For Sarah...

That first chance I was rising early, earlier than the sleep deprived might want me so as coffee rich and strident raced through me beckoning me into a day I asked what I might do if I arrived whilst the sun hit the trees side on.

'Take a spade' was the answer, simple and to the point. 'To dig a hole?' was my reply but being so close to the quietness it rolled into this mind and found purchases eloquent and expansive of which I have learned to ride without questioning beyond a vantage of my own simple mindedness, my dumb naivety and a love of tools.

And with that I seek only to find the core, the source where fingers and thumbs learn to feel and my eyes watch with a sense of wonder that my mind can know so little.

So while the others sought to impress the experts with their knowledge of the current currencies I just wondered why must we have coins and what are these notes that allow our conversation.

So that's the first term over and I've found some minor celebrity which somehow allows me to be more obtuse, be seen pointing to dense thickets like brer rabbit knowing he can outwill the fox but the fox unheeding. I can play an even more irrelevant hand because people are curious.

But the march of the making of plans and being careful is full and strong and maybe even see's me as an enemy. Why? I know why because even though we might choose to start from stupid it doesn't mean we aren't allowed to see the map from higher elevations and if you drop that dull little pebbl;e into the wide stagnant waters you are allowed to stay and watch the ripples.

I see the place you choose to put me and I can be my own spy and secretly shine up the dull trinkets we all carry... and move them slightly so notice is thrown into corners.

Second term and madness is a conviction, though free, I am reminded of but threats are always a shining light for me... the jitters are appearing. But I'm enjoying my holiday, the world is a wide wide place and these freedoms given by a government have me playing in parks and discovering alcoves and I'm forgetful of serious intents.

Last minute I'm called to the stage, still in residence of privilege, so I find tools and just paint pretty pictures, old scores not even settled but dug up, possibly tired, for new action. And they yawn and stretch never realising that spinning new lies of consequence again wakes the sleeping giant.

Not even a photo hidden of the plank of wood and the spinny thing never mind the dull lump of mud but the encircling watchers have watched... the giant is waking.

What is the Giant? It's a giant.

It is the bored world with niches carved out and no interest in widening. Dull savant's only interested in their own glory asking for excitement for plunder for their own hordes. Pirates with big treasure laden but grounded ships expecting my little racy yacht to smash into the fatness of their relevance and renew the tired vigilance.

But I have no interest in this, I'm already gone and can see your broken hearts and my choice is even less for I must break them even more. I've tried to show you the tools I use and that's as far as I can go because I think I understand the questions you're unwilling to be seen asking.

So I'm gone but not easily forgotten. Maybe I'll go back... maybe I won't. I have a stash of good mud but it's quiet, it's resting. I'm uncovering the foundations of precious moments which will be the building of walls, not to hide a horde but to glorify and uphold, trinkets glued in and almost hoping the crowning ramparts will see me allowed to be mud frozen by fire... but that's still a future far off.

(That's my story, Sarah, of a year at the ASP, where I found technical stuff so utterly univigorating while I just wanted to play. Matt McLean was a hero, he's cool and Peter Lange had the blarney goin' on but seemed a little tired.)

300 words for an exhibition next July at Fresh.

I have what might be called a Love/ Hate relationship with Art though it's never really veers into hate, well, it never does, but it does go well into not caring much.

What that means is that I never stop being artistic, as such, I do very much stop caring about having a career in Art especially when I go into territories which could only be called craft and even into what might be called restoration.

I think what it is is that first and foremost I love stuff and how it relates to us as humans in the world we are constantly recreating around ourselves and Art, as a career, can be a part of that for me but it's merely a tool and not a product or end in and of itself. And that stuff, whatever it may be, always has a story. It either came to me with a story already told that I might frame and re-appraise in some way or it is in need of a story and, for me, that seems to be the all-encompassing life that is an Artful life. It's not the end product being sold in a gallery that be added to a CV, even though that's part of it, it's me on this planet, in this body, living in this country and finding ways to be best at what I do and passing those insights and discoveries around for discussion and review so that we all might find better ways of making this life, we all share, enjoyable and interesting.

So fads in the Art world have no real consequence to me. Yes they can be invigorating and inspiring and I'm more than willing to steal what I need but in the day to day experience of my life they're just like anything else on the periphery, mildly entertaining but essentially reasonably remote to what I see and feel everyday.

Maybe then it's that my whole life is my own fad. I am my own fashion which is the sum total of the places I've been, the people who are there and what they do within there own lives. So I guess that's what I want this exhibition to be about. That I am a man brought up and living in South Auckland who has decided to do it my way and at this time in my life, and always recurring, is a love of furniture. My pallet to tell stories of the past finding its future, through the now that is always of the greatest importance, is that of the things we use to sit on, store things in and place possibly more important things on. It's like making art of the frame, being a bit hidy hidy about what I'm actually saying, hiding in plain site.

And what will I be saying with a few scratch built pieces of furniture, a bunch of experimental works made up from discarded chairs and tabled pieced together with extras and some high end stuff redone from 60's and 70's South Auckland sitting room classics... and a few paintings done with spiritual discovery in mind?

I'll be saying thankyou to South Auckland for constantly inspiring me to live here and, guess what, we have a totally unique view of life and we need to remember that, not only is it more than enough to be proud of, but it's also more than enough for more conservative and richer places to start seeing us as the rich and diverse culture that we have.

Ideas having their time part2.

I think what's more important than ideas being found and brought more into reality is how they are fitted into society especially ideas where we might need the help of others. If an idea is couched in the wrong way and meets the wrong person for approval then it's not that it's time is wrong but it's placement and as time goes on and the ideas I'm given seem to be much more in this territory then it behoves me to think more about this idea of placing ideas where theres more chance of them being accepted.

And I kinda realise too that the idea itself doesn't matter so much as the underlying understanding that'll come from being more realistic about applying ideas in a way that makes their approval content greater and more likely to see fruition. It's like the flow of water and paths of least resistance so the idea is just the little boat and the placement is putting it on the water to see how the stream flows.

