Fear and Loving

It has been a week since my sister's funeral and almost two since I returned from the war zone: I still have dreams about the former by the way. They are episodic and intense and never last very long, despite the rhythm of fear running through them all. (With my sister it is different: there is a kind of shroud of peace now across the face, if I can call it that, of her death.) Life can be fearful anyway but I guess the thing about war zones is the inherent permission they give you to fear. Perhaps art can be described as the same: isn't one of the things about art its permission to fear too? I spoke to an old friend on the phone today, not about this so much as the artist's work. As a professional critic he is probably better positioned than me to speak about the work, but he is a fan and I think likes the idea of familial loyalties, in creativities anyway. (His late maternal grandfather has just had a book reprinted and he is attending a literary festival with his mother this weekend to celebrate this fact; he is also returning here again in a month or so to celebrate a separate book by his father.) He has written well about the artist in the past and has always struck me as the sort of person drawn to art by its poetry rather than its careerism. The artist is working on the email she will send to the artist mentioned yesterday by the way. I spoke to this friend about this and he supported the idea. Rather kindly he has also potentially linked the artist with what sound like a great and interesting couple with an elegant space in the centre of the capital in which the artist can temporarily park her work if it helps in terms of making it easier to have people - potential gallerists and the like - come to see the work. Where we live, though ample for us, is off the beaten track, it would seem, certainly for your regular gallerist. They, too, it would also seem, have fear. A fear of the unknown street or artist.