moments

I've written about this before and will do again. One of my pleasures - something I'd like to capture in my art - are the small moments of wonder, enchantment, sudden emotion that come unexpectedly. From  the world around, from art, from connection with people.

Perhaps it's as close to a manifesto as I'll ever get - take pleasure in the moments where it comes.

So for example Saturday was rich in these moments:

Sheltering under a railway bridge near Cornbrook when it started to rain heavily. Water began to run down from the wet street under the bridge where it was dry. Down through the dust slowly. Water would spread out from where it was gathering. The dust where it spread would darken. The water would gather, bulging against its own limits, then spread out again. Generally following the slope downhill but making occasional sideways excursions.

The newly covered dust would darken and the process continue.

At a small stone the water split round it - the two halves rejoining further on. It's impossible to describe the feeling of pleasure this gave me.

But there was more. Small rafts of dust carried on the surface of the water. A thickening and accumulation of wet dust at the margins of the trickle of water. At times the water spreading away from the main stream appeared to be alive, to have intelligence. Questing and sniffing for something before becoming inanimate again.

This was one of the smaller pleasures.

Feeling the warmth of the sun. Seeing a small fire on a hillside. Listening to a record for the first time in years and hearing sounds I'd completely forgotten.

Or then again the existential dread that moments in the films of Tarkovsky cause me. The gust of wind through trees and bushes that recurs in Mirror.

At times experience can be overwhelming, and the desire to share it unstoppable.

That desire comes out in my art. Or at least an attempt to reflect some of the emotions and wonder I feel.

But it perhaps comes out even more strongly in my life. I love to draw attention to things I find magical - where part of a building has been pulled down, the way the bark of tree accommodates messages carved into it, a sound.

And I love it when friends show me things I hadn't noticed - a tiny frog, a song I'd never heard, a quiet place. I think friendship is generous with such pleasures and I always appreciate it.

Part of this - both alone and sharing with another or others - is taking time. Setting aside other concerns to concentrate on something with no monetary value, with no reproductive or food value. Something that only has a personal aesthetic value. Something that will often be transient or that is dependent on those circumstances.

Yet I'm still not sure why this is so important to me - why I keep returning to the subject. But I do feel quite evangelical about it. Perhaps it is simply that these moments do represent something that can't be given a clear, measureable material value. Being moved by something outside of yourself. Being taken by surprise by something that might be perfectly everyday that you've seen countless times before.

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