Water Water

Every Grain of Sand

There is irony in the fact that I live within walking distance of the sea, where the tides wash up and down twice every day, and water is plentiful, but my garden, and my allotment, are parched.  

It is beautiful here, in north-west Norfolk, at any time of year, with miles of sandy beaches, naturally occurring dunes and an abundance of wildlife.

And even in the heat of summer, during the peak holiday period, there is space, even, sometimes, no one else to be seen.....

Or if there is someone, they may just be a dot on the horizon....

Water, water, every where, 

And all the boards did shrink; 

Water, water, every where, 

Nor any drop to drink.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

A de-salination plant would be an eye-sore.  But, perhaps, it could help with these hot dry summers.  It could help with irrigation of the fields that are now burned and dead.....

Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear

Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer

The sun beams down upon the steps of time to light the way

To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay

Every Grain of Sand

Bob Dylan

It is great to swim here.  The water is clean and fresh, the zing of salt a zesty seasoning to life.....

And these days even the clouds are warm, and dry.  Water vapour that tantalisingly will not condense and precipitate.....

I gaze into the doorway of temptation's angry flame

And every time I pass that way I'll always hear my name

Then onward in my journey I come to understand

That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand

Every Grain of Sand

Bob Dylan

The shores are littered with the remains of life. Here a variety of shells, deposited at the high-water mark, await the grinding process that will turn them into sand.....

And here a harmless Moon Jelly lies stranded on the shingle, to slowly evaporate to nothing before the next tide flows back.....

Sometimes the weather looks to change, the clouds angrily torn by the sun.....

But it doesn't deter the lovers on the beach, and nothing comes of the falsity of hope.....

The Sun came up upon the left, 

Out of the sea came he! 

And he shone bright, and on the right 

Went down into the sea.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

And then, as the day draws to a close, the colours intensify, and the heat abates.....

Sometimes the sun just gleams across The Wash....

On other evenings there is bruising and blood stain....

And sometimes the water is pewter and the sky a furnace.....

I feel insignificant before all this grandeur.....

I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea

Sometimes I turn, there's someone there, other times it's only me

I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man

Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand

Every Grain of Sand

Bob Dylan

These pictures were not all taken this month (though they were taken this year), but all of them are from the Norfolk coast between Snettisham and Cley.....

A Wandering Eye

 Picture this......

All pictures are in the past. Even what you think you saw just now, for example Anthony Michael Gordon's 55th minute goal against Argentina happened fractionally before you could experience it, with the light travelling through your lenses to your retina then crowding down your optic nerve to be processed by your brain.....  Nothing is what you think you saw.

And so it is with art.....  Hockney has gone the same way that T S Eliot took.  Words and pictures still with us, but the light has gone.....

I am in London again, roaming the interstices of  life and love, wandering partially for the sake of it, partially because to stay still is also an illusion.....

Although I think I prefer my rustication [sic] in far flung Norfolk there is a vibrant stimulus in the hectic miasma that is London.  Almost an aversion therapy......

So I prowl about, a camera, or an iPhone, at the ready, snapping images that later may help me remember where I have been or what I saw. Pictures which, along with the estimated 5 billion to 5.3 billion photos that human beings currently take every day worldwide, will mean less than nothing to no one. 

This figure equates to over 61,400 photos snapped every single second, resulting in roughly 50 petabytes of new image data captured daily, which average leads to more than 2 trillion photos taken annually across the globe, of which around 90% are now captured using smartphones, leaving conventional cameras and film to account for less than 10% of daily images.

So, there we aren't.  Here I am.  

Yes, here I am.  Competing with the rest of the world, remembering that the essence of competition is that there are always losers.......

But.....  WTF?  Other people breathe. That doesn't mean I shouldn't.

And, as Hiromix says:

Though what she doesn't say is that every image, whether it is a painting or a photograph or (perhaps) a sculpture, is a selfie.....  It's not a new thing.  The first artist ever was expressing something of his or her self.  The last artist ever will still be trying to say something that emanates from the self.....

Here is David Hockney telling us about his house in France, wanting us to appreciate his life, possibly subconsciously wanting us to share his life, without - obviously - intruding......

And here is Andy Warhol vicariously extending his world to tantalise us with fame and luxury:

And here is Christo wrapping the desirable away so we can only dream of what lies beneath:

While Bob Dylan entices us to follow his lines into the distant imagination of an evanescent world:

Of course, you cry, [Who are you to patronise?  Ed] there are images that involve no artistry, such as those of the Camera Obscura..........

But this device is only designed to monitor or assist imagery. It doesn't happen by itself.....

So what about nature?  The circle of life?  Why are flowers so attractive?

Aren't they just saying, Come, look at me?  Come, smell me?

Come on, come on, come on, come on

Now, touch me, babe

Can't you see that I am not afraid?

What was that promise that you made?

Why won't you tell me what she said?

What was that promise that you made?

Touch Me

The Doors

Anyway, this, by a circuitous route, brings me to Kew Gardens, a somewhat pricey outskirt of the metropolis.  Here, where foxes and badgers rule supreme and hedgehogs are no longer happy residents, a series of sinuous sculptures punctuates the park, courtesy of the late Henry Spencer Moore (not knighted, by the way, in 1951).....

Having recently visited Barbara Hepworth in St Ives, (and having previously written about Henry Moore at Perry Green in https://www.richardpgibbs.org/2013/05/feeling-henry-moore-ish.html) I am shy of opining about the abstract.  There is something grand, something liberating, however, about being next to a substantial three-dimensional art work in an open, natural environment.  

As Moore wished, the work expresses itself from all angles.  You wander around it and it presents differing ideas/thoughts/possibilities as the lights changes as the shapes interact.....

As Moore himself said, in Unit One, edited by Herbert Read in 1934, All art is an abstraction to some degree (in sculpture the material alone forces one away from pure representation and towards abstraction).....

Or, as he wrote in The Listener in 1937, Each particular carving I make takes on in my mind a human or occasionally animal character and personality, and this personality controls its design and formal qualities, and makes me satisfied or dissatisfied with the work as it develops......

Makes me satisfied or dissatisfied...... Art as an expression of satisfaction. Art is an expression of the self.  Not to deny anattā - the Buddhist concept that there is no permanent, unchanging, soul or 'self' but that there is a flowing collection of consciousness, sensation and perception that allows a more sensitive and imaginative connection with the world.....

That may be a hazy view of the life outside the window.....

But a two-dimensional swimming pool is just as elusive......

I must wrap my car......

But I will let Raye say her piece:

And I don′t really like my body

But knowing it′s my only body

I should probably call somebody

I should really show you how I'm feeling inside

Matter fact, I′m glad you called me

I been hiding, I been high and I been sleeping hungry

Body Dysmorphia 

Rachel Agatha Keen, Michael Harris Sabath

Now I'm gonna love you

Till the heavens stop the rain

I'm gonna love you

Till the stars fall from the sky

For you and I

Touch Me