Simple pleasures of this February

Sunshine on a winter day.

Getting shot by a tangerine and smelling of citrus for the rest of the day.

Owning Frankentop.

Discovering Tumblr (even if I am a bit foxed by it)

Renner-fetish!

Snowdrops!

Doing some drawing again.

Knowing I am partway through chapter nine of "Gold Hawk" and the revisions are flowing well.

Meeting new interesting people.

Crocuses!

Being able to walk home in daylight.

Remembering crying into my binoculars at “Onegin” last week.

Daffodils!

“The Golden Cat” – finally!

Eviscerating lychees with my tongue.

Getting busier again at work.

Trade Fairs!

Orchids!

I love my life.

Why do I do this?

Why do I write?  That’s not what I trained for.  I spent five years at art school; five years of thrills and spills, being abused and then praised and then abused again, having my best work rubbished comprehensively and then being urged to carry out stupid ideas I had dreamed up during a drunken pizza lunch with my mother...  (FYI, it’s useful sometimes having a mum one can get plastered with!).  I painted and drew for the life of me.  I learned an enormous amount about myself.  And I tried (& tried, and tried) to connect what I could do with the Fine Art Newspeak Bullsh*t that most of the tutors spoke, most of the time. 

In the end, though, it didn’t work.  I’ll never regret those five years: they were fascinating and fun, I made some great friends, I learned to salsa and speak Spanish, and I did make some good paintings.  And drawings.  Good, big drawings.  If I ever know someone whose house is large enough to hang the really big stuff (which isn’t that big – I think the largest pieces were about six feet by eight – come on, some people make artworks hundreds of feet long) then he or she will be welcome to any of it that they like.  I’m unlikely ever to be able to hang it myself, after all, since I’ll never own a mansion.  I still paint and sketch with great happiness, on holiday, or down at the London Wetland Centre.  But I have come to see I’ll never be an artist.

It’s partly that I haven’t the patience to sit and listen and try to engage with the aforementioned Fine Art Bullsh*t.  I managed to, at college; but five years of it was more than enough.  Way more...  Life is too short to waste time bending one’s brain into that distorted worldview, just in order to please someone who will then turn around and say “But I don’t like the shade of blue you’re using, either”.  Excuse my French, but f*ck them.

I am someone who got a tremendous amount out of spending five years making what I consider to be art; but “an artist” is someone who wants to make a career in the Art World and embrace the Fine Art BS; qv my earlier rude comments, above.  I got into art because after ten years with no creative outlet except my job cooking (which I was good at, and also don’t regret), my rediscovery of creative activity when I was in my late twenties blew my mind.  I could have gone full-tilt into anything creative that I had happened upon, but it was an adult ed art evening class that I hit on, and that hit me. Like anyone who's been hit, I was a little punch-drunk afterwards, though in this case it was punch-drunk with joy.

Ultimately, all I was doing at college, though, was having fun and playing.  I think I had a whole second childhood in those five years at KIAD, and all the fun and all the frustrations of adolescence, too; but at an age when I was mature enough to experience them fully – and, crucially, gain from them - instead of simply drowning in them.  So no, no regrets whatsoever, but still I have come to feel it was a dead-end for me.

When I sat down, in autumn 2005, and did that “what are your creative goals” exercise from The Artist's Way, what came out wasn’t art works.  It was stories.  And they have been coming out ever since.  Not as steadily as I would like, but pretty steady even so. 

I wanted to write when I was a kid.  I had a head full of stories I wanted to tell, and all these years later they are still there.  The “back burner” exercise I did last year uncovered the fact that some of them, even some of the really old ones, were actually worth doing.  New ones pop up in my brain all the time.  Urban fantasies, pseudo-historical fantasies, romantic fantasies; slight things like the fairy tales, and epics that could run to four volumes.  Storytelling; that’s what I was made for, it seems.  I ignored it for all those years, and the moment I let it see daylight, it sprouted anew.  Stories, stories, stories.

That’s why I do it.  It’s what makes me, me, and it’s the greatest delight I have in my life.  I have no idea if I will ever be published (though I intend to keep trying) but I cannot stop the storytelling, because that would be like stopping growing.  I could stop doing the art in any serious way, because it was, ultimately, a blind alley.  But the stories are not blind.  The stories have intense eyes that see me, and see the world, and through which I can see; and nothing looks the same when I see through their eyes. 

I describe Anna and Thorn talking about sensory interference, I send the protagonists of “Café Tana” into the maze in the heart of someone's mind, I trap Simon Cenarth on a battlefield and walk across a desert with Maramne Myas to try and save her husband and reach her lover; I meet aliens, heal gunslingers, discover creatures that feed on fear, and learn to overcome them by overcoming fear, and I find love and lose it and find it again; and then wake up and want breakfast.  In stories.  Which are my truest world.

What more to tell?  A busy weekend: The Olympics Opening Ceremony was great fun, beautiful, exciting and relatively cheese-free, and also managed to be very smoothly drilled while looking completely anarchic and organic; Saturday I got sunburned again helping TCI to gloss paint doors on trestles in her garden; Sunday I did my grocery shopping and cleaning and all the other domestic duty stuff, and got rained on, and wrote, and watched “The Town”, which was excellent.  A classic-tropes heist movie, extremely well done and totally gripping; I’d put it on a par with “Heat” and “Ronin” and “Ne le dis à personne” in terms of good old-fashioned thriller quality.  And surprise surprise, Mr Renner is terrific – playing a terrifying, and ultimately tragic, murderous nut-job. 

