‘What the world needs now....’

In a discussion the other day with someone very concerned about humanity`s headlong plunge into disaster, -ecologically speaking -, the man opposite me was musing about how to use the psychological mind-bending techniques of the advertising industry ( and of our governments) to correct our course before it is too late. On the face of it, a logical approach to an important problem. Along the lines of fighting fire with fire and all those ‘self evident’ truths, means and solutions.

I found myself struggling to define the error contained in this concept. Confronted with the problem and the urgent need, it was hard not to agree. That is how we have always dealt with things after all. I reached for the analogy of pre-war Germany and the emergence of the Nazi propaganda machine. We think now, rightly, of its leaders as evil beings subverting the thoughts of their people and building a vast, destructive juggernaut on the foundation of a set of nasty ideals. All true, but within the thought structure of the people involved I know most must have been acting for altruistic motives; they believed their own propaganda, were in love with ideals like the purity of the people, the manifest destiny to have more ‘living space’, to take their place as a world power. Perhaps they also dreamed of some kind of world government that could force the folk onto their (ideal) track. Being good pragmatists, once the ideal was formulated, the means to achieve it was flexible. The goal was the thing, not how you got there. The more you fervently believed, the more horrible the means you could use, - war, murder, genocide, the subversion through propaganda and governance of your own people.

Having always thought of myself as a pragmatist ( the usual default North American philosophy) it came as a surprise for me to be saying that the means is important, in fact more important than an end goal. Attractive as finding a psychological tool and altering the way people think about their world may be, it is the tool which is suspect, just as it was in Germany or in many nations today. Good results do not come out of bad action, never did. It is ourselves who are the ‘enemy’, if we think that using the tools of the competition is the way to go. The world may well ‘go to hell in a hand basket’, but let us at least begin to act from day to day as if good can only come from good, - that love is the only way, and that the way is important, not a goal.

Afterward.

Something has been bothering me about my own argument. If, having tried appeasement with Hitler, the liberal democracies had continued a pacifist stance and not rearmed and fought and eventually won, then where would we be today? Where does ‘love is the only way’ meet another really destructive way? When do we say ‘no passera’, and pick up the same weapons as the foe and beat him at it?

There is no doubt that wars, either tribal conflicts or world wars wreck havoc on societies not only during the actual conflict phase but for many, many years after; within succeeding generations of families whose members participated and were brutalized, or within societal attitudes that were carried forward into the future. Although we may not recognize it, much of our problematical attitudes towards the earth, seeing it as a commodity to be ripped up by our muscular technology, has the last century of warfare behind it. But I still think that, given all the difficulties, following a way of harmony is the final cure for conflict, though it may take more generations than we really have time for to accomplish it.

Forget about achieving the goal and live it in our own lives right now.

Walking with granddaddy.

Let the music begin!

I has rained heavily all night long, - the steady beat of the drum on our metal roof, but this morning the grey clouds are all wrung out, the seasonal stream and waterfall are speaking again after their long summer`s silence and little two year old Clara is in need of some outside activity. Her Granddaddy too, so out we go into the soggy world. She is dressed for the occasion; a shiny, red, hooded coat, rain pants and rubber boots. Off we go down the trail that parallels the stream, passes through the woods and curves back beside the stream again towards the house. For her short legs this must seem a grand adventure in an enormous land of moss covered mountains and towering trees.

As we wander slowly along, my mind wants to muse among thoughts about my latest art project, but Clara`s total absorption in the present moment pulls me back. I am taking her for some much needed exercise in nature and she, by her very nature, is pulling me back into this vital and drippy world. On the last stretch back up the grassy trail though, she is lagging behind. I stop and smile back to her and get a grin in return. She is not lagging because she is tired, or feeling left behind, or somewhat lost. What is it?

I realize that it is very quiet, with no distant aircraft or all the other background noise that we normally accept as silence in the country. Just the gentle murmur of the steam and... ah, the sound of her plastic raingear swishing as she walks. She herself is now off in her own personal world, listening to her own walking musical accompaniment!

“Tears, idle tears*

It had been a typical Fall morning, the fog slowly thinning to mist, the trees and buildings steaming as the sun burned through to bring a blue sky and a fresh breeze. The car window I was working beside was coated with tiny drops of moisture and it was a simple, mindless thing to stick out my finger and begin to draw a round face. As I drew in the little comma-like eyes the drops formed drips that ran down the window. Quickly I drew, not a happy face but a down-turned mouth to match the tears. Then I ran for my camera and recorded this transient image.

So transient, like the thought that drifted up from my unconscious and united with the developing face on the glass. My usual mind begins to doodle a happy face, and my deeper self, working with the image, expresses tears.

*Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather in the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
from‘Tears, idle Tears’ by Tennyson.

The title for this piece came to me immediately, even though it is by a Victorian poet and not a well known poem of his either. It is such a dramatic way of expressing regrets for what might have been. How often what I create has a feeling from music or poetry that is its twin in another medium. All of us creators are drawing from the same well.

Yes, those ‘days that are no more’ are surely behind me, but I are not dead yet and much remains to venture. Nostalgia, the looking back on one`s life, reminds me of the old West Coast method of navigating on foggy days. On setting out from land to cross a strait, a long line would be trailed behind the canoe. The crew could not see the destination ahead but by constantly lining up the canoe with the trailing cord behind and keeping the angle constant between cord and the dominant wave pattern they could maintain a course. So, while we cannot know our future, we do know our past, and a careful understanding of that is the best way of finding the path ahead. We do need to cast off and keep moving because we get, not what we deserve, but what we risk, what we dare, but neither should we never look back. Tennyson finds the mood in ‘Ulysses’ that is the next stage to the backward glance to the past, a resolve to keep developing, ‘to strive, to find, and not to yield’.

Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to find, and not to yield.
from‘Ulysses’ by Tennyson.

WOOD WAR II. The beach landings were hotly contested.

Holocaust memorial. Ash, fire and wire.

I have been cleaning up around my workshop, now that it has a new metal roof and has been rebuilt inside and out. Thirty years of ‘may be useful’ bits of wood, full of nails and half rotten, have been going up in smoke over several days and now the last of it, a large pile of red hot coals, breathes orange flame in the gathering darkness. I reach for my camera and begin to create a series of images. I have no set purpose at this point, just collecting, with my thinking mind held in neutral.

I try different angles, swirl the camera around, take low and high angle shots and then on a whim roll a coil of old fencing wire against the flames and photograph through that. I move on to some interesting shots of old crockery, semi-immersed in the coals. Then I do a counter-intuitive thing and turn on the flash. All the bright orange light of the glowing coals is extinguished. Grey ash and charcoal, fissured by bright gouts of flame create a very different mood. When I photograph through the fencing wire this time, I have found a powerful image. Not a beautiful image, it reminds me of the Jan Martel book, ‘beatrice and virgil’ that I have just finished reading. His book is a very creative take on the Holocaust that I made the mistake of finishing just before falling asleep, or in that case, not falling asleep. I recognize my ash, fire and wire image to be existing in that same mind space, creating yet another form of Holocaust memorial.

I am still making photos of beautiful things these days, but when this kind of image arrives I am very pleased. It means that I am expanding my range of expression beyond the beautiful and into more difficult subject matter. My mind is touching things way down below somewhere, and translating them into more challenging imagery.

Spirit Dancing

Cast shadows of a maple branch and its myriad of leaves against a red barn door. A few from the still green tree hover above. The red/green colour contrast sets the green leaves and their shadowy relatives, projected and made visible by the last rays of the evening sun, to dancing. If I turn my mind just so, I can see that this is a companion piece to my image of wire, ash and flame.

All those millions of souls who went up in the purifying flames of the concentration camps are still with us, to be glimpsed in a certain cast of light, their spirits dancing joyously with the living.

Can you imagine. On the occasion of John Lennon`s 70th birthday

Can you imagine squatting down beside a tidal pool, your eyes focusing through the film of reflected sky and becoming absorbed in the beauty and minutia of the seaweedy world of crabs, periwinkles and bull heads. The rocky shoreline, the beat of the surf, fades from your awareness just as has the reflection of the firmament overhead.

Do you hear a loud crash of a wave, feel suddenly the spray of the wave that reaches far up the shore and invades this perfect little world? Look up! There lies the great ocean, glinting in the sunlight and stretching out to the curve of the horizon.

True Love. 'As You Wish!'

‘As you wish’*
 from ‘The Princess Bride’

In the comments after ‘Red Rose’ was published on Dragongate I was asked if I thought that ‘True Love’ was a concept that resonated in the modern world. A big question, and I could only answer from my own perspective, that it is important within my own life, and that the ability to love profoundly is an important part of what makes us human. If many around me have a more jaded and ‘realistic’ view of the world and human relationships, then perhaps they are missing out on something useful.

When Jung was asked if he believed that God existed he replied in a functional way. “ If believing makes sense of your life, gives it meaning, then why wouldn`t you?” Similarly, if allowing a feeling to fill me to the brim, to colour my way of being in the world, and if that allows me to function well from day to day and is a big driver behind my creativity, then why would I put it aside and choose a more limited ‘realistic’ view of human relationships? ‘True Love’ is part of a constellation of attitudes that enrich my life.