Getting the buildings behind the ASB in Grey Lynn using the Mens shed prototype combined with a art gallery of sorts then is the little boat and the stream of water is the ASB management hierachy and the challenge then isn't so much just about the boat but placing the boat within the watercourse where it'll have the longest journey.

Now the selling point to get the ASB on board is somewhat convoluted and would require quite a bit of foresight on the part of the reviewer to even see the relevance of such a step and what I have found over the years is that foresight is not something in common usage at least not in the lower echelons of commercial life. People are just trying to get on with the work they're given within a structured and understood model of how it all works and no matter how efficient a suggestion of change is it'll rock that boat so any rocking of boats has to be in a place where the boat has a chance to rock, can be viewed rocking, and any ripples created allowed time to wash on shores that won't destroy the marine life living on those shores.

This is why ideas need to find the right bay to be tested in. The idea doesn't really matter even if it's brilliant and required and all that other stuff... that's completely beside the point and the point is that structures in needing stability will resist instability even if it offers a greater stability in the long run.

This is the thing with structures. Our most efficient structures aren't actually structurally strong until the very last piece goes in and makes them stable and this requires, this type of building, a soft touch and alot of effort put into stabilising networks to get this unstable, until finished, structure working as a whole.

Mostly, what we do as humans, is overbuild from the foundation up where each successive layer is a structure in itself that allows each individual part to stand alone whilst other parts are added. Immensely inefficient really but it's a way of building that while limiting height and adding inertia it's something we all feel is safe because we add layers of rigidity, rigid upon rigid, and so safe footings upon safe footings.

The trouble with this though is that it becomes very difficult to change the structure. It can only really be changed from the top down simply because the top is resting on all that below it and if you take out parts of the middle or the bottom so much above it is reliant on that foundation of overbuilding then the whole becomes unstable.

Whereas efficient design of structures where all the parts are equally stressed to hold up the structure any attempt to enact change or modify the structure is felt by the whole thing and to remove one part is quite simple as it's job is determined by it's use and so all one has to do is remodel the use and add the required support to undergo change.

This is somewhat the same as the overbuilt structure except the quality of perception of change is modified by the rigidity of the layers of structure which inhibit the feedback through the structure and so change acts in convoluted pathways and is more easily misunderstood.

So while I can stand off to the side of the ASB as a structure and see that the idea I'm carrying is valid, that the banking giant would be in the advantage by being associated with changes in the economic environment which are yet to be easily seen and the simple fact of them being in possible association to such ideas is an advantage they would reap the rewards of without actually doing much... it is an altogether different proposition to see the benefits from within the structure of the ASB itself with all it's overbuilt preponderance.

Ideas having their time.

I went for my big drive out to the Northwest the other day and two ideas found me whilst doing so. Ideas, though, are something I've never been short of and even get to throwing lots away but this isn't about that.

The first idea was pretty straightforward and might have been a logical extension of dropping in to Adventure cycles to get some ball bearings for a particularly nice rolling pin. After leaving and being well impressed by Bruce's place and all the youngsters he has working with him and seeing his particular form of education which always involves people learning to teach themselves by always going beyond themselves and having to figure things out, as in risk, it may have been reasonably obvious to see the next stage of a transport revolution combined with a education revolution which is what the idea I got seems to be about.

Simple really, just have buses that go up and down the motorway and have stations along the way where the buses can stop. But the important part is taking out 1/2 of the buses sides and installing bike racks. I then discussed this with my brother yesterday and the logical conclusion he had was to supply bicycles on a mass scale so then we don't even have to carry them. Oh, and have fleets of little buses, and slightly bigger buses doing small circuitous routes that feed into the big buses on the motorway. Okay well and good... sorted but it ain't going to happen and heres why.

It couldn't be privatised and if it was it wouldn't work and that's our main problem these days. The divide between corporate and social welfare is a divide that doesn't need to be there but is ingrained in our society especially with the decision makers that seem only able to function from one side of that particular fence.

Because the next idea which came to me was in the form of a response to the ASB bank after having asked if I could possibly rent the space behind the Grey Lynn branch which has three garages and a courtyard. They said, the property manager, that they might need it so, basically, no one else can then.

My idea for the space was to have a workshop and gallery space set up which would revolve around doing up old things that are broken and in doing so get into that whole thing about taking care of what we already have but the trouble with such a setup is that it would have to be non-profit profit making or profiteering non-profit.

Basically what that means is that as a maker of money you do that to be able to get what you need but at the same time you are there to help others as well as enable them to save money. Its seems reasonable doesn't it and many people are already out there doing it but it's yet, as a business practice, to be accepted as a way of doing things in the charitable sphere... and it needs to be.

At the moment you either set up something that's for profit and be charitable where you can or you set up a charity but it's not allowed to make money in the sense of individuals being allowed to do so within the framework... except they do and this is where we end up seeing large charitable organisations taking on business models and employing managers and marketers to expand the donations and therefore expand the 'company'.

So underneath all this we actually have people realising that profit making and being charitable can work together and theres absolutely no reason why they shouldn't but we have yet to legitimise the practise which might even be as simple as naming it.

Crossover economics just came to me... purple money! Where the red of socialism meets the blue of capitalism.

Mens sheds are a good start

But, dare I say it, it's a bit silly ruling out half the population but in today's economic climate could they have called it 'the peoples sheds' or is that just a little too communistic? Either way the naming of it doesn't really matter unless the slogan still reads as more important than the content and if we keep moving in these types of directions then wahtever it's called doesn't matter and the sloganeers who've managed to divide and conquer the free expression of individuals regardless of their race, gender or creed will have had their days in the sun and be consigned, by their own obvious ineptitude, to the scrap heap of been there, done that, and it's fuckin' useless! Why did we ever buy into it!

I'm not sure what to call this one...

I read something the other day about how someone else dealt with anger and it was that they waited for as long as they needed before taking the person aside and telling them off... not whilst the anger might fuel pettiness but when the anger had dissipated and they knew the actions and could state them fairly.

