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!

Re "re:Rite"...

I'm so sad to see that only the Daily Telegraph have bothered to send someone along to have a look and listen to this extraordinary project. Darn it, I don't want to turn into a Telegraph reader; that would be embarrassing.

I have to agree with some of Ivan Hewitt's remarks, too. I think it's the first time anyone has done something like this, on this scale. It is hugely ambitious; and they certainly didn't pick a nice, safe piece of music to use, either. I used to use "The Rite of Spring" on my headphones when I was an art student, playing it over and over; staying late so I could get the studio to myself, dancing and drawing together, getting filthy with charcoal and acrylic and practically hurling myself at the walls as the energy built up and up. I got a touch of the same fever yesterday, and I was just doing pencil studies in an A5 sketchbook. What I want is for someone to make over to me a final, unused room in the Bargehouse, and give me charcoal and paint and a sheet of paper about six feet by twenty, and let me loose for the duration. I know that isn't going to happen; but I can go back and draw some more, at least.

One problem is that it was full of kids, and the "try out the percussion" room was consequently a nightmare of toddlers and parents squabbling over the gong, the tambourines and the bass drum, and a fearful racket was resulting. One had to simply tune it out. Then there is the problem that the screens in each room do not recreate the experience of being in the middle of an orchestra, because almost without exception they each show only one section of the orchestra - violins here, clarinets there, and so on. It is still amazing to get up close and personal with some of the best clarinetists, violinists, etc, out. But one doesn't get the surrounded-by-musicians feeling, the awe-inspiring sense of a huge collaboration, and the tension of that collaborative effort holding together, that I remember being such a buzz when I was a terrified and inept teenaged percussionist.

The up-close-&-personal thing is a little strange, too; it is odd to be so close to life-sized filmed poeple, and their indifference is somehow of a different order to that of filmed people on the small screen of the tele. I felt at times as if I were snooping on them; and I did catch myself once or twice muttering "Give us your profile again, lad" or "Please show me that fingering again" at the screens. And even (forlorn hope indeed, this!) "Keep still, Maestro!"

So I'm not sure the project accomplishes all that was hoped for it, but I still think it is exciting; and it has given me a chance to do something I haven't done for ages. I'm now so fired up about drawing I don't believe myself. Good heavens, did I actually go through a phase recently when I no longer carried a sketchbook around with me? Weird.

When you come to work for a rest...

It's been a busy weekend. I wouldn't change a scrap of it, but it has all been a bit rushed. I managed to do at least some of the week-in, week-out sensible jobs, like grocery shopping and clothes-washing. I made a disgracefully good risotto, and an even more disgraceful chocolate & chestnut mousse. I had lunch with my mother and went to an exhibition at the Royal Academy - an odd yoking of cool, formal, very-knotted-up Eric Gills, powerful early Epsteins, and a roomfull of stunning pieces by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. Then on Sunday I passed several blissful hours standing drawing musicians at "re:Rite" - I'll probably never again get the chance to draw members of an orchestra that close up, and I intend to make the most of it, so I'll probably go back at least once. Then I went to a live concert to follow up the weird filmed and played-in-a-warehouse one ("re:Rite" is really rather peculiar altogether; more of that in a moment), and finally crept home, via my local indian takeaway, because I was too knackered to think, let alone cook. And I like their Saag Paneer.

The live concert was lovely, luckily. I was concerned that I would have wired my brain to modernism at "re:Rite", which is, as the name suggests, a performance of "The Rite of Spring". This is one of my all-time favourite pieces of music, and that is a good thing, since if I am going to spend a lot of time at it, drawing, I'll be hearing the piece several times over. I got about two and a half rounds of it yesterday, and didn't stop thinking it brilliant.

But I did worry, as I dashed, wolfing a small sandwich, back down the South Bank to the Festival Hall, that Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov and Sibelius were going to sound a tad, well, conventional, in comparison with the Total Immersion Stravinsky Experience I had just had. The Tchaikovsky "Voyevoda" overture, to be frank, did (& I may now have added insult to injury by spelling it wrong); loud and jolly. Then Nikolai Lugansky came on and played Rachmaninov (piano concerto no.3) and blew me away; it was as though my brain had hopped across a bridge and come into a perfect place for this. Utter lush romantic passion, manly romantic passion that is, not sugary gambolly stuff in the manner of Hollywood. Mr Lugansky was wonderful - and he is delightfully ornamental (his picture in the brochure is very unflattering - he turns out to be about 6 foot four and fair, with a long nose and ravishing hands >sigh<). If he had been feeding me champagne and christmas cake on the side (between cadenzas!) I could hardly have been happier. And the Sibelius (no.2) went down a treat. The last time I heard this, it was played (with brio but a distinct feeling of "oh christ we are out of our depth now") by the amateur orchestra my stepmum and baby bro play in, so it sounded rather more clear and polished here in the hands of the Philharmonia. On whom, I have to admit, I am developing something of a collective crush...

