Category: art

The Boat

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Let me be… let me be, let me travel from land to sea, why oh why d’you put me here, this land around is full of fear.

The sea is where free energy flows, the water is, all I know.

Let me float with wind and tide, let me escape these humans who have no eyes,

No eyes to see what’s wrong, no freedom to feel their inner song, to shout out loud, to feel their soul, they just dig and dig inside their hole.

But when they realise they are in too deep, the sides to climb are just too steep.

So please release me from this tree and let me feel the water, surround me.

Ugly

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They were breathing heavily as they crossed the motorway. It had been a long walk along the side of the fence until they had found a way up and over. They crossed the lanes quickly as the traffic was thin and now with fatigue setting in they needed somewhere to sleep. Slipping and sliding across the loose earth on the banks below the metal barriers, they slowly forced their way through the thick brambles towards the silhouette of a building in the distance.

After 40 minutes or so they arrived, the windows and doors boarded up but the building looked solid. A concrete masterpiece. After a few minutes they found a gap in the fence and had climbed the sharp edges of the spiral staircase, when they reached the top Billy pushed forcefully against the old door and it caved in.

Old and New

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James stood there looking out at the horizon. He smiled to himself as the blues and pinks blurred together where the sky met the sea. He raised his hand, held an imaginary brush and started to paint, softening the lines where the colours met, blending them together in his mind.

After five minutes of work, the colours started to change, he stopped, sat on the tree stump and cocked his head.

‘needs more orange’ he said to himself out loud…

…and continued, dipping his brush into the pallet and detailing the new colour infusion. How quickly things change, how hard was it to capture a moment. His thoughts drifted away from the make believe painting to how the horizon might have looked before the huge electricity poles, before all the houses and industry soaked up the water of the valley like a sponge. ‘I bet even then the sunset then would have been different. Green perhaps?’ he laughed to himself.

His thoughts continued a pace, ‘maybe 30 years ago the electricity poles would have looked so ugly on the horizon, but now they are strangely attractive, I wonder what human ugliness will bring next, and how we will start to love it.’

Complex

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Joe picked up the dandelion and a little milk spilled out from the stem, he looked at it, ‘the blood of the lion’, he whispered to himself twisting his head in acknowledgement. Thoughts about writing science fiction and fantasy sprung into life. ‘Real world situations’ how could they be transformed into fantastical elements that would bring a smile to readers faces. You know, the ones where the ‘rules’ in the fantasy world are created and then some real world application is given clarity later in the book. You put the book down and smile to yourself, nodding in appreciation. That’s a good moment he thought to himself. But milk from the dandelion… hmmmm maybe not.

He pushed the flower further away from the lens and clicked the shutter… then pulled his head back as the imaged flashed up on the lcd screen. ‘Wow…’ he sighed, ‘complex’. He pinched the screen to zoom in a little further, the seeds were beautiful, they fit perfectly into each other, one leaning on the next delicately touching the heart of the plant, holding on but not too tight. He smiled and looked back at the plant, blew and watched the seeds helicopter away with the breeze.

‘Hold on but not too tight’ he thought to himself.

The Wild

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She stumbled around inside the house looking for something to protect herself with. The dogs had been barking for the last 10 minutes and she now would have to be brave.

‘Nobody passed by…’ she said to herself. ‘No one…’ She scolded herself. ‘Stop it… It’s probably just a…’ The dogs let out a loud chorus. She picked up a knife and walked to the door.

Slowly she prised the door open to catch a glimpse of the intruder. The dogs howled again, but she couldn’t see, what was the cause of their anxiety? Then from behind the petrol pump stood a man dressed in black, black leather trousers and a jacket to match, his shoulders square and eyes shaded from the sun behind dark lenses. She pushed the door toward the frame reducing her vision but adding a greater sense of safety.

She held her breath as the man walked towards the gap in the fence, as he moved the dogs backed down, maintaining the volume of their alarm high starting to cower. All bark and no bite.

‘Kalimera’ the man cried out and she slammed the door shut.

Dragons

Posted in art, beauty, children's story, emotion, escape, Photograph, simple, spiritual, worldTagged , , , Leave a comment

I remember playing with the kids, I remember what it was like to step into a room of children and feel their expectations. They were always ready to have fun and cause mischief. But the greatest thing about the children is that they didn’t carry any of the adult shit their heads, their minds were simple and they saw the beauty and excitement in everything.

That’s what inspired my journey, that’s why I left the city I wanted to look and to stare at the simple things, see the beauty in the ugliness, see the beauty in all the small things that we ignore. I wanted to look at things with a child’s eyes, to not worry about what everyone thought, to turn the brain off and kindle the excitement inside me for the world and the people in it.

… and so I did, I stopped to look at things and found Dragons.

Boredom

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‘Sorry mate. It’s a nightmare, there are so many conversations going on at once, I don’t know who to answer.’

