present is present
art as a medium for presentness, a portal in and a portal out
I’ve been making lino prints, finding out that every idea is a portal if you sit down with it. A portal in and out of where you are, something to show up to and disappear into. Carving into lino I instantly losing a sense of where and when I am. Time just disappears into itself and I disappear too, often in silence. I’ve been using new songs I am writing as the basis for these prints, they feel like a safe container for each other. Songs and words and symbols all holding each other.
Recently I’ve been playing a few very small shows in London, finding containers for these songs and finding out how they should be played - the next one is at Morocco Bound in Bermondsey, a small London cafe/bookshop with my friend Ted Mair.
Playing these new songs live, I’ve found out the container is the most important part of being present with them, not dissociating. They’ve been private and now they are shared, and I’m making a space for them to be as they are, small prayers and places of presence. Something here is very new, making music without a band, new structure, new way of relating. Shedding something, growing something. Slowing down and focusing.
A creative process is a mountain, a room full of things that needs to be organised, but those things are hiding in corners. The further into looking you get, the more clearly you see what there is to be done. As you take everything apart and sit with it all in front of you, you realise you can’t walk away from the mess if you need to use the room again. Something needs to be done with it. You have to get present with it or stay cluttered. And there maybe lies the revelation - that if you do it, it gets done.
Speculation ruins things. It is so easy to think of your idea as a holy grail, something you never get to arrive at but travel towards. When you sit down to your idea, it shows itself to you, and then you get another one. It’s an easter egg hunt.
Lately I’ve been working on a project with a friend. It is an access point to presence: walking and looking, listening and responding. We walk, we film, we improvise music over it. The project creates a container for itself.
How do you create that container without anybody to co-create it? I am writing this in a cafe, watching somebody install a window in a house across the street. To build a house you break the process down into discrete tasks. I read in a book, the void is big enough for us all, the universe wills both everything and nothing. Everything shall be as it is. Whatever you do, that is what gets done. Sometimes you just have to get present with an idea, make the container.
Prints look incredible, can't wait for the shows!
gave me chills <3 can't wait to own a print!