16 posts tagged “art”

i can't imagine there are terribly many people who just randomly go off to belgium for three days with very little notice... for fun. but, yes, i am one of them. i confess that i love belgium. i love the confused languages, the horror that is the mannekin pis (alas, he was not wearing one of his costumes this week - apparently earlier in the week he was dressed as a dentist), the food... dear god the food, and the peculiar dark underbelly of the belgian character.

i was originally meant to meet up with a friend to show her the delights of brussels, but when that plan fell through after the eurostar tickets were booked, i decided to take a slightly different tack and make a plan that would ensure i'd see something new. i've been impoverished in brussels before... it's not really a city that is good to be poor in and i could do without going through it again, so i caught my eurostar to brussels... and then went to ghent.

alas, along with my general current penury, the fates saw fit to make a complete joke out of the ££/€€ exchange rate, so it was not a tour of 5-star hotels, but rather an experiment in youth hostels. i find it rather interesting that you get the same quality sheets in a youth hostel as in a 5-star hotel. it's only the places in between that attempt to impose thinning, greasy polycotton nasties on you. so in that respect it was quite luxurious. dying for a bath and a quiet night now though!

anyway, ghent is delightful. i say this categorically and heartily recommend it, especially if you're thinking of having a nice quiet weekend or long weekend away. it's pretty but not chocolate-box - it's a real city and it feels lived in. it also has this somewhat bizarre mediaeval theme going for it. maybe i need to explain though. yes, it's a mediaeval city. but it's nowhere near as mediaeval as it looks. at the end of the 19th century someone looked up and said "hey! we have a castle!" so they promptly pulled down some of it and rebuilt bits that weren't there any more (or indeed ever - apparently the roof was quite different originally). then some bright spark decided that while they had some very nice mediaeval houses, if they had more then perhaps more people would come and see them. so they found some plans and built some more mediaeval houses. um. according to my map, although i didn't go forth and confirm this for myself, there is one house which actually exists in two different places - they found plans for a particular house, went ahead and built it new... then discovered that that exact house already existed once they stripped off whatever had been done to the facade, but underneath it was the genuine mediaeval version of the not-so-stately home they'd just built. bizarre and wonderful. the castle is all about the torture - grand living doesn't enter into it - they even have a rather too detailed torture museum. it's just wonderful.

so i spent two days in ghent, doing a lot of wandering. saw both the museum of contemperary art and the older stuff (a lot of which was by flemish/belgian artists, and showed things like belgian interpretations of impressionism and so on - great stuff) then caught a train back to brussels, where i explored... um... an art gallery - the musées royaux des beaux-arts de belgique. just for a change. and wow, what a collection! genius heironymous bosch, and their late 19th/early 20th century collection is brilliant too. apparently later this year they are opening a dedicated magritte museum next door, which sounds amazing. guess that means i'll have to go back again soon!

since i wrote my last post i have become employed! yes! a real live job! and i'm really enjoying it to. i am a "learning technologist" in the e-learning department of the imperial college business school, working on an assortment of online courses, which is proving very interesting and not too taxing (yet. ask me again when the students return in october...). the people are lovely, the office is nice and the commute a reasonable length. the college is in south kensington, literally just around the corner from the royal college of music, royal college of art, royal albert hall and the v&a museum, just to start with. i really must plan to go to a prom while i'm there because it couldn't be more convenient! but the best bit is that i discovered the library...

now, i should clarify that imperial college is a science and technology university. their students are all engineers and biochemists and doctors and mba-types. not an artist to be found anywhere on campus (they're all round the corner :-) but i came across the campus central library on my second day and figured i might as well find out if i was allowed to borrow books. i figured it never hurts to belong to another library and there was the slim possibility that the computer books section might have some useful webby books (it does. planning on checking out quite a few of them very soon). so i joined up, checked the list of floors and discovered that 'computing' was on the top floor. and that, unexpectedly, so were 'cds'. well, i didn't really hold out much hope. it's not unusual, after all, for libraries to keep a few random cds for the students and given student preferences, they'd probably mostly be pop music. but it was worth checking.

