Ralph Fiennes, by Julie Kavanagh.

On performing Oedipus ...

Now Fiennes’s fear was palpable, with a physical language of agony, like a Bacon painting; his barely audible “Not yet, not yet” sparking the ineffable shiver released by a great performance. The audience was silent, drawn into the moment, but at the end let rip with whoops and whistles, recalling the cast on stage again and again. Sophie Fiennes went twice and said that one performance was the most extraordinary she had ever seen. “It was not acting, it was being. It was a leap of faith, like jumping from one building to another. Ralph had dared to enter that state. Afterwards I told him, ‘Jini’s certainly gone to heaven now!’ Because she would have loved the play, she would have loved his courage on that night.”

From Two Years With Ralph Fiennes, by Julie Kavanagh.

A brilliant article, a brilliant man and the photographer too ... I had to put it someplace safe.

Photograph Jillian Edelstein.

Georgia O'Keeffe, on making the unknown known.

I feel that a real living form is the result of the individual’s effort to create the living thing out of the adventure of his spirit into the unknown—where it has experienced something—felt something—it has not understood—and from that experience comes the desire to make the unknown—known.

By unknown—I mean the thing that means so much to the person that wants to put it down—clarify something he feels but does not clearly understand—sometimes he partially knows why—sometimes he doesn’t—sometimes it is all working in the dark—but a working that must be done—

Making the unknown—known—in terms of one’s medium is all-absorbing—if you stop to think of the form—as form you are lost—The artist’s form must be inevitable—You mustn’t even think you won’t succeed—Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant—there is no such thing.

Making your unknown known is the important thing—and keeping the unknown always beyond you—catching crystallizing your simpler clearer version of life—only to see it turn stale compared to what you vaguely feel ahead—that you must always keep working to grasp—the form must take care of its self if you can keep your vision clear.

Georgia O’Keeffe (painter) writing to Sherwood Anderson (writer).  

Source: Brain Pickings.

There was something about this small article, by Maria Popova, that made me want to note these words and keep them to read again and again.  I loved the first paragraph most particularly.

I enjoy reading what artists write to each other, seeming to want to think on an important thing that so many wouldn't find important or interesting.  Sometimes these things seem like the real stuff of life, as opposed to the forms we fill out and the lives that we Must live in that 'real' world people talk of.

Soon I will be heading off on another adventure, in a small village somewhere between Naples and Rome.  There is a house and some dogs that I've been invited to visit, while breathing some good country air, with a view that I suspect I might want to photograph every day.

There is a book that wants to be written, or two.  There are the photography workshops to announce, the ones I've planned for 2015.  There is a bar where I'm hoping the espresso is perfect and where my beloved crema brioches are possible.  Where there's a delightful red wine waiting for me.

Another adventure in Italy, in that land where everything is possible and sometimes, just sometimes, you find giantic lightbulbs out in the carrugi.

Forget Special, by David duChemin - Photographer

Name an artist or inventor, anyone that affected social change on the most massive scale. Who were they before they became, say, Gandhi? Pasteur? Picasso? If they had waited to make a name for themselves, doing the very things by which they made a name for themselves, were deemed special, they’d have never done a thing. Gandhi didn’t know he was Gandhi until he became, you know, GANDHI. He just did his thing. And even then I’m pretty sure he didn’t know what all the fuss was about. Who others thought he was and who he knew himself to be were probably always different. And I guarantee you it was not easy. Have you read his biography?

David duChemin, photographer.

I have been selecting photographs for the exhibition at the end of this month and so, it goes without saying, David duChemin's article, Forget Special, was incredibly timely.

The risk is more than we can imagine ... And until they get the answer they think they need to hear, they remain paralyzed, their art undone, their business unstarted. Waiting to be special, first.

 

That Creative Place ...

I used to ride horses when I was a teenager.  Quite often they were slightly insane horses that the owners had tired of.  There was Mickey who used to paw the ground when we crossed streams ... indicating she was about to roll and you could only stay on if you imagined you could stop her.  There was Nutmeg who made a vet turn away in horror when he health-checked her for her owner. 

I was that horse-mad kid for a while.  The vet had spotted multiple 'issues' with that big, slightly crazy, ungainly chestnut called Nutmeg.  And then there was her paddock-mate, Cinnamon, the ex-racehorse who occasionally raced off with whoever was riding him.  He was a geriatric.

I survived. 

But there were days, few and far between but enough to keep me going, of sublime happiness.  When, just occasionally, everything would come together. The sky would be blue, the air warm, and the horse would be having a best-behaviour kind of day.  Those days were the days where being out with the horse was like floating along on my own private cloud of joy.