And someone came home at 4.00am last night and slammed doors and played music in the flat.  At 4.00am.  Gods, I wish I had my own place! 

Crikey, a month since I wrote anything!!

I seem to be forever saying “I’m so busy!” lately.  But tomorrow is Good Friday, which means church for my church-going friends and for the rest of us, a four day weekend.  Oof. A chance to catch my breath...

I worked through my lunch break today; but it was the first time in over two months that I have done that.  In the previous job I had to do it two or three times a week.  The new job remains refreshingly structured and organise-able compared to the old one, too.  And my new manager Paul still hasn’t shown his Dark Side – if he has one, which I am beginning to doubt.  So busy or no I am feeling decidedly cheerful about work. 

Of course there is the odd chaotic group planner, and the odd startlingly rude one, and as always from time to time I have IT problems.  Next spring is going to be a harder sell than usual because we don’t have our regular Trop-Ex tropical flower exhibition in February, which is a great pity.  And the weather has turned chilly after a beautifully mild March.   So it isn’t all shiny, but shiny enough for now.

But Kew is looking lovely, with delicate new leaves opening everywhere, glorious displays of magnolias and crab apple blossom, the first cherry blossom, early lilac species and azaleas, and great banks of native fritillaries near the river; and my own little bit of garden in Chiswick is looking lovely too in its more modest way.   I have been busy outside of work with sketching (I’m having a real fit of duck-drawing) and sewing, and tidying the garden, and I’ve been to the David Hockney exhibition at the Royal Academy (wonderful: if you possibly can, go!) as well as two very enjoyable mixed bills by the English National Ballet and a couple of excellent concerts, including Britten’s “War Requiem” with Mark Padmore, the chap who was at school with my brother Steve, a heart-rending tenor soloist. 

ENB are in good form, though I managed to get rather a lot of Dmitri Gruzdyev, a dancer I find dismally uncharismatic, both nights – I would much prefer to have seen pretty much any of their other men as Nijinsky’s Faun, never mind as Balanchine’s Apollo – I don’t mean to sound bitchy, but Apollo he ain’t!!  The three Muses I saw were lovely, though, and Erina Takahashi was a terrific sacrifice in “The Rite of Spring”.  David Dawson’s “Faun/e”, a new piece on me, was gorgeous despite the men’s silly “will it fall off or not?” costumes, and “Suite en Blanc” looked even more luscious second time around.  

Steve, incidentally, has got his plaster cast off and is progressing well with physiotherapy.

A ray of watery sun has just filtered through the clouds; may it be a good omen for the weekend ahead! 

Against the blanched white clouds

Where last month there were only

Dark branches like scars, now

Everywhere I see shivers of green. 

Birds sing, or hop scuffling

Among the flashing celandines.

The swans stake out their usual demesne

By the lake, and a thousand coots

Chase one another like ninja chicks

Across the grey spring waters.

Odd, unsettled...

It's an odd patch.  I get bad news, I reel, I find my feet again, I realise that until I get more facts I can't make any decisions or plans, and I am left in limbo.  I won't get more facts until this Thursday at the earliest. 

At least it isn't my health, or that of anyone close to me.  

Meanwhile the weather veers between dramatic late autumnal sunshine and dramatic thick mists and raw chill.  The ground is thick with fallen leaves now, but even now there are still many more clinging on to the trees, for we still have not yet had a single frost, or a single gale. I am beginning to allow myself the hope that the weather for my winter break in Cornwall may be okay.  It's only ten days' time before I go now.

In the last week I have, besides work, been doing some more writing, had an afternoon birdwatching and sketching at the Wetland Centre, baked chocolate orange sultana muffins, had supper with a friend, been to "The Sleeping Beauty" (Marianela Nuñez, absolutely wonderful again as Aurora), sung (badly) in the first Christmas Choir practice and been on a Tree Identification training walk.  I've been busy, and happy.  But I hate this business of being in limbo.  It's like being in the dentist's waiting room, only worse by at least an order of magnitude.  Even if in the end the news is bad, I'd rather know, and at least be able to plan for it...

The "back burner"...

A few nights ago something made me wonder about just what constitutes the contents of my mental back burner. Turns out it's a big old burner and no mistaking...

Some of the things sitting macerating there date back to my days at Art Colllege. I'd still love to make and film an installation of found objects on a beach; film it being built and then washed away by the tide, on a brilliant sunny day, add a soundtrack of summer beach sounds, and call it "All summer in a day". I'd still love to film the train journey from Charing Cross to the coast and synchronise it to the "Death and the Maiden" quartet. I'd still love to draw all the activitiy at a big theatre or concert hall; the spaces both empty and full, the rehearsals, the auditorium, the fly tower and storage areas and the stage in use and deserted...

There are stories that are ancient and stories that appeared very recently. The oldest dates back to my teens, the latest to just a few weeks ago, to a dream image of someone walking into a wood out of which blows thickly whirling snow, though there is no snow at all on the ground in the open. There are the stories I've been working on lately, and stories I have previously worked up into what I now realise was the wrong form. I've written three film scripts and three stage plays in my time and the Gods only know what possessed me to do so, since all of them would be better off re-written as straightforward narrative fiction.

