Notebook

Should artists have jobs? It's a tough one. I'm lucky: I like my job. But I also like what Patti Smith said on the subject back in January -- I hung on to it and will continue to do so. She was talking to Laura Barton in The Guardian.
'Smith is nothing if not a grafter. She prickles at the modern notion of rock as a glamorous vocation, of stars made overnight, of the MTV generation’s iPodded consumerism. “You have to kick doors open yourself. When people come up to me and say, ‘Patti, nobody wants to hear my CD and I don’t have enough money for equipment,’ I say, ‘Well, get a job, y’know?’ That's what I did. You get people who say, ‘The government won’t give me a grant and I can’t do my art.’ I say, ‘Fuck you, it’s your own fault, you expect the government to give you a hand? The government is corrupt. Do what it takes. You do babysitting jobs, you work in the factory, you work in the bookstore or become a pickpocket, y’know? But whatever. Get a job.’ Work is really good for an artist.” Her features sharpen and there is a fierce set to her mouth. “My son is one of the best guitar players I’ve ever heard. And how does he make his money? He does manual labour, he does landscaping, he digs ditches. He’s out there sometimes eight to 12 hours a day because he lives in Detroit and it’s hard to get work there. But it’s good, it’s good. Artists should work.'
read the rest...

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I call this: sitting ducks. It was taken in Paris, in the Jardin du Luxembourg, not so very long ago. The orderliness of the chairs settled in the pond: only in the City of Light, don't you think?

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"At that moment something would happen, of such peculiar subtlety that it must have eluded the perception of all but those involved in the experience. The catalyst of sympathy seemed to destroy the envelopes of personality, leaving the two essential beings free to merge and float. Thought must have played little part in any state so passive, so directionless, yet it was difficult not to associate a mental process with silence of such a ruthless and pervasive kind. As they continued sitting, the two women would drench the room with the moth-colours of their one mind. Little sighs would break, scintillating, on the Wilton wall-to-wall. The sound of stomachs, rumbling liquidly, would sluice the already impeccable veneer. Glances rejected one another as obsolete aids to communication. This could have been the perfect communion of souls, if, at the same time, it had not suggested perfect collusion."
From Patrick White's Riders in the Chariot

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Jodrell Bank Telescope, 50 years old this year and still going strong. This lovely photograph of the Cheshire landscape was taken by one of Jodrell's astronomers, Dr Anthony Holloway. Why do I have a radio telescope on my website? Not long ago I got to climb up into the dish, thanks to the good folk who run the place; all this in aid of events coming this summer to celebrate a half-century of listening to the heart of the universe. Watch this space (as it were)...

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