Though an incident I was part of a while back didn't make me angry it confused me enough that I'm now using, in a slightly different vein, the same approach to state what I think happened. And while it is about one particular person I want to try and state things more universally and have no interest in being able to do a one on one with this person. It's not that I'm scared or unable to approach this person but I'm just not bothered anymore except I think they might somehow appreciate my view of the situation that occurred and I've chosen, for better or worse, to do such in a way that suits me.

It was about work we'd agreed that I'd undertake and it was stuff I understand. I understand it because even while I don't know all the proper time honoured procedures I am of a bent that I appreciate the design and engineering practicalities of most things and can usually work out what was and is that needs to be achieved. In this particular situation the hardware involved is of a type where all one needs to do is go buy the stuff thats worn out and replace it without adding stress so the parts can do their job with the minimum of interference.

But upon pulling apart the articles it was obvious to me a different type of cowboy had been there before me and that this particular cowboy had been good at what he did but it wasn't a way of working that I'm either proficient at or fond of doing unless it's an absolutely last resort. This particular cowboy was a silicone cowboy and silicone is a very useful material if used in places where replacement isn't an issue during normal wear and tear but silicone cowboys are experts in using it instead of old parts in need of replacement and a direct result of this is that taking something apart that has been done in this way is usually a minefield of interconnected abuse that needs entirely new parts from beginning to end or hours spent cleaning off the old silicone and doing the whole thing again with even more silicone. It can be done but by this time the replacement parts are cheaper than all the cleaning required so it's entirely impractical.

At this stage I am trying to let the person I'm working for then to know this but they became irrational because they were unable to understand the practicalities of the work involved and it wasn't long before I was being mistrusted and almost attacked for being incompetent and about to cause huge problems that would result in certified tradesman charging huge amounts of money to rectify. So then I'm sitting there still trying to explain what for me is still a totally rational set of problems which can be easily solved but the irrationality gets even bigger and more awesome that I realise this has become a metaphor for something else... something no amount of rationality will ever solve.

But what I do know is that I can go out and find the part I need as it's inorganic time and these parts are available in good condition and in abundance so I try this as a way to leave what is becoming a totally untenable position on my part.

And I'm driving around and nothing is available... and they're always there! This then leads me to believe that theres more going on and metaphor is indeed doing it's merry dance but I still have a problem to solve and have to figure something out so I go to a suppliers and look at the prices of brand new stuff, the whole thing from start to finish, as we need one at home ourselves for complete replacement and given this person I'm working for is looking in that direction anyways it's seems a good idea to go back and suggest this. I will buy a new bit, put it in for as long as it's needed then take it out when you've chosen the one you want.

So I go back and it's not good enough. Still totally irrational and unable to grasp the actual reality of the situation so I basically do what I can and get out as quickly as I can.

And I need to get home and let it all go as it's doing my head in. This person who I thought was one thing turns out to be something completely different as the work I'd done took them to edge I hadn't seen before. I had seen traces of it and just thought it was silliness without a foundation as such but blow me over it's a complete and utter foundation entire and solid as a rock.

But that's not what this is about. That's their business and my business is figuring out why I so often get caught up in these positions where the world is falling apart for others but for me it's nothing more than a few simple problems that can easily be solved by a mixture of time, money and careful problem solving. Just going out to put out the rubbish it came to me and it's that I'm very used, within my own work, being able to take myself to positions of utter irrationality, attempt the previously un-attempted, and know within myself that I'll be able to come up with something at least able, and usually more able, to solve the initial problem. Sometimes I've failed miserably, and learnt so much taking apart what I was trying to do, but usually I come out on top... wipe my brow and soak up up all the blood from all the cuts and bruises, and sit back and feel wonder at how it all came together.

But what I haven't mentioned yet is a huge amount of faith that I have to have in my inner voice that urges me to take all these risks. Over the years the risks have gotten bigger and bigger but with that my faith has grown and the ride has been glorious. And I think that's what people subconsciously want of me, for themselves, when they commission me to do work for them. They want the glorious outcome but are often as unaware of the price as I am... but I'm used to the price and I'm more than happy to pay it, digging deep into faith and trusting myself and my instincts that what I hope is in my heart will find a way through. The unawareness then is different. My un-awareness is conscious, it's a choice that I know the price but don't need to think that I'm unable to pay... whereas in others the unawareness is often unconscious, and even sub conscious, and when the time to pay arises it brings up a whole bunch of other stuff... opps.

Is it my fault then when the shit hits the fan? Well yes it is, I am responsible for my choice to be there, and back to the story I go, and so the next morning, though my legs were trembling and I felt sick to the stomach, I was urged by that quiet voice to go back into the fray and do the best I could to make things at the very least as good as I found them. So I did go back and I did find the part on the side of the road before I got there. I walked in and did the best I could and even received an apology of sorts but for some reason it didn't ring true and again that's not my business. My business was to make fast what needed to be made fast (as in working) then inquire, given the change in circumstances, how much further into the work I might be accepted to participate.

Hardly any was the answer. The whole job was gone but I was asked if one particular slightly problematic set of doings might suit me... and it didn't so I left and haven't been back since. I was hoping this person might come and see me but all I got was an offer to visit them to talk things over and up until now I haven't felt comfortable that I couldn't bring myself totally faithfully to the problems that were raised. I can within myself for my own problems because not long after I called into someones elses life to refit their domicile. That one went to the cleaners too and I've washed my hands of it... I'm getting good at that.

And what have I learned? Good question. I still don't know exactly and I may never know at least not the full implications but what I can do is try to be more forthright, at the beginning if people want me to do something for them, of the way that I work and what it might possibly entail... huge risks and ultimate failure and if you think it might end in Glory then be well prepared to pay a price that makes you uncomfortable. That may or may not be true but being that kind of honest might make them think twice about what they want from me.

In the end I really do want people to have what they want and I do hope it'll be what they needed from that want... 'Cause between want and need always seem to be where the issues come from and my problem is that I'm often quite thrilled at the problematic nature of the difference between want and need so I'll go marching in regardless of the obvious difference between the two. Even when I realise what someone needs and see that their want's cannot give them that and I try to open them up to what they actually need. And how arrogant that is of me? To even think I know what others need... Hey Mister, I just do what I'm told.

