Never again this sun, this world
and never again this watcher
Hello friends
I nearly didn’t make it outside at all today. I got caught up with a painting I wanted to finish, so the light’s already fading when I set out. I walk fast, just letting my feet take me and my eyes and mind wander, not thinking about anything much, going through the motions of getting some exercise and daylight because I know this is what will get me through the dark season.
I must have walked this same route a thousand times, so although it’s as beautiful as always, my mind’s on other things as I walk.
But turning towards home I see a huge full moon, a ‘supermoon’, rise peach-gold over a low rounded hill, as if it’s hatching out of the top. The sight pulls me up short and brings me back to the moment. To the west, dark feathers of raincloud are sweeping over the sea and the last strands of a gold and aquamarine sunset are still lighting the sky over the water.
The full moon is rising to my east at the same moment as the sun is setting to my west. And between these two great movements, my feet tread this round Earth, feeling it roll, once again, towards the darkest end of the year.
The chill wind is on my face and the sound of geese rises off the fields. My feet beat a steady rhythm on the road home. Lights are coming on in all the house windows as I pass. Behind them I can see my neighbours doing ordinary things, standing at kitchen sinks, filling kettles, stirring pots, in a humdrum of everydayness.
Life is a series of such repetitions, of kettles filled and refilled, of dinners cooked and eaten, of teeth brushed and walks taken, a steady rhythm of footsteps, breaths, heartbeats. In this way, days, weeks and years are ticked off the calendar.
So many of our daily actions are taken without even having to think, they’ve become so habitual. It sounds like a kind of deadness, but it’s not. Not if you pay attention. It’s a pattern that repeats, crucially, with small variations.
My paintings grow out of this repetitive, incremental process, a pattern of repeated movement that starts as a sense of restriction but soon becomes an opening, a place of expansiveness that is somehow within time and also transcends it.
Thank you to Richard Elliott for reminding me, in a recent post, that music is about pattern and repetition too, and that much of our sense-making is about pattern recognition. It’s made me acknowledge that there is a trance-like element to my own activity of repetitive mark-making that has a kinship with music’s pulsing beats. He writes:
There is an invitation to enter the loop, which exists as both an ever-present insistence and also as a kind of void, the kind that opens up in trance-based music to allow the trancing body–mind to reach the desired level of engagement.
But I think the poet Kathleen Raine says it best here:
I’ll be releasing some of my new small paintings very soon. I’m waiting for the materials I need to frame them to arrive - delayed by storm-cancelled ferries - but as soon as they are ready, you, my lovely subscriber, will be the first to hear!
Join the Life Raft Co-Working
If you’d like some support and gentle accountability to help you build a habitual pattern in your creative work, come and join our weekly Zoom session. It’s free. We start with a quick hello chat and share what we’ll be working on, then leave our cameras on and work quietly together for an hour or so. A recording of the previous week’s session shared each Monday on the paid subscriber chat.
That’s all for this week!
-Sam
So lovely to read - thank you ! And for the poem which I didn’t know and is just perfect. The way you write about your practice is so inspiring and your paintings are just beautiful. On a personal note I am reminded daily of my own repeated routines as my dogs constantly anticipate me - they know where I’m going and when before I do !
The repetition of ordinary things. It's holy. It keeps us grounded. Thank you for this lovely reflection.