Writing is like that for me.  Just sometimes it all comes together.

Photography I can do anywhere.  I enter that state of non-thinking ... that creative space, easily and work almost unconsciously, losing my self in the process.  But writing, that's something else entirely.

Writing, for me, comes from another place.  It's a space more consciously created.  I feed it like I might feed a fire.  Building the flame from a spark up into, if I'm fortunate, a roaring fire.  And I'm finally learning that sustaining that space or that mood, is the trickiest thing.

I'm almost bullet-proof as a photographer and yet I am as fragile as a butterfly when I write.  I had spent two hours building that creative space yesterday.  I have a photography exhibition opening on 31 October and the theme is complex.  I want to get it right.  Dreaming it into being involves writing.  Writing involves building the fire.

I was horrified to realise how fragile I was yesterday.  How fragile the creation of that space is.  At the same time I was glad to finally understand the different creative spaces I inhabit when I move between the two things I love doing best.

I knew I couldn't interview someone and photograph them at the same time but I didn't know why.  I think both disciplines ask for a similar depth but they're different.  With photography I'm simply searching for the soul, or for a small glimpse of the true core of a person.  I want to capture something of who they really are ... to show them their own personal beauty.

When I interview someone it's completely different.  I am listening, intently, consciously.  I can't lose myself in that photographer space where I don't really exist, where it's all about slipping under the surface of the person I'm photographing. I have to be present with an interview.  Later, when I'm writing it up ... perhaps then there's that slippage into the soul.  Or, more nicely put, into the shoes of that person.

I was a writer first.  I thought that was what I would be in my spare time, after I found a sensible job that paid ... but I never ever learned to protect the space.  Photography allows me to move in and out of the creative space with ease.  Well ... coming home after a photography shoot is sometimes slightly fraught, as I am empty and exhausted by all I've given but ... I can flick in and out of photography without building a fire slowly.

I love that I will be 50 soon.  I love that I'm finally getting curious about who I am and what I do.  And I love that I have the opportunity to put together this photography exhibition and explore complicated things while knowing I need to keep the line through it simple and clear.  I love that I have to find the poem within the story... the few images that capture multiple layers.

But most of all, I love that yesterday, I finally understood that I need to create and protect the space where I write.  That I begin with a spark and build a fire. 

Mmmhmmm, only took me 49 years to learn this simple thing ...

Listening to Van Morrison's Into the Mystic today.  Working now ...

On Expecting Better of Myself ...

One of the things I'm struggling to come to terms with at the moment is that if I can't 'lose' myself in my photography, my photography suffers.

I already knew I couldn't interview someone and capture their portrait at the same time.  I knew couldn't tell the story in both ways, simultaneously, but oh how I've fought 'knowing' this.

The Belgian bloke asked me last night, 'Does a painter teach painting and paint at the same time?'

Well of course not but ...

I always expect better of myself.  But always.

I read something yesterday where a woman is complaining about her boss: she doesn't give me enough praise, barely lets me take a day off,  will not give me a pay raise. She goes on and on about how we must invest profits back in the company.

Then she talked of her employee: often doesn’t show up to work, comes and goes and she pleases, treats her job as a hobby.

Artist & CEO of Ann Rea, Inc.  Founder of Artists Who Thrive.

Of course, the woman was self-employed and talking of herself.  It's an interesting article and well worth a read if you're trying to create your own business.

And it's true.  I rarely take time off and yet I fit a million other things in around the work that must be done. 

Justine Musk wrote something I love on this particular subject: 

I have come to believe that perfectionism is a kind of evil, that it’s poisoning my gender and holding us back, as individuals and as a group. I wish more women knew in their core that they have a right to be who they are without trying to please or worrying about what other people think.

Perfectionism is the endless chasing of external validation, and it steers you away from your inner guidance system, your soul-voice. It makes you think that the small things are just as important as the big things, or that everything is a big thing, and this just isn’t true.

You can choose your priorities according to what truly gives you meaning, and you can let the other things slide. You don’t have to do everything.

Men know this. Men go for the touchdown. Women head in that direction, but then start obsessing over the state of the grass – and blaming themselves for every little weed, every little bald patch.

I wish more women knew to trust themselves more – to be themselves on purpose – to allow themselves to express their own power, creativity and greatness instead of trying to keep everything so controlled. Life will not be controlled.

Justine Musk, from The Self-Love Series.

And so you see how it is today.  I'm pulling out everything I know on the subject while trying to put together a life where I concentrate on the things that are important.  I understand that it's quite possibly okay that I'm willing to work all the time but some praise to myself wouldn't go astray.  Prioritising 'distractions' might be a plan too.

Let's see how it unfolds.