Rock Balance before Tears - a photo on Flickriver

            I was lost.

Then someone gave me a new map. I followed it and it took me back to where I started. 

Seemingly back home. 

I'm crying while write this, I really didn't expect that. But I think finally the splinters are working their way out. Each new sentence I write that resonates with that buried and deep emotional pain has a soundtrack of heavy sobs.

If you've been reading my witterings over the last couple of months you probably noticed that there's been some stuff going on.

I've always enjoyed writing stories to go with my pictures and back when I started doing this they used to be funny. Nowadays they seem heavily weighed down with something.

Yesterday I went to the beach and made my very first proper rock balances. I'd made plenty of rock stacks before and mini pebble balances but nothing where a pointed heavy rock is needed to hold everything together with gravity. I'd not tried it even once.

Midway through making the first one I had a massive AHA moment, everything that the expert rock balancers at LEAF had been telling me suddenly made sense and I was filled with joy and inspiration. "I get it!" I shouted to myself and I was transported back to a time many years ago when I suddenly got what land art is all about.

Back then I was trying to recreate a Goldsworthy sycamore leaf box and while I did so I realised that land art is not about the end result it is about the process. By trying to find leaves with right angled veins I discovered all about those trees and how some had obtuse angles some acute and you had to get to know quite a number of trees to find the right-angled ones you need to make a box. It was that day that put me on the path I am on now.

From an early age I'd find my peace in nature and suddenly now land art became another way for me to connect and find more of that quietitude. And I loved it, dreamt about it and went out and made things whenever I could.

After a while I started to get some interest online and it grew and grew. It was very nice to share what I was doing with people and of course I enjoyed the attention. But soon after the whole atmosphere changed around what I was doing and it felt like the very activity that gave me peace had been taken away from me and now it became a burden as I felt owned by it.

Bear in mind that this all in retrospect and it's only today I have come to realise this.

My art became another cause of stress when it used to be the reliever. I became more and more resistant to making anything and I had no idea why. 

I felt like it had been stolen from me and I somehow felt bereft. It became all about what was expected of me and because I could no longer give it to you I felt like I had failed. Failed all of you at everything. Not worth a bean and that was how most of my life was up to then.

Land art and my love Julia helped a casualty of life find connection. A painful life of crippling shyness, unrequited love, a broken heart and no one ever knowing how I felt inside and with it the belief that no one cared. In land art I found something that helped me down the path of repair. But then it became part of the problem.

Yesterday at the beach I felt the same solace balancing rocks as when I found land art. When I got home I searched out photos from the experts such as Michael Grab, Tim Anderson and Patrick Catalde and I was inspired so much I wanted to dash out the door and make something there and then.

That map had taken me home again and whatever it was that set me off in the first place was back.

I went down to the river at Middlewood, the place I go when I really need to connect and set about looking for rocks to balance.

At first the searching starts to move you into a flow alpha state then the first assembly takes you in still deeper until that moment when you are trying to glue the whole thing down with a pointed rock. Right then your world is filled with only what is in front of your eyes and you reach a deep and mindful state. The only other activity where I have experienced this same state is climbing when your whole world becomes the two square feet in front of you. My land art though connecting and mindful renders a different flow state from this.

As your awareness expands, time seems to stop and gradually you bring that rock into balance. And then it stands and you get a big dump of happy chemicals.

It stood for just thirty seconds. 

When the dopamine started to drop I started to feel a little emotional. The process had opened me up and sentences by way of explanation ran through my mind.

I sat on a log to write some of it down and then like a tidal wave crashing over me I began to cry.

While not trying to sound like an over-wrought actor pouring out their Oscar acceptance speech, there are too many people to mention who have helped and guided me on this journey back home.

You know who you are. 

Thank you.

But this is not simply a tale of some old duffer finding his way back to what he loves about his art. This is a yarn about a much more profound journey where many of the wounds I have had since childhood are finally being healed. At that I am astonished and grateful. 

I had no idea when this day begun that here is where I would be. 

To all of you who said that chaos is often the beginning of a journey to somewhere more profound. You. Were. Dead. Right.

Thank you to you as well. ;-)
Taken on: March 28, 2018
Tags:
Rock Balancing
stone
zen
Sculpture
Richard Shilling
MiddleWood
Lancashire
River Roeburn « less
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