The work will wait while you show the child the rainbow, but the rainbow won't wait while you do the work

I have done nothing much but sleep over the past two days. But our son is now here and our daughter is enjoying the self-imposed mystery of a sleepover over at a friend's house. As I write, I can hear the artist gently urge our son to sleep. When not sleeping I have been loosely reassembling my thoughts - old and stiff playing cards drifting down a fast-moving mountain stream come to mind - while leafing through my notes and cards in my hardback notebook. It frustrates me that the artist had not been in touch with the gallery when they were making their various attempts to contact her, only because I had made provisions for that. But this is also her unique strength. She is so seeped in art itself she has no time to fathom its curricular business. However, we must now wait for the woman who came round to return from her holiday and this will not happen for over a week. When I sleep I am like a runway, across and upon which are landed planes of every hue. I have been back to the war zone. There is the plane of reason, the one of visuals, the jet of fury, the hot air balloon of comic self-indulgence. I will be returning to the war zone - the first trip was just a taster - and already I feel in touch with a different world. War, I hate to say it, can also bring out the best in people. The artist looked well when I collected her and the children from the station. She looked rested - from all the hard work and successful but tiring mothering. I sat facing them in the back of the taxi as the city became our backdrop and the road our good route back home. Strange without a close protection team. In our children's eyes are many corridors and I love each one. Now, as three candles burn without grief in the fireplace, and my fingers pound the keyboard, I am aware of the work I must now do in order to make good things happen. I am aware of the broken hearts and minds. The artist is best at making good things happen through hard work. She just doesn't like reading emails from prospective galleries. It is an intrinsic and undeserved and very beautiful fear of failure.

A Good Place

The artist's brand new piece on the wall still looks very abstract. The precise subject matter, the mood, tone, allegory - call it what you will - is not yet fully revealed. And yet we know it is there. Whatever it is, we know it exists. We have seen this happen before. It is part of the endearing - and enduring - ritual. As for the artist herself, we most definitely have lost her. She is a good mother, a great mother, and doesn't miss a trick, but every time she begins a new piece it is like watching someone disappear through an invisible curtain into another room. Imaginary candles are lit in skilled silence. Chaos is left like a pair of scuffed shoes at the door. Surfaces, like emotions, are smoothed. Hope, perhaps, is reinvented. Added to which is this surreal image of the artist herself standing on a small blue plastic stool in order to work on the upper section of the piece. Her right arm stretches up like a waving dancer frozen in mid-wave. The index finger and thumb work with incredible detail, but the entire body is straining. From over here by the round red table, the artist looks like something conjured up by Rene Magritte. The red clogs she wears add to the confusion, as does our bare-chested son passing with an impossibly intricate pirate ship pointing from his belly. (To me, you can almost hear the whirr of Ingmar Bergman's cameraman.) Of course, I realise that by deliberately not releasing any of the artist's work on this blog I am in effect talking to a blind person by half-describing - and never showing - what I see. It is not my job at this stage to show the work; it is for the artist, when she is ready, and has found the right person. But, who knows, you may not be disappointed. Besides, we live in an age where everything has to be instant, there is no foreplay, and as a result no one is relaxed when conclusions are drawn or opinions are formed, if we can even remember what our opinion is. Our daughter meanwhile has fallen asleep on the bright red sofa ... and our son is in his bunk with his pirate ship standing by. As for the artist, she is a million miles away, in a good place.

The Dinner Party

We had the pleasure of some well bonded new friends around for a supper of roast beef, roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, gravy, peas, beans and horseradish sauce this evening. There were thirty-five or so candles awaiting them, each flickering with contentment as they entered the flat from the cold. Our friends have a daughter only slightly older than our own - they attend the same school - and soon the two girls wandered down the corridors of an imagined adulthood, musing on the particulars of their adult world, while our 5-year-old son squatted like a rebel by a mountain of cushions, looking sharp as a needle on a tree in his aunty-designed peach-red pirate shirt. Aside from the genuine pleasantries and compassionate vibes flying around the room, what was of particular interest to me was the artist showing her work. Both parents are teachers as well as artists and it was welcomed by the artist therefore to have the chance to receive some in-depth analysis, especially when you remember that pretty soon after the upcoming festive period has ended, there will emerge through the last remaining cooking fumes of excess a gallerist of young but high repute coming to see the work. I remained pretty much silent throughout the viewing session and always enjoy listening to other people's takes on the artist's work. It is especially good when people look at the work without any need for biography. In other words, when the work is simply taken for what it is, and it withstands what I will clumsily call critical prurience, it is then that you know the work is as good to others as it is to yourself. So, from that point of view at least, it was good to see the work out from its temporary sanctuary by the door, allowed to breathe within people's eyeshot again in other words. It remains true that the more I see this work, the more convinced I am of its merit and worth. Why, it may even be good enough to give these very light words true weight one day.

