Up at 6.00, having woken up at 4.50. What a great start to the day.
Point, oil pastel and ink on Ingres paper. Well, that just about sums up the morning. I have been thinking about happiness and realising how great an illusion it is. I have probably had 6 months in six decades. I am not whinging, simply stating fact.
I look at the bulk of humanity (with the glib posts on social media backing up the assumption), and feel that people's satisfaction revolves around the most pointless of improvements. That pubs are closed and holidays to Benidorm banned equates with the restriction of Hell itself. A beach holiday is my very definition of punishment, and I have spent a day in Benidorm, so I know.
Art, both producing it and looking at it in galleries, supposedly soothes my savage breast, but ultimately it is unsatisfactory. it is a pat on the head, but so too a Chelsea bun and a good cup of coffee: one can survive on bread and cheese for a fair few weeks - I can vouch for that - but it is a delight to then be offered bacon and eggs. Almost too much, too rich, too close to upsetting the stomach five minutes after consumption.
The BBC is reporting on Sport. We are locked down, but the items about the delayed Olympics and Southgate's 50th match are just another strand of the 'panem et circenses' mentality of the purveyors and ingestors alike. Would that I loved football like many of my contemporaries at school; would that I had a significant other to stay at home with; would that I had a job that took all my focus and satisfied (neither art-making or teaching really manages to do that any more). No more circuses!
I see stats like 'We have destroyed 83( of all wildlife,' or 'a species goes extinct every 7 seconds' and, even if I doubt the validity of the data, I have to wonder at the total inadequacy of the human race to face its problems or do anything about it. Greed is the password for everyone. I want my paintings to sell more often and for higher prices, so I can buy a nice house and travel round Europe and the US looking at art galleries and museums. Granted I'd then donate it to the nation, but it is all about salving my ego.
Maybe in two weeks time I will have more regular work. It is an excuse for being part of some broader society? And when I am steeped in 'normality' I need not address any existential question, need not worry about bank-balances or stocking the fridge. There are five more days left in the month and I would have liked to have sold one more picture, but the sand is running through the hourglass nexus and will all end up in the lower glass bulb and another month will prove to be inadequate.