Looking for Eric

Watched this film on DVD a couple of weekends ago and loved it - and I'm no footy fan!  It was funny, inspiring, and quirkily wise - with all those Eric Cantona aphorisms - like "when the seagulls follow the trawler it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea" and "he who is afraid to throw the dice will never throw a six".  The real wisdom in the film is the way in which the men, younger and older befriend each other.  There are very few films about friendships between men - yet we know how important our relational connections are, particularly when we are mentally or emotionally vulnerable.  I really like the humanness of the characters - flawed, all of them, who together are stronger than they could have ever thought possible.  Years earlier Eric walked out on his wife and baby during his first panic attack.  His fear and shame made it impossible for him to find his way back to them then and you get the sense that he's never really been able to get his life 'on track' again.  His love of footy has been the highlight of his days.  The men who step in to act like friends when he needs them are his workmates.  They can see he is not coping. One of them, Meatballs, gets them all together to talk about how they might be able to help and support Eric. Some of their attempts are pretty woeful but because they do genuinely care about Eric, the postman, their ability to connect with him and with each other over more than just footy grows apace. At his most desperate point Eric begins to have imagined conversations with his football hero, Eric Cantona, who, in Eric's imagination becomes a sort of life coach. It is wonderful to watch Eric, the postman gaining confidence in himself and beginning to make changes and boundaries in his relationships. The overriding drama that Eric is at his wits end to solve he one day shares with his friends. In conversation they bounce ideas off of each other, enabling Eric to hit upon the plan that does solve the problem - no doubt then added upon and improved by his friends who all band together to carry it out.  It is a very uplifting film

Not everything changes

Last week, while visiting the Bendigo Art Gallery, I encountered Thomas Sheard's 1900 oil on canvas of The Arab Blacksmith (shown in part above).  I'm always taken by monochromatic images because they emphasis texture and light so I was drawn to this painting.  The photo realism is quite something, as is the simplicity of the scene.  Low technology, the complete focus of the men on the task at hand, the timelessness of the scene. Apart from the small child on the back of another child, who has a shy eye on the artist and on us the observer, everyone else is engrossed.  Even the man on his own, with some sort of stick under his arm seems intent on watching what every one else is doing - like some sort of  guard on surveillance duty. Men in the background stand talking or sitting absorbed in the conversation or the task at hand.  What are they talking about, one wonders?  The weather, their crops, are they transacting business or planning war strategy to protect against attack from a neighbouring tribe?  And the child with the baby?  Is she a young wife, traveling with her husband,  waiting while their horse is re-shod so that they can continue their journey?  The children are out of place, yet comfortable. If the child is female, then her place in the scene is even more unusual. So many questions. No doubt it is the mysteriousness of the unknown culture, unknown place that  draws me to inquire so long of the painting.

On Monday of this week I opened the daily paper (The Age) and saw a large photo which at first I thought was men standing in front of the painting from the Bendigo Art Gallery. On reading the caption and then the article, I discovered that it is not an image from more than 100 years ago - as is The Arab Blacksmith, it is a recent image and shows Captain Stephen Karabin of the US Marines meeting with elders in Afghanistan as part of the efforts by coalition forces to prevent the Taliban from reasserting their dominance.

It just made me think how little changes in some places. 

Penguin Valentine

Yesterday, listening to Late Night Live I discovered that penguins give each other gifts, little rocks, in their courting process.  What a fascinating bird!  I've been charmed by them since visiting the Melbourne Aquarium a few weeks ago. There you can really why it is said that penguins fly underwater.  They are such fun to watch, in the water and out of it.

Inspiration

It's raining again.  Thundering, too.  Delicious after the hot dry wind of yesterday.  The green of new leaves against a white cloud filled sky looks fresh and clean. Just what I need in my mind as I ponder what I will make next.  This morning I've been making fisherman's pants, testing out a pattern. I have so many ideas about what I want to make next that I cant decide where to start.  Need to get some clarity of inspiration from that fresh view outside my window.

Talking about inspiration - how about this idea for a "shot in the arm" - 25 coloured pencils arriving every thirty days for 20 months, building up to a collection of 500.  Each named colour conjours image and imagination.  Here's a sprinkling: Spiffy; Kilimanjarao; Norwegian Sky; Horatio; playroom; blackberry ice.  The pencils are an initiative of the Social Designer website who curate and create goods "for the greater good", the sale of which sees funds donated to a variety of charitable causes.  The rationale behind receiving the pencils in lots of 25 rather than all at once is that

 It's human to have favorites. To be drawn to certain colors, to have others surprise you. We believe the greatest beauty of 500 Pencils is that you don't receive all of them at once, but over the course of 20 months. It gives you new focus as an artist, working with color families and feeling the precious nature of each pencil. We send 25 pencils a month, crafted to order. As you build to 500, the pencils become your story and experience. It's about enjoying an unhurried creative process, and the artist - that over time - you become. 