I have, in total, besides "Ramundi's Sisters" and "Gabriel Yeats", both of which are finished and require only revision, another eight very promising stories, eight that are not quite ready, and eleven that are definitely not ready, but that still intrigue me. Plus three that are not fit for purpose, but have a grain of possibility lurking - a good central idea or a strong character waiting for the right home... twenty-nine healthy items all told, and three duds.

It's a slightly scary total. I've decided to make proper notes about the state of each idea, to see if that clarifies how "cooked" they are, and which ones I should start on next. Wish me luck; it's a big undertaking I've got there.

ENO's "Idomeneo", or, how to c*ck up a really good idea.

“Idomeneo”.

Not that young chap Mozart’s finest hour, but lovely stuff nonetheless. ENO field a terrific cast and a very odd production, and I come out at the end feeling wildly frustrated. The production is almost worse than a downright ropey one would have been, because it is very nearly superb, but fluffs it totally by continuously restating its cleverest ideas, over and over like a nervous tic, until one wants to shake the director.

The basic idea of relocating the action to the contemporary corporate/political world is a good one. The device of the lover’s debate/duet being sung during a formal meal was interesting, first time around; it neatly pointed up the misery of having to hide your feelings in public, of being a Public Face and not able to have messy things like emotions visible - much less allow them to affect one's behaviour, when Duty has to come first. The device of having besuited corporate functionaries hurrying about the stage with clipboards was effective, for about a scene.

But as the repetition of these ideas - endless successions of waiters bustling, endless pacing Suits in noisy shoes - goes on it becomes first irritating, then distracting and finally infuriating, and I begin wanting to shout “No more bl**dy waiters, please!” It isn’t until the third Act that the constant stage business, and busyness, calms down enough to let the music and the performers carry the piece properly.

This is particularly rough when, in the amazing Paul Nilon, and in Robert Murray, Sarah Tynan and Emma Bell, the ENO have four principals who can handle every delicate nuance of their music, every lovely phrase and fancy frill, and who also act their socks off. It seems almost mean of Katie Mitchell to have surrounded them with endless fussy distractions on stage, rather than setting things up and then having the confidence in her concept and in the piece itself to let these great acting singers - and the orchestra, in excellent form as usual – just take it from there.

It was also unwise, I felt, to make so much of a figure of fun out of Electra; being the unwanted one in a love triangle is hell, as I can vouch - it is not funny at all. Hell for the participant, and boring for their friends, but funny? - no. Besides, it means you have the comic relief committing suicide at the end, and that's a big jump for the audience to make.

On a different note, I'm really sorry to learn that Nicholas Mahut lost – finally – his protracted battle with the Human Barn Door Isner at Wimbledon. It seems bizarre that I watched the first part of this match on Tuesday after work, and they have only just finished playing now. But to me it looked, at least on Tuesday, as if the underlying battle was that old cliché, David and Goliath, aka brains versus brawn; and I’m afraid in that situation I am firmly on the side of brains. Call it intellectual snobbery. Besides, Mahut looks like an elf. Intellectual snobbery with a side-preference for elvish men, then...

Going home now, to reheat the rest of that curry, and get back to my drawing.

More constructive stuff...

And yesterday evening, I:

made a huge lentil and cauliflower biriyani;

and a huge bowlful of sliced and lightly-sugared strawberries;

ate some and put the rest in the fridge for another night;

put on some cheerful music to sew to;

realised after mending one shoulder strap that I simply couldn't sew to this particular music (the Warsaw Village Band) as it was far too energising;

and set up my easel with a sheet of A4 cartridge paper and spent an hour drawing like a maniac, working from some of my orchestra sketches from the autumn, getting covered in charcoal till I looked like a comedy coal miner...

I drew my favourite Maestro. I know, I know, crushes are the mark of a feeble mind. Tough; it's a good drawing. Yes, I did actually say that. I'm quite pleased with it, and I don't say that often; this morning I woke up to find the figure on my drawing board staring across the room at me, which is spooky but very satisfying. It means the drawing has "got" him, at least a bit.

Tonight I'm off to "Idomeneo" at the ENO, so won't be able to get back to the drawing until Thursday. I hope that when I get in at midnight or so tonight, I will still see him watching me (a girl can dream!...).

When I work in a large scale in charcoal I tend to overlay drawing upon drawing, so that part of the interest comes from the interaction between multiple layers of images. I discovered years ago at college that this process worked with images of buildings, especially interiors; and have since learnt it is also very effective with portraits. So at the moment my image of the Maestro has five arms and two layers of head; he looks like Shiva in a black velvet jacket.

It was interesting to realise that the Warsaw Village Band is absolutely not music to sew to. They're terrific; slightly mad stuff, a wildly trippy fusion of traditional Polish folk music and psychadelic trance, hypnotic and driving. As "get up and dance" - or "get up and draw", in my case - music, they're hard to beat. I sewed to Sibelius (Violin Concerto) and Rachmaninov (Symphonic Dances) yesterday; fabulous music, but music I could sew to.

Different energies, different rhythms, and different responses to them. Neither is less than the other; but they are not the same. No, different magics altogether.