Last nights dream info...

Sometimes I have these really coherent dreams where it seems it's somehow important to take reasonably seriously the information or ideas that are discussed within the scenarios. Last night's was one of those where I woke up going "Where did that come from?"

It came from a weirdness where I went swimming with an old friend who was somewhat depressed, which I knew why, but wasn't interested in telling him straight out, but was because he was suffering living a life he thought he was supposed to as opposed to one he felt from the heart... so he was living a constructed self as opposed to his real self... but it's really hear nor there and I just suggested we go for a swim and at the swim place, which was pools, the interesting things happened.

There was like two pools and after a dip in the big kinda normal one I decided to go do some jumping into the little but deeper pool but I was told by the residents, who were all Maori or Pacific Islanders, that it was not worth doing... but I did it anyways.

And it wasn't worth it as the water surface had a surface tension that was really high and it was somehow a whole lot harder and more viscous and it turns out that a few guys needed it this way to do their tricks. I then argued, with the locals, that it wasn't fair to hold this whole other pool in a condition that only suited a few. The locals argued back that I was being racist and didn't like that these few individuals could do something and make use of something I couldn't. I said it wasn't a racist argument at all and that the point for me was that special conditions allowed a few to use resources that could be used by many. At this point one of the workers came on my side and supported my arguments saying that he indeed saw the reasonableness of my arguments but also saw the benefits of the few being held as special and being an encouragement to the many. I was encouraged by this and offered it was the special conditions that were at fault here and whilst being encouraging in the skills shown by the few where also dis-encouraging in a real sense by creating a threshold it was harder and harder for the unskilled to attain.

Then I woke up thinking wow... that's deep man. I knew exactly what it all meant but also felt somewhat daunted by the extra depth of the information offered within the arguments. Now I don't have any idea where this sort of stuff comes from, be it me or some other reality I have no idea about but it always feels like it's from something deeper and more knowledgeable than me, even if it from a deeper and more knowledgeable me, I feel a certain obligation to bring this understanding to more people. It could be in places like this or it could be in normal conversations.

So I've had ideas like this in the past and don't really pay them to much attention but in this case it may be time to address such in more depth. I remember back a few years ago when I was doing some stuff down at fresh gallery here in Otara where I'd end up in arguments where my point was that any artist is there for his community and not for the art establishment because most of the artists argued that they needed to win over the establishment, and be accepted, before they could bring their art back to the community... which I thought was ludicrous and basically self aggrandisment parading as art.

It' never worked and it will never work when battling the establishment and the only outcome there ever is that the practitioners become the establishment. The new artists that come through don't then see art as something that benefits their community as something they can bring to that community but as a career in which they must spend years gaining accreditation as opposed to a set of skills already grounded in the community in a sometimes naive way that can be widened and encouraged amongst greater numbers.

And it's special conditions that create this divide.

And it's often in the form of positive discrimination that these special conditions are applied. But don't get me wrong... or do, it's your choice after all, I'm not disenfranchised from the positive uses of positive discrimination and see them as a fair and equitable way to redistribute wealth but I do think more attention needs to be paid to the uses of positive discrimination when all it does is create new elites where the conditions of entry become so high only a few can hope to attain them.

I was talking yesterday to several people who wanted to know about my own artworks which were on display at the Titirangi markets. One of the things I hold high is being approachable and in this I mean not only being at markets but also such things as using commonly available materials and using tools that require skills built up over time. The anti thesis of this is this newish tendency to use digital tools and manual labourers to create art: this creates a special condition of required investment that raises the threshold of most people being able to see themselves capable of doing such things.

The only special condition I apply to my own art is one of time and this is simply because people must make that decision to use that resource themselves with the required sacrifice on their own part. Everybody has the resource of time at their disposal even while they might use the argument that they sacrifice time to obtain money so that they can buy time later... that's just silly.

I see far too much art out there that either relies on gender, racial or physical difference being of paramount importance or of some specialised knowledge and acquired intellectual difference which is then held up high by these special conditions and all it seems to do in the long run is re-establish an eliteism as opposed to widening and encouraging more engagement in the arts... in everyday life.

Not that everybody needs to or wants to be arty... that's not the point either, simply that societies that have alot of art going on always seem to simply be calmer and more confident about who they are.

I kinda found this with my year around potters and clay. There seemed to be far too much emphasis on the profundities of glaze technology, which required specialisation of knowledge, and the simple realities of being able to create forms with clay... but that's another story.

She's hard... and I told her so.

Without going into details I bought something somewhere that started a conversation ending in me saying I'd bring back two articles that the women I'd been talking to would appreciate adding to her collection. In figuring when I'd return with these articles I added to my list of needs that I could ask her if she sold stuff on behalf and if she did I'd give her these articles as a sign of good faith.

See, I want people to have what they want, I want them to achieve the happiness they seek and if I have something they want I want them to at least honour the fact that I possess what they want for some kind of a reason as I try to honour what others might have that I want from them. And it's about those relationships much, much more than the things themselves. It's like if something comes into my possession and I fix it up then I'm both finding it and fixing it up for someone somewhere and it is both an honour to be given that task and an honour to be part of  succession of events that lead to people relating to other people searching within life with that which might make them feel greater than they were and ultimately as great as they are.

Not that I'm a saint by any stretch as I suffer to from a sense of self without equal but I have enough moments of humility thrust upon me that always in the back of my mind, and trickling up from my heart, is a sense that I'm a part of something much bigger than just me and that remembering honour and trying to be honourable without thinking to much always leads to a greater peace and calm within me.

So when I found this woman and saw her joy at what I had for her it was slightly perturbing when she offered me a pittance for them and I told her she was hard. She said she needed to be because she was in business. What I saw, and felt, was that though she was collecting something that brought her joy she wasn't honouring the journey that brought it to her. She was working under a misguided idea that being businesslike, as in hard selling and buying (buy low and sell high) was the way that joy and accomplishment is achieved. Of course, such people are the last ones who'd ever get in a line to be told such so I just kept my mouth shut, accepted her amount and was told to go see the help to receive my payout.