Coming for a British family who emigrated to Canada when I was four, right after the Second World War, I would guess that feeling and expressing one`s emotions was not something that was fully developed, suitable for Europeans of the more excitable kinds perhaps, but cool, calm and collected was more our style. Emotion was there below the surface, but given little space to express itself and develop a full range in our everyday lives. My life seems to have been a game of catch up ever since.

Now that I am working with art full time it has become critical that I develop my feelings and give them space to rattle around in my conscious self. Art is expression, and one needs a well developed inner life if what one expresses is to be anything more than simple and banal. I read a lot of poetry these days, listen intently to classical music and observe the world around me with sharp eyes; a catch-up, self taught course in the refinements of artistic expression.

Perhaps age naturally turns one into a ‘soppy old fool’ towards the end. If so, then I will surf on that wave crest too and ride it as far as it can roll. ‘April love’ may well be for the very young, as Pat Boon sang, but ‘True love’ is deeper, stronger and rolls on forever and forever!


* In the ‘Princess Bride,’ whenever Wesley said, “As you wish.” he was really saying, “I love you!” and that, as all will agree who have seen this movie, was ‘TRUE LOVE!’

A Red Red Rose.

A Red, Red Rose

My love is like a red, red rose,

That`s newly sprung in June:
My love is like the melody
That`s sweetly played in tune.


So fair art thou my bonnie lass,
So deep in love am I;
And I will love thee still my dear,
Till a` the seas gang dry.


Till a` the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi` the sun:
And I will love thee still, my dear,

While the sands o` life shall run.

 And fair thee weel, my only love!

And fair thee weel a while!
And I will come again my love,
Tho` it were ten thousand mile!


Robert Burns ( 1759 - 1796 )


I must have glanced at and then passed over this old poem in a college anthology yesterday, because at one in the morning I was awake with the emotion of it running round and around in my mind. I have never been any good at memorizing but I can remember the feeling of a poem very well. Now I am digging potatoes on a sunny Fall morning and multitasking by going over it again. Anything that insistent must be given some conscious thinking time.

Over this morning`s coffee I reread the poem carefully, - pulling it apart into its expressive elements. The two comparisons, a red rose and a melody. The declaration of love until the end of time; `til the rocks melt in the sun, `til all the seas run dry, while the sands of time shall run. The final promise of return, of constancy, though it were ten thousand miles. Very expressive stuff, but also very familiar and, like an old tune, often difficult to get past the by-now hackneyed expressions.

Hackneyed now perhaps, but the reason it is in the anthology is because at the time it was a revolutionary piece of writing and pointed to the future; the French Revolution, the Romantic poets that were to follow and how we understand the world and our place in it today. Here is an educated commoner ( unusual, except in Scotland, at the time) who writes to his love, not by dwelling on the quality and brilliance of his feelings but on eternity in a concrete, factual way. His love is not some court beauty, but the girl down the road. This is the beginning of the age of the common man.

So, why on this bright morning am I giving it a fresh pass through? The important part of this poem does not just dwell in words or ideas but in the reader`s own emotions as was Burns` intention. ‘And fair thee weel, my only love’ is written to a particular person and meant to dwell in her heart forever. It was never designed to have a shelf life of two hundred years, but even given the separation between his time and mine, even given the familiarity of ‘My love is like a red, red rose’, I am very moved.

That is the wonderful thing about the arts, they do not simply appeal to the intellect, but like an arrow, pierce directly to the heart. This poem is the epitome of that process. I stand with my shovel amid the growing pile of potatoes, perhaps in the same pose as farmer Burns himself took while dreaming up this poem for his girl, and feel that sweet emotion as though it comes, fresh minted, from within my own heart.

The Wild (2). Skid row.

A red brick storefront glows in the morning sunlight. Its street number is 1910 and that could be its building date as well. A tattoo salon now, it must have had a long succession of occupants as this part of town, once the bustling waterfront that equipped the miners for the Klondike Goldrush, skidded by slow degrees to its present and pleasant state. That is what I notice right off, this is ‘ the other side of the tracks,’ but if one does not see it as such, does not pre- judge it to fit the stereotype, then it is simply a place basking in the same sunlight as the rest of Victoria. The camera is teaching me an important lesson, to see without personal filters on.

