of Thai fishing village and of Parisian grands bourgeois at the same time? Or if you're the son of immigrants but also the citizen of an old, conservative nation? So you burn cars, because when you have no culture, you're no longer a civilized animal, you're a wild beast. And a wild beast burns and kills and plagues."

Thanks for thinking of me babe... even when i may scare you.

Sinking in

Standing on my balcony, souls wet, i find myself once again wishing i could give myself up. Wishing I could close my eyes, tilt my head back and breathe in what my eyes see. Breathe in that gentle touch softer than the fingertips of a child or lover tracing pathways across my face in the silent roar of sudden pleasure. Passion so fierce and pure it leaves invisible winding scars my reflection will lament forevermore. And in the release of that breath I take, I no longer want to be standing on that balcony watching, waiting for the falling rain to encompass me and hold me in her embrace. An embrace unlike anything ever felt. Cradled in her truth and timelessness. So close i am shielded by her, covered in her. So close I am inside her. And with that one breath to become a part of her.

Returning

unknowingly my eyes search
my head leans into the silence
searching for a stirring in the black
my hand itches to reach out
into the night that is not yet set
i have not known time till now
not felt the weight of this uncertainty
(knowing you are unaware of my presence)
i have not known what it means to wait

Fragments

Broken pieces of myself
I find
In places i have never been.

Hidden under layers of time
Secrets resting with bones
Not mine.

THE INDIAN SERENADE

I Arise from dreams of thee

In the first sweet sleep of night,

When the winds are breathing low,

And the stars are shining bright.

I arise from dreams of thee,

And a spirit in my feet

Hath led me -- who knows how?

To thy chamber window, Sweet!




The wandering airs they faint

On the dark, the silent stream--

And the Champak's odours [pine]

Like sweet thoughts in a dream;

The nightingale's complaint,

It dies upon her heart,

As I must on thine,

O belovèd as thou art!




O lift me from the grass!

I die! I faint! I fail!

Let thy love in kisses rain

On my lips and eyelids pale.

My cheek is cold and white, alas!

My heart beats loud and fast:

O press it to thine own again,

Where it will break at last!

~ Percy Bysshe Shelly (1792-1822)

Spin-ster!

(I wrote this as an accompaniment to a short ariel-dance piece I choreographed for myself as part of a 3 week ariel performance workshop with Brandy Leary... il try and figure out how to put the vid of it up next!)

I awake to the sound of my breathing. Within myself first and then on the outside. Where I have awoken I cannot always tell right away... At times I wake into a dream that resembles a reality, other times into a reality that could be a dream. But then again who can tell which is which?

Haven't you ever wondered if you'll suddenly wake up and find all of this has disappeared? that it was only a dream?

I no longer do.

My faith lies in the laws of gravity. Especially when they fail. I need nothing more, for i know in the end i still feel alive.

I continue spinning, in and out of control... and when the world is a blur even when steady, how does it matter what direction I am turning in?

I am asked to turn in sync with the world by people who do not turn it. But I move to my own rhythm. The one i began with, awoke with.

In and out of consciousness too i go, only to wake some place else.

Watching the skies

I do not see the sun. But the sky is filled with clouds a brilliant golden orange. The light plays hide and seek with itself as the clouds dance across the sky. A Kite rides the wind waiting for something, for it watches what goes on below but does not hesitate. The air smells like rain, yet not a drop has hit the ground. And as if in response to my realizing its nearing the peacocks begin to call from the rooftops around me. The traces of the sun are quickly fading leaving what seems to me a clear blue sky. My deceptive eyes watch the light clouds, layered so densely i cannot see beyond, as they pass overhead bringing towards me a much darker canopy, steady in its course. I have been told by an elder that it is not the dark clouds that bring rain. I hope they were wrong.

you there...

trust that i will not fall
alone
your hand will follow
when in need
i shall still resist
until i need no longer
that hand to hold

trust that i will know
for longer
than my heart does remember
the hand to hold
when in need i will
reach out
to the hand to hold

Drunken painful rants...

Why is it that those of us who start out as losers, end losers? Just cause im used to being dumped... used and taken for granted, doesnt mean i want people to treat me that way... But it keeps happening... Dosent matter where i am or who with. What this girls problem is or if she really has one at all... none of it matters, as long as im at the receiving end of the bull shit and pain...

I feel like a moron tonight... for trusting someone.... for thinking that if i do the right thing things would work out... for putting so much effort into doing the right thing and being screwed over anyway.... i feel like a moron because even though i know the right thing gets me nowhere, gets me hurt, gets me pushed aside, i insist on taking only that path...and for believing that something good could come my way...

There is nothing to say that will rid me of my annoyance, nothing that will ease the pain... so im writing this instead... venting my frustration and hoping it will empty my mind and heart enough to let me rest tonight... (seeing as its 3 in the morning!)