HOW WRONG COULD I BE?

honestly, it's like there's some weird terry-pratchettesque L-space thing happening on the 5th floor of that library. yes, there are computing books; yes, there's a bunch of studious sciencey bods scattered around the tables with their books on dna strands and how to build a bridge and whatnot, BUT there's also a whole freakin' arts library up there!

ok, to backtrack. i sauntered over to the cd section, seeing, as i approached that it looked a pretty decent size for one in such an unexpected place. then when i got there, discovered that 2 of the 3 large double-sided racks contained exclusively classical cds. and a quick glance led to an estimate of about 40% of that being music written after 1900, which is just unheard of in any cd library and like heaven on earth for me. next i decided to check out the books and see if i could find the css tomes. and the first thing that caught my eye was a book on segovia (famous spanish classical guitarist for those who don't know) and i thought "huh?" so i toddled over... only to find three racks of music scores of all types - including scores for (relatively) modern operas such as britten's peter grimes and tippett's child of our time. next discovery was row after row of music texts - from the standard norton scores to biographies, harmony texts (even one written by the university of western australia's david tunley). then art books. philosophy. poetry. history. just an amazing collection! and all for meeeeeee!

so my lunchtimes have been spent working away at library books. at the moment i'm focusing on research for my article on erik satie and dada. i've had such a hard time getting hold of decent scholarly books on dada up till now - i've had to buy every book that's been of any use at all because normal libraries just haven't provided anything that was helpful. and this brings me to another of the joys of this job. i have done research at lunchtimes at other jobs, but always ended up feeling a bit like an unsociable freak. now i can just plonk myself down and beaver away at what i want to do without a care in the world - because all the tables around me are filled with people doing exactly the same thing! HUZZAH!

so extremely happy in the new job and for once hoping that it goes on for the full three months. i'll barely touch the tip of the iceberg of books and cds in the library in that time, but at least i should be able to get through a fair few!

one of my projects at work at the moment has also seen me dipping my toe into the murky waters of open source development. and i must say, it's been quite a challenge. it seems to be an unwritten law that anybody who's even thinking of getting involved in an open source project must be an uber-geek who lives and breathes the unix command line and has an intimate knowledge of arcane programmes that run only from that command line. woe betide the newbie who, while she has a certain amount of programming experience, hasn't touched a command line since dos and has never so much as shaken the paw of unix or subversion or python or any of the other behind-the-scenes wonders that seem to be required. it would seem that the easy part of the whole thing is the actual coding. getting the source code took far longer than identifying the file i would need to tweak to do what i wanted. and the project, of course, has nothing so simple as a "how to get involved" page. you just know, apparently. and unfortunately i didn't, so i've been flailing about for the past day and a half trying to work things out. fortunately, around 1.30 this afternoon, things started to click into place a bit and now my key concern is why won't the source code (which i haven't touched since i checked it out) build without errors. i wrestled with that for a few hours, then come 6pm gave up and posted it to the project forum. too hard. need expert advice. the frustrating thing though is that i can see pretty much exactly what needs to be done to the particular file to achieve my goals, but i need to get through all this setup dross first. honestly, the uber-geek who takes pity on us less experienced souls and writes an introduction to open source dev and its tools will win bucketloads of undying gratitude and will no doubt be responsible for a ton of eager new helpers, so very keen to do the dull jobs, on open source projects all over the web...

wow, i hear you gasp - you did what??? well, yes. i bought a book. i didn't go out intending to buy a book - i went out intending to have lunch with a friend (which i did) and buy some fat wool for a hat (which i didn't). i almost bought a pair of shoes, which i may go through with later in the week if the tube strike doesn't get in the way. but i did buy a book. so by now you're probably thoroughly bored of this post (and only 4 lines in - wow!) and just wishing i would tell you which book was actually bought, so here you go:

The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art

M Rothko

... and now you're probably sorry you asked. i do love mark rothko. i didn't get abstract art at all until i stumbled into the seagram murals room in the tate modern a couple of years ago and those paintings just sat and pulsed off the walls at me until i was ready to cry. it's still one of my very favourite places in london. and now he's one of my favourite-ever artists. i think it takes a lot of courage to put a couple of rectangles of colour onto a canvas and not be either taking the piss or totally up yourself but have it really mean something. i sometimes feel like that about music. it can seem so pretentious to be putting notes together, to be making something new for forces that truly great composers like stravinsky or debussy or britten wrote for. it can seem somehow redundant, and all the more so before you've worked out what it is you're trying to say. stravinsky once wrote (in relation to "programme music") that music, by its very nature, is powerless to express anything at all, but i suspect it might be more accurate to say that it is powerless to express anything other than itself. it's a piece of abstract art, but - as i believe rothko felt very strongly about - "abstract" doesn't mean that it's a void, that nothing was *intended* in its creation.