Suddenly bells are clanging in my head as all honour I might have had in the handover is lowered to the floor of a cash transaction... and one requiring my identity be proved. But I still want her to have these pieces that gave her joy so as I stand there before the counter and the help does book things I figure I can just give them over and leave and hold my honour intact.

So I did. "Don't you want your money?" "No, I'm fine" and I leave. "You're sure?" as I walk up the stairs. "Yes".

It's not even that she who received what I left behind even has to consider how I acted. That's not my responsibility, it's hers to choose to or not but my responsibility is to honour my idea of what is worth honouring... which is just about everything even when people attempt to dishonour what I believe honour to be.

There's an old Native Indian farewell that is "Walk in Beauty" and this above is how I work such ideas into my own life. There is no dividing line between the crass reality of greed and selfishness and trying to live an honourable life. If there is it simply means you cross it more than you should... but in time one won't because the benefits of not crossing are far greater as what line there ever was vanishes.

And all throughout this experience the concept of honour didn't once cross my mind. I just did as I felt was right. Did as quickly as possible whatever sent doubts packing and got back to just being happy. In hindsight I can ascribe what might be honour to my actions but that's really just a word used to describe something after the fact. Who knows, maybe I was as self serving as she was and my actions have only made my delusions deeper and the truth, whatever that is, is still as plunged in the mud as it seems to be everywhere else in this mess we call modern life.

I don't know, I have no idea... but it felt right. I felt like a dog shaking off the water and mud and ready to go rub myself on some clean blankets.

A Spiritual life...

On and off I go to a place called Spiritual forums and at this very moment several of the threads I'm interested in seem to be coalescing into an overall depiction of where I might be at spiritually.

But before I go any further I'd have to say that the role of spirituality in my life is more important than anything else... even art. And it has been for quite a while, about two or three years now and somewhat coincidentally my removal from art as a motivating force and spirituality becoming prime are inextricably linked... as they should be.

It was the last show at Pierre's where I started quite late but once underway had spirit on my shoulder the whole way. So much work got done and involved huge amounts of risk but I just went with the flow of it all and stopped certain jobs when it seemed right and started in on others when they seemed right. All the while it seemed a huge task but it all came together at the end and I filled a room with all my own artworks... my first solo show!

The fact nothing sold though somehow seemed unimportant as I walked straight into working on expanding Pierre's gallery and even within that all the things that wanted done came easily into my imagination fully formed and somehow only requiring Pierre's faith and money stream to come into existence.

But Pierre ran out of money so I walked and by then I knew our time together was over. This is about when all the events leading up to the show made such an absolute sense that it would have been silly to expect things to go on in the same vein. Yes I could have made bigger and finer artworks and looked for another gallery to emblazon them within but that just felt pointless as it felt like I'd made all the points worth making within the final show and that the people who actually took any notice were just reminding themselves of stuff they already knew.

And the spiritual aspect, that for years anyways, I'd be working to bring less ego into the work... planned outcomes as it were, and just going within the materials themselves and fulfilling the requirements of a future generated within those materials had been the fulfillment I'd been seeking anyways and that this final show of work totally and utterly ended any need to progress further along those lines seemed entirely self evident.

Also at this time, about two years ago... maybe three, I'm not sure exactly, I finally had the time and the space, within deciding to let art go yet again (it has been a somewhat recurring theme throughout my life... as if this tendency from my youngest years always needs holidays more than I do), to really have a go go at a book by Eckhart Tolle called "The Power of Now" which had been suggested to me as a good read by someone from my past who's spiritual judgement I hold in high esteem.

The thing is I started meditating when I was still a teenager and merely used it as a relaxation technique and have been doing it on and off for years and I think that getting the Eckhart Tolle book and it's aim to have one stop ones thinking and just be within the moment really felt like the next logical step in my life.

Logical too because I've always been a lucky son of a gun and for years previous to this the need to make money to exist has been almost eradicated so for almost a decade now I've been ablt to do whatever I decide wants doing... to the extent that I've looked back at several things I got interested in and wondered how I ever found the money to get so deeply into tinkeriing and discovering certain lines of enquiry which never seemed to make the money to keep doing them. I don't think about it though and always just put it down to luck and just keep being curious and taking the odd risk that looks like it'll be fun!

But back to the art which had been veering right into non thinking anyways. All the artworks of at least the last decades worth were either visions that popped into my head fully formed or things I started from scratch and just followed within the context of what the materials seemed to want to achieve. No planning or drawing, except the least possible to get me started, and being within the moments of what was directly in front of me or what was on the edges waiting it's turn.

So the art was no longer an end in itself but a tool of a spiritual nature that I was learning to use and not only that but once these artworks were created it was like they then became directive of connections within life that led to further unfolding of the true reality underlying existent life.

Then I basically meditated for about a year whilst reading the Power of Now and giving myself completely to the discoveries this involved... it was glorious year that ended on the precipice of enlightenment, and enlightenment that was engulfing me but was held back by residual fear. Residual fear I had no idea was there but was there indeed!

This then led me to pondering how the enlightened soul lives within life. I felt, and could be wrong, of course, that if I was still alive then that meant doing something or other to continue existence and that whatever it was, and an enlightened soul, needed to exist together, in and of the same body, without resistance and that these residual fears, whatever they might be, needed cleansing and to be without resistance within living... I think.

What's really quite beautiful though is I really have absolutely no idea what's going on. I'm still bludgeoning my way through life like a bull in china shop and still creating big huge messes all over the place but I'm calmer than I've ever been. Or to be more precise I'm still frenetic and whirling but I've tasted enough of that absolute calm and quiet that resides within all of us that I'm no longer as concerned with doing it right as I might have once been. It'll work itself out regardless and though all my past pain is with me almost all the time I'm accepting of that and willing a friendliness with that pain, an nonresistance that has it slowly diminishing at it's own pace.  It's not hiding somewhere deep inside of me anymore and pushing me towards revealing itself... it's here and now and that's fine!

And one of the reasons it's all good, no matter what, is the glimpses deep meditation has brought to me of what may be the ultimate reality... or what I can ascribe to such, which is just such absolute bliss, total peace, stillness and contentment that even the words used to describe them utterly fall short of the being within such.

I mean art's still neato and I may even get around to doing some more but I doubt it'll ever have any real meaning from here on in and just be something, like everything else I do, I do to pass time... well that doesn't explain it so well, something to be within time... if that makes any sense.

Being of this life but not of it at the same time.

I just went outside to get some plumbing stuff and reminded myself of what a glorious mess my life is... all the tools and bits of wood and weeds spreading accross all my attempts to put nature in it's place, it's all just such a great intertwinning of in- consequence I'd be hard pressed to tidy up in the decades I might have until I finally leave this mortal coil... but what that's really means is I'm home at last.

The task is to just tidy it all up now so whomever has to deal with after I'm gone... doesn't have too much to do. It may turn out that the finished result is actually art.

The Art Fair?

Long before I even thought of the possibility of being an Artist I had been introduced to the environment of selling commodities through buying an end of lease Musical Instrument store in Otahuhu. It was about 1990, or thereabouts, and the owner was over it and uninterested and with a loan from my parents I bought the shop usage.

Then came a short period of realising that I had to buy stock, and which to actually buy, as I got used to the day to day running of a business. Prior to '87 I had a landscaping business I built up from nothing and in both instances, within the Music world I'd been teaching myself how to repair and maintain guitars, mainly electric, it was about having a skill I could market and then finding a way to engage with the publics needs. The music shop was really interesting as it was my first foray into garden variety retailing where you buy stock and resell it within certain accepted percentages. That's to say that the margins for profit where reselling at half again what stuff cost to buy.

I realised almost straight away that I sold more if I lowered those margins but that's another story. The point was that as a seller of articles I bought the merchandise and sold it on and the only thing that really mattered was choosing the right articles to sell.

So what struck me as obscene as I found my way into the Art World was that the seller not only didn't have to buy the article but they didn't even pay the rent to show the article as all this was passed onto the artist as costs for the show.

I can understand this, to a certain degree, if an artist is unknown, as the Gallery owners are taking a risk in showing unseen art and this then gives the art world it's defining gesture which is that it is a speculative field and therefore the understanding is that the artist supplies the work and pays for the chance to do so and the dealer puts up their reputation.

But when you go to the art fair it is patently obvious that this isn't so. Well, on the surface we have this speculative gesture, this parading of the new and the vanguards of progress, but it's only a veneer and a veneer that is getting thinner and thinner as costs rise to the dealer to have their chosen stock brought before the public.

And it seems to be that while there is a limited availability on money to be spent on the purchase of art, and one supposedly dwindling as the global economy crunches down into survival mode, there is absolutely no shortage of minds and hearts wanting, by guilt of association, to be a part of this commercialisation of the intelligentsia, and so this gives all the credence the dealer network needs not to be held morally accountable for the way in which it defines it's economic viability.

To me it is very much alike the corporate piracy of the recent few decades where the factories that supply small hand to mouth towns with their survival are bought out and sold off by ripping out the machines and on selling to the highest bidder. Short term profits by the capital holders are held higher than the long term survival of the non capital holders who rely on the industry to allow them trading their labour for existence.

So while we walk into the "Art Fair" we might wish that we see as much art as we can and that it be a fair representation of what art actually is but we see nothing of the sort. What we do see is a small select portion of what is art that has been hand picked to provide the survival of the dealers of that product.

Case in point is that the little side show provided for aftershow entertaiment at the letting space which shows 16 little vids of interviews, only 2 are with artists. That's 12%... which isn't much. The other 88% of commentary is provided by the hangers on who define the content after it is created which is alike Fonterra is to farmers and imagine if the ownership of Fonterra was split the same way!

And this reason all of this happens is just the same as why the corporate raiders are able to denude countries economic bases with such gay abandon. The resource is always expanding. The natural resource that is art production is always there with willing confederates who will jump at the chance to force feed the mill with it's produce. The mill is the gallery network and it's stands at the river mouth of the great natural resource that is art and it pollutes and defiles it. It does absolutely nothing to conserve and keep for posterity the magnificence of natural creative intent.

Ok, I'm being overly dramatic but it's only to make a point and I don't blame the dealers for making use of the resource... they know not what they do, and I don't blame the artists either. I don't actually blame anyone because non one is to blame. Finding a scapegoat to burn on the pyre of righteousness is just silly and it never solved anything in the past nor will it change our futures for such moralistic depictions are actually symptomatic of the causes that create these types of problems in the first place.

So then it behooves me as the depicter of a problem to then offer a solution. Maybe when a far greater amount of people see it as a problem then it might be time to think about possible solutions but at the moment when the problem parades as the solution it seems somewhat moot.

The Old Man's treasure.

On this previous Monday I decided to find the inorganic and do a little searching and listening as I had quite a good day selling on the markets of Sunday so I wanted more interesting stuff which I could use to barter in the realm of psychological tendencies at the end of this month. But it's also very much a tuning up exercise as we drive about quietly reviewing swags on the verge and listening for intuitive insights.

Theres a sense of treasure waiting to be found that encourages me to do this, a memory of a future where I have the thing or things at home later and I'm sitting there appreciating the Humanity that made such a thing possible. So while I pass pile after pile of sadness and lack theres usually something telling me that to keep going will eventually unearth vitality and relevance, like a brightness shining just beyond  the next hill, or an old song so soft it can hardly be heard.

Eventually I was simply drawn to a meagre pile which just had two small wooden logs which weren't the branching parts so would split quite easily for firewood, well at the least the bottom one was while the top was a wood lathe blank of especially interweaved growth and at this time the old man who'd built the review of no longer wanted came walking up to chat... and chat we did.