Just down the street is ‘Opus’ - the art supply store that I am headed for, and it seems appropriate

somehow that creativity and decay should rub shoulders here. The essence of creative thought lies in working with disparate elements, in not prejudging, in having no preset agenda. The kind of process that drives more rationally minded people crazy. But then that organizing cast of thought has written this part of town off long ago and prefers to dwell on the ‘social problems’ and the need for ‘renewal’. This is really just a part of town, like a part of the human body that has an important function but is screened from view and not talked about in polite society, - is often a curse word.

As I walk down the lower part of Johnson street I come across a store dummy on the sidewalk. Headless and sexless, dressed in a bright red shirt it calls out to be photographed. That is always the challenge in art, to find the one element in a vast collection of things that will speak for the whole, and here is one possibility. Red is the dominant colour in my photo, the shirt, the signs, the banners, and at first glance it speaks of happy things. But red is fire and blood also, and this upward shot has a hectic quality that reminds me of Las Vegas, all glitz above and snarls and fangs just below the surface. The thing is, this is not just skid row I am imaging here, but our society of which this is an organic part.

The Wild.(1). Two realities.

A parking lot in Victoria is backed by the concrete-block side of a building and on the wall is painted a mural of a forest river. Fishing in its swirling water are bears that pause momentarily to look out into the city-scape that backs their reality. All rather mind bending once you really look at what is going on - this sandwiching of two disparate realities.

Today I am involved in using my camera to make a link with reality, looking through the lens, not for beauty and harmony, but for the authentic voice of this place down by the waterfront. It is difficult to break the habit of natural landscape photography, but this wall and all these cars is the perfect starting point.

The question that it presents so clearly is just what I need, - which is the wild? The scene by the river, or the streets, buildings and vehicles? For this day I will see these seedy streets as wild territory and photograph them as such.

Who knows, perhaps someday in the future all the bear`s real natural habitat will be paved over, or then again, perhaps there will be bears fishing for spawning salmon by this shore, backed by a forest growing on mounds of crumbled brick and concrete. Now there`s a cheerful thought!

Gran`daddy

Little Clara is going through a phase, she is fixated on her two grandfathers. Now, flattering though this is, I know it will be something else next week, - it is a developmental thing after all. But is does remind me that all the people in a child`s life are part of her developing world view and that my contribution had better be a thoughtful one!

As my own children reached maturity I learned to let go and watch them fly on their own. Now as a grandparent I am learning to re-engage in a new role for my children and their children. It is all happening and I am learning by feel, allowing myself be directed by the daily changes. A delicate business, and these moments are more important than my art, my past accomplishments, or my latest design and building project. More important than myself. That repeating lesson down through the years, - that who I am is best defined by who I care for.

A journey into colour as expression.

 I recently made an image of some weedy plants growing against a red painted wooden fence down by the docks in Fulford Harbour. White trumpet blossoms, green vines and red fence. Not much really, except for me it was evidence of my recent interest in colour relationships.

Ever since my artwork last winter doing studies of the painters Cezanne and Gauguin I have been seeing the world through their eyes, their sense of colour and form, and recently I rediscovered a set of colour cards I had bought in art school, - tints and shades of all colours. Being partially colour blind, I had not found much use for them, preferring then to play to my strengths in graphic black and white. Time now to work with the increased colour sense I have been experiencing lately and the emotional impact that is possible when colour is used with intent.

I reread Johannas Itten`s book, ‘The Elements of Colour’, on his studies in colour theory and began to place blossoms against different coloured backgrounds. Orange/red flower backed by a cool blue/green, pink blossom upon a matching pink, green leaf on a yellow ocher. What I noticed was that each photo carried its own emotion in its colour relationships that had little to do with the subject itself.

Now, when I see white sails against blue sky I actually see that they too are blue, reverberating in the intense blueness of the air. Yellow flowers at dusk are shades already, have lost the warm cast of sunset, and are sliding into the blue of the night. And what I cannot report as true colour in a scientific way I am free to create in an intimate personal expression of what I see regardless of what more colour-sighted might think. I am lucky after all not to be constrained by ‘reality’, that agreed upon understanding of what the world is like, and to be free to play with colour relationships as a musician must play with sound.

The light in the window.

In the window of the used goods store (Value Village) I see a bright painting of poppies. The hopeful reds contrast so strongly with the confining quality of the frame, the glass, the surroundings, that I take its picture. Only later on the computer monitor do I see the little message partially obscured up in the left hand corner. “To bring peace to the earth, strive to make your own life peaceful.” a quote from the Dalai Lama.

I continue to walk down the street, past the man on the sidewalk steadily repeating “ Got any spare change?”and across the road. It is early morning and folks are leaving the homeless shelter and spreading out to acquire what they need to live another day. It is here that I meet Vanessa with her peace sign that I have earlier described in my blog entry, ‘Fair Trade’.