‘I didn’t have one conversation’

‘Yes we did, we talked about Muji’

‘You talked about Muji’

Silence… John sat back in his seat and drank his coffee, his mind was a blur with questions and answers, for jobs he had to do that day, for people he had to see and for Mary, he had to spend some time with her. But he knew those things should wait, he needed to speak honestly with Chris, he knew he was unhappy and he wanted to listen to him, but then he had to go and help Rebecca.

‘What you gonna do for Christmas?’

There was a long pause as Chris stared out of the window toward the sea. ‘Duno, go to Turkey?’ He said asking the question to himself.

‘Or stay here?’ John encouraged.

‘Hmmmm…’

Chris picked up his empty glass and walked toward the bar. As he did Elizabeth burst through the door.

‘John, hey mate, how’s it going?’

‘Yeeees, how the fuck are you?’ John shrieked standing from his seat.

Elizabeth slalomed through the tables and jumped up into John’s arms, they held each other smiling.

‘I missed you’

‘Yea me too’

‘We need to…’ Elizabeth burst into a long monologue about the potential theatre ideas she and John had been discussing over the last three months, John listened and in the background Chis slipped away. He attempted a goodbye, but it was too late Elizabeth had all of John’s attention.

Chris walked toward the beach, along the promenade, his mind empty, not angry, not sad, just empty. The path was deserted, old, abandoned and in need of a lick of paint. His eyes jumped from one closed building to the next. Bored, the grey on grey reminded him of his own thoughts. He sighed to himself desperate for some inspiration, but kinda happy there wasn’t anything there. He kept walking until he was far enough away from the hubbub of the cafe and sat down next to kiosk.

Sometimes Leaves Go Up

Posted in art, beauty, chase, drama, escape, feel, game, meditation, Photograph, Play, scene, storyTagged , , , , , Leave a comment

They ran, they ran and ran, they couldn’t stop, not to think, not to look, not to pause for thought. They were making all the wrong decisions, they went right instead of left, they tried to scramble when they should have stuck to the path. They called to each other when they needed silence. But they tried. They both knew that there was a way, they both wanted to find a way, but every decision they made ended in a clash and because of this, they stopped. They stopped trying to escape and were caught.

And here only when hope was gone, when captivity was inevitable did they see each other, they felt each others touch, the pain and friction between them melted away, they looked into each other’s eyes and their hearts beat together. Despite the desperation in their situation, they smiled and felt the warm glow of each other’s love.

They turned away from each other, away from their captors and looked out across the countryside, the landscape was wild, unkept, the terrain uneven and the fauna sharp and aggressive. But there was a peacefulness to the energy, an acceptance from the couple in their fate. They smiled together and looked up to the clouds. As they stared towards the sky the autumn leaves rose up above them swirling, spinning, drifting, bouncing like a butterfly… sometimes leaves go up.

Big Kids

Posted in art, blue vein, challenge, Childhood, children's story, drama, Everything, feel, friendship, game, imagination, macro, old, Play, scene, story, thoughts, toyTagged , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Things moved fast, life didn’t change much, but there never seemed to be a moment to pause. There was always someone to chat to or laugh with, and you were always close to them, parked up next door or across the road. You could drive somewhere else, but inevitably someone would turn up and then play would resume.

The funniest times were when crews with children turned up, two little rat-bags running around the wild, covered in dirt, but beaming with smiles. It was great to see them play, their imaginations were alive, their toys broken but ingrained with evidence of many stories.

It made me think about our own family, maybe we were all just a bunch of big kids and moving fast wasn’t such a bad thing, maybe it kept our own imaginations alive.

A Little Magic

Posted in art, beauty, birds, challenge, climbing, imagination, landscape, nature, scene, story, thoughts, Why?Tagged , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Sometimes I have to tell myself to look around, to stop and appreciate what’s around me. But most of the time I just stare at the rock. It’s hard to look around when your focus is elsewhere. But one day I will, it will probably be too late and I will have missed the chance of a good view, but I promise myself, when I am old and can’t climb as much, I will stop to look around.

Despite promising himself the time to look around was going to be later, Matty was surprised. He was up early at the top of the cliff, he and his climbing partner James had stayed the night on the rocks and were preparing to continue their assent. Dawn was breaking and the light was blue. Matty turned to look at the pitches below him, to seek out the valley floor, but his view was interrupted by the clouds marching in below him.

The valley quickly filled and Matty nudged his mate to wake him. James opened his eyes slowly, sat up on the ledge and let his sleepy eyes dance across the bed of clouds.

‘Wow’ he announced, ‘That’s pretty fuckin cool’.

The two climbers sat in silence breathing in the air letting nature show off in front of them.

Two hours later and the boys were climbing again, making their final push to the top of the cliff, as Matty sat in his harness belaying his friend he thought back to the morning clouds and the excitement they had inspired. Taking his eyes off the rock face he looked to the sky. Above him Vultures circled flying down to his level, swooping below him and then in wide arcs returning up, out of the valley into the clear blue sky. It was a beautiful sound as they passed, huge wings beating slowly, majestically, Matty could almost feel the air they pushed in his direction. He smiled to himself. He smiled back at mother nature.

‘Safe’ James called. The signal that he was secure at the anchor of the pitch. It was his turn to climb.