Icarus and kites

This is an oil picture by Babara Fletcher entitled 'Man with Kite'. Today in a moment of reckless abandon I purchased her watercolour and acrylic version of the same picture. Though much smaller and cheaper. It is beautiful and it is me I have decided. I am that man flying my kite. Testing the water, seeing what I can do with it. Swoop through the sky with my feet safely on the ground. I am being an insecure Icarus, having quite got the faith to leap but allowing the kite to live my dreams.

I got the picture from one of my favourite galleries. It is true escapism to go there but also full of inspiration for a writer. I took my painting and then did something I never do (the guilt associated with taking time for me when I have so much else to do always stops me) - I say in a coffee shop and sipped a little bit of chamomile tea whilst I took in every inch of this tiny picture.

I love beautiful skies, I love the stars and the moon. They are my inspiration. There is a story in Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics about climbing up to the moon using a ladder. Earlier this week there was a moon I am sure you could do that too. I was picking my son up from work at midnight and there it was hanging in blackness. An orange moon that I could almost touch as it was so low in the sky. It was mystical.

I bought this picture today because it is my time to be Icarus and not the man on the beach. Maybe stupidly but with faith it is time for me to step off the cliff and try to reach the sun or moon with my writing. To believe and have faith in it and myself by trusting the connections. But more importantly to go back to being who I really am as a person and a writer and not let others decide who I should be. There are only a few who know me enough to suggest things like that (at times knowing me better than I know myself) and it is them that I need to listen to again. I need to go back to reaching for the stars, the moon and the sun in my own way just like Icarus but without the ultimate fall hopefully.

A very short clip!

Connections and circles

During last week I was looking for an image I could use in a lecture. I came across this photograph by Martin Parr - one of my favourite photographers. He was at Manchester Poly along with my sister where they both studied photography together. Her life followed a very different path to his but I still see her as one of the best photographers I know even though her current career bears no relation to her past studying. I love the simplicity of her photographs and have a series of them on my wall that she gave me. Why am I mentioning this - well she was the first to introduce me to true creativity. I was very young when she was studying but I can still remember the power of her photographs - a simple green apple in a frosted glass to a stripper emblazoned across a curtain. At that point I started to understand what impact images can have, it was the beginning of one of my circles. I often use photographs to inspire my writing or I give students a selection of photographs in order to make the connection between a photo and a narrative because that's the point, every photograph has a story - real or fictional - it is just waiting there to be told.

The simplicity of my sister's photographs belies the richness of the images plus the (often) hours of thought behind them. It is this that I have been trying to achieve with my writing but have found recently instead that there is a fine line between no atmosphere and gag-enducing purple prose! I am looking for that balance.

My search for that balance has included loking back through some of my favourite books in order to try and make the connections between images that are barely there but are powerful enough to fill the reader's imgination and those that are blatant and blunt but just as effective. Several books came to mind including Cosmicomics, Holes, Palace Pier Blues, The Book Thief and The Bloody Chamber, All of which achieve to varying degrees the balance of simplicity and richness in their descriptions.

The Bloody Chamber came to mind as it is a book that I am lecturing on next week. This has lead to further connections as I have been reading about Angela Carter this afternoon and apparently with my PhD looking at the representation of sex entitles me to label myself a 'moral pornographer' (an image I quite like if I am honest). In that it is my aim with my thesis novel to construct a text where the woman's sole purpose is not to just gratify the man, instead it is the demystification of flesh and a reflection of the real world where all are equal and desire is not shame-faced. I felt that sort of connection this afternoon.