as you can see, the mere act of picking up this book and flipping through it was enough to make me start thinking profound and likely unreadable thoughts about art and life and the feeling was so strong and good that i just had to give that book a home. so i bought it (as you know). and some more knitting needles :-)

it's a lifelong addiction for me. i just can't help it. i'm not really happy unless i'm plotting or doing a course of some sort and i was getting a little fretful because i don't know that i'll be able to afford to do the drawing class i want to do at central st martin's (drawing london on location) and i don't know that i'll be able to sort out and get into the one-to-one composition tuition short course at tvu for this year - i could probably sort it out for the october term, but i suspect i'd have to miss at least 2 sessions due to our plans to go back to australia for christmas, so maybe next year.

then this dropped into my inbox:

tate online courses: artists' techniques and methods

which sounds really interesting, covering techniques for drawing, collage, watercolour, composition and symbolism, oils and mixed media. all for £20 and i don't have to go anywhere! very tempted by this one...

back from paris now. and next weekend we go to switzerland skiing for a week with some friends. djeli is dying to go skiing, but it's looking like i won't be able to ski at all because while we were in paris my leg and foot started to swell again and the whole left leg has been uncomfortable (to the point of needing the heat pack again) all week. i blame the paris metro. all those stairs. grr :-) but at any rate, i doubt very much that i'll be skiing while lopsided, so i need to make a plan that involves accompanying djeli on his drive to troistorrents (nearish lausanne) and then playing hermit for a few days to do some work while avoiding the 2-year-old that apparently populates the place where we'll be staying, and maybe fitting in a day-trip or two to lausanne and/or berne as well.

paris was pretty good though. my french is getting better and better and i was quite shocked to discover that i had better french than anyone else who was there (we went with two of djeli's sisters and their families). i've now got to the point where i can natter a bit with shopkeepers and don't feel so flustered about asking them to repeat themselves if i don't understand because i feel now that if they repeat, i have a chance of working it out, and sometimes they simplify the vocab too, which makes it easier. we did a bunch of touristy stuff because none of the kids had been to paris before, so there was notre dame, with attempts made on the saint-chapelle (closed), the conciergerie (closed), a view from a particular department store that susie (older sister) had been told was great (closed for refurbishment) and djeli's and my absolute favourite-ever patisserie and home of the chocolate-encrusted brioche (closed down); then the next day to the science museum (always very cool and my translation skills much improved over the last time we were there, thank heavens), then the eiffel tower and our favourite posh supermarché out at porte maillot which spared us from the tedium of a fourth trip up the arc de triomphe in three years. and then a little required shopping at sephora and the galleries lafayettes food hall on the last day. i'm looking forward to going back again soon. i really really want to go to the (i think) palais de tokyo where they keep all their early-mid twentieth century art - matisse and so forth, and also thinking that i should make a concerted effort on the louvre sometime - maybe a three-day midweek trip on my own, sketchbook in paw. might try catching the bus across. i adore the eurostar, but if i can stand the bus then it's likely to be a lot cheaper, and it was quite bearable from brussels to london. must start trying to cut back on the 5-star travel...

It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be

i took delivery of two new books between copenhagen, sussex (where we went for new year) and paris - the last of my gift voucher bonus from PwC (which I have to say has been the best bonus ever) - both of them excellent. The first is a tiny little book by an advertising guru called paul arden and is called it's not how good you are, it's how good you want to be which is an excellent summary of all sorts of things i need to keep reminding myself of with my work and i'd recommend it to anyone who needs a pocket-sized kick in the artistic pants every now and then.