Long live all the many and various magics of this world! - including the magic (for it certainly is one) of charcoal.

Busy busy bee...

...that's me at the moment. Just spent my lunch break answering work 'phone calls because my colleagues were already too busy answering other calls. And now my lunch break is over and I still haven't reviewed "Cinderella" (magical) or written about my lovely Sunday afternoon drawing waterfowl at the London Wetland Centre... or my tomato seedlings... or the weather... or my ultrasound results.

All in good time. I hope.

Cheap but cheerful

I had a ticket on Monday to another of these "Insight evenings" - public open classes at the Royal Ballet - and just as I got into central London I realised I'd left my sketchbook at home.

I dashed into a stationers and bought their cheapest A6 sketchbook, which turned out to have brown paper pages. I thought I'd wasted my £3 - but it turned out to be a pleasure to draw on. It took my 4B pencil really smoothly and without smudging, and gave a lovely rich soft line. I filled nearly a third of the pages at the one sitting.

Ballet, History, and Science Fiction.

I’ve had a great weekend… Ballet, Sci-Fi, pizza, sunshine and a stately home.

What did I say a week or so ago about Science Fiction being a great genre when well-handled? I watched two movies this weekend, both of which, in very different ways, were worth watching. One was fun, with beautiful period costumes and lovely settings in the Czech Republic, but it had plot holes you could ride a bicycle through and a casual amorality that left an aftertaste. The other was terrific; thought-provoking, intelligent, scary and moving, and full of really big ray guns. More of this anon - you can have fun guessing what the two films were, while I talk about ballet for a bit.

On Friday evening I was at a Masterclass at the Linbury Studio, watching two young ballerinas being coached as the fairies of the seasons in Ashton’s “Cinderella”, followed by two Ugly Sisters going through some of their comedy scenes. I started off drawing the dancers, and as before I got a couple of good sketches and a lot of zen spaghetti. I couldn’t draw the fellas (the Ugly Sisters are danced by men, as classic Pantomime Dames) as I was laughing too much.

Masterclasses are fascinating. They give one a chance to see just a scrap of the hard work that underlies those polished performances one sees in the main theatre. To watch a lass being taken through a series of fiendish variations, over and over, till she is dripping with perspiration and puffing for breath, yet all the time continuing to move with grace and precision, is astonishing and a bit alarming, and fills one with respect for the dedication needed to attain that skill – and that level of fitness.

And to watch Philip Mosley’s snub-nosed hobbit of a shorter Ugly Sister and Gary Avis’s rubber-faced (but still very cute) taller Ugly Sister ramping up their comedy till your sides are aching is awe-inspiring in a different way, too. I do like Gary Avis, and it is nice to see him get to do some comedy, after all those villainous gaolers and vicious Tybalts, and noble French Princes who never get the girl, and doomed Hilarions.

Yesterday I had a day out, with no grocery shopping or cleaning; instead I went into Richmond, mooched in the shops, had lunch at Pizza Express and then walked along the Thames towpath to the beautiful National Trust property of Ham House. The sun was out and along the river bank groups of people were strolling, walking dogs, birdwatching, going fishing... Buds were breaking and the willows were just starting to turn green, and there were clumps of daffodils in the water meadows. I watched the rowers and the ducks and made friends with a lot of dogs, and came down to Ham feeling full of good will to all men.

I last visited Ham House on a school trip when I was about fourteen; my O’level History course included a module on “The Social History of the English Country House”, which at least got us some good field trips. But I haven’t been back since. Walking around yesterday, what struck me was how much my dim memories of Ham had informed the fictional house of Falmory in “Gabriel Yeats”. I have spent a lot of time “in” Falmory in recent years, so much so that at times it felt like a homecoming.

The smells of dust and furniture polish, the tapestries and shining furniture and checkerboard marble floors, the paintings looking down with their distant smiles, and the magnificent carved staircase, it was all so right, somehow, so purely and truly the imagined Falmory itself; it moved me strangely, to find myself there, “- and know the place for the first time.”

As the NT were having a free entry weekend, I spent money in the shop that I would otherwise have spent on my entrance fee, and then treated myself to the luxury of a full Cream Tea (with proper Cornish clotted cream), sitting in the sun in the formal kitchen garden behind the House, where the first hyacinths were blooming in the shelter of old brick walls, and buds were opening on the espaliered peaches. Then I went back across the water meadows to the bus stop at the bottom of Richmond Hill, and home again with a heart full of sunshine and history.

My Saturday night movie was “The Illusionist”; Edward Norton being handsome and enigmatic as stage magician Eisenheim, in a mystery set in an alternative 1900 Vienna (the give-away is that there’s a Crown Prince who never existed). It’s good fun; not a film to take too seriously, but classy entertainment. The protagonists are credible, as are the villain and the compromised Chief of Police, and it looks fabulous (and Edward Norton is startlingly sexy in a gangly, repressed-intensity kind of way).

As regards Eisenheim’s illusions, the film makers want to have their cake and eat it; to say “yes, of course it is all just stage magic, all illusionism” while not actually showing how most of it is done, so that it still looks beyond belief. I felt that was a bit of a fudge, to be frank.