It was a good curry, too.

All in all a great weekend; but I am tired, and a steady day answering silly emails seems restful in comparison. Tonight I am off to a performance of bluegrass banjo music. Ickle Miss Eclecticism, that's me.

Only tangentially relevant...

I am just finishing a lunch of something wonderful: bread, with
Delphi Fresh Aubergine Dip.

To see that picture, you have to scroll to the furthest right of the selection at the bottom of the page; this is the next to last one. Not that seeing a picture is helpful - it's pale brown goo. I just like the fact I have now learned how to do hyperlinks.

It's melitzanosalata. Quite a smooth one, and not too smokey - obviously mass-produced, so not perfect - but a pretty good substitute, for a raving philhellene stuck in damp, chilly London in November. The first bite filled me with memories of holdays in Greece. Sigh...

I bought it by accident - I thought I was getting two pots of hummous but I didn't check the labels properly and the second one was this. Now I'll be looking out for it.

Eating melitzanosalata is tangentially relevant to writing about the creative life, honestly. I won't go on about Proustian moments (this wan't quite of that order!) but anything that makes me think of Greece gives me an emotional boost, and an emotional boost always helps to keep the creative fires stoked. I think I must have been a Greek in a past life. Several past lives, even. Or maybe I just love the place anyway.

And it has reminded me with a little thrill of anticipation that I am off on holiday to Cyprus in just over three weeks time. I'll need to get out some lighter-weight clothes, and check I have some sun lotion to protect my now autumnally-pale skin. At the moment, the BBC website's weather page gives the conditions out there as being sunny, with temperatures in the mid-twenties C and low humidity. Good food and wine, sunshine and hopefully some birdwatching, wildflowers and a few ruins. And the hotel has an indoor swimming pool, so I'll get to go swimming even if the sea is cold (which it well may be). Heavenly.

Watch this space...

I am about to issue my second small self-published collection of poems. "The Date Indicator" will contain recent poems about love, music and the wheel of the year. I hope to have it out soon (barring misfortunes in internet cafés). I may also do a second edition of "Downriver" since that was so succesful (ten copies "sold" - or rehomed at any rate - not everyone paid for it!).

The official price will be a mere £5, and with fifteen poems that is a snip at three poems for a squid; but you can probably blag a copy if you talk to me sweetly enough.

And it may, just may, be illustrated... Still working on trying to get the hang of the technology of that (with a lot of help from my colleague Viveka), so don't get too excited...

This looks really interesting...

I haven't played in an orchestra since I was 17, when I acted as Assistant Percussionist in the University of Kent student orchestra (my father was their timpanist and he needed a spare pair of hands he could trust sometimes). I've always remembered it as tremendous fun, and absolutely terrifying - something of the same terror that goes with trying to cope with life in a foreign country when one knows almost none of the language.

Now my favourite orchestra, The Philharmonia, are doing this
and it looks bonkers but incredibly exciting. I shall have to go and see... I hope it isn't too much aimed at kids - always a possibility these days when accessibility is the top criterion for so many arts-based activities. But I'll take a sketch book along - if nothing else, I can draw double-basses (& double bassists) to my heart's content...

Tengo un coliflor...

Yum. Reheated cauliflower with cheese is the tops. I am ridiculously hungry.

This has been an interesting weekend. The first thing that happened was that on Saturday morning the laptop suddenly decided it was no longer ill, and in fact was as good as gold. I am now right up-to-date with my backing up on disc, as I no longer have complete faith in it. But I am baffled as to why it decided to behave again in the first place. I took nothing out, put nothing in, gave it neither reiki nor toast, and was unable to remove its bottom because although this unscrewed it did not come off. Yet it decided it likes me again. I am not complaining - this is not complaining! - this is rather a bemused cousin of joy. With a sidelong glance of deep mistrust.

Still, I have rescued the latest versions off all my projects. That is a Good Thing.

To celebrate I went shopping, no longer for a new laptop but for, appallingly, some shoes. Didn't buy any; bought a jacket instead. Then bought a cd of "MGV"; a marvellous, beautiful, thrilling piece of music by Michael Nyman; restrained myself from buying the whole of the original three "Star Wars" movies on dvd; got the ineffably silly but thoroughly enjoyable "Stargate" (which was in a sale) instead, as well as "Let the Right One in", which will undoubtedly scare the living daylights out of me but is based on a terrific book and is probably worth seeing - just the once, at least.

Then yesterday morning I got all the cutting-out, tacking and fitting of a new skirt done, which just leaves the main sewing (I do this by hand, so it's a slow job, though durable when done). In the afternoon I worked in the garden, and in the evening I went to Club Night at the Chiswick Scottish Country Dance club, which meant several hours of non-stop dancing, plus a slightly odd supper of smoked salmon sandwiches, shortbread and tea.

I am exhausted, and I ache all over, but it was a good weekend.