Inspired: How Creative People Think, Work and Find Inspiration

the second one is a book called inspired which is a series of interviews with assorted creative folk, looking at where they find inspiration, what their working environment is like and so on, with a ton of photos of creative journals, collections of this and that, and brilliant workspaces. i find the creative process and the different ways people approach it to be absolutely fascinating and this book in itself is amazing and has inspired me to be a bit more creative with my own creative (mainly composition) journal. i always thought i must be a bit mad to keep the ton of bits of paper that i do simply because they have an image that intrigues me on it - i like the texture or the colour or the shape, or it makes me smile and i can't throw it out - but reading this book one thing i found was that about 80% at least of the people interviewed confessed to collecting something - from adidas shoes to fabric swatches and packaging - so now i don't feel quite so weird and i'm starting to stick these random bits and pieces into my composition journal so they (a) don't clutter up the place and gather dust and (b) can be got at when a little spare inspiration is required. i'd much rather store a bunch of composition journals than a box full of little pieces of paper i'm not looking at. anyway, it's an excellent book and so many ideas to play with! now i want to do EVERYTHING - i want to paint and collage and draw, and write music, and write lists, and dance and walk and tidy and bake - all sorts of stuff.

this evening i drew for the first time in... oh... months and months. and gosh it felt good. a real stress-reliever. give me a box of willow charcoal, a big bit of paper and a nice big space to spread charcoal dust around in and i'm a happy happy gal. and i got to thinking about grand gestures, how good just letting rip in whatever way makes us feel - big sweeping strokes of charcoal across paper, really let-loose dancing, going for a good run or whatever. and then it struck me that you can't really do this with composition. even writers can lose the lines and write in
REALLY BIG CAPITAL LETTERS
if the fancy takes them, but the grand gesture in music invariably involves the creator sitting down quietly and writing lots and lots of little notes, each of which has to fit tidily into its allotted space on the stave, or nobody will be able to play it. and if you write music that can't be played then its questionable whether you've actually written music at all. so maybe i need something like drawing to help me let rip so i can be as fastidious and pernickety over my notes as i need to be.

job is coming to an end next week and then i'm back to my scores, and hopefully back posting a bit more often too. and who knows? maybe i'll even get around to finally getting the film i shot in australia processed and scanned...

well, i've had two days back at work and am steeling myself for the 6.15 awaking tomorrow once again. the new job is going well, and is interesting and i'm learning loads too, although friday was a bit stressful (mostly being new and not being able to find anyone who could confirm that i was working from the right design when the code was supposed to go to the client by c.o.b. friday) and overall by the end of the two days i was left with a cottage-cheese brain which lasted all the way through yesterday (resulting in a disgraceful lie-in followed by the consecutive watching of ghandi, robin hood: prince of theives, and mrs brown without really noticing the day drift by). fortunately by this afternoon it had solidifed somewhat into a state resembling cream cheese (still soft, but somewhat less lumpy and runny) and i was able to consider the not inconsiderable problem of how on earth do i maintain my artistic momentum in the face of such mental and physical exhaustion.

i'm really pleased with how far i've come over the last few months of my sabbatical. in spite of all the interruptions and crises, i've managed to complete my set of two-part inventions, explored a new direction in writing the satie song arrangement for america (which the commissioner likes so much he's suggested i do another two), written a psalm for satb choir and the first two songs of a group set to the short poems of walt whitman. and more importantly, i've got myself back to a point where, given alertness and appropriate quiet time, i can write for a couple of hours or so without too much trouble. the problem of course, is finding the alertness and appropriate quiet time. with 1 1/2 hours commute each way every day, having to get up so early and correspondingly go to bed before i really want to, i'm left with very little time to myself. and the cottage-cheese brain doesn't help.

so i have turned to my trusty friend, guilt, for help.

a couple of weeks ago i came across an online project being run by the tate, national gallery, v&a, sir john soanes museum and a bunch of other institutions which is ultimately aimed at helping people to make the most of the various museums' extensive digitised collections, in particular in inspiring and helping people to make their own art. the project is called creative journeys and they were looking for an assortment of artists to volunteer for the pilot. basically, we roam around the online collections, reading and viewing and blogging anything we find intriguing or influential on our own artwork - whatever that may be. so i signed up with the view that as i'd committed myself to the project, it should help me to push through my mental fug and actually do something.

