Anthem for a new year

 

“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in…”

 

From this heart to all of yours…may your New Year be filled with love, creativity and magic…we build the doors and then we pass through them…

“every heart, every heart / to love will come / but like a refugee…”

“For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
We’ll drink a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.”

Photo by clinock

P.S. My new year’s resolution is to remain cheerfully cooperative with the primal flux.

 

 

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the complexities of silence

 

It was a period of silent contemplation.

Away from previous distractions and illusions.

It was an adventure into other realities

and a questioning about things like this.

 

I return to things like this

and I’ve been thinking again

about creative process, how and

why do we do what we do?

 

Painter, song writer, potter,

dancer, musician, actor.

What is this mysterious energy

entertaining us all?

 

Enter this beyond I know

so very well, the back of my hands,

the inside of eyelids, thighs,

mapping you to my home.

 

And the very bones of me,

and the meat, absent of me,

and the soul of every move I make,

and the complexities of silence.

 

art and poetry by Clinock

 

 

I had been thinking about underneath

the complexities of silence

and how much deeper it can go

before we are only the dance?

 

 

Art – The Complexities of Silence – 16 x 20 – Mixed media

 

Mexico – Adios por ahora

 

 

 

 

 

photo by Clinock

We Rise

There are periods of moments

strung together like seagulls

along the white wake of time

that seem to glow with more light,

more intense shadows sliding,

more music in their foam.

 

There have been days like this

leading to the now of writing

on this poignant day of remembrance:

I shivered, sweating and sleepless

through nights of fevered demons

the medicines invoked in the blood.

 

And at the same time needing

to solve incomprehensible clues

leading to solutions of puzzles

I didn’t ask for or want.

And always the rumors of war

we didn’t ask for or want.

 

There were the anniversary rituals too.

One year after the crowning of the mad king,

and the previous day, because he knew to leave

before the Ace of Spades became the trump,

Mister Cohen waved farewell.

I bled tears that day for a man I loved.

 

And today, the eleventh day of the eleventh month,

we enact our agreed rituals of mourning:

Silence, remembering, honouring the dead

of the wars that never end.

People, we can do better than this,

isn’t it time we gave all our children  peace?

 

“From bitter searching of the heart,

we rise to play a greater part.”

 

 

 

 

Mixed media art, photo and poem by Clinock

Demented Confessions 8 – ’43’

she knew immediately

the symbolism, the references,

the memory, the confession.

 

there are people in my life

who know more about me than I do.

I make my confession to them.

 

 

Art and Poem by Clinock.

’43’. 6″ x 6″ (15.24 x 15.24 cm). Mixed media relief sculpture in cradled panel.

 

 

Demented Confessions 1 – Invocation

Demented – from Old French dementer or late Latin dementare, from demens ‘out of one’s mind’.

Confessions – via Old French from Latin confessio (n-) from confiteri ‘acknowledge’

Invocation –

My Renovation Quest was to become out of my mind. Somewhat in the same way one is out of milk or coffee but more to the point outside of the rational and the drunken monkey, like the Dadaist Buddhists were if they ever were.

I do not welcome madness. I did once or twice but there was no pleasure in it.

Dali said: “The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad”.

So I confess and acknowledge what is found. Each work is a confession and a confirmation. I honour each work as an actual act of art made with these hands, eyes, heart and brain.

 It was another hard winter, here in the soft northwest Pacific sense of ‘hard’. Almost endless rain and if not rain then air so loaded with icy moisture one could squeeze it like a sponge and almost get snowflakes. A chilling, foggy dank, cabin fever, mossy, dripping, out of one’s mind Gothic kind of winter as I began these wall boxes. They are a necessary transition from my free standing ‘Renovation Art’ sculptures to that which comes next.

They made me laugh and wonder and ask what, and why.

In the dark hibernation of my winter past, in the name of Renovation, I made my confessions every day and night to all who still lived and listened. Did you hear my sins? Did you enjoy them? Did you hear my invocation? Must there be sacrifice?

Self-indulgent revelations in the fur and fire of the cave.

Invocation. Mixed media relief wall box by clinock. H.8″ (20.32 cm) x W.8″ (20.32 cm) x D.2″ (5.08 cm).