Musical Bears, Page 3

Though this is really Page 1 of the story (words not yet added). I kept starting off with these wandering minstrels going down a road, but did not find the road inspiring, , it was kind of dingy, with bushes behind the bears which formed a barrier did not like, and lanky plants in the front to cover up the grey of the road – so I changed the tune and set them free to walk playing across grassland, untrammelled.

This version of the book is ready to be sent out to try and find its way into the world. Rather like the bears themselves.

What shall I do next? All the things I have been putting off, like painting the outside of the studio with a beautiful Farrow and Ball deep scabious blue. Wonder of wonders, outside paint that is silk not gloss. Oh the horrors of that ancient sticky drippy smelly gloss paint. This blue paint is genius. But still, I have been putting off the task….

Cover: Musical Bears

This is my basic idea for a cover for Musical Bears. The yellow has come out darker than the original, which is a lemony cream. I am amazed to be using yellow, I never paint with yellow, but the book seems to be dragging the colour into itself. At the beginning all the colours were mauves and dusky reds, but over time the palette has changed. There is no logical reason for this. It’s like Music While You Work – sometimes Bach, sometimes Brel, no rhyme or reason to it. Might be The Specials. Or Ry Cooder. Or a selection of film music from a free offering.

So yellow makes an appearance at last. Maybe the lettering will be blue. There needs to be an image on the left hand side, a red and black butterfly maybe, and the lettering needs tilting to the right. Have found a way of overlaying lettering, quite by chance. I pressed the wrong key, pressed it again, and hey presto, the background disappeared, leaving the lettering intact. Sometimes it would help to read the instructions. My post-project plan: delve into the pile of How To books that are piled up on the bottom shelf of my computer desk.

When I send the book out on its rounds, I will take down everything to do with it on WordPress; but for the moment – stet.

Abracazebra E

Another small square painting, I think there were only two paintings done from out of the book of printed-out drawings, at the end of which I find a neat label with my long ago address.

Can’t ever remember sending these images to anyone, there has probably been some upheaval I have forgotten about, and other things took over. But it is fun to find a project which I can launch into when Musical Bears is ready. All the base drawings are there, with a list of the words to look for at the back. Not a project that lands itself to translation; though it could be used as a fun vocabulary source, a search game, with words in both languages given. No problem with ange/angel, anyway. It is the angel who appears at the bedroom window and leads the boy and his cat away into the night.

I think the eagle could do with some work…. I wonder what kind of butterfly beginning with “e” that is…..

Abracazebra R

For seven years all my possessions were in store. For some years before that I was in a state of flux. These 26 drawings and 2 paintings must have been done about 20 years ago, when I had studio in an old animal shed in Berwick upon Tweed. Others thought it was forbidding, but I felt all right there, through some strange times. I had a fiddle which I played upon now and then, and my music, and no money, which was just as well as the electricity board never managed to read the meter, in spite of being told about it, several times, and in spite of them installing a new meter; not a pipsqueak of a bill! For five years! Apparently I was living at no known abode, which defeated the computer of the electricity board. Anyway, whilst trawling through the mass of paper possessions that eventually came out of store I recently found a little book called Abracazebra, which is an alphabet story of a boy’s journey through the night, and through the letters of the alphabet, accompanied by his cat. All I have found are print-outs, but the originals must be somewhere.

However, Abracazebra has solved a problem. Knowing I was coming to the end of work on Musical Bears, and absolutely needing a project to keep me occupied, this is something that is already more than half there. These days I don’t have to scrimp and scrabble, so I can take my time. Do some walks with my camera. Do some painting. Draw from life. Examine the world around me. But working on this little book will provide me with something I can start on, as soon as the bears go travelling out into the world, hopefully playing their music to some appreciative listeners; though I’m not holding my breath, as these things can take a long long while. But I shall persist.

Old Barn Door

To my amazement, I found that over the past fifteen months I have scarcely put an image on to WordPress, whereas before I used to go out walking for miles, with my camera, come home and trawl through the images I had captured, then put a few on to this site; it was like a kind of diary. I am quite a hoarder, I realise; letters, photographs, emails, thingummies, boxes, books, pictures, unsorted reference material, cards, even old newspapers (though I do manage to throw them away, these days, hoarding newspapers is not a good trait). There is so much in the world, the older I’ve got the more I realise how little I know; and behind me fragments of my life pile up, waiting to be sorted into some kind of shape.

So, this is an image that appeared among the many hoarded, and I put it up here, somewhat at random. I liked the light through the cracks. This same image I realise, was put on my website in May 2014. The words are different, the place is further away, I will let it stay. One day I will go out into the landscape again, with my camera; but at the moment, walking is for my health only; my energy is with a fiddle, a banjo, a little tin whistle. a guitar, a turquoise patterned drum, and some bears.

This image is of an old barn across the yard of an old house in the Liddel Valley, which is the place that has captured my heart; though it is only when I go back there that I realise how deep this feeling goes. The countryside round about belongs to the hawks, and the hares, and the orchids. There is a room above the barn which had old papers in it, including some of my father’s plans, though these days I don’t know what is there. Massive stone steps with no railing lead up to this room; last time I visited I think the room was padlocked, and the steps were were clotted with the droppings of barn owls, which made me happy, as barn owls are the spirit of the place. For years after my son and I left the house they disappeared; and now they are back. At dusk and even late afternoon they can be seen, flying slow and low and white, sometimes mobbed by smaller birds. Their cry is eldritch. I have a stuffed barn owl in my studio. He is called Marvin, after a magician in a book called Parchment House, which was published many years ago. My young son, who was used to me writing poems, sat down and read it, and said: “I didn’t know you could write a proper book!”

Cards