My Blog

On returning from Dark Mountain August 22, 2011

When people ask what I do, I have no label for it.
I can't give the "right kind of answer"
I hear others saying words that have shared meaning - photographer, film-maker, writer, poet, crofter, professor, architect, activist, engineer....
I have no one-word or two-word answer to give.
I can try a phrase that serves instead of an answer.  "It depends who's asking" or "It's a bit complicated" or simply "I'm a life-long-learner".

So how long have I been doing it - this thing with no name?
Ten years, at least ten years.... and that ten years built on all the things I have done before.. mostly things with no label.
 
I can try a fuller answer.
I can tell you what I am doing now - and what others are doing that we started together - I can tell you of one fruit from the seeds that have been planted.
I can share with you the sweetest fruit that I have at this moment.
But to savour that fruit you need to know its story.
You need to know the sweat of the labourers, the ground that was hard to till, the failed crops, the trampled crops, the crops that were watered with tears.
How else can you savour the tiny precious fruit that I would share with you.

What do I do?

I fill the time - and space - that is allotted to me.

I spend my time. I invest it. I fritter it. I do what I do.

(Is it really "my" time?.. who "owns" time?  is it borrowed time? shared time? a resource not mine to squander? )

I am simply me, doing what I do, and finding out what it is as I go along.
I can only struggle to share something of "What I am actually doing (or thinking) now,"
Or what I have done
Or what I hope to do.

But that is not what you mean when you ask me  "What do you do?"

Do you really want to know? Do you really want to hear? Sharing what I do is hard to do in any reasonable fragment of time.
There are too many different strands
Too many interconnected ideas
Too much involvement in practical work and parallel ongoing analysis of it

In some ways it is easier to share my imaginings (because imagining creates the "larger space" in which the "actual doing" takes place.) But people who express their  imaginings are artists, and artists have skills and avenues of expression that I do not have - so I cannot share thoughts or visions or dreams.

If I was painter I would paint you pictures
If I was a sculptor perhaps I could express it in three dimensional forms
If I was a film maker - then I could share so much, so quickly, so concisely

But I am simply me.
And I am back from Dark Mountain
Influenced to risk more - to break my prose into shorter lines - and to use more fanciful turns of phrase.
Back from the wonderful elastic timelessness of something that, on the calendar, claimed to be only a weekend.
A time appreciated all the more richly for seeing where it stands between our shared pasts and the unknown country that is our future
A time, a brief yet eternal moment, when we appreciated being where we were, when we were, and being there together.

If I was an artist - I could share... whatever it is that true artists do share.. that inner cry.. that expression of being...

But I am me.

Acting out my life.

I have no choice but to share ideas the slow way

Doing what I am doing, trying what I am trying, connecting with those I connect with, sharing ideas, sharing moments, and making digital footprints.

(Thank you everyone at Dark Mountain Festival - I appreciated being with you)

References: