BACK IN THE COVID - The Lockdown Diary Day 64

In a contemplative mood today. I should not be because we have decided that our hedges will be cut today, a job which requires motivation and a not inconsiderable amount of determination there being a good number of them mostly requiring a straightness and steadiness of aim on the hedge trimmer and therefore some stamina. Stamina is not in plentiful supply at the moment.

Why the contemplative mood? I am naturally contemplative, it is actually central to my way of being but that is not generally the mood on me ahead of so much practical work and  pre-planned work at that.

Grayson Perry’s art club on the TV last night had me thinking. Art Club is the best of the lockdown programmes so far in my view. I am a fan of Grayson. Who wants perfect when you can have Grayson Perry flaunting his own failings as well as anyone and who does so with such intimate, scruffy sincerity. As an artist he stands above most all other contemporary practitioners being without, it seems to me,  false pretencion or artifice and living in his art. By which I mean that his art is a manifestation of his self. As much, for example as his cross dressing lifestyle. So many contemporary artists invent themselves after they have sold and this assumed projected self then becomes a commercial necessity. Grayson Perry will always be Grayson Perry, always an artist, unlike for example Hurst and Emin, charlatans in my view, who have long since fallen over the cliff edge of artistic oblivion and will be known in the future not so much for their art but for the ‘artist’ they invented.

Grayson’s theme this week, he has been inviting the public to send in artworks on a different theme each week, was the home. Much of the content struck deep chords with me, all of it especially relevant in lockdown. The feeling of security, belonging, safety, protection and especially how much it becomes a part of your everyday self made concrete in familiar objects, treasured possessions, reflections of taste and the focal point of your expression of love for your partner. Our house, our home is exactly where I need to be right now in the Covid. My home, together with my wife, has made the lockdown experience not just bearable but positively uplifting.

Lifting the blind, as I do first thing on mornings when I make the tea in bed, hedges really were uppermost in my mind, honestly, when this glorious, illuminated example of nature’s artistry presented me with it’s unique rendering of morning sunlight and raised in me just that feeling of joy that magnifies the value in everything that surrounds me at home. Hence the contemplative mood.

And so to the hedges.