What I talk about when I sit in silence
Clarity, ambition and building art that goes beyond the material world
Is it the same with everyone?
That when we close our eyes
the images keep rolling?
No invitation.
leaving without goodbyes.
A private cinema
I didn’t ask to watch.
Where do they come from,
And why am I so sad
when they stop?
I try to taste my tongue
and find nothing.
A small failure
of being present.
A reminder
that I have drifted.
I tell myself
I’m running through it all,
But I don’t know
what it all is.
Sitting behind me
a shadow that can’t speak.
In front
waiting to be noticed.
Inside,
There’s a room I walk past every day.
Inside,
everywhere I’ve been,
everything I’ve seen
everything I’ve thought
could ever come to be.
But it’s a lot to take on.
So much unfinished,
So much undone.
Eventually
I forget the room
where the real conversations
used to happen.
I thought by now
we’d be working together
me and myself.
the same direction.
the same game.
It appears,
We are not.
Somewhere along the way,
I stopped listening.
or rather,
hearing.
The outside got noisy.
The inside got shy.
The voice I once trusted
became a recluse.
When I slow down
I hear what it’s become.
Thin.
Tired.
A voice that waited too long
for someone to return.
It’s not easy
to face a friend you’ve abandoned.
It’s not easy
to stand in a room
with the part of you that stayed loyal
even when you didn’t.
Pain is simple.
It arrives when ignored.
The outside world is always here to help you avoid it.
To move fast enough that you don’t notice.
But silence reveals the truth
that nothing heal
until you sit with the part that hurts.
I hear it now.
But it’s not something that fixes overnight.
we’ve been apart for too long
and even though I can close my eyes
and keep the movie playing,
the scenes are still pale.
Edges washed out.
Colours waiting
to return.
But there’s hope
a faint glow.
deep in the centre of the frame.
A reminder that the inner world
doesn’t die when ignored.
It waits.
keeps the lights on
Knowing we all
Come back eventually
And the voice,
the one I left behind,
is starting to find itself again.
Not loud.
Not clear.
Just steady.
steady enough
to let me know it survived.
If you’re enjoying this weeks edition of HGLA, I’d highly recommend this performance by William Marx of John Cage’s 4’33” Filmed at the McCallum Theatre, Palm Desert, CA.
You’re going to need a quiet space and about 7minutes, If you have the time, I’d recommend checking it out before you continue or if you’re currently on the move finding some time when you’re alone to check it out. Button below or video above will take you to the Youtube clip.
Fermata
There is a space that art rarely reaches.
It sits somewhere beyond the narrow outlook of any gallery or institution.
This isn’t a failure.
nor a critique.
It is simply hard to package.
Hard to name.
Hard to hold.
Yet almost every artist I know wants to touch it.
Some of us play with its sibling,
duration.
But in truth
we are all trying to understand it.
eternity.
The boundary of the one experience
we will never grasp.
The infinitesimal.
The point where time dissolves.
It’s frightening.
Time,
is frightening.
To imagine eternity is a task the mind resists.
To look inward
and sit with the base case
with no inputs
is already more than most people can bear.
Last week I came back from a ten day silent retreat.
Twelve hours of meditation each day.
Time with myself
without excuses.
What I found was an inner landscape
in need of repair.
I like to think I am no more broken
than the average person on the street.
But I must be
to choose this path
through the chaos of modern life.
That thought stayed with me.
Was this my way of stepping out of the game?
A rebellion against prosperity?
Or is there some honest validity
in disappearing long enough
to hear myself again?
Or is the artist simply in it for themselves,
a rogue agent
taking the cream
off a society
struggling to stay afloat?
I learned early
that the most important thing in art
is the concept.
Sometimes the execution becomes so refined
that it becomes the concept.
A diamond cut perfectly.
A still life rendered without error.
A portrait carried across impossible mediums.
These are acts of skill.
Acts of craft.
Proofs of labour.
But when we gather these works together,
the question becomes simple.
What is the sum of the parts?
And when I look at the sum,
what do I discover
about the person who made them?
And the path they’ve taken.
The looking glass is rarely kind.
Especially when you avoid it for too long.
I have been distracted.
I have been unfocused.
Letting the pressure of making something novel
move me away from the centre
I should be working from.
Yet I know I learned something.
I know there is a thread of eternity
woven into what I have built.
I can feel it.
I just haven’t yet understood
the person behind.
So far so good
There is a thin thread that runs beyond the work.
Something we all sense.
A common suspicion is that sometimes profit and art do not sit well together.
But the world is competitive.
We are all looking for something that gets us off the floor.
When I first created “Hot Girls Like Art”
I wanted a concept that went against the prevailing idea.
That fashion defines beauty
But I wanted a concept that could grow on its own.
Without the need for some central mind like Vogue,
something decentralised
An open idea that anyone could step into.
A form of shared IP
that supports art when you engage with it.
And in turn
Creates a loop that benefits the whole.
It’s a lofty ambition.
But a worthy one.
Ambition brings a mountain to climb.
The scale only becomes clear when you stand at the base of it.
But lately, I have begun to see the people around me.
The ones who are helping me climb.
Are the ones built for long roads.
Because the path itself is not the hard part.
The real test is staying on it.
And not flinching when it goes awry.
What’s next
Big goals require simple plans,
I’m travelling around the UK and Japan for the next four weeks.
And I realise that when this phase of my practice comes about,
I get a little lost
But I’ve spent some time trying to figure out how to keep up the progress,
While I’m away from the paint brushes and paint.
Writing over the last 18 months has given me a huge amount of clarity
what works,
what I can explain,
what I can understand,
and the bonus of being able to now ignore the noise of the outside world
has left me in a position to finally start making my own noise
So I guess from here I’m going to start figuring out how this new game works.
While beginning to release some of the projects I’ve been working on in silence
Over the last year.
Over the next four weeks, I’m going to be taking a deep dive into “awareness”
It’s a way for me to see if a longer focus on a single topic brings up some deeper results.
And it’ll allow me to be a little more consistent with the work I’m sharing with you.
If you’re following my account on socials
You should be able to see what I’m seeing (IG) what I’m doing/thinking (TT), and where the projects are going (here)
Expect work across all my normal mediums and some new ones.
and some initial concepts for how to make HGLA something that others can play in.
The art world is big,
The world of fashion, media and experience that it now competes with is even bigger
and I know which one I want to win…
hopefully I’m able to make something that can do that
and hopefully it’s a game you enjoy being part of too
wish me luck
Love you loads
R x