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.