painting series

edge, rim, shore

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I’m teetering
again
on the rim
or edge
threshold,
shore.
I’m not quite

a lure
a calling,
I’m being,
no, not forced
invited
drawn

All at once
the future
arrives to me
here
in this moment
now
shall I?

Will I?

Joy jostles
wildly
with my
wildest fears,
wild dreams
wilder than I know
can possibly know
bewildered
oh afraid oh
enticed oh
enraptured
oh, shall I?
do this
step off into
an unknown future
with you?

will you catch me?
will you?

I’m coming

Note: This poem continues the series of piano painting poems inspired by the music of Ludvico Einaudi’s Divenire, played by myself on the grand piano of my downstairs neighbours. Unlike the other poems in the series it was created before the painting, and was a path into the courage to face a new blank page and enter into the vulnerability of creating in the unknown.

summit day

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I am so close to the summit now that I see it all the time, it’s not a glimpse anymore.

I’m working with each step towards something immense. It is my destiny.

Last night I messaged my friends for support. Today I feel it and the extra measure of power, love and reassurance I need for being brave.

I let go of some last things that needed to be left behind. Towards a summit you must not carry anything unnecessary, as you are weaker and energy reserves are depleted. No personal idols can be taken to the summit, nor any false responsibilities nor undue lament.

There are a few final practical things to be done. I will do them steadily, trying to make sure to prioritise them correctly, although my mind is affected by the thin air and intensity.

Thank you for what your own silent watching has meant to this moment.

a glimpse of the summit – discipline

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I’ve glimpsed the summit, and yet I’ve not reached the summit. This is a moment where discipline seems somewhat unwelcome, yet it is essential.

Who wants to be disciplined when one can see dreams unfolding ahead, just beyond the summit in the realms of now-a-possibility?

Yet if the energy needed for the summit completion is dispersed into illusions, then the very possibility of the summit comes under threat.

It’s a work of wonder to hold steady with focus, diligence and discipline when under the surface thrills of delight are shivering too and fro in the inner waters.

It is strange that even this bit has its own difficulties and temptations, when so much hope and joy is present. But it does. You have not reached the summit until you have reached the summit.

Yesterday: lists. Today: chores, communications, work.

childhood piano

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child
sitting there, legs dangling
enthralled, wondering
playing notes as
precisely, intentionally as a
Phd researcher,
though four years old

girl
sitting there, music room
stuffy, piano teacher
aside, seeing notes
black marks on black lines
pure

girl, still, though older
sitting there, wishing
her father was not so emphatic
my daughter could play that piano,
a contortion, playing
another person’s tune

teenager
sitting there,
aplomb, the one who can
accompany the orchestra
glory, approval,
satisfaction

young woman
sitting there, university
practice room, ‘perhaps you
can teach me?’ – she fails to recognise
an offer of intimacy,
and why should she?
she is absorbed

twenties
long absence, no room
in the small spaces, none
in time either

thirty-something
sitting there, new home
space, although it’s squeezed up to the sofa
new teacher,
horror at performing,
at persistent error,
inepitude,
shaking with it

forties
sitting there, new home
old piano abandoned to old existence
yet grace, magic
though borrowed, a queen’s instrument
peace, beauty, renovation, reunion
soul.

return to the studio

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I have spent the summer tending ‘the studio inside’ after my one week residency in June. The communal garden has been a studio. And my neighbours’ apartment with their piano. But the days are getting colder and soon the neighbours will return to inhabit their city home full time.

I returned from holiday and two absences stared me sternly in the face. Indisputable and unmoveable. One was the absence of a studio.

I am a very joyful person and quite good at smoothing over bumps and being grateful where gratitude can reside, but somehow the absence of a studio is very stern, and immune to substitutions or platitudinous comfort. There is a joy in a studio which literally nothing can replace. This is a mystery to me. I’m somewhat reluctant to concede this ground.

But maybe starkly facing our absences has an importance? So I pondered to myself.

Into this absence I said a fierce prayer. If your commitment to existence is not to control your longings nor to detach from them, both of which constitute a harsh diminishment of human being, and if you refuse to despair, a fierce prayer is mostly what is left. I leave the deeper questions for another time, but in this case I was astonished to find, shortly thereafter, I was sitting in a studio again. A temporary arrangement, but astonishing nonetheless.

I reviewed the writing I did here at the start of the summer. I pondered the renovation of ‘the studio insight’ and now reflecting, this is indeed what has happened. Through piano, plants, play, seaside, parties, festivals and dancing, many of the old broken places have been substantially mended.

The day I heard I would have a studio, a project took shape in my being. Since that day, a series of disruptions have overwhelmed my daily life. This is a recognisable and now almost encouraging pattern showing that I am on to something.

This does mean however that some of the renovating got trashed so now I am attending to that.

But there is a deep thrill in the heart of the project, and its existence cannot be prevented.