There are two other big problems. One is that the main big plot development is so full of holes that it doesn’t do too well to think about it afterwards. Of course, being me I did think about it, and so found myself also reflecting on our hero’s rather dodgy moral choices. We are asked to accept and approve the fact that he sets an innocent man up as a murderer. A very unpleasant man, it’s true, a licentious and violent man and one who is plotting treason; but a man who would be entirely innocent of the particular crime for which he is framed. With hindsight it sapped some of my sympathy for Eisenheim, and it also seemed out of character in Chief Inpector Uhl to be so cheerful when he discovers the truth, given that he also discovers he has been duped into contributing to the accused man’s downfall.

My Sunday night movie, on the other hand, was a winner; “District 9”. If you haven’t seen this (and always provided you are an SF-lover) see it asap. It's marvellous.

Sometimes, when something is much-praised, when one finally gets to experience it it is a wash-out in comparison to the hype. “Tectonic Plates” and “Four Weddings and a Funeral” both fell into this category for me (and that may well be the first time they’ve ever been lumped together!). But equally, sometimes things live up to their preview hype. And just occasionally they exceed it. “District 9” exceeds it.

It’s one of the best science fiction films I’ve seen in years; intelligent and nuanced, quite terrifyingly scary at one point, and full of subtle historical references, not only to the obvious issues of South African history (the whole thing is set in Johannesburg, mostly in a nightmarish slum township) but also to the Palestinian intifada, Europe under the Nazis, the Cherokee Trail of Tears... It’s intensely moral, but also scrupulously honest about moral decisions and personal valour - the hero is pretty deeply unheroic until he realises it’s all up for him and the only worthwhile thing he can do is save someone else. It’s horribly violent, but the violence is to a purpose, and one which would not be properly served if the violence were not shown (and a lot of the time the violence is also off-screen, illustrated by reactions and by a sudden splattering of gore, or seen in long-shot, rather than graphically foregrounded).

The leading man revels in the name of Sharlto Copley (Sharlto; is that one of those odd Afrikaaner names, like Charlize and Tarryn? I suppose it must be) and is astonishingly good. The aliens look real, and are refreshingly uncliché-d. There’s no attempt to make the ending conventionally happy. The filming style, slewing between mock-documentary and normal narrative action, ought to be an instant fail but instead works marvellously. It is, quite simply, brilliant.

What was I saying about Science Fiction being a great genre when well-handled? Well, there you are; a perfect case in point. Brilliant.

Sketching moving targets...

Yesterday evening I went to the "Insight Evening" at the Royal Opera House; the seats in the Clore Studio are vilely uncomfortable, but luckily the content made up for it. We started with a discussion between Barry Wordsworth and Brian Elias about Elias' memories of composing the score of Kenneth MacMillan's "The Judas Tree" - Elias was a charming, funny and articulate raconteur, and having sneaked in a sketchbook I managed to do a competent thumb-nail portrait of him. Then we got Irek Mukhamedov coaching Mara Galeazzi and Thaigo Soares in two chunks of "Judas Tree" - fascinating, and I'm glad they can laugh as they work on something this disturbing. Then Julie Farmer coached Nathalie Harrison and Michael Stojko on one of the numbers from "Elite Syncopations" - not surprisingly this was also funny. And I had fun drawing the dancers. Now that is a really challenging subject! Their bodies are so superb (sorry, I know how lecherous that sounds but I can't really phrase it any differently!) and their movements so perfectly controlled and so athletic; and they move, well, all the time. In the end I simply went for an overdose of the Zen Spaghetti; one or two of the resulting frenzied looping scrawls are quite evocative, too. Altogether a rewarding evening.

TGIFriday

No, not the steakhouse. Just the sentiment. Thank the gods, it's Friday.

This week has rushed by, which I ought to be concerned about. Isn't it horrible how time passes faster and faster as one gets older? Since it has been rather a rough week I'm relieved to reach Friday and see my two days of rest ahead. Although the weather forecast is for more bally snow tomorrow - rats!!

I had another physio session this morning and was commended on having made good progress with my flexibility exercises, but then told I had a good long haul still to go, and that after the first two weeks progress normally slows down a lot >loud and heartfelt sigh<. My wrist has ached for most of the rest of the day after being asked to do exercises with weights for the first time. Still, I've now got an extended exercise programme, and will push on with it. There isn't much else I can do, anyway. I want my hand back... please...

Tomorrow I have a concert at the Festival hall; Janacek and Suk, should be good. At the moment I'm thinking I'll go up into the West End a bit earlier and take a leaf out of Jana's book by having a sketching session in a café somewhere, with a light supper perhaps. She and her cohorts in California seem to do this regularly and I like the idea; and it does my aching and frustrated creativity good to get a little exercise. I know, because I managed to do a little bit of creative activity yesterday.

I was watching "The Culture Show" after an early supper. There was an item about the Royal Ballet and on impulse I picked up my sketchbook and tried a little drawing; to my immense pleasure I was able to produce a thumbnail sketch of Jonathan Watkins that actually looked like Jonathan Watkins! Yippee! So I did another, rather sketchier one (he moves a lot). Then I started one of Laura Morera, but the interview cut away from her before I could finish that, leaving her with no eyes (eeee, zombie ballerina ahoy). Finally I managed to grab a hasty back view of one of the dancers Watkins was rehearsing. After that the programme went to an interview with Anthony D'Offay, who is considerably less easy on the eye, but I drew him too, anyway.

