Sowing the Seeds

Where do ideas come from. This note is about some ideas that have swirled around, but never come out in a coherent way, but with some planning might.

One of my favourite Peter Greenaway's films is Drowning by Numbers. The idea of a count through the pictures reminds me of turning the pages in the book as you read through the story, yet you don't see them until you look at where you are in the book to stop or want to say where you are in the story without spoiling it for someone else. It must have been the first film of Greenaway's I saw, having missed the earlier ones of A Draughtsman's Contract and Zed and Two Noughts.

In a sequence of panels, you see numbers linking the frames one to another, but in a film. You should watch a film as a straight story, but when I saw this if taught me some thing. That you could add elements to the image and suggest more, by developing layers. You look at the story, which is simple, but yet gets more complex has you review it or watch it again, but why watch it again. Greenaway's talks about how the photography on the film was devised to match 18th century painters such as Constable and Gainsborough.

Both of whom, I could say, at the time was not impressed with and the flatness of East Anglia counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex. Constable's Haywain was from the area of Flatford mill, where I can remember a rowing bow trip down the river and an argumentative trip later to Aldeburgh on the coast. The film opened my eyes to their work and understanding of the paintings. When I read the book, Fear of Drowning that linked a lot of the story as a set of 100 pieces, this idea of overlaying a series of images strongly influenced. My series, the Dreams of Deucalion was based on the idea of walking through an alphabet.

I rather like the idea of including games and Drowning by Numbers have a series of games, which can be used to described the action that is happening in the film. Hangman's Cricket played on the beach with a multitude of players has always fascinated me. Cricket is the archetypal English game and has a long history throughout the ages. It laws had to be written early to allow everyone to agree on how to play and give results to the amount of betting that took place. George the third's father is supposed to have died, when a cricket ball hit his face and caused an abscess in his jaw.

So I was rather intrigued when I saw this article about how Cricket was imported by weavers from Flanders. What also stuck me was the comment about cricket near Guildford. How it links into the north downs and the Pilgrim's Way. This one runs from Winchester to Canterbury, and yet, there is another path that runs to Stonehenge and called the Harrow way. Again we have Chaucer's pilgrims leaving from London, so there are layers waiting to be explored.

Having been recently to St Martha's church near Albury. A small church that has probably existed since Saxon times on a hill dominating the countryside. Being a Saxon church, it might have been possibly a pagan place of worship and it is unusal for a church to be sighted on a hill. St Michael's on Glstonbury Tor is another chapel, only a tower reamins. This Church at Albury is on one of the stages of the North Downs way, a route that seeks to follow the old pilgrims way. If games can be called a metaphor for life, either you are a player, a winner or a loser or just some one to leave the table. There is a game which surrounds or affects you in some ways.

Again the article mention is made of the idea of using shepherd's crooks as bats to defend the wicket. The idea of the sheepfold reminds me of the Andy Goldsworthy, Sheepfold project, which if I will endeavour to visit on a journey up north. So I will start to look at walking the route to see what I can find and what might develop further.

All these ideas are swirling around inside of me, waiting to make the links and join in creating work. I wonder where I will go.........