the morphing cup

I love tea. I am not this didactic in real life (well, sometimes I am - when it comes to how you brew in the teapot).

why draw

A great and moving post from Roger Ebert here.

He fondly recalls Annette Goodheart's lesson (and admits that it is what he remembers she said, not necessarily what she said, which I like):

Begin with a proper sketch book. Draw in ink. Finish each drawing you begin, and keep every drawing you finish. No erasing, no ripping out a page, no covering a page with angry scribbles. What you draw is an invaluable and unique representation of how you saw at that moment in that place according to your abilities. That's all we want. We already know what a dog really looks like. ...

I found this was a benefit that rendered the quality of my drawings irrelevant. Whether they were good or bad had nothing to do with their most valuable asset: They were a means of experiencing a place or a moment more deeply.

All makes me want to draw out in the world more.

My sketch doesn't look like me but it feels like me when I drew it.

the reason for my blog absence

Well, this is one of them. I've been baking. I'm taking a course.

a bit of a ramble (or...if I waited for fully formed ideas before acting I would never post anything)

I think that for a good few years I would have said I was looking for a unified theory to explain everything and propel me forward. I now realize (for me at least) that was a bit silly, the theory a bit of a red herring, idolatrous. I knew this for theology a few years ago (settling on one theology, so you can be some kind of -ist definitely not for me now). Trying to explain the infinite and unfixable with something finite and fixed just doesn't work.

That said, I love that we come up with theology (and with theories). I love thinking and talking about the way things are. Rambling. Talking nonsense is an important part of my creative process and a lot of my rambling is nonsense - but fun. I like an idea/theology that admits it is just a part of the picture, open to revision. (I need more conversation.)

This is why I love when people offer a story, a metaphor, a picture, a parable (any of that sort of thing) as part or the whole of their justification. Have to admit that I am not very good at any of this yet. (I would love to work on it.)

So not a theory but themes. What I am looking for are ways to process what is happening around me and beyond - the thoughts and feelings that these happenings provoke, the horror, the horror, the sad beautiful kaleidoscope. My drawing is part of this. Even though I feel far from it, I get that there is a style there somewhere and happy influences and some sense of what's going on. I want to move towards something that is spontaneous and vibrant enough to catch some of the extraordinary everyday.

There's a lot of work that needs to go into this. Most days I just scratch the surface. But I am trying.

All of which is to say, This drawing makes me really happy.

The idea for the drawing was stolen from here. For someone who is having a great go at telling stories at the moment try here.

2 more informers (facts are subversive)

...in a good way. Tim & Tom.
And because it feels like ages since I posted a drawing.

[Garton Ash] explains that facts are “subversive of lies, half-truths, myths; of all those ‘easy speeches that comfort cruel men.’” “In our time,” he writes, “sources of fact-fixing are mainly to be found at the frontier between politics and the media. Politicians have developed increasingly sophisticated methods to impose a dominant narrative through the media.” That is, among other things, an excellent description of American politics in the last two years.

jr has a plan

TED Prize Winner JR & INSIDE OUT from TED Prize on Vimeo.

...for this. Described here. Wonderful-imagination-space-changing-compassion.

shaun tan wins an oscar

...for this.

me again

two potters

Good interview with Mr. De Waal here.

At 10PM, Daniel Kitson Will Be Drinking Tea and Blowing Minds Again

Daniel Kitson has occupied quite a big space in my imagination since I saw him perform last month. This is partly because he has eschewed DVDs, books, TV shows, and the like so far. Because I do not know very much about him I keep on thinking about what I saw and wondering. This is part of his art, I'd say. It all remains quite immediate and this helps me start wee conversations with myself, which sets me off in pursuit of the windy ways of my own thinking.

It also helps that he writes sad and funny things like this (for We are Gathered Here):

Everyone you have ever known will die.

And so will you.

And yet we dance in the looming shadows of mortality, we dance and we talk and we eat and we argue. We read books. We care for people. We buy houses. We plant trees and we start to drive and we learn how to make milk frothy. Because something, somewhere in the middle of it all has to matter. As our seconds and minutes and days slip by, something has to be important. And who are we to giggle and point and sneer at what others have found to care about? Who is to say what is beneath us, what is not worthy of our hearts?

Everybody needs something to hold when it gets dark, so who am I, who are any of us, to point at anything and call it facile or redundant or stupid or rubbish

Even when it quite clearly is.

A new stand up show about finding something important in an ocean of twaddle.