A Projected Future and a Blast from the Past

The artist is already thinking of the piece she will begin when I return to the war zone, which I guess isn't so far away in time now. I was thinking: this is another of the reasons I admire the artist so much. For some it would be a cloth, a garment, a drink, an affair, emptiness, relief, drugs, obsessive behaviour, news-blanking, becoming reclusive. But not for the artist. For her, whatever the situation, it is always work. Not as a distraction. Not as a means of avoiding the facts of life. (Never.) But as a sure line before her. Her mothering skills for example never waver, though nothing to do with work will see her avert her eyes. Where others have a kind of laughable success - in which minor talent possibly is over-rewarded - the artist has nothing to say but industry and exquisite skill. This is why I contacted one of the most important art dealers again in the country just now on her behalf. (I should also have sent him a link to this blog.) I contacted him again after many years twenty-one days ago. He never replied. He used to know me when I worked in the art world myself and I think he enjoyed some kind of professional resonance from this. He also came to see an admittedly minor play I wrote but which was nonetheless produced and performed in the city of the scraped skies with some kind of fanfare. In fact he asked if he could meet one of the actresses afterwards who just so happened to be my girlfriend. Anyway, now, successful, loaded, powerful, he doesn't seem to want to know me. Instead of asking myself what this says about me, it is what it says about him that occupies me most. I just wanted him to look at the artist's work. I didn't want to tell him what to think. I didn't wish to influence him into offering a show - that would have to be his choice. I just wanted a nod from him in the artist's direction. Just like the nods I gave him when he was starting out. I tell you, gallerists are the only people I know who run a mile in order not to do what it is that they are best known for doing. Their loss, I guess. We have our art and the war zone. We are ugly but we have the music. We are not ducking any issue. They, it would appear, they whom we need but wish we didn't, have only money. (Go on, surprise me.) I can't wait to see the artist's next piece.

No Pressure

The gallerist is coming to see the artist next week, not this week as it happens. I met the gallerist myself today. I met her in her gallery. A broad, refined space which literally gave me shelter from the storm. (My light brown cordoruoy coat looked like a cammy leather afterthought.) Immediately, I thought the gallerist charming, bright, unaffected, and the gallery measured, respectful, epic. Her thoughts stroked the work on the wall, which were largely contemplative and contemporary landscapes. I enjoyed talking to her - we even discussed the seventieth birthday celebrations last weekend - and I hope the meeting next week is a success, because as people alone the artist and the gallerist seem a cut above the rest, and they could be good for each other. A good service. This in fact is one of the things with the artist's work. It requires an unlazy mind to appreciate it properly and the artist's journey to date is not one in which the participants are particularly required to party, talk 'dosh', or deliberately lack cohesion. Its society should bubble, yes; the talk should prosper, certainly; but it also needs the right space and the right person, and this one person I met today was impressive. Meanwhile my trip grows closer and my running in the morning marginally less cumbersome.

Think global, act local

Our four faces were blank and emotionless as we stared out at the clusters of people in the capital rushing on foot along the pavements by the side of the road, as we were driven like innocents from the railway station back to our flat after several days of bliss in the pure and mountainous countryside, which is home to the artist's parents. Staring out from the taxi, it seemed insane to us at first that people should really be living so on top of each other, but then we sort of looked at each other and remembered, hey, we lived here too. In fact our children started singing and I took various pictures of this. In each of the images, examined later, they did not look like that first sentence at all. I could have begun: 'Our four faces were expressive and emotional as we stared out ...' Isn't it funny how a description based on one moment can be so invalidated the next? Trust me, though, when I say they were not exactly unhappy to see their flat again, even though the rain wept on the leaves and the grey sky was not how we had left it. We stumbled in and abandoned our bags. The artist made no mention of her recently commenced piece on the wall, but I know she will already have sized it up. (I think her main priority has been to get the children resettled.) I have meanwhile been reading up on things. I have been examining what they call in war the struggle for people's minds. I have been looking at what is said about propaganda as a force for peace. I have been comparing how much terrorists 'spend' on video publicity, effectively, versus how much a major power spends. And I have been concluding in my small and powerless way that effectiveness is more important than performance. The big picture. I must always aspire towards the big picture. On the train back, staring out at the last of the mountains, I was thinking globally. For now, while the children try to get to sleep, I am acting locally. Think global, act local.

Riders in the storm

The artist takes a rightful breather, burying her head inside a 600-page novel like a head of corn inside a giant balloon. The mood of the news is not good; it is local and dark, like the weather, and packed like (an) unexploded bomb(s). Soft and relentless rain on the windows creates the right sort of feel in a movie but in real life just makes you restless. The artist's daughter has the right idea - watching TV with the artist's son - though with too many angry voices for something so well meaning. I admit to the idea of the ideal taking a day off. I also admit to the reality that a creative environment is not always a flourishing one and that sticks in the mud cannot always be sidestepped. But there is reward to a creative household. This last piece the artist has been working on can thrill like a walk in the woods. There is a kind of paranormal light across it. It plays yet never deceives. There must be two thousand leaves in the image, one or two hundred broadleaved trees and shrubs. As I write, it remains screwed like a statement to the wall. The density of the medium means its presence has no doubt, but because all the scattered newspapers protecting the floor have been swept up and binned, and all signs of work temporarily removed, the piece sits within the domestic landscape like a cross-armed stalwart, a permanent member. It is a part of our lives - we are having a relationship - but soon it will be gone.