What I am thinking now is the coincidence that, in this rundown part of town, two photos taken one after another should speak of peace, - not a subject uppermost on my mind as a general rule - and neither of which I orchestrated. But then I should not have been surprised, it is always in the hard and gritty places in life, in greatest darkness, that peace finds a way.

The reunion.

Last weekend I went to a fiftieth high school reunion, reluctantly. That was such a long way back and really I was a nonentity in the high school scene. Now I am in a crowd of sixty-eight year olds, the vast majority of whom I do not know, now or in the past. As I cruise, peering at name tags for familiar names and faces, I stop and hold short conversations with anyone who is sitting alone. The standard conversation with the males involves a short statement of their lives, -their work lives -, and then a polite pause for my own recitation. This is so deadly, a person`s life stripped down to work, -no families or adventures -, just ‘I was a lawyer, construction worker, teacher’ and presumably, ‘Now I`m retired and not even that anymore’.

I have earlier checked out the 1960 yearbook and found what I had written then as my life goals - anthropology, artist, world traveler. It would seem that as I drifted through life I was actually right on track after all. I mention this to the people I speak with and they shake their heads, their lives were nothing like they had predicted, perhaps because not everyone can be movie stars and a millionaire by age thirty! Then, I had simply projected my present interests out into the future and followed the moon track on the water.

A fellow art student asks if I knew that Carolyn Wild had died of cancer last year and I remember the vital and artistic girl that I had known through junior high, high school and university. Dead? And I never said goodbye? There was time on my drive to my daughter`s house later that night to think about my reaction. Never lovers, too much like childhood friends, I had left her one evening in bitterness after she had chosen to jump dates and drive off with someone else. Impolite, but very much in sync with her age, and, in my own youthfulness, I had drawn a line which she would never cross again. That I had then what age and understanding has brought to me now and that I could have picked up that friendship, more cautiously perhaps, and carried it on into the future where it could have continued to enrich both of our lives.

By the end of that evening I had come full circle, these people were not so foreign after all, older and wiser, they were just my fellow companions along the road.

Fair trade.

“ Hi, I`m Vanessa! What`s your name?” I am wandering with my camera in the seedier waterfront part of Victoria early on a Saturday Morning and have been approached by a young woman. I can see the pitch coming, this is the second time I have been petitioned in five minutes, but admire the technique so I answer, “I`m Bill.” and we both stick out our hands and shake.

“Bill, do you have any spare change?” I dig into my pocket and pull out a handful. “A Dollar seventy-five. Is that of any use to you?” As she reaches out her hand again and receives the money I have an idea that would make this a real equal relationship and say. “Vanessa, You could do something for me. Could I take your photograph in exchange?” And so she poses with her fingers set in a peace sign  against a backdrop of sky and decayed buildings with a hint of a crooked smile on her pinched face.

“God bless you!” she says as she wanders off down the street. I wish with all my heart that I had thought to say the same to her. Fair trade.

Moon River

We are catching the last ferry back to Saltspring Island as foot passengers, it is nine pm and already dusk. Our long summer days we love so much are already closing in and it is only the end of August. I pause to photograph one of the big ferries coming into the dock beside us, silhouetted against the sunset.

Docking ferries has always fascinated me and I suspect many others too. There is something so careful, so powerful and so sensual as the ship enters the dock at last. Those ferry drivers must stagger home each night strangely satiated after a day of this kind of primal activity.

A half hour journey across the calm waters to Fulford Harbour in the noisy passenger compartment and then we are walking up the ramp getting ready for a long hike up the hill to find our parked vehicle. But first I must stop to make another image of a yacht bathed both in the lights of the ferry compound and in the river of moonlight streaming toward us across the water from the San Juan Islands in the distance. A beacon in mid stream flashes once during the long exposure. Just time for this one picture with the camera balanced on a hand rail and then up the hill, round the corner, up the hill some more and along a side road to where our van waits for us shining softly in the moonlight.

Continuing creation.

In a recent conversation with my friend Michael I found myself saying that all the massive churches that mean so much as concrete symbols of faith are really artifacts of creative thought. The vital union with the Maker was while the architect, builders, sculptors and so on were actually dreaming up, making, the expression that people walk and pray in. Today we experience these things second hand, the translation into human terms, and that requires a bigger leap of belief than that of the original designers who were experiencing the act of creation directly.

This intuition of mine would take in all the centuries of thought as well, all the writing, the lives lived as lights for us to follow, the foundation of example upon which we too must build. And the building is important for each generation to continue or else flames dwindle into ashes and ashes become hollow structures of bygone times. The making of new thought is the vital part even as it necessarily tears apart the old to build the new.