To subscribe to 500 Pencils or just find out more go here 

When meaning has meaning

"Have a great Christmas", she said, turning, moving away from me, already on to the next task.  Just empty words, I thought.  She says them to everybody. Maybe so. But then I think, no, she actually means them. Her words are genuine.  It's her actions that belie her.  Made me think about how often my words don't match my actions.  How often does the way I say something suggest that I don't really mean it?

Recently I saw the Japanese film "Departures".  I was moved by the gestures, the ritual around even the simplest of exchanges - hello, thank you, good bye. I found myself moving my body in the cinema, as if to bow in response to the characters, feeling as though they were acknowledging me in their expressive movements.  I know ritual, just like words, can be meaningless:

Shape without form, shade without colour, paralysed force, gesture without motion   -- (T S Eliot - The Hollow Men)

Ritual can also be powerfully expressive;  reinforcing meaning, honouring of the other.       Seeing "Departures" made me want to slow down and appreciate the moment - what I am doing, who I am with, where I am.  Treating death, and the dead, with reverence seemed to make the characters relish life all the more.  To use all their senses in the most ordinary of actions.  We saw this particularly in the eating of food, the meaningful conversations,  the remembering, and the passion for pleasure, often portrayed through the listening or making of music.  The act of showing reverence to each other, dead or alive,  made there seem like there is something sacred present in even the most base elements of living.  This reverence seems to call forth a deeper dimension. As though if we act like there is something sacred then there is.  In the film it didn't matter what people believed around death, the practices of preparing the dead for cremation or burial seemed to be the same and helped move the bereaved into a transformative psychological space, which is the purpose of ritual. And it was here they could make some sense of what was happening to them.  Find some expression for the unspeakable, unnameable.  The death of someone we love we know changes our life.  It is a big thing.

What about the small things? What difference might it make if I make sure my actions match my words?  For one thing, it enables me to care. To show care and awareness of the other. To demonstrate care for my own life through acting deliberately and intentionally.  It also enables me to have a sense of there being something beyond me.  A sense of  sacred. An awareness of the mysterious way in which ritual is a container where sometimes something unexplainable happens and I am touched, moved, changed in some, perhaps small and often transient way through something as simple as a look, a handshake, a word.  But even when I am not changed there is something about the way in which living as though this moment matters ensures that it does.  And so does the other with whom I am sharing the moment.  And that is a message I would want to convey. It's not just our words but we ourselves have meaning.  Meaning is made when we act as if we matter.

Rewarded?

Earlier this year, one lunch time, as I was perusing my favourite Adelaide bookstore, I discovered a Charley Harper colouring book. I'd seen Harper's art works before. They have been with me since childhood. Sharp, graphic, geometric images of birds were familiar to me. I associated them with the 60's - the colours and simple style seemed to fit with that era. I'd never known who the artist was. Since that moment in the bookshop I have searched to see more of Harper's works, amazed by how many there are and how witty they often are. An American, Charley Harper (1922 - 2007) developed his unique style, based on his life time love of nature, while studyin

g at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. If you are interested you can view some of his works here, though a Charley Harper search in Google Images will bring up many of his works.

I felt very lucky to find a small Charley Harper 2010 calendar in Readers Feast bookstore but then, having seen that, I got it in to my head that there would probably be a diary with Harper's art works in it also. I wanted it. Choosing my diary has long been something I do with care. It has to have images in it which I will enjoy through out the year. I began a search for it, looking in many book shops, even went on line to Amazon.com - all to no avail. But then, when I had put it out of my mind and almost decided on a Delicious diary, I found it! I reluctantly attended a workshop for small businesses on record keeping run by the Taxation Department. On my way to to the workshop, as I was walking past The Hill of Content Bookshop, I decided looking in there would be my reward once the workshop was over. There I found my Charley Harper 2010 Engagement Calendar - and felt doubly rewarded.

The picture on the cover is called 'The last aphid', a 1981 acrylic painting and serigraph. I don't have a favourite Charley Harper work of art. I love most of them. This one is very cute, it is called 'Love from above' and like many of Harper's works is a form of silkscreen print, known as a serigraph

and this one is clever. It is called 'Bear in the Birches'.

and these are funny; the first is called 'Br-r-r-r-r-thday', the second one 'Blackberry Jam'

It is the birds, though that I think most typifies Harper's works. Here's one example; it is called 'Green Jay'. Even though his illustrations look simple they are incredibly accurate representations of real species.

The Doily Tree

Since most of us don't know what to do with them anymore, it is a good thing that these crocheted ornamental mats don't grow on trees. But yesterday walking along Gertrude Street, Fitzroy I was cheered to see this fabulous application of the old doily. Must have taken someone hours to stitch them all into place. The person I was with wondered what the tree itself might have thought of such adornment. I think if I was a tree I'd be pleased to have my beauty honoured with such an intricate, handcrafted labour of love.