today i had an idea which is based on the same premise and with the same goal, but at a smaller level. i've launched a new blog called one creative thing which i will be using to track the creative things i do every day - sometimes it'll just be one thing, sometimes a few, but hopefully by keeping this up, i'll be making myself focus on doing at least one thing either with or for my creativity every day. of course, one hopes that every day will be a litany of amazing compositional progress, but i know myself better than to expect that. instead, i plan to record anything creative or which encourages me to think creatively or to play in some creative way, be that baking a batch of muffins, booking concert tickets, borrowing a book of poetry from the library, sketching passengers on the train, working on my satie and dada article or buying origami paper.

so why on earth post this online?, i hear you cry. and i guess that's a good question. it's not like i expect anyone will actually read it ever, far less comment on it, but it holds me accountable in a way that a list in a notebook on my desk does not - it's visible to the world, so there's always the chance that someone is reading, and if there's that chance, then i have a responsibility to keep it up. plus, if anyone should stumble over it and think it's a good idea that they could gain from themselves, then that would be awesome.

now i need to go and book tickets for tuesday night's prom, lay out clothes for tomorrow and get everything ready for the morning. heigh ho!

Book: Share a self-help book that meant a lot to you.

i start by stating my long-long-held belief that 99% of self-help books are a great waste of tree.

this belief has been modified in the past year from a belief that 100% of self-help books are a waste of tree.

Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity

the book which changed by mind was julia cameron's the artist's way, which i've mentioned before here, but which i think is worth waving about again. i came across this book by accident. i had reached a low point in my belief in my own abilities, and it turned up in waterstone's at just the right moment. in a fit of impulse buying i brought it home, and it has since completely changed my life. yes, it sounds hyperbole, but it helped me to go from being depressed, hating my job, unable to write, unable to believe myself capable of taking on any project for anyone else, and barely able to consider starting anything even just for myself - to where i am now, taking six months off work to work on my music, exploring different creative avenues such as drawing, producing music (albeit slowly), experimenting with new composition techniques, and working on a commission for someone else. i have more confidence in my ability to produce music of a sufficient quality to show other people and am slowly working through a number of self-promotion plans with the aim of getting my music better known.

so yep, the artist's way gets two very enthusiastic thumbs up from me.

wow. i have got sooo much done this past week. it's just incredible. for the first time in years and years and years - basically since i left uni in 1995 - i actually feel alive and like i'm a valuable member of society.

this week was my first full, 'real' week of being a proper composer (i'm not counting the week before christmas because it was all packed with pre-christmas errands, or the christmas/new year week because i was away, or last week because it was only half a week :-) and i can't believe how much i've achieved already. if i count in the three days of last week too, i have:

• finished the last of my two-part inventions
• started at last on the satie arrangement i was supposed to do six months ago but couldn't find the time to even think about
• joined westminster music library (hours of amusement to be had there, oh yes)
• been to two art exhibitions (turner prize at tate britan and the awesome fischli & weiss at tate modern)
• caught up with two friends
• baked my first-ever chicken pie
• made mushroom soup
• cleaned out the fridge
• tidied the entire house, including inside a number of cupboards and rearranging all the enormous bookshelves in the loungeroom
• dismissed our cleaner (which required the consumption of much trauma-consoling chocolate afterwards)
• listened to a ton of music
• been to the movies
• renewed my australian music centre membership (so i can keep up with any composer opportunities that i could be writing stuff for)
• worked out which piece i'm sending in to spnm's shortlist next week and checked that it fits the requirements (which it does)
• updated the musical examples on my website, posting three new sound files and one score extract
• sent off the website address to my potential commissioner (crossing fingers now that she likes what she hears)
• cancelled my subscription to gramophone magazine
  
• cleaned up all the rubbish that had started to float round the garden
• unblocked the outside drain which had got all choked up with leaves
• drew stuff.

i'm sure there was more too - updating of blogs, reading of articles and so on, but this should suffice to give an idea. i'm rather pleased with myself :-)

it was great in particular, going back through older music i've written to pull together the new sound files for my site. it's been like revisiting old friends. i was especially pleased to be able to pull together a semi-ok midi realisation of this piece, egg the first, which was one of the more stylistically mature pieces i wrote in my last year of uni.

Egg the First

3 comments

i'd forgotten how much i like it, and going through the score to make a proper working playback version made me rethink the (currently almost unplayable) notation, so i'm going to work back through it and see if i can't make it easier to play and get it some performances.