Grey summer skies

A long hot summer spell has been broken by a couple of days of August rain. With no irrigation routine for a few days in the garden and orchard its time to grab the camera and head for the seashore.

A fine mist, trying to be rain, soaks the grasses and glazes the rocks. The dry mosses have already soaked up and turned bright green again. From the cliff top the sea fades to mist and nearby island`s grey forms merge with the low overcast. A day for photography after day after day of blue skies and strong shadows. Really, I had been finding it difficult to get serious about making pictures in a world that insisted on being so ordinary. Now at last; gradations of tone, shadow-less forms, wet beads of moisture on bleached dry grasses and crisp fallen arbutus leaves. Everything in the dry summer landscape is now vivid under its layer of varnish.

 

The Tibetan Book of the Deaf.

When I found that the missing song of the birds was not due to global warming but rather to increasing deafness on my part I knew that hearing aids were in my future.

Bananas: the dangerous fruit?

This Spring when my one banana tree came out of its winter shelter I took an axe and chopped its root up into separate sprouting parts. It had set fruit last season and over the winter had begun to send up new young sprouts so it was time to begin a whole new banana grove. Now I have a crowd of saplings lining the path to my studio door and they have begun to whisper among themselves.

I have long known to be careful walking near the zucchini patch, they are such dangerous plants, - especially for children -, always waiting for the opportune moment to reach out and drag one under the leaves, kicking and screaming, but this whispering is unsettling too. The least breath of wind and the leaves slide against one another, a sibilant conversation. My cautious mind says, “Be on guard!”

Bananas are tropical plants. Near the equator is there common knowledge about banana dangers that I am missing here? Do people wander into banana groves never to return? Do workers advance in groups, machetes slashing from left to right? Is there danger pay?

These plants are young yet. Imagine being kneecapped! Ha, ha. But this whispering in the breeze is only the first indoctrination. One day whispers will become deeds.

Cornucopia. The abundance.

Mid August and we have stated harvesting the abundance of vegetables and fruits from our garden. We eat well on salads in the heat of summer, pop warm plums, all dusky purple, directly into our mouths as we pass the orchard and Heather works hard to dry, can and freeze the first of the apple crop, the strawberries and raspberries. She is waist deep in the cornucopia of summer as she pours herself out to bring the harvest home.

How lucky we are to live a life so closely tied to the land and the seasons. In the midst of this it is natural to feel the relationship between the language of the spirit and the reality of our world to the point that all those divisions that religions love to draw between this life and the life of the spirit are artificial. At this level of participation in life there is no separation at all.

Cornucopia, the pouring out, is what life is all about. How many old grandmothers have said at the end, “I`m all use up.” They have poured their lives out in a steady stream for their families and communities and leave well content that this was truly what their lives were meant for.

The Government Wharf.

All up and down this coast of B.C. boaters are familiar with the red railed wharfs. Built by the federal government down through the years to serve the needs of coastal communities who relied on the sea, they were either torn down or offloaded onto their communities several years ago. One never knows these days what state of repair they will be in when you come alongside to go ashore. The ones on Saltspring are in good repair and the other morning while waiting for the ferry across to Vancouver Island I took a stroll down the “Government Wharf’ at Vesuvius.

Last summer I tied up my rowing/sailing canoe ‘Tillikum’ and staggered ashore here. I was on a one day circumnavigation of Saltspring Island ( some 80 kilometers) and needed to phone home to let Heather know I was running late. I also desperately needed to exercise my legs which were cramping up. Then it was a hot September afternoon and I was feeling close to failing in my self appointed challenge. Today it is the cool early morning light of the beginning of summer and I`m feeling excited by the cast shadows of those red rails on the worn wooden steps.

That first photograph of rail shadows running diagonally down the steps sets the tone for all the others I take in that fifteen minutes as the ferry gets closer and closer to the nearby ferry dock. No broad vistas today, just tightly organized images of dock and water, rails and pilings. There is something poetic in this careful organizing of form and space. Just enough to tell this important thought that lies at the center of morning light on the Government wharf.

The shadow nose.

There are times when some flash of shape catches my eye and before I know it I have branched off from my main focus to bring that new idea out into the world. This time it was my shadow cast onto a slanting white panel by the morning sunlight streaming through the window of my studio. In itself not much, but as raw material for some graphic black and whites there was a lot of potential. It is awkward to take the photos while at the same time turning my head to show my profile, but a few moments later I have them ‘in the can’ and go back to the flower shots I was involved in before I was distracted.

