NOTES TO SELF 2

More notes to self: Regarding The Beat of Place.

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What and where is the music of the landscape?

Is there actually a tune to be discovered?

To be extracted, willing or not, from its depths ready and waiting to be mined? Or can it be scratched from its surface, picked off, stumbled across by happenchance?

Is it thoughtful, mournful, pretty, catchy or silly, hellish or monotonous?

Happy or sad or indifferent to our presence?

Will it give pleasure or enhance our understanding of a place?

Maybe a contemplative experience or simply a kiss-me-quick sugar rush?

Is it waiting to be unearthed, ploughed up from the soil, or tickled like drowsy trout caught unawares in shaded waters?

Or is it determined to stave off our advances, lying low, a secret frequency, coursing through veins of rock? (that would be Gneiss wouldn't it?)

Or is it to be discovered in the elements, beating rain drops, sounds shared on the wind, shafts of sunlight, in heavy cloud bearing storms?

Is some kind of response ready and waiting there, to be explored, pawed and remoulded?

Is there a beat of place?

Or does it instead reside innately within each and every one of us?

Or are we missing a trick?

If there is such a thing, then how then to track it? Pin it down, absorb it, release it? If that's what we should do?

Or is it for feeling, guiding, nurturing and then only to be let go?

Could it be that it is simply imbued mystically, alleged, like a crock of gold? Forever out of grasp, but still there nonetheless.

And still we look.

Where or whatever it is, the music of landscapes can't be found if we don't begin our search.

And maybe that's the point - to keep looking never to find,

but report back we must on how we tried.

And when and if we do start this journey, it does well to remember that the journeys we take all start with a different map, in a different time, from a different place.

Perspective.

There's no two the same.

All I know or feel for sure is that a flame cannot become a fire without a spark and so, when you enter a landscape alone with purpose something happens. The unvisited tree, in the unvisited forest, makes no sound when it falls.

So they say.

If we don't engage with the landscape then how will we hear its music?

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MAYBE NOT AN UNUSUAL SET OF CIRCUMSTANCES

Its official: severe hearing loss 30 odd years in.

And now it would appear other sensory experiences peel away with each passing day.

I, innocent bystander, have witnessed the slow demise of the world's aroma.

Its official: severe smelling loss 8 years in A.W.O.L.

Maybe not an unusual set of circumstances.

The bright chime of Life's liberty bell has become monotone, a dull thud.

My neural pathways are unwalked.

The information highway now comes with added border control.

My emptying husk head, nods in the wind like cotton grass on a stalk.

Maybe not an unusual set of circumstances.

Be social. It helps keep the brain cocktails flowing. I know.

But I find it hard work to participate, they can be very stressful.

Finally, fortunately, I have learnt to be at home with my own company.

To a point.

Maybe not an unusual set of circumstances.

I am an artist. So?

I have chosen to communicate visually with the world. OK?

But where is my work? And what is my world?

We all have our excuses.

Maybe not an unusual set of circumstances.

My purpose is elusive.

Am I having a crisis? I think: 'crisis' can imply some kind of excitement, if negative.

No this is just boring.

Just where has my mojo gone?

Maybe not an unusual set of circumstances.

Not enough new experiences 'going in'.

We are nothing but infophiles.

But I have nothing to file way.

I need to get out of the house a bit more.

Maybe not an unusual set of circumstances.