Kerry Lemon - That Remarkable Artist I Met, London.

I met Kerry Lemon a couple of weeks ago and, since then, I've struggled to write of that meeting. 

Why?

Well, she was so remarkable that I have had no idea where to begin ...

There's an interview that gives you a sense of her.  But that's complicated, due to the fact that she's being interviewed by another truly remarkable being ... Elizabeth Duvier. 

I met Elizabeth via her blog - Mystic Vixen. Over the years her writing and photographs were that place where I wandered when I needed beauty and intelligence, and some soul-soothing too.

And so, it has to said, Elizabeth is also remarkable, for many reasons but perhaps SQUAM is her biggest, most beautiful and inspirational thing.  Well, that and her beautiful writing, and art.

Their conversation follows ... however there is more.

The meeting happened like this ... Elizabeth put out the call, writing to her friends, that I was new to the UK.  Kerry Lemon replied, saying she was madly busy with work but how about meeting up on 'this date'? 

I said 'Sure!'  

And eventually that date came round.  I headed for London, and met up with the delightful woman you see in the photograph at the start of this post.  I took photographs along the way, and managed to capture Kerry caught up in the awe and wonder she felt when viewing the work of one of her favourite installation artists, Rebecca Louise Law. 

Kerry is short and cute. Spending time with her, I decided, is a little like spending time with a very alive fairy.  One who sprinkles fairy dust where ever she goes, engaging all those she meets in delicious conversations that leave people smiling.

But more than that.  She's talented, driven, self-disciplined, intelligent, and entirely inspirational.  And wise.  So very wise.

Do you see what I mean?  How to write of this Kerry Lemon ... how to share something of her remarkableness.  It's difficult.

We met at Waterloo Station, under the big clock, and we clicked.  Just like that.  I felt like I'd known her forever.

But she's like that ...

She was taking me to the Columbia Road Flower Market, Sunday morning magic.  I'd never heard of it. 

What a sensory overload.  Meeting Kerry Lemon and visiting the Flower Market too. 

Yes, I promise, it's impossible not to adore her.  I imagine that's clear.

I could have followed her around for weeks.  I wanted to try and capture something of her fairy-dusting all those she met while she wandered.

It was a good day with a remarkable soul. 

And that's about as clear as I'm able to get on Ms Kerry Lemon.

Portrait Photography - as it should be

A friend posted the following story on my Facebook wall yesterday. It confirmed what I have always thought about portrait photography ... the photographer oftentimes photographs the relationship between themselves and their client. 

It's about mutual trust and respect but it's also about what the subject allows to be known of themselves ... the story he or she tells, the glimpses we are allowed.  That's why I prefer to take an hour or two with a portrait session.  I love to enter an environment that makes them comfortable.  I love if we have time to chat, to get to know one another in a relaxed situation.  It doesn't take long usually.

In this experiment the photographers all captured something of the person their subject presented himself as. I thought it the perfect illustration of how portrait photography should be.

I Have This Friend ... this magical wild woman whom I adore.

Pippa popped up on my Facebook wall, after we'd been chatting over there.  She wrote, and her words melted my funny little Kiwi heart.  She had written me a poem.   Memories from long ago during that first divorce of mine. 

We used to talk for hours back then.  Epic talks.  And beach-walks with that beautiful Labrador of mine - still much missed.  We talked wise woman talk ... tough but so good.  So clear.  That's the 'shit' she talks of .. .the times when we almost derailed our friendship.  Crying or laughing. then simply talking our way back to being comrades, sisters, best friends forever.

She wrote:

Hey Di... miss you as always... just about to retire for the night. But our little conversation here tonight sparked me. So here is a wee gift for you... of course I haven't edited, so rough as always, but from the heart. Love you xxx

Who wouldn't love her right back.  I'll even forgive her reference to that time, while moving a mattress, it collapsed under me as I leaned on it.  She almost died laughing as I face-planted on the shag pile carpet.  My head bounced off the floor on impact!!! 

(Fortunately some red wine may have been consumed.)

If I'd died ...!!  I told her.  Later.  After the laughter had stopped convulsing her body, the laughter that had rendered her speechless.

(She couldn't have called an ambulance.  I swear it.  I would have just died ... there on the floor. with her laughing too hard to give the address.)

How we laughed, back then, in the land of long ago.

Her poem ...