Meditatio

A white candle burns by the empty fireplace. A desert lamp leans like a cold ceramic tower to the right of the broken music box on the floor. The candlelight reflected on the white gloss paint next to the fireplace flickers like a burning lighthouse. I hear only silence within the hollow of the unplayed acoustic guitar that comes all the way from China. I sneeze, and the dust particles on the blinds stick their hands up and say it was them. A message flashes up. The so-called anti-spyware device on the computer says it has zapped 19 spyware items. Only because the items are peppered with words such as trade and click and ad and serving do I appreciate their demise. My calf muscles stiffen. The book from my dying sister is on the table. I have not written to her yet. A second lamp meanwhile looks up at me from the wooden floorboards to my left. My son's toy police badge sits on the shelf below the Eliot, Sassoon, Plath, Auden and Hughes books. I think briefly and warmly about the land across the ocean. I think about the month drawing to an end, and I think about money. I think about the art. I hear the artist's voice as she reads a story to the children in another room, and even the cars outside seem to be listening. I hear the dishwasher and smell what I find out are the phosphates, nonionic surfactants, polycarboxylates, enzymes, perfume, geraniol, hexyl cinnamal and oxygen-based bleaching agent of the dishwasher tablets. (I nearly place the box of tablets back in the fridge after checking the ingredients.) The TV is turned off. I am wondering why I am having trouble finding certain websites. As I await news on a possible job, travel, position, hope, in my mind I am tapping my fingers. At least I am not idle. At least I am looking, however independently, at the big picture with fresh eyes every day. At least if I am running in circles they are at the crack of dawn. I feel like some tea, a perfect cup of full luxurious tea. The candle by the fire meanwhile flickers like a ghost, and I think about my dead parents. Then I think about music. No, I don't think about music, I feel about music, I imagine music, I almost hear music. The artist has had a good day. She has met with the young woman with the gallery and the woman is coming to see the work in the flesh. The candlelight, if I am not mistaken, applauds.

Old Flame

I am sitting by a tall white candle. The flame is sure and perfectly still. Not even my typing seems to influence any movement and it is rather like sitting here with a soul. Our daughter walks in. The candle is getting flustered. It leans to the left. It leans to the right. It swirls all around. It lopes like a drunk. Ah. It is still again. You see, the artist is trying to get both children to sleep. They are quiet again. The artist now returns to the sitting room. She leans across me for an empty cup. The candle flickers regularly, steadily, like a pet familiar with the caressing manoeuvres of its master. The artist puts the kettle on in the kitchen and returns to the room again with a large yellow plastic bag, carrying various images collected for her from the centre of the capital. Feel the heat. She is looking at them now on the bright red sofa. As she rustles the crisp and semi-transparent packaging, the candle sways, almost like a waltzing ghost. The artist now leans back on the sofa, sending another gust of air across the room, but this time the candle does not respond. It seems satisfied with the artist's position. It would appear not to wish to grumble. I stare more closely at the naked flame. The burning wick leans to one side like the right-hand side of the letter 'n'. There is a red-hot tip to the top. The actual flame carried by the wick is perhaps two-and-a-half to three times the wick's height. It looks like a Klansman. The artist, though, is as still and as serene as the flame. She will be working tonight. I just know it. In fact she rises presently from the bright red sofa, comes towards me, and moves a variety of working items onto the table. She is also moving the flame. The candle is still but the flame is definitely moving around. It is dancing, strutting, jigging, twisting, two-stepping, tangoing, tapping, hoofing it, doing the rhumba. This candle is going to watch the artist tonight.

The wind blows out the candles and kindles fire

Two bright red candles burn in the fireplace. They burn like a need to reflect. Traffic smokes past, computer systems jam, glass breaks, and people promised love are killed by the hour. The candle holders were a gift. They were a gift from a friend who obviously knew a thing or two about reflection. They are tall and gallant like friendship and made of pewter. From where I sit the two flames pierce the gloaming like cat’s eyes, and in the corner of the room to the right is the artist with a glass of wine in her hand. (For some reason her shadow is moving more than her body.) On the sofa meanwhile is our son and he is watching his sister stand too close to the candles with her long hair in her mouth and a plaster on her knee. I watch as my daughter, unprompted, moves out of harm’s way. It is late and I enjoy these moments of reflection. I am also thinking we have pretty much forgotten as a culture how to reflect well. Sadly, I think we imagine we no longer have time. A central premise for art I always thought was reflection. Maybe the solution lies there. Anyway, the artist’s sister has come to stay for the night again and I am watching the scene like a movie, or piece of art, as she sits with us and talks. Above the fireplace is a small ink drawing of a mother and child, and tiny rose petals form the illusion of a frame. I like it when the light is low like this in this room. It reminds me of being young again and pretending to understand. (No change there.) On the crammed bookcase are nine tea-lights. They, too, are burning and flickering like golden white ghosts. I place a mint in my mouth and continue writing. Not that I've been burning the candle at both ends this time, but I've miles to go before I sleep.