new year – BLANK CANVAS

New Years Revolutions

So its 2024, another year over, another year starts, but really its just another day, sunrise, do stuff, sunset. The mid winter break (if you get one) allows the chance to rset, to think about those things which you want to concentrate on, to change old habits, bring in new ideas, start afresh from a Blank Canvas (™). I am lucky in that I am happy with my life so my main wish is for continued health and happiness, some resolution to world conflicts, action towards halting climate change, a Labour government, new patio (not like Fred/ Rose), the chance to go to conferences in Copenhagen, Philly and Porto, travel to Vietnam, see more of my kids and be just a little bit more famous.

New Years Day started well on my mission, with the Lyme Lunge, a beautiful site of 1200 people in fancy dress dipping into the ice cold water of Lyme Regis, Dorset. The local press loved taking pictures of friend Steve and myself, our outfit garnished with 2024 futuristic glasses. An easy image to summarise the new year. So far this year I am having an article written about my first book (Blank Canvas), have had some music played on Radio Wigwam and have finalised some amazing acts for the Sidmouth International Jazz and Blues festival. Exciting times ahead. I hope everyone has had a great start to the year, enjoy the increasing amount of daylight and the opportunities a new dawn brings.

2024

Ok ok so it’s another day, another year. Excellent stuff and thanks for everyone who has read my posts, my books, listened to my music or looked through my photographs. Next year is time to release book number 2 into the world, an exploration of music scenes through my eyes.

Have a great New Year and hope the world can finally get its act together in all ways.

New Year New Start New Book

Here is an excerpt from my book Blank Canvas which helps to define the concepts held within, the idea of starting from a blank slate, which is something I feel most intensely at the start of a new year.

Blank canvas as a concept, a freeze frame within which new creation can occur, also connects with other art forms that time may change. Author David Keenan in an epitaph for beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti described his command of ‘beginners mind’, writing from a place that is pure and fresh, as though viewed for the ‘first time, every time, which really, you know, is the truth. Everything is new and risen up and blushing in its perfect moment’.

Swirling extreme movements can be utilized to support arriving within a trance-like state through dance, as shown by the Sufi whirling dervishes, or through Stanislavski’s physical action acting. Ashtanga or Vinyasa Flow Yoga centres on physicality, realigning the body for transcendental meditation, lifting into the air. Searching for a trance-like condition has also been associated with narcotic drugs, reducing the daily noise which covers a blank mind. Carl Jung’s psychological concept of serendipity relating to chance, breaking away from formalized structures as the randomness of early life creation is apparent within blankness, reflecting conscious and unconscious process decisions. Another element is Buddhism’s Śūnyatā state of no mind, relating to an emptiness or a void arrived at within meditative practice, so it is the stripping away which is important.

As former art student and socio-economist Inez Aponte suggests, ‘the notion of enlightenment is when all that drops away. That construct that we lived with drops away so we can actually see. We can really see. Most of us aren’t really seeing, we are walking around with filters’ . As the young Bill Drummond was told on his first day at Northampton College of Art by life room tutor Mike Little: ‘Everybody can look – only Artists can see. No life drawing no Art’ .

Order Blank Canvas: art school creativity to punk, post punk and new wave here:

https://www.intellectbooks.com/blank-canvas