There’s an icebreaker called two truths and a lie

There’s an icebreaker called two truths and a lie that a friend used in a workshop and mine was that I’m 31, I play the violin and I travel outside London twice a year.  And sadly the last was the lie.  I’m not talking about travelling that means five months life changing experiences in India or kite surfing in Venezuela – I mean anything, for any amount of time, outside London so last weekend after I wrote my blog early at an internet cafe in Paddington (£1 for half an hour!!) I finally tested the earth is round theory and took a train to stay somewhere outside LLanelli with a friend. 

Now at heart I’m a city rat and I’m looking forward to sitting at bus stops outside Sainsburys when I’m 70 and talking to other grey haired people like myself but there’s something that I can’t resist about the coast which makes me run wildly along empty shorelines and soak my feet in the water. 

I loved walking this close to the coast and for such long distances.  I loved watching how the water bit chunks out of the rock and stone, chewing away the mud and the grass and spraying acid salt that made funny lines of black, orange and green.  

But before you think that all this bad prose is a sign that I’ve converted to a life of rural bliss I’ll confess that as much as I thought of this I thought of friends and the non-arty sometimes difficult parts of my life.  And of course, I thought about my work.

A while ago I was talking to a great guy whose work I really like and he was describing an idea for something he would like to do.  I remember smiling wryly and wisely in my head when he said he knew exactly what he wanted to do and just needed a couple of technical questions answered to do it.

I remember shaking my head sagely because I knew that it didn’t work that way.   It was my favourite habit to think that I had all the answers and I just needed one thing – the name of the gallery curator that would bankroll me after seeing my first solo show in London after art college, an artists collaborative called ether gallery was ‘planned’ in a similar way for two years and closed before the first show ended. 

Nowadays, I have plans for the next three months, the next six months and up to next summer with satelliting ideas around that for the next three years.  Admittedly the last do tend to be the doctor evil world domination sort of ideas but in a post-ironic way. 

Three people asked me separately this week about what big projects I had coming up and I realised I haven’t got any.  So I ummed and ahhed and talked faintly of plans for travel and studio work and resting after the last full on year getting steadily quieter and quieter all the time.

Somewhere I missed along the line that all my plans don’t add up to a hill of beans.  And if I expect anyone to chat to me outside Sainsburys when I’m 70, I better get on with it.