Laugh together, work together

These days in our basement flat here by a park in the sunlit capital, we seem to live and breathe and love and work in one room. It's a few rooms actually, but they're close enough to feel like one. You would expect something as close-knit to create fireworks, but in our case it seems to create only more industry, as one cell of work gently competes then computes with another. The artist for example has her new piece on the wall alongside her old. She has worshiped the clean surface for two days, as she begins the assault in earnest now to build those first few layers so elemental to the finished work. She passes it like a dog on heat, brushing her eyes across it, not out of vanity, not with any self-congratulation, but like a dancer commencing some ancient dance, full of private ritual, slow unfurlings of meaning, vocation, spirit, skill, need. Our daughter, perhaps to stave off early bed, unzips a colour pencil-case given by her grandmother. Our son challenges himself to get out of bed and get some fruit from the kitchen. Now, though, the artist has sat down on the bright red sofa. I am watching her profile as she lies back and rubs her eyes, all the while staring up at the new piece. I wish I could say some Mozart is playing, or Alabama 3, but the only sound is the washing machine and the relentless tapping of my fingers on the keyboard. At least the lights are low and the day's battering of industry is partly abating. It is always the same when the artist begins a new piece. I always lose her for a while. She becomes someone else's. I don't mind this. I married an artist. She does everything she said on the can, and some. If anything, it is me who is unpredictable. At least I know the purpose of this blog: to chart the crucial journey through thick and thin towards ultimate exhibition. It will be the mother of all shows.