Slip sliding away

Last week  was a funny  really as I ended up inadvertently starting my fieldwork again. On Friday I fitted a slide to the platform it is the focus for my research so I had to start to write field notes again. I had forgotten how extensive my field-notes are - I haven't read them mind they may be crap.  All day Monday and all day Friday back at the playground building off the platform - a new way off and probably on.  The kids came in the afternoon and the little ones were shooting off the slide before I finished it- dodging around my circular saw.  They made me laugh,  as the second one down came head first - the best plans of mice and safety officers.  This bit was fun but I ended up feeling a bit grumpy as the job took a lot longer than I thought it should do.  Retro fitting anything to anything especially when its old and a bit broken always takes longer than you feel it should do, also you can only ever to an OK job.  I have written extensively in my field notes about the guys at the playground burning my wood.  I even gave them all pseudonyms to protect their identities - one was fire-starter the rest were probably quite insulting but that's research ethics for you. 

On Monday I went back to the playground and decided that there were a few jobs needed doing.  This was mainly brought on by thinking of the risks involved in the new slide and the fact we were all worried about it but there were other risky things that I was partially responsible for.  I hadn't really cleared everything away after finishing building and we had brought load more stuff from other playgrounds.  There was also a large pile of bricks the builders had left which was a bit of a safety hazard.   Anyway we consolidated the tippy bits as I call them and made most of the stuff safe or at least out of reach. I put a few things that looked Loose parts like in the loose parts area.  This included some bits of wood, a blue barrel, a red thing, a dustbin lid a pan lid some plastic hoops some plastic containers and a couple of old cable drums.   I told Patrick we could just leave it there and see if anything happened - I don't really think it will, to be honesty it looked more fun and more loose parts than it probably is.  This morning I did a talk about the Odd project and again I think people were interested in what I said though nobody seems that interested in what I write.

This is becoming a problem as I'm shifting my practice from visual art to the written.  I'm not making films anymore which was a place of experimentation.  I'm not really doing much visual art, even in workshops with other people.  Much of my focused time is spent writing and reading now and I suppose as I nearly turn 54 this might be the thing I decide to be good at.  Even with or perhaps because of my dyslexic struggles with language I sometimes get close to writing something with a passion.  My last blog post made me cry when I wrote it although I've just read it back and am reminded for the need for opacity.  

Drawing attention too and the going on about something too much is the problem.  As an artists as and artist as an artist as an artist! was the central line to a theme tune I wrote with a young artist called Louise.  For a brief moment we contemplated setting up a company that would write and produce banal theme tunes.  When I was a kid all our games would have theme tunes 'Nna nana nana nana Zoo Gang' -  'Sackly and Muckly the greatest men on earth'. No game could start without the production of and singing of a theme tune. But as a failed  artist and failed theme tune writer the only lesson I have learnt is that to hold anything dear there needs to be a level of opacity.  Nothing we truly understand can actually hold what we need from art.  Understanding sits within the realm of philosophy and science. art sits within a different plane. Here it is fine to not know what you are feeling as long as you are able to feel something.  My theme-tune for this week is - 

Fire starter  why did you burn my wood?

You took away the affordance

of my loose parts 

to warm your cockles 

If I had labeled every piece in bright crayon

if I had cherished every length in ordered piles

cradled each log like my own child

wood you of burnt my wood pile

I suspect you wood  

it was only ever a stack to you

you never saw the things that grew

in my minds eye

great castles the domains of dragons

the Swiss family Robinson

Making the best of things

escaping the flatness of today

sometimes you need a platform

to jump from 

we are what we build

we dwell where we make

 Its more a poem than a theme tune or maybe its a stream....