I am slowly wading deeper into the complexities of my photo computer program these days and when the shadow images come up I begin to alter them. Darken, increase contrast and then begin to manipulate as the mood strikes me. Soon I have some images I like that have come a long way from the original raw photos.

Not so many months ago I scorned this extreme image manipulation but now, well, the sky is the limit. I have made the link back to the graphic printmaking that was my special interest way back in art school.

Fiddle music

The violin squeaks and scratches as my wife Heather saws back and forth across the strings. It is twenty-five years since she last played and this new violin is calling on all her concentration. Her intent Scottish face with the instrument tucked under its chin is willing a fiddle tune out into the summer air. A jig or a reel, about ‘Black Donald`s pipes’.

Back a hundred and fifty years or so her ancestors walked west for days from the Red River across a sea of rolling grass, to claim land near Pilot Mound in southern Manitoba. Years before that their ancestors had been evicted from homes in the north of Scotland and ended up near Glasgow in ship building. When that ended too with the advent of steel ships these carpenters moved on to Ontario, and soon after that on to the frontier in the prairies. As they travelled, wherever they went, you can be sure that all their folk music travelled on with them in their minds, ears, feet and fingers. Now, a few generations later, it is finding its voice again.

That persistence of music, what`s carried in a tune, is elusive. It is not simply history or culture but something more integral, more elemental than that. Heather`s face, the stance of her body speaks of channels in the mind, of character, that the music is reinforcing. She persists, as her ancestors persisted and it is not at all certain that it is not the music that is expressing itself and that she is but the carrier, coming to fiddle music at last as though fated to give it audible life once more.

The Dance

The clematis blossoms are more interesting now that they have faded, the centers are becoming more prominent as the petals hang tattered below the crown. I am using a piece of black construction paper as a backdrop to separate individual blossoms from the usual blur of leaves and twigs. I am also using a ridiculously high ISO ( sensitivity) to make these images. Generally a big no-no in photography where the aim is usually crisp and sharp, I have discovered that the grainy effects that come with high sensitivity are really very interesting in this context. Coming to photography from the graphic arts means that I have access to a whole different way of evaluating what I am creating here. Not only am I interested in the texture of the photograph as an element in design, but I see these photos as raw material with which to work. I am making something, not simply recording what I see.

Once into my photo shopping computer program I choose two images and stare at them for a while until I recognize in one the out-flung arms and swirling robes of a whirling dervish. The white and black, the textured surface, are so graphic and simple. I supply the title and the recognition takes place in the viewers mind.

The other swims into my mind as a bird`s beak, and if so then the trailing petals must be the costume of the dancer. I carefully add an eyeball into the dark slit above the beak and let it be. Once again I want to leave it for the viewer to make the leap from faded clematis to ceremonial dancer and his mask.

Some big thought is tugging at my mind as I work. Even as I create, something is urging me to make a leap as well. I am busy helping clematis blossoms express themselves as dancers, but I am being prodded into recognizing another larger thought as well. The expression, the gestures of the faded blossoms, would they mean anything if there was no humans, myself and other viewers, to recognize them, to give them meaning? Does everything hang on our `unique` human consciousness? Or is this cherished belief just another example of our human tendency to measure everything against our own yardstick? That deer wandering across my lawn right now, a monkey in a tropical forest, the dolphin surfing down a wave in mid Pacific, we measure them against our own way of understanding and being within the world.

The blossoms take these attitudes whether I see them or not. The deer, monkey and the dolphin think as they need, and in their own way. The microscopic life of the word too expresses itself and all of which it is a part. The rocky mantle rises and sinks, the atmosphere swirls like smoke, all dances. What we think as uniquely human is simply another expression of the whole.

The Studio Gate. An opening to the creative spirit.

Over the years I have built a lot of gates here in the ‘Big Woods’. Some have rotted back into the landscape and my five rail gate between us and a neighbour down in the valley is on its last legs, propped up with sticks after a tree smashed it during a winter windstorm. Gates remind me of Robert Frost`s well known poem about fences - “ good fences make good neighbours”- except in this case good gates really do make good neighbours. Gates, after all, can open, allowing passage back and forth.

When I set out to photograph my property gates all went well until I came to the ones of my studio that open into the trellised courtyard and cobbled path that leads to my studio doors. They are handsome gates sure enough, but by now I am growing tired of gates per se. How about the function of gates to open a path into another space. I write a blog called Dragongate after all, about an entry point into a creative way of viewing the world and my studio is the main place that my creative work takes place. Apart from my mind, that is.

