Round The Blue EP

Was a dazzling day

In the month of May

A chill air from the West

I’d like to say

Everyone was there

Dressed up in their Sunday best

But the line of cars

That we used to see

Was a memory

And the living

Are the ghostly

In this tragedy

When you go down

You’re out of bounds

The send off was never for you

It’s for the one

Who’s left undone

A chain of love round the blue

We wrap them up

In a blanket

Of history

And the kids’ll go

So one day they’ll know

Their ancestry

In memoriam

Distance is a sham to let go of

We are by your side

Nothing will divide the chain of love

The stories we tell are so important, and my art feeds off these stories. Listening to the lyrics and hearing the stories behind them inspires me. I love the use of halos in art - It makes the spiritual visible, reminding us that we are not 'mere mortals'. And I love the concept of the ‘Long Now’ which I thought about when considering the chains of love stretching out behind us and before us, including all those who have already departed, and those yet to come. So, it may look like there are breaks in the circles of the halo, but they are all just different shades of gold emanating out from the centre, which, with my theology, represents God. And also, the ancients used to worship the sun as the source of life. The 'dazzling day' lyric worked with the gold.

Write it all down

But don’t make a sound

Better to say

We’re doing okay

Stay where you are

Don’t raise the bar

Yours is the dark

Don’t leave a mark

Play it down low

Don’t make a show

Don’t be inclined
To know your own mind

Seeds on the breeze

Carry with ease

Heroes in line

While we lie supine

What have we done?

Here’s to the herd

Armed with the word

Those at the bow

Will save you somehow

Peace is the wage

For closing the page

Leave them to sup

From a near-empty cup

Play it down low

Don’t make a show

Shane explained that ‘Supine’ refers to our absolute vulnerability. This is a loose figure study. I often look for hope in my work, but not false hope or toxic positivity. And hope only rings true for me if I've allowed myself to sink into sorrow and despair. It feels right to just embody this 'supine' position sometimes. Lying supine is also a yoga pose known as 'corpse pose'. Often done at the end of a session, embodying complete relaxation and surrender. So, I think you can see this as either a very vulnerable pose or a really relaxed one!

Frozen by the shutter’s pass

A pinstriped leg mid-stride

You only see the tree rings

When you slice and look inside

Normal is an echo
Of a learned and foot-worn trail

With just one stamp of Mother’s boot

There’s a new world to inhale

Gathering the timber
As we wheel away from sun

To warm our expectation

That there’ll be another one

There’s comfort in community

But what are we, and who

When stony-broke and lowborn folk

Constitute its glue

Lovers kiss by megabyte

Whom oceans set apart

Christmas lunch and party punch

Surrealist works of art

Nothing must detain us

From all-consuming growth

From birds and bees came equities

What heart can balance both

Gathering the timber
As we wheel away from sun

To warm our expectation

That there’ll be another one

I took my reference from a finger print (obvious similarities with tree rings). The gold of the fingerprint comes through the sombre purple. Shane shared his thinking behind the lyrics, “This thing we’re living through has cut a slice through us and shown what we are inside. How we presume things will progress in the usual way, as if history is the only reference, and how that presumption has been exposed for the arrogance it is.”. So, the finger print in my image has been cut in half and shifted across so that it no longer matches up (the physical distance between us). But even though the fingerprint has shifted from what we are used to, it has forged new connections reaching across the divide, and it now looks somewhat like a crooked heart. The tree rings and fingerprints reminded me of labyrinths I've walked and how you can't always see the way ahead clearly or the destination but you carry on walking round the curves in hope. It reminds me too of something a nurse said to me following surgery for breast cancer. I was concerned because they had had to remove all the lymph nodes from one side but she said, “your body will find a way, it’s like if the motorway was closed, you’d just find an A road.”

As an aside, a bit like word association, Timber made me think of Timbre (appropriate for the musicians!) and also, randomly, Timshel which means "you may" in Hebrew. Made famous through East of Eden (which I haven't read!). But reading extracts from the novel it becomes clear that the translation is important. Apparently, some biblical translations have used 'you shall' and 'you will', but using 'you may' makes all the difference. It gives us a choice. We have a choice here in this time.

Can I see you up town

When everything’s calmed down

We can talk of the year

That burned off the old veneer

Tell me all that you know

Speak to me real slow
I want fill up my head

With the silliest thread

When we’re getting them in

There’s a light under our skin

Its patience was long

When everything was wrong

I’ve nothing but love

For the dark sky above

But the street lights are blue

For everyone we knew

I wanted this to be abstract, not too literal, and really simple. I wanted it to be quick, without too much forethought, just tapping into the unconscious and seeing what emerges. The slash of colour across this one can speak of separation. A meditation on that which connects us and that which separates us. There are themes of 'above' and 'below'. You can interpret the larger circle as God and/or the sun - or not! But even with distance, or separation, the circles are all related, all cut from the same source.