Spirit in the Sky

The artist's lot is presently a busy one. In fact we are both tearing across our options. For example, we park the children at two separate houses with friends - something we do so seldom - before the city explodes in a mass of trailing fireworks and sparkling derring-do. We travel across the capital like salmon against the flow and make our two meetings. The first is with a husband and wife team - she one of the most successful soul and R&B singers in the world and he her charming and friendsome co-writer and producer. (Even more importantly, two great folk.) Where we meet is like having walked into a gabled timeslip, with the ghosts of famous characters hobbling in rhyme down long cobbled alleyways. I even imagined Eliot's fog rubbing its poetic nose against the building as I stared out at the smokers sharing grins and giant sighs. In a kind of cinematic half-light indoors, we discuss relationships - our relationships, maybe all relationships - in the face of creativity, and the need therein for non-judgemental support, uncramped style, and playful honesty - honesty about one's life: life often mirrored in the work - at a time when most of the art of our culture is a one-liner idea executed by others and glorious life as a result completely blanked. Anyway, we, the singer's and artist's husbands, chatted among ourselves, admiring the progress of the sisterhood next to us. Two hours later, we said goodbye, promised to do it again, and disappeared into the imaginary fog. Now, we had to see the huge fans of the artist's work at a party they were having. There on the wall below the skylight in their generously sized living room was a freshly framed image of their four children adorning a felled tree, with perhaps three thousand leaves bristling within. This had been done by the artist. Immortality as a theme in discussions about portraiture is nothing new. But as everyone spoke and I stood alone by the image, I was made aware of something else. A kind of frank indivisibility. Three brothers and one sister. Whatever else happens, their unity, certainly in this image, remains intact. Is this what they mean by an artist's gift?