I can't tell you how much I dislike snow in this city. Although I believe I may have gone on and on about it last winter, and into the spring because it just kept on coming back.
It arrived tonight. I feel cheated. It usually leaves us alone until Christmas ...
I have applied a grungy polaroid filter to indicate my displeasure.
Writers are often asked, How do you write? With a wordprocessor? an electric typewriter? a quill? longhand? But the essential question is, 'Have you found a space, that empty space, which should surround you when you write?' Into that space, which is like a form of listening, of attention, will come the words, the words your characters will speak, ideas -- inspiration.
If a writer cannot find this space, then poems and stories may be stillborn.
Doris Lessing.
This ... this is so true for me. I recently deleted my facebook account and experienced a most astounding silence. It took time to adjust to a life without interesting voices crowding in but I did. And I loved it. I wrote. Eventually though, I realised how little people-contact there is in my everyday world and so I went back to facebook.
The alarm goes every morning at 6.45am here. I have breakfast ready by 7.30am, when I'm home, and I'm usually here at my desk by 8.30am. And then I read my way into the place that I work from.
It's a mixture of going through email, a scan of my facebook wall for news of the world, catching up on my blog feed and picking through a selection of new reading there.
There's no physical journey, beyond climbing the stairs to the first floor but there is some kind of journey into that place where I work.
So much can go wrong ...
I think it's why painters have studios, photographers too. Ateliers. Mine would be locked some days, with no visible signs of life showing. I have this 4 hour window of time where I can concentrate intensely. It's the time when the best of my creativity comes out to play. I know this but I can't always hold onto it.
I'm studying the 'how' of it because I have had 5 disasterous days in a row, with life crashing into me, again and again. I think, in the process of opening your self to dig deep and create something that didn't exist before, or to write of something you love so that the passion leaps off the page and convinces people ... you need to go to a place where you can take off your skin and just kind of feel your way with your nerve-endings, with your senses perhaps.
An argument can lay waste to that 'place', to that state of being. Or realising that this person or that really needs you, or that the house is a mess. That particular 4 hours out is all that I require but it's so difficult to actually take that much time in the world where I live.
Exit Stage right, and Genova.
I have a favourite poem by a writer I've loved for years. I've posted it before so forgive me if you have already ready it. Otherwise, maybe this captures something of the struggle ...
Woman Enough
Because my grandmother's hours
were apple cakes baking,
& dust motes gathering,
& linens yellowing
& seams and hems
inevitably unraveling
I almost never keep house
though really I like houses
& wish I had a clean one.
Because my mother's minutes
were sucked into the roar
of the vacuum cleaner,
because she waltzed with the washer-dryer
& tore her hair waiting for repairmen
I send out my laundry,
& live in a dusty house,
though really I like clean houses
as well as anyone.
I am woman enough
to love the kneading of bread
as much as the feel
of typewriter keys
under my fingers
springy, springy.
& the smell of clean laundry
& simmering soup
are almost as dear to me
as the smell of paper and ink.
I wish there were not a choice;
I wish I could be two women.
I wish the days could be longer.
But they are short.
So I write while
the dust piles up.
I sit at my typewriter
remembering my grandmother
& all my mothers,
& the minutes they lost
loving houses better than themselves
& the man I love cleans up the kitchen
grumbling only a little
because he knows
that after all these centuries
it is easier for him
than for me.
Erica Jong.
I had to shower, dress, go find a birthday present for a party this afternoon. I had to get lunch from the supermarket. After it all, I came back upstairs just after midday and experimented with layers and frames for my photographs ... trying to 'play' my way back into writing.
Let's see how the rest of it goes. The shot ... a city street in Genova.
The story of Botart de Amberes follows but here's a shot of the five art barrels at the 2013 event.
Founded in 1998, Puerta Del Sol is my wine shop of choice here in the city of Antwerp. The quality of their wine leaves you knowing they really care about wine. They visit each of their suppliers, check-in during the harvest to see what techniques are used and, over the years, have developed the ability to know immediately if the wine has been enhanced in ways that fail to meet their quality control standards.
I wasn't surprised to learn that Puerta Del Sol was born out of a passion for wine and Spain shared by owners – Guy, Frank and Jules. They host wine-tasting weekends several times a year, an open-door day, where people are welcome to come along and taste what they have in stock.
Something I find relatively common here in this Flemish city is modesty… a failure to beat the drum loudly. And so one day, in a conversation where I asked the right questions somehow, English-speaker that I am, I learned about a rather exciting art initiative organised by Puerta Del Sol.
BOTART is an art project that began in Mallorca, with Araceli Servera, oenologist and member of a family that has been creating Ribas wines since 1711.
The Ribas website explains that BOTART is all about 'uniting the world of wine with the world of creativity'. The central ideas is about raising the profile of artists living and working in their respective regions in Spain. That said, over the years, the Spanish version has extended its reach and in amongst those Mallorcan artists already featured are German and Egyptian-born artists. The Antwerp version, known as Botart de Amberes, is still all about artists here in Antwerp.