First of all I open the gates part way allowing a glimpse of the studio double doors. Better. I open one of the doors allowing a view through the building to a window at the rear. Better still. I set the camera and then pause, - a recognizably creative moment has arrived. I am recalling two images I took several weeks ago and am beginning to imagine them into a new form. One was of a tulip which had two petals trailing down showing the sexual parts inside, - the pistol and stamens, - and the other was of a pioneer church in the Burgoyne Valley where I had opened the picket gate but the church door was locked preventing me from opening it for the photo. Here was my opportunity to combine and complete a visual thought.

My problem was related to my question about the church, - what if I had opened the door and all that was visible inside was blackness? That was likely after all because the camera was exposing for the correct light outside, but was that really the idea I wished to convey in my photo? No, but then neither was it that this was a closed and locked off place. Here in my studio what did I wish to communicate? A bare space? Just snapping away was obviously not enough or I would be done by now. Here was an opportunity to explore my feelings about this space and its place in my life. Here was an opening and it also involved the tulip.

The thing about creative work is that it is so sexy, fecund and ripe with possibilities. Even the act relies on intuition, sensation, the flow of the moment. And then there is the stereotype of the artist and his nude model. For this photo I really needed a female nude, a Venus, just inside the door. Now, flagging down a passing woman on the street has some obvious and possibly far reaching consequences so I put my camera aside and rolled out a strip of newsprint. I don`t really need a model because I have the perfect image in my head already and I can draw - life sized.

It is not long before I have spray painted in the modulations of the form, mounted it on some foam board and cut the outline. Propped up inside the door, silhouetted against the window light and with the overhead lighting on to break the darkness slightly I am now ready to make my photo. Click! A fair bit of work for one photo, but I seem to have made a leap forward in my photography this morning: thinking it through, working out my image.

Later when I see the image on the computer screen I begin to think that clever me was working along unaware of what was really expressing itself through my busy work this morning. In Jungian terms the nude figure is my anima, the repressed female aspect of my personality, and it is that shadowy force that lies at the heart of all my creativity. Something powerful was using the gate as a two way path and making a self portrait today!

Take a hike.

                                         Wild geese.

My photography club recently had its first gallery show here on Saltspring and the other night Heather and I went to the opening. A hundred photographs covered the walls, shouldering each other aside in a bid to be noticed. I was sad to see that my own precious pieces were lost in the bravura performance of so many large, bright, beautiful, professionally framed photos. Here was an opportunity for me to understand my own way a little better.

Typically for me I had made my own frames, sawing, shaping and sanding the simple strips from the rough cedar planks I had earlier cut from my own trees, buying large sheets of glass and cutting them down to fit, gluing, spray painting and finally choosing mats and cutting them to frame my photos. The whole process took time but what pleasure to have my art work in tangible form rather than simply a computer screen image. I was doing what ‘tiggers do best,’ not letting my lack of cash stop me from achieving a high level of satisfaction.

The choice of which of my images I would display was difficult: how to fit in with the group has always been a problem for me, I`m usually off on my own adventure. No really edgy photos, I decided, and that cut out a lot! My choice came down to simple, non flashy, carefully composed, contemplative nature images. Small wonder then that they were lost in the shuffle. Here was the nub though, did I want to shine out among my fellows or did I wish to represent myself and my present interests? Really there was no choice to make, although it was painful to see my little creations squeezed so badly. I am on a personal journey after all, and my work will increasingly diverge from the usual standard. That is the most difficult thing, to trust my own passion and follow my own path even as it becomes more and more remote from the main road. That pain I`m feeling, that`s just the sign that I`m moving forward.

Nocturne.

‘The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o`er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.’
‘Elegy in a Country Church-yard’. by Thomas Gray

Three steps from the computer screen takes me out onto a second story balcony of my home and from there I stand watching the day fade slowly into night. This, along with the first glow of dawn is one of the most expressive moments of the twenty-four hour day. It is also difficult to photograph. A slow shutter speed is obvious, - the technical part - , but how to express in pixels the richness of the moment, the evocative, important part of the creative process?

Left to its own devices the camera will try to brighten up the darkness to a ‘correct exposure’ and that I must avoid, but how to catch the scent of flowers, fir needles and drying grasses. How to express the rich sadness that permeates the air as in the above quote from Thomas Gray? Once the image is in the computer I experiment with several possibilities. Perhaps by darkening the image and increasing the saturation of the colours? Or making it into a moonlit black and white? Or the same with a blue tint added? Lighter? More contrasty? Softer? The possibilities are endless.

While manipulating the image on the computer screen I am drifting into a nocturnal musical mood, feeling the mood within myself, and eventually settle on my first instinctive choice of rich colour and velvety shadows. Nocturne.