I expressed that I'd finally set up a wood lathe and especially like the meditative dimension of having to take time to get what we wanted and this seemed to be the response he was after and he invited me onto his property to see something that might interest me. I've learned that to be invited is always brings a deeper unfolding than asking and that the expression of ones own delights will always yield more than specifically digging through desires that demand quenching.

In a little room off the back of his garage was his wood turning area and my eyes were drawn to a line of old chisels on the bench which were all haphazard and unmatched but what he offered me was a set of unused Marples chisels at a bargain basement price of five bucks each, so forty for the set still in box, and, of course, my response was that that was too cheap and I'd be happy to give him a hundred for them.

For some reason I then mentioned a motorcycle in decrepit condition that I'd seen on the other side of the rubbish territories which had caught my eye as a potential project to keep me in trouble (later in the day I went back as my knocks on the house door had not been answered and my thought was that the owner was at work so an evening inquiry would be more suitable to answers... which it was but this broken motorcycle was a testament, a monument, to Police brutality as the owner stood in the darkened doorway of this old house which had obviously been passed to him by parents now deceased or at least very close to such and that this incident in his past was now his identifying gesture within a world he no longer saw as a place to embrace his courage and determination... sad, and no motorcycle for me... yet, as I did actually leave a note in the mailbox with an offer and my phone number and given such individuals can often get into trouble with forgotten bills then I just may get a call someday) and this too lit up the old fellows eyes with a sparkle of shared inconsistencies and he led me then to the garage under the house and opening to the street.

And such treasures! It seems his own eye was such that the same type of ugly appealed to us both... the type of ugly that was so of it's time that it was passed over so quickly and discarded even quicker that it rarity now is the stuff of legends, legends in the making which are always better than legends kept alive, and so we did the little dances of voice that enamoured us to the other as we passed from cold artifact to even colder artifact, going deeper into his cave, and my brain became chained to my heart and laid sticky rubber burnouts across futures even I'm loathe to fill.

I left with a light heart soon after as the old chap was tiring without any promises or commitments and only him telling me to think on it for a while then return.

Then I went back yesterday with my heart in my mouth feeling like I was stomping across the broken glass shards of a dream so I walked especially softly as I asked that I be able to list the things and photograph them. Now two hours hence I go back for my appointment and I feel less inclined to own any of the things, not because they aren't beautiful and wouldn't enjoy their company but because the dream is turning to reality and I remember that such things all to often just become more things.

So my responsibility, if indeed I have one, is to become an agent of sorts... maybe. I'm not altogether sure but uppermost is that this older recipient of dreams still has them even while they may be fading and that those glories demand I walk back into his life with humility and respect. I don't actually know if I'm capable of such and that if I do call him Sir, like all those polite American youngsters do in the movies, would it be empty of validity, would it be a false oath to a fealty I do not feel?

The acquiring of stuff seems almost mote somehow and that the challenge is to create bridges between the few others, maybe even me, who might come into possession of such gold as is on hidden display, and the guardian at the gates so that little is lost of the intangible parts of such concrete depictions. I don't know and may be guilty of adding nobility where it has never resided... or maybe that's what it's actually all about... that nobility is where we put it, despite what it is supposedly represented by.

I actually sold stuff...

I tried a different tack yesterday at the Grey Lynn Car Boot sale that actually ended up with sales. I took in old stuff, not made by me, which I have been keeping for projects but decided they won't ever be used but then used that need to cherish them still to set the prices fairly high. I always treat selling as more of a game now than any actual imperative to accumulate money and in this instance the choice of articles and demeanor in stating their value seemed to come together to end in the exchange of currencies.

It has always, in my life, been a source of intrigue and curiousity as to what others find valuable and worth buying. And not so much the thing itself as much as the reasoning and/or the emotion we might use to ascribe value to something.

And, of course, apart from the items or articles that allow us to be warm, fed and sheltered nothing else really has any use other than the defining gestures of personality. You are what you wear is actually you think you are what you wear because you are you no matter what you wear so it's the thinking that makes the difference.

This isn't new stuff and goes as far back as anything else does but can be locked down fairly easily to Buddha and his teachings as the source of all suffering. I'm sure others came across such insights in way, way distant past but I would suppose Buddha was one of the first to have enough critical acclaim to knot the rope of consequence around him as the first but who knows maybe the terrible trio of Plato, Aristotle and Socrates were also onto the same kind of thing.

But what it is safe to say is that for as long as human kind have had the gift of language to converse in we've had a few on the edges wondering why we do what we do and then comes the question of what is done with that speculative wondering.

In a sense that brings us back to the beginning of this narrative where I might be saying not that I make and collect things to sell but that I make and collect things so I can engage the mysteries of selling, the playground of wants, needs and desires.

To do so means one has to be in what might be called an enviable position or what is more often called lucky but though I'm a fan of being lucky it's so vague a position, a kind of unchallenged talent that arrives and leaves on the mists of chance that it doesn't really offer us much definable ability to ride with clarity and precision it's waves and eddies.

Because with all the people I see in enviable positions it's always the result of choices, even whilst many don't see their positions as enviable or can connect the dots that see the results of choices made.

But above and beyond choices it's always about money being far more important or far less important than is normally the case and interestingly enough the difference between realising ones enviable position seems always to be about the difference in importance of money. Therefore it's alike the clothes we wear and the thinking we ascribe to those clothes in setting our position in others eyes.

"Adversity is the state in which man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then."

John Wooden 

I heard this quote the other day in the movie Battleship and for that alone this Hollywood attempt at Blockbuster success was worth all the other heroic gestures so esteemed by the modern state of the middle American. Why? Because it's not anywhere as deep as it could be, doesn't tell us the whole story, but is a wonderful start to begin describing what adversity even is. Again the clothes we wear.

But I just remembered, I gotta do stuff, I gotta empty my brothers van of stuff and get it back to him so this thought just popped into my head.

Buddha might have said, I don't know, that's it's neither uphill or down hill, there is no hill... you are the hill.

That's a bit silly... but I get it, 

Do what we must or what they ask?

I've just finished up with someone who wanted me to work with her crreating a new interior for her families living space and after about 40 hours of discussions she said that my view of life is incredibly distorted.

And it must be, distorted, because I'll always go for what feels right over what people actually want because the two are often very far apart. I think that's it's all this literature and TV out there now that makes people think they're experts in given fields, or at least knowledgeable enough to know what suits them, so they think they know what's best for them. That's all well and good if they're prepared for the consequences but most people aren't so the job of anyone who is knowledgeable in any given field is to try and ascertain what a person wants within the deepest part of them and come up with solutions that allow those needs to be met.

To illustrate that this person I was working with wanted to impress people and have them think she was elegant and stylish through the choices she was making and if I had done what she asked I would have been paid but she would have ended up even more insecure in herself as the outer facade became another barrier behind which the real her could not be seen or given time to expand within. Just a new layer of protection against becoming what her heart truly desires.

Whereas I believe I saw what she wanted which was to have an interior environment which would allow her to grow in strength because the choices made for seats and shelves and floor coverings were an admittance of the true life she led and that this admittance of truth of what we are is what builds our confidence and therefore has people admiring us for those choices based in honesty.

But not just the honesty of what we are as individuals but the acknowledgement of shared spaces within a family that allow the inherent strengths and weaknesses of each member to find the space to be themselves and grow against and within that sharing of a space.

The trouble with such lofty sentiments of possibility is that I can't explain in logical details why the solutions I come up with are valid because the way they come to me are without a planned and implemented process of deduction. They are just visions that come into my head and feel so right that to deny them validity would be silly.

So now after forty odd hours of being told my powers of observation are acute and my perception of underlying values were uncannily defining I now have a distorted view of reality...

Why? Because I suggested this woman needed to see a therapist. Because in the final few hours I finally met the husband and viewed a dynamic, between husband and wife, that was sorely in need of fixing and carrying on with my work with them would bring a crisis neither of them wanted but both of them actually required.

Now I have to go out with a van load of stuff and sit in a cold carpark in Grey Lynn and see if I can find any other individuals willing to bring me into their lives offering things that will helpfully enable them to be more of what they really are... yup, I'm definitely distorted!

Resurfacing or new foundations?

On my other blog I went on about using a space in Oranga to do various things and sent a letter to the Mayor asking if I could. They said no.

This raises quite vital questions for me which are basically about me having designed myself to do specific things in a specific way and finding the world I live in has absolutely no use for that way of doing things.

It all started a very long time ago but the short story is of being open to ideas and visions that require my skills to come into being. Take this with a grain of salt though as it is my understanding that even being capable of recieving these ideas and visions requires an outlook of an empathic nature that though not completely selfless is moving into that territory. But as I have become more proficient at bringing whatever is required into being.... into being, the resistance of others to those visions has become more pronounced. It's as if my own acceptance of such inevitabilities are completely un-inevitable for others and this has brought me to a point of asking myself why I even bother.

I'm also fully aware that this may seem entirely self congratulatory and that I'm awash in my own in-consequence and striving to defend a mirage of usefulness both to myself and the world... but I realised long ago, as I said above, and have ruminated vastly on such, is that we cannot see what is possible unless we are faithful servants of the impossible... that is to say that the element of risk almost has to become alike breathing... not thinking just doing and letting the outcome be what it may.

And now it seems almost pointless, which I understand, trying to save the world... especially when I'm asked to do so. But I'm glad actually, it's about time I reset my priorities and had a bloody good look at the foundations I've built for myself.

Just on Sunday I was at the City Library... it had occurred to me that morning that it would be a good place to visit, and upon entering they'd changed things around so my initial idea of getting to know the comic book shelves was thwarted as they were not where they were before but that's what librarians are for even as they carry that look of being supremely interested in somewhere else except for where they are.

So after bothering the noble carer of tomes I headed into the labyrinth of streetwise insouciance strutting through it's own nonchalance... well the modern stuff anyways the seems to revel in brevitable awkwardness and the inability to draw properly with captivation of it's audience in mind, alike most post modern art, and I was within the comic book section and found quite quickly what I didn't actually know I was searching for. I found an illustrator who'd done a specific illustration which was an answer to a question I didn't get around to answering the last time I seriously put paint to canvas. As soon as I saw it I realised I had a hankering to solve that particular problem and even remembered the recent questions I'd asked myself which were, in hindsight, hankering back to that unsolved question. 

Knowing then that I was onto something, following my muse, hearing the voice of God, unearthing a future germinating in the black soils of now... whatever you want to call it I went up the stairs to the Art section with nothing in mind except the possibility of older style comics and happened to pass one of those trolleys with books yet to be returned to their warm shelves. One book stood out but upon looking didn't do anything so I walked on and the little voice said go back... so I did, and found what was calling.

Being inspired has never been a problem for me... being bothered is where things get difficult. This why I've come to allow such mystical intrusions into my life... because I'm lazy. These channellings of what could be, and normally obviously so, kind of set out a path that's always interesting and not so much for the outcome we might suppose is relevant but for the irrelevance that churning through such mud unearths. It's like a get out of jail free card, collect 200 bucks, and be back at the start. A covered walkway that stretches ahead and features a playground to play in and when I can be bothered doing anything play is my favourite thing!

But I've got to regard this impetus to play with colour with a realisation that I might be choosing painting to simply put off a duty within myself to give due regard to my last big speculative outing where I filled a gallery up with objects and none of them sold. The thing is paintings take no less time, far less materials and best of all pack down to almost nothing if the buyers of such decide they don't want to own them.

Then again an option slightly nefarious has raised it's head whereby I can pay for my Gas bottles rental and get them filled... as well as replacing my hoses which are 30 years old... at least, and blow holes in themselves every time I use them now, which is a slightly dangerous state of affairs... and restock the steel and make some big shit!

Ok, I've re-read the top and I remember what I'm on about... now that's a pertinant way to end this. I don't fully remember though, but enough for it's relevance to eventually find it's way into my observable reality.