BOTART acknowledges and celebrates the creativity that goes into both painting and the art of wine-making. Honoring the fact that passion and imagination are required in both disciplines.
As retailers of the Ribas line of wines in Antwerp, Puerta Del Sol decided to answer the Spanish BOTART with their own version here and so Botart de Amberes was born. Heading the project are Guy Voet from Puerta Del Sol, Ernest Van Buynder of Mukha, and Adriaan Raemdonck from De Zwarte Panter Gallery. Together these three invite artists to take part in Botart de Amberes.
The 2013 event was not just about celebrating the two new artists - Guy Leclercq and Leonard Leenders - but it was also about the fact this is their third year running the project. Previous barrel artworks have come from Frieda Van Dun, Carolien Huber and Nick Andrews, with each barrel painted in a style that is representative of the artists usual work.
And just in case you're thinking these guys sound like people you might want to buy wine from, English and other languages are absolutely no problem. They're Belgians from Flanders. They do languages ...
You can find them and their divine wines at their shop here in Antwerp - Puerta Del Sol, Ter Rivierenlaan 118, 2100 Deurne.
The shot that follows was taken during speeches made at this years Botart de Amberes, on the evening when the two new artists were announced. I love looking for shots that are a little unusual and this was taken without flash in the offices of acerta, hosts of the event.
I was out photographing an event for friends on Wednesday night and while there I met a lovely woman called Nina Coolsaet. She is a Belgian Bio-Engineer living in Spain and she has the most delightful story about her Spanish family and their vineyard located to the north of Alicante.
Avi, Catalan for 'grandfather', is the name on the label of wine being tasted today and it is produced on their bodega called Mas L'Altet. This morning I had the pleasure of beginning this misty cold Antwerpen Saturday over at Puerta Del Sol, interviewing Nina.
Interview to follow. The photograph that follows, Frank, Nina, and Guy at the Botart de Amberes Event, 2013
I am always searching for a kind of balance in life ...
I work hard. I work long hours. There is no income. However I have finally decided to commit to the life of an artist. And I'm lucky, my Belgian bloke is pleased that I am finally writing again. It was the thing I loved first, the thing friends back in New Zealand most associated with me, it turns out.
So I write in the mornings these days and depending on whether I'm on the school pick-up run, which is lunch-times two days per week, my writing often runs on into the afternoon. And the evening.
And I edit for friends and causes I believe in the way some people do crossword puzzles. That's my hobby. I love making texts beautiful.
And I can be lured out of the house to shoot an event or a portrait for friends I admire or whose business impresses me. That was last night. And I sparkle on the inside. I love the energy that shoots through me when I'm working with my camera. And I always meet really superb people. There was this wine-maker last night. An extraordinary woman that I will interview on Saturday.
So I have all these things that I love doing but they rarely involve money. And making them earn money while bowing to the gods of taxes, social security, and etc, can only be described as a Kafka story.
Do I kill all the art and get a real job?
It feels so much like cutting off my nose to spite my face.
I can create beauty. I'm pleased with the shape the book on Genova is taking. My photographs seem to please people and even if they don't, I find them pleasing. I printed 20 of my Genova photographs off as A4 colour photocopies.
I was like a mother with her new baby. Who knows if the baby is ugly, I was that mother who was besotted. The images looked so powerful laid out in front of me. I needed that. I was bored with looking at them on the computer.
The scales that weigh the content or purpose of my life are sensitive things. Sometimes I have them in balance - my work is good, I should continue with photography and writing, the housework, and this crazy extended family of mine. Other times it's ... who do I think I am. Some princess who can live so irresponsibly and lightly in the world!? I must find a job!'
We live in a world where the arts are always first against the wall in budget cut and yet art is the thing that makes humans different to animals, isn't it? Art is the place we all escape to ... into books, into music. And yet the raised eyebrow, the idea that we are spoiled ones ... oh how that messes with my head.
I was out with a friend last night and I said, I should get a job. She said, but you work. I said but I make no money. She said you work really hard. We laughed. I do enjoy Ruth's company. She keeps me sane.
So here I am, living what feels a little like life in bubble. If I float out here, kind of disconnected from the world, then I can write this book I've been carrying inside of me for a long time but ... like being on the edge of a cliff, I can't look down. If I look down, I'll may fall into despair and despair means I struggle to write and create. Bitterness is deadly.
Lately I've read through a million job decriptions, trying to work out who would hire me, woman of strange abilities. And I can't get past what I might gently call the 'wankspeak' of job descriptions. I think you're meant to apply anyway and then everyone laughs and says noooooo, you're absolutely what we need but we had to write that other stuff ...like, fluent in 17 languages, with the ability to get our newsletter out into the world in 17 seconds flat. But maybe it's better those jobs have seemed impossible.
This morning began with a bit of a crisis. Oh, you guessed. Maybe I've written it out of me and tomorrow I'll delete this and we'll pretend it never happened.
But make no mistake, this needs to be read knowing I'm smiling. I have fought off the despair. I'm going to write now.
