Sketch for a Catalogue
Jottings and ideas for a catalogue – the sketch is the first step to something becoming a reality…
Creativity
What the Goldberg Variations show me
I’ve been listening to Bach’s ‘Goldberg Variations’ today. It’s a change from the ambient and drone music that I usually play whilst working. I played the recording made by Glenn Gould in 1981. It’s been a favourite of mine for years. I have a collection which includes Gould’s earlier recording from 1955. The way he … Read more
How the team works: live music at Vale Park
It’s a beautiful space. On the banks of the River Mersey is a small park called Vale Park, not far from New Brighton. It’s nestled behind trees through which you can look out at the river and see the profile of Liverpool against the sky. The city’s profile has changed radically in recent years with … Read more
Emulating Young
As I write this post, I am listening to a music track randomly chosen by my iPad. It’s a track called “Driftin’ Back” by Neil Young and Crazy Horse from the album “Psychedelic Pill”. It’s a glorious twenty-seven minutes plus in length. A long jam of a song. And yet at no point in the … Read more
Experimental VI – a memory box
In the early 1980s I worked for a couple of years as a Community Artist. I was part of a team of artists from different disciplines. We worked with a diverse range of people from 8 to 80 years old, most of them with some sort of special need. Sometimes we worked on our own, … Read more
alice reimagined
Back in 2004 I wrote a booklet of poems called “the alice conversations“. 13 poems in a short booklet, it was a set of dialogues and conversations with Alice. When I first began working with Carl Jung’s theories of archetypes and active imagination, I developed a set of characters that would reappear frequently in my … Read more
Experimental V – music with or without an audience
I have mentioned before on this blog that I am a huge fan of the work of David Sylvian and Richard Skelton. An initial google might lead you to think that these two have very little in common. Sylvian began his career in the last 70s and early 80s with Japan, a band that trod … Read more
Experimental IV – photos
In the last post I mentioned that I worked as a Community Artist in the 1980s. This involved teachings skills in photography as well as creative writing. It must be said that my photographic skills were pretty basic. This was in the days of rolls of film, black and white moody photos and dark rooms … Read more
Experimental II
I didn’t get what was meant to be happening with John Cage’s 4:33 when I first heard about it. This was a piece of “music” that lasted for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. Except it wasn’t a piece of music because the musician would sit at the piano (or any other instrument) and not play … Read more
Experimental I
This is the first of a series of posts on the experimental. This will be a set of blog posts, which feature ideas and experiments. Different approaches. What is “Experimental”? There are two distinct definitions for the word. When aimed at science, (of a new invention or product), based on untested ideas or techniques and … Read more