If we could live anywhere, it would be in a place like Idyllwild. That's where we spent Memorial weekend, in a little wood cabin-just the sound of rustled leaves and woodpeckers to break the tranquility, or hiking through nature trails beneath the brow of Mount Tahquitz.
Naturally, I love towns that are like a frozen pocket of time- little mom 'n pop shops cluttered with old books and antiquity, dirt roads lined with rusty old trucks.
So I was surprised then, that it also has a good deal of gallery's, betraying the usual hobbyist fare with some really strong contemporary work *
The food was naturally wonderful because I had the best chef in the world-Lani, concocting the most mouth watering deliciousness-hearty fuel for those long steep walks, food for the very soul.
In an ideal world, a world shrunk to the size of small town, a world small enough to make sense of, I would enliven days spent in seclusion of an airy studio there, in an enclave overlooking the mist covered peaks.
It would be perfect.
It would be enough.
*paintings Carol Mills
We're back from a two day sojourn to Joshua Tree. It was cold, windy, inhospitable and alien-everything in fact that is the prerequisite to fire my imagination.
At night the gale tugged at the tents canvas, so we curled in our sleeping bags like pupae,awaiting the eye of the storm. And I had the most vividly,epic dreams.
It was perfect. Thank you my darling wife-x
What did I miss whilst I was away?
Well, my daughter-Emma, was part of an exhibit that's going on called Studio 121, showcasing second year BA Hons Fine Art students. I've only seen a small photo sample of her work on display, but it looks like a tremendous combination of cubist collage and naturalism, and I say that without a hint of bias.
I'll post photos as soon as I have them.
The show is currently showing at:
I also received news about something which I should be able to confirm over the next few days-past indiscretions have taught me the folly of spilling beans before money is in the bank, so to speak, but I think I am on fairly safe ground to tell you that good things are afoot, or at least a small toe.
I'm returned, though in what capacity I'm unsure.
I was unplugged, off the grid, out of my skull, roughing it in a tent and living off the fat of the land for a week.
That's not strictly true, there was no cultivating of crops going on since Lani and our co hostess-Lauren-who I like to refer to as; Amazonian, warrior woman due to her impressive stature and dexterity with a tomahawk, packed enough provisions for a small army.
Instead, I cultivated an understanding.
So, all the weight and ambition of the world, compacted and obliterated to irrelevancy when diminished by the spectacle of standing on a cliff and peering into the valley below.
All the pressures of trying to be relevant dissipating when peering into a bottomless night sky with a million lights emanating from a million years ago.
All the hollow questions lost to the burning embers of a woodfire, when with wine and women.
A time to re-evaluate, a time for perspective.
So spiritually rejuvenated, the shows are behind me, because I realize that if I stepped away from it all tomorrow just to exist, it would be more than enough meaning, if only because trying so hard to be someone means so little.
Like watching a kettle boil, the water doesn't heat any quicker if you will it.
The shows are up for another two weeks, whether I make a bean or end up with enough wood to make a pyre is immaterial at this point.
There are things that are so much more important than convincing people of ones worth through paint on a wall.
I'll continue in vein, but not in the same vein-I'll see the series to the bitter end, finish the book of 'Dead/Ends',but in the end I really couldn't say what will happen.
When I left England a little over five years ago, I had determined that it had failed me. To my mind,it had never supported my ambitions or elevated me from my humble provincial origins, and I sensed pretty early on, the hopelessness of it ever being a foundation for me to build my life on.
Moreover, I scoffed at my hometown of Liverpool ever being a cultural epicenter for the arts, railing that it had traded for too long on the currency of four moptops who fucked off and changed the world, and having scraped that particular barrel for all its worth, could only ever again procure scum from its depths.
Never would it be anything more than a bitter catchphrase of low life's and lowly living, a Harry Enfield caricature of gobby yobs in trackies, a Boys from the Blackstuff cliche of dossers, thieves and sociopaths. Whilst the city would ever bare the psychological scars of little Jamie Bulger's death, at the hands of two of its 11 year old sons.
Returning for ten days then, was something of a revelation. Of course I could have been seeing it all through the ghastly fog of jetlag, which I tried in vain to rectify with sleeping pills at night, and the high fructose diet of triple redbulls by day, but it appears to be very much a city reinvigorated by futurist architecture and glossy American style malls, and a vigor for the new.
But if there is a life there for me, then lest we forget why I was there to begin with-the prodigal son and all that, to the bosom of my family go I. And what a wonderful, delightful in all its complexity gallery of relatives I have. We are all getting older, and I don't think I ever realised how much I missed them, how much I took them for granted, until I was with them again.
And of course, I am a doting Grandfather.
Oh little Quinn, all the wonder and glorious travails of life ahead in those little, curious blue eyes. All furrowed brow, peach complexion and sweet little grunts. He is the most beautiful and precious thing.
So much crammed in such a short time, ten hundred snapshots of English idyll, fish and chips and tea and scones.Crumbling Roman walls in Chester, ostentious guilded Pre Raphaelites in Port Sunlight, misty Mersey drizzle, Dali at the Tate.
Now I'm back,having burned the candle both ends, and endured a fourteen hour delay in Philadelphia, I am suffering a serious bout of the flu. I slept eleven hours last night, and my head feels like its full of cement, but I am glad to be 'home'-for I feel I can call it that now.
So I was surprised then, that it also has a good deal of gallery's, betraying the usual hobbyist fare with some really strong contemporary work *