The lines went where I wanted! The sketches of people looked like people! Yes, yes, orgasmic yes - I will be able to draw again!

It gave me such a buzz that I followed on by typing another page or so of the Work In Progress. So it was a good evening, and it has inspired me to try some more this weekend. Wish me luck; and have a peaceful weekend yourselves, out there...

Not-so-good day

I'm feeling rough.

I'm not sure why, but my wrist has swollen up badly and is very uncomfortable today. It aches all the time, and I am back on the paracetamol because life is too short to sit around in pain all the time. But it has really depressed me to be like this. I realise how "close to the edge" I am. I've used inverted commas there because I don't want to give the impression I may suddenly top myself or strip off and run screaming through the office; it isn't that bad an edge. It's the edge of tears and the edge of wanting to pull a sickie, that's all. But the thing is, I don't do those things, so I am up against my own standards, and that is a hard, flinty wall to be backed up against. I cry at the theatre, I cry at books, I cry at funerals; but I don't cry for self-pity. Self pity is for babies and the gutless, and tears are for those who like to play helpless because it makes life easier if someone else will deal with your problems for you. Pulling a sickie is for the lazy and the undisciplined. Good grief - where did I get my standards from? - Rooster Cockburn's School for Masochistic Machismo?

I am tired; just so tired.

Last night I tried to draw something; just a quick sketch of the man on the tele. Let's just say, the results were more tangled spaghetti than usual. This morning I wake to a painful, puffy hand that is even more immobile than before. I arrive at work to find the place reeks of carpet glue and the usual collection of weirdoes are writing and telephoning me, and I want to hide. I want to cry. I really do want to cry.

I want to be able to draw a line on the page that I shape, not my f***ing raspberry rippled hand; I want to be able to draw a line through the air with my fingertips, too; and to be able to open a screw top jar by myself. Oh gods, I want to weep; everything is still so difficult, and there is such a mountain ahead of me still to climb.

I will come through today, and the next day; I know this, rationally. I wish I had a little more strength to go and actually do it, though.

Plenty of people (Lance Armstrong, Amitabh Bhachchan, Alina Cojocaru, at least half the England cricket team, to name but a handful...) have come back from far worse injuries or health problems than this. I am being a total wimp. I am gutless and have no self-discipline. And I went to Rooster Cockburn's Masochism School. Please feel free to ignore me until I get my act together again.

Touch wood...

Oh dear – please excuse the jesting and very mild ribaldry. I am ever-so-slightly high with nervous tension; because, in theory (& touching wood repeatedly) my plaster cast is due to come off tomorrow.

Then the real work starts. Physiotherapy.

I’m really, really ready for this now. Just this last week or so, I have had virtually no pain in my wrist or arm. The aching and the cramp have both stopped (touches wood again!) and apart from the thumb I seem to have almost normal sensation and tendon flexing in all my digits. The thumb is still slightly numb and distinctly stiff, but it has stopped twitching spontaneously. I have done my finger exercises several thousand times (creeping out strangers on the Tube and in restaurants in the process) and am now very tentatively doing a little lifting of items heavier than a sheet of paper – a teaspoon, for instance, or a glove... Anything to strengthen this poor wee imprisoned wrist in advance of its liberation.

So I’ll be as primed for the un-plastered state as I can be. My fracture clinic appointment is at ten to ten and my occupational therapy appointment is at eleven. Yes, I am absolutely counting the hours. I have no idea what to expect, and I am both excited and scared. My wrist and hand are bound to be weak and comically stiff, and I may find they are almost totally useless.

I need a working right hand. I have learned to type, and to write, albeit slowly and eccentrically, with my left hand; but I cannot draw left-handed. Left-handed, I can do those art college drawing exercises designed to “free my mind” by producing images that are not so much zen spaghetti as Tourettes’ spaghetti. But I can’t draw anything left-handed that I can learn from or be excited or moved by; just uncoordinated scribble. I learned fifteen years ago that expressive scribble is a great tool. But it is just a tool, and not an end in itself.

And I want to get back to my Scottish Country Dancing club. I am missing the Strathspey something rotten.

New Year, New Me; or, better still, can I just have the Old Me back, please?

I have already noticed it’s a new year; in fact I don’t think I’ve forgotten and written last year’s date once, which I’m rather proud of. But my chief focus at present is on getting back the use of my right hand and arm, and I hadn’t really thought about New Year’s Resolutions, New Year New Me, etc. Time to rectify that, maybe?

Of course, getting my arm back is a Resolution in itself. I gather that it can be anything from a couple of months to a couple of years to recover fully from a broken wrist and the associated surgery. So that is Resolution no. 1, then; getting back my right arm, flexible, strong and fit. I’ll never be able to lift a fully grown woman over my head, I know, but I’d like to be able to play badminton again, and swim, and use a handsaw in the garden, and knead bread dough, and return to my Scottish Country Dancing group able to cope with a fast swing in a right-hand hold…

Resolution no. 2; I want this to be the year of actually looking for an agent, instead of simply talking about it (& then panicking). Gulp. I’m panicking slightly just thinking about it; but writing needs to be read, otherwise it is just distilled daydreams.

Resolution no. 3; do more drawing. I was having so much fun in November, drawing at "Re-Rite" and working from my drawings, and now I have lost momentum, for unavoidable reasons, but I had managed to remind myself of what utter bliss it is, and I want to do more. This is dependent on Resolution no. 1, above, of course. Get arm back, then draw.

Resolution no. 4; see all the cultural events I want to get to. Don’t look at brochures and websites and then say “Oh, I can’t afford it and I’ll probably be too tired anyway.” A great concert, exhibition, ballet or theatre performance boosts me up and fires my spirit. Embrace it. Living in London has its down-sides, after all; so enjoy the rich and hugely varied up-sides as much as possible.

Resolution no. 5; more time out of doors. Seeing the beauty and the sweet ceaseless changing cycle of the natural world also boosts me up, and fires my spirit, just like watching dancers or listening to great music.

I don’t think I need to resolve to write more, since until the broken wrist I was getting on with that fairly steadily. Typing since then has been such a drag, and writing by hand almost impossible, that I have stopped writing temporarily, but I am itching to get on with things. The protagonist of “Café Tano” and her tree surgeon friend have been stuck in a fairly sticky situation for the last seven weeks, and I want to get them out; “Ramundi’s Sisters" is three-quarters typed up/revised; and Iain Siward, Aietes and the android professor are sitting in a shuttle, deep in outer space, worrying about who they are, where they are going, what has been happening, and why Iain is still alive (well, Professor Maddix isn’t worrying exactly, being an android; she’s just terribly, calmly, unexcitedly interested).

Oh, I want my life back! I want my right hand back! I want my arm, I want my arm!!

I am working like mad at my exercises, and the residual post-operative numbness is fairly minimal now, and all my tendons except the one in the thumb seem to be working fine. It’s not long now; on Friday the cast is due to come off. Gods, get me through this last push, these last few days of prison; get me through, get me through…

More beauty (& without lechery this time)

One of my great passions is drawing from nature; birds, animals, plants, and of course people. I often take a sketchbook to the London Wetland Centre(WWT) in Barnes and draw the waterfowl - that's where this goose and coot were drawn, I think...

Many of the birds at the WWT are quite tame and are unconcerned by my standing staring at them and drawing. Others, the wild birds, I have to draw through binoculars (I don't just use them for ogling men at the ballet!). But the challenge of drawing a living subject, something animated, moving, and getting on with his/her/its life, is always a delight. The orchestral musicians of the Philharmonia, and the handsome Maestro waving his arms; people on the tube; the wildfowl at the WWT... It is always a joy to draw.

Years ago in Granada I spent almost the whole of the fiesta of Las Cruces drawing the dancers in the streets. It was heaven; sunshine, music, happy people dancing sevillanas and boleros, the streets and squares all decorated and chiringuitos selling cold beers, cold cola, manzanilla and pinchos; and me drawing like a madwoman.

Please, dear gods, let me get enough use of my hand back - soon - to write and draw again. It is nine days today till I get the cast off. Yes, I am counting.

A sketch! A sketch!

Can you tell what it is yet (because the quality isn't great)?

I don't know his name, but he plays the double bass with the Philharmonia and he was resting and having a little think, mid-"Rite", so I drew him.

Many thanks to Viveka Gaillard for her help - but I can see I'm going to have to find a better system for this. Still it's a start - this is what my thumbnail sketches look like and I have a gazillion more of them, as well, now, as two large A1 mixed-media drawings worked up from them.

Technical hitches and dream hopes

I'm trying to find a way to get pictures of my drawings onto this blog - without having to buy a pile of expensive new kit, that is (!!). So far, no luck. The friend who used to have one of those Blackberry glorified-phones has got rid of it, and I don't seem to be able to text 'phone pictures to anyone else who has the technology to convert them into jpegs and email them to me.

I refuse to buy a home computer plus scanner plus digital camera, just to play with. Rrrah! I have better things to do with my money, seriously.

So in the meantime, you'll have to be satisfied with my gushing descriptions of my own work, which is pretty surreal.

I had another great drawing session last night, once again working from my "re:Rite" sketchbook; assisted by a couple of U2 albums. I drew violinists and viola players this time, about eight of them layered one over the other. When you draw something, you look at it with an attention to details that is different from everyday looking; I've now noticed that the concert master, who revels in the glorious name of Zsolt-Tihamér Visontay, looks in profile as if he could be related to the sexy vampire in "Twilight". I wonder if anyone has ever pointed that out to him?

Maybe I am going to have to bite the bullet and get a digital camera, just for this. Nobody blogs about doing art work and then fails to provide illustrations... Ah well.

On a more cheerful note, I had a wonderful dream a few nights ago. I was on a walking tour in Greece, and had been taken by boat to an Aegean island where I climbed a magnificent limestone gorge full of garrigue and singing birds, up into a mountainous hinterland. Suddenly I found a small village hidden away in the mountains. A little boy was charming the wild birds and animals; he called his parents and they made me welcome and gave me cakes and raki to celebrate my birthday, which was the same day as their son's. They put me up for the night in a little guest room with a view across the fields to the village church, and gave me the key to their home, saying I could come back any time I wanted to stay with them. Compared to my last two memorable dreams (one of which was about a certain Maestro and was, ahem, sexy, and the other of which involved finding a frog in my handbag), this was a pretty good dream-world place to wake up from. Every image in the dream was joyful and life-full, and offered hope and love and welcome. Admittedly I could say as much of the sexy dream, but lusting after married men does not make me feel good about myself, whereas this left me feeling a benediction had been passed upon me as I slept.

