Head Like a Pinball Machine

I think if I tilt and shake my brain a little, the balls of inspiration might spark and ding and eventually connect.

 

 

The flippers on both left and right brain will continue to flick those thoughts back into the mix until DING! the idea is formed and like a ball heading straight down the ramp, comes out in smooth fully formed thought.

Yesterday was sparks of ideas – balls set loose among the bumper caps. It started with a visit to the op shop on a rainy morning and the plunger pulled back and thwack! the first ball was set loose.

I found these little records of Sicilian folk music amongst the albums.  The covers were amazing – the story in images, sung by an odd man in a great hat.  The first one I picked up had cormorants (a significant symbol in my work). I had to have as many as I could afford.

The way home the rain had cleared and the cormorant boat that I often sketch was perched delicately on the top of Mt Kembla’s reflection – a painters dream and so the plunger pulled again and thwack! my second ball had let loose.  So now I have the 2 balls let loose in there, popping caps and bumping sparks, hitting marks with birds, lakes and reflections.

To make matters worse the absolute best cover of a boy in a green boat. The beautiful pea green boat.

Inspiration will come in all forms and as the balls were dinging in my head I was washing up and ding! another thought – colour. I had sliced beetroot on my wooden chopping board and whilst scrubbing it – the most wonderful layering of colour that speaks to me in oil – alizarin crimson over ochre. Not beetroot over wood. That has to be a 1,000 pointer or a free ball.

I’m confused, I know it all will come together. It will culminate in a painting somehow, I just don’t want to use the tilt. Just yet.

Meanwhile here’s some shots from those albums waiting to happen. And the bonus….love the music! If only I could understand the lyrics….

 

Crazier than a Coconut

Sometimes all those weird little things that happen, that create links are just that. Weird little things that happen. Over the past couple of weeks I have been singing  or da-da-daaing to myself that Avalanches song, Frontier Psychiatrist. How I got there was a bit like this

• A Moruya Riverside market purchase of this record  that I bought for the cover
•  
• Lack of Salmon fillets at the fish market that led to Deep Sea Cod
• 
• The recipes on-line were all over 300 calories except this one
• 
• Deep Sea cod with coconut, lime and chilli salsa
• 
• I always cook to music, so I thought I would give this one a spin (yes I still play records)
• 
• Dry lips on a road trip, I picked up this Coconut and Honey Lip Gloss
• Cooking the coconut dried out my lips so I tried it out.

It was at that moment this series of events led to the culmination of the ultimate taste, smell and listen coconut experience as the last track -Anna came on. I had heard this song before but remembered it as that wonderful part of the Avalanches song and there I was, licking my coconut and honey lips, busting open a coconut and busting out those words – a record, a  record, a record  and that boy is crazier than a coconut.

It was at that moment that I felt and tasted Crazier than a Coconut.

PS My Spanish is not good -Does Trios Los Panchos mean three men without pants? And the fish was sublime -definitely worth the fresh coconut.

Hurtled into the Safety of a Letter

While the Prime Minister was being hurtled to safety in Canberra I was not that far away in a world of poetry, music and art.  I love this country but choose not to celebrate it on the day it was taken from the original owners so I try to immerse myself in things yobbos would not and The National Library is just the place.

“Handwritten” an exhibition of works from the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin was simply wonderful. My last adventure to the Library was to see Nick Cave’s genius, this time it was wonder after wonder. From Dante’s Divine Comedy, exquisite illuminations, letters from Napolean and Kafka to Beethovens 5th Symphony.  His chaotic, powerful notes crossed and re-written  and as you study the darkened marks on the staves -the music opens and my goose pimples explode in those few notes.  In the same darkened room the delicateness of Fanny Mendelssohn, sister to Felix Mendelssohn is a complete contrast and a simple pencil drawing by her artist husband adorns the edge of the manuscript, the words by poet Josephf Von Eichendorff.

It’s this relationship between music, art and poetry that reccurs in a letter dated jdth August 179i3 by Goethe.  He has written a poem especially for his artist friend Roesel who had sent him a drawing. At the top of the letter he has combined a brush and a pen within a laurel wreath.

Perhaps the most poignant comes from a man named Peter Hagendorf, a small intimate well thumbed diary of an ordinary man. A soldier in the 30 year war (1618-1648) This diary covered a 25 year period and described atrocities of war such as a beautiful young woman of 18 burned alive to recipes of tasty pumpernickel. Over this time he writes on losing his wife and eight children and enduring poverty and injuries to wealth and accounts of lands that he journeyed through.

A page from Hagendorf's diary 1624

Picking up a Library Newsletter on the way out was an article concerning Arthur Boyd and Sidney Nolan in producing backdrops for the Ballet. I treasure poetry and music, I am influenced by musicians and poets as much as other visual artists.

I didn’t need the fireworks for Australia Day, Beethoven supplied those.

Images from “Handwritten” Ten Centuries of Manuscript Treasures National Library of Australia