Two wide-eyed figures and a five string instrument, roughly hewn, full with colour and texture.
. . .
This work is used on the homepage at Public Art World and conveys a little of the rich experience of sharing music. Made from simple shapes and vibrant light, my search for meaning seems straight forward, but then the dance of ideas begins...
The Time Between Us is a play of words that alludes to the magical experience of making and listening to music with others.
When we share music, we do so in a way that is not possible with visual art. Art requires physical space between its different visual elements. With art we take in what is already whole and on display before us. We look from different points of view. We scan a little of the finished work, bit by bit.
With music, its unfolding is like life. Silence in music might be thought of as similar to space in art, but they are different. Things that take up space, like a painting, can be observed from a distance. Music cannot. Our lives, all life, like music, exists only in our now.
At the heart of every snowflake is a nucleus of dust. This tiny particle could originate from any number of places: the smoke from a forest fire; the minute specks of volcano ash that are pushed into the high atmosphere; the fine debris that falls from a meteor as it streaks across the sky; the microscopic particles picked up by the wind from plant spores and the cells of feather and skin that living things shed each day.
I ponder on the journey of a particle of dust. The dust from one living thing to another.
From someone standing on a hill looking skyward, from distant sand, and then for days across an ocean far below, until on high, ice crystals enfold and change the particle of dust to form a single snowflake that lightly tumbles to the earth and, after time, comes to fall upon my palm. I sense its cold but cannot feel its weight. like the image that accompanies the poem, it is as light as light itsesf, waiting to be known by the warmth of my attention. I easily ignore a solitary snowflake, yet its journey can be as great as any I have made.
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A Solitary Snowflake Falls
A speck of dust from soil or sand,
From powder down or loose brushed skin,
Encased within its centre lays,
A prick from past of living thing.
As snowflake falls,
The grain returns in shallow husk of crystal white,
Come gently lay upon this earth,
In wait and warmth in day or night.