Haven't vanished...

...just rather busy. And I have had a bad attack of cystitis (you all really wanted to know that, didn't you?!). The constant nagging discomfort, verging at times into real pain, is beginning to get me down after four days.

Think positive, Dent.

I had a wonderful Drawing Day last Friday - I booked a day off work so I could indulge myself totally. I went back to "re:Rite", used up almost a whole A5 sketchbook, and worked a brand-new 4B pencil down to a stub, drawing musicians. I managed to get everything from detailed portraits to the most flailing Zen-Spaghetti drawings; to me, these all say something worth saying. There are no failures; there are only interesting experiments. Everything takes you somewhere, even if only to a place of knowing that "That didn't come off". Most of it, at least to me, carries so much resonance - of the music and the energy of the performance - that it fairly zings on the page, whether the image is a recognisable face and identifiable instrument, or Zen-Spaghetti loop-lah chaos.

I listened to the whole of the conductor's commentary on the headphones provided (& it was absolutely fascinating) and took advantage of this to also draw The Maestro, about fifteen times - again, managing to produce everything from a proper thumbnail portrait to a couple of Zen-Spaghettis. As he is a moving target, to say the least, the Spaghetti drawings were only to be expected. Some musicians sit comparatively still, others move about a certain amount, but in most cases they were moderately simple subjects, with at most face and hands in movement. The Maestro bounds about like a dancer, grinning, pulling faces, and waving his arms, never stopping the entire time. Wonderful to watch - and his commentary was illuminating, funny and oddly touching - but a tough challenge to draw.

I've done one large drawing since (cello section, focussing in, as it developed, onto the figure of principal cellist Karen Stephenson) and begun a second last night. It feels good to be doing some big drawings again.

I also danced my feet off a concert by Vieux Farka Touré (who was corking) and Rachid Taha (who may have been drunk; but his set was great fun, like a north-african-inflected early Rolling Stones). And I did some useful domestic things like grocery shopping and cleaning as well. And defrosted the freezer. I don't think this had been done for about two years. It took five and a half hours. Ugh. I deserved my whiskey and my drawing session, after that.

I also went to the triple bill at the Royal ballet. Melissa Hamilton is wonderful. Yuhui Choe is wonderful. Eric Underwood is wonderful.

So are quite a lot of the company, actually.

"Agon" looked a bit untidy at first - Balanchine needs precision and clarity and both were lacking somewhat in the opening ensemble - but then they got it together and the second pas de trois and the pas de deux were spot-on. The score is Stravinsky at his most spare and taut and spiky, the choreography appropriately a back-and-forth shifting, between lyrical beauty and angular abstraction. "Sphinx" was bonkers but terrific, Edward Watson was as stunning as ever despite a very silly mask, and the playing of the Martinu Double concerto was a treat. "Limen" was also slightly bonkers, and I'm not too sure it meant as much as it meant to mean, if you know what I mean. But it was splendidly danced, the staging was weird but very effective and the music (Kaija Saariaho's Cello concerto) was simply amazing.

On the way home, I found myself walking into the tube station just behind Gary Avis, also of Royal Ballet fame. I don't know if he'd been at the performance or doing something else (he wasn't dancing that night, at least not in the triple bill). He is less tall, handsomer, and more melancholy-looking in person than he appears on stage. He got on a different train to mine and stood there waiting to go, with a sad, downcast gaze. It would have been rude to bound on board and grab his arm and tell him I think he's wonderful; but I do. Gary Avis, you are wonderful; and I hope whatever was making you feel blue on Tuesday night is soon sorted out.

Now I'm off home to reheat last night's fish stew and get some more charcoal under my fingernails. Drawing board, "re:Rite" sketchbook, stinking fixative and all; here I come...

Drawing madness

I spent yesterday evening working from my orchestra sketches, developing some of them into more carefully-worked drawings, trying to find ways to explore the things that fascinate me about the orchestra.

I can't express the music!! I haven't got the space to express the scale of this huge group of people and their monumental work. I can't do a portrait of each individual musician, I haven't got the time (though it would be tremendous fun). So where do I go with this? Because it has to go somewhere; I am fizzing like shook champagne at the moment, and this energy has to be poured out and made use of, or I will pop.

I am interested, visually, by the tension between the individuality of the players as people and the fusion of those individualities into a harmonious ensemble. Looking along the fiddle section, for example, every instrument is the same shape, every bow is the same shape, and every player is making more-or-less identical movements; but the individual human beauty of each player is unique. In formal visual terms there's an intriguing balance there.

I think what I am going to do is to work up to making some A1 drawings, like the pieces I did years ago based on sketches I had done in Canterbury Cathedral. Big, nuanced, multiple-overlayered charcoal pieces. I am excited just thinking about it. I am excited. I don't know who it was who thought of this idea, this crazy "digital residency" that has given me licence to draw musicians without getting in their way, but whoever you are, thank you! and blessed be!