DI

Couldn’t resist
Sorry e hoa
To share such a rampant line:
Delicious as red-wine face-planting mattress-miss
Singing along
To magic music
Veins running red

Life-saving walks on beaches
Dog like abandon
Almost rolling in our own shit
To come out clean
Conversations shredding our lives
From before conception
And beyond limits

Dreaming outrageous dreams
That have come true
Faltered
Disintegrated
To make room for the exquisite chaos
Of life

Before death claims me
I know without doubt
I have lived!
Fearless
And fearful
In spite of
Because of

I will die a complete woman
Defeated, humiliated
To arise
Phoenix-like
To seize the dawn before anyone else is awake

Your smile, our clowning, stumbling shared
Moments
Brilliant jewels in the kaleidoscope
Of my life

Two Beautiful Souls ...

What matters the most is that you’re doing something to make the world a better place. And you have to believe in this. It’s important… you think with your eyes, and that’s all the world asks you to do.

– Camille Lepage, July 26th, 2013.

Christena Dowsett is a remarkable woman, I follow her blog and make that statement based on what I've read over there.

Christena writes things like this, of time spent with her friend, Camille Lepage:

Our last night together, we closed down the bar by talking with the Maasai guards who were there. It was quite a sight to behold. She and I and six Massai dressed in full traditional clothing. We must have talked for an equal number of hours. I remember how intently she asked them questions, about their culture, their families, if leaving their loved ones behind for work was hard. She asked nothing that would relate back to her. She was intent on knowing them inside their own context.

Meanwhile I was asking questions like, “How do you guys feel about tourists and white people in general?”

She looked outward for her questions. I looked inward.

I sat and listened most of the night. I watched her. And learned from her how to learn from people.

Earlier that day she told me, “You need to not see them as different. See them the way they see themselves. Show them as if they were white. You need to look at them as if they were your brothers. Stop thinking about you, you have to think about them.”

And this post, titled The Bag-less Lady, made me smile. 

These women, the photographs, Camille's legacy kept alive by her friend ... they're so important.

'The more personal you are willing to be' ...

The more personal you are willing to be and the more intimate you are willing to be about the details of your own life, the more universal you are… And when I say universal, I don’t mean universal only within our culture… There’s a lot of balderdash thrown around — “You don’t understand people who live in Sri Lanka and their response to the tsunami because you just don’t know that culture.”

Well, there’s an element of that — but, to me, cultural differences are a kind of patina over the deepest psychosexual feelings that we have, that all human beings share.

Sherwin Nuland, extract from yet another brilliant Brain Pickings post.

One of the constant battles I have with this blog of mine is just how much raw and gritty truth I write here.  And in struggling with 'how much', I suspect I lose quite a lot. 

I do know that friends in real life enjoy catching up on the details I usually leave off my blog.  I have a complicated family life ... like so many these days.  I have much to write about on the subject of being a step-mother, perhaps.  And even more about being a foreigner in this day and age.  Or on traveling without languages (usually).  And on just making it home ...   And even more on why I haven't dedicated my days to learning the language in this country I'm currently a citizen of.

I have this theory ... but that's for another day.

I love red wine.   I mostly drink sparkling water though, with 2 espressos per day, and lately, a hot chocolate sometimes.  Most other drinks don't agree with me because they're full of sugar, or sugar substitutes, or have too much caffeine or tanin or goodness knows what.  I used to be able to drink and eat ANYTHING!  Now I have food allergies and grass allergies, and they just added dust mites to that list but I've only just begun to check the facts of it all. 

I prefer not to take anti-histamines.  

I'm not good at learning languages but I love people and traveling.  It seems to work out.  We 'talk' anyway.

'I'm from New Zealand ... ' gets me further than I could have imagined, in terms of excuses for everything.  We Kiwis are a delightful people from an exquisitely beautiful country.  So yes, what am I doing out here in the northern hemisphere?!  That's something else I could also write much and often about.

I love photography and books, and writing and people and other cultures, and conversations that go on into the night.  I love sitting down on that airport bus, leaving to fly someplace, and I love coming home to people and places I know.  I love music. All kinds.  I love people who are passionate about what they do, and I adore people who are kind.

I'm a grouch.  I should write on my blog on my grouchy days.  I'm quiet and need space, and if you hurt me I'll disappear into a silence.  I'll try not to argue ... so don't make me.  Just believe me, it's better you don't.  I also love talking.  And meeting new people.

So you see, I leave a lot of this off the blog but I'm thinking, in 2015, I might experiment with just being me on the blog. Let's see how that goes ... I'd like to be more universal.

Chimamanda Adichie - The Danger of a Single Story.

Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice — and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.