The 10th Muse

There were nine muses in ancient Greek mythology. Daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, they were the divine inspiration behind human artistic and scientific endeavour. Calliope is probably the most well known, she is the muse responsible for inspiring heroic/epic poetry. Erato is the inspiration behind love poetry.

Because I love art, a couple of years ago, I promised myself I would do some form of art every day. Whether it be a few lines of poetry or prose, a sketch, doodle or a painting – or even taking a photograph. I think I do two types of art – conscious and unconscious.

When I consciously do something, I think about what it is I want to paint, how I want to paint it, materials, medium, etc. And I have an image in my mind’s eye about what I want to achieve. Invariably, I am slightly disappointed with the finished piece because it never lives up to the ambition of my imagination. The enjoyment was in doing it in the first place.

The second type is my unconscious art. I pick up whatever is at hand and just express myself without thinking about it. Whether it be in words or brushstrokes. I tend to get more satisfaction out of this kind of work because I don’t have any preconceived standard I was hoping to meet in my mind.

And it is this work that I sometimes question whether it is actually ‘me’ who is doing it. Or, rather my unconscious connection to the rest of the energy of the universe that my own sub-atomic particles are inextricably linked with. My Divine Muses, if you like. I am merely a conduit to put the marks on paper, canvas, or pizza box lid. (My muses do like a lot of pizza.)

Yeah, I’m aware that all sounds a bit pretentious and hippy-trippy, but you can’t escape the fact that our subconscious selves have an awful lot to say if you only let them speak.

Anyhoo, here’s what the muses wanted me to say recently…

Frida Kahlo inspired by the novel “The Lacuna” by Barbara Kingsolver.

Inspired by The Gorillaz and the war in the Ukraine.

‘Noodle’, inspired by the Gorillaz and Euterpe.

‘Peppa loves jumping in bloody puddles,’ inspired by a recent court case in Russia over copyright.

Inspired by patients at Stepping Hill Hospital where I work.

Ditto for this one.

And this one.

Inspired by the Divine Proportion, or Golden Ratio.

Inspired by Ourania.

Inspired by Melpomene.

Inspired by Polymnia.

I am very passionate about the act of ‘doing’ art being the most important aspect of it, rather than the end result. I see the benefits of this in patients with mental illness all the time. Yes, it can be insightful, but it doesn’t have to be. It can just be mindful, cathartic, meditative, expressive. And most importantly, you don’t have to be good at art to do it – it’s about the process, not the result.

Because, when you open yourself up and let the muses in – be they divine, subconscious, or Earthly, that’s when you really feel the joy of doing art.

Oh, and the 10th Muse?

For me, it’s the Golden Ratio.

More on her another time.

I don’t think there is a muse of epic tidying.

Ebb & Flow

EBB & FLOW

By David Milligan-Croft.

It begins with tingling pinpricks

In the wrist. Moving slowly

Up through the spongy muscle

Of the palm. From there, it spreads

Its spiky tendrils into the burning cul-de-sacs

Of my fingers.

Until the numbness sets in.

Somewhere outside, a piano is playing

A delicate melody. Vibrations of sound

Floating in the balmy August air,

Drifting off into the universe.

Meanwhile, across the galaxy,

Two spiral nebulae collide,

Stripping charged electrons from their atoms.

Ionised oxygen and magnesium sending 

A kaleidoscope of colours crashing,

And burning in the lightless void.

The beauty and violence of a star

Forming to give birth to new worlds, new life.

Then the ant. The curious ant

Pads across the table.

Its antennae probing the wall

Of flesh that is my hand.

It’s checking to see if I am safe to traverse.

Cautiously, it crawls over my palm,

Up my numb fingers. I feel nothing,

And everything, at the same time.

Winter Haiku

A skin of verdant

moss conceals the wet dry-stone

wall on misty moor.

The Runes of Scars

Well, hello there.

It’s been a while.

Just thought I’d share a few haiku with the class.

Languid river flows

past weeping willows and pink

cherry blossom trees.

_________________________

Vapour trails scratch the

deep, blue sky – a pair of larks

glide without a trace.

_________________________

Was it a petal

or a butterfly, caught on

a summer zephyr?

_________________________

Then, there’s this…

I tried to flesh it out into a haiku. But the more words I added, the less powerful they became. So, I’ll leave it alone.

Suffering is written in the runes of scars.

__________________________

Things I stole from Sylvia.

My daughter and I went to visit Sylvia Plath’s grave again in Heptonstall, West Yorkshire at the weekend. (I know, it’s just one thrill ride after another at our house.)

It was a stunningly sunny day and I took the liberty of stealing a couple of leaves from her grave as a memento.

Now, some people might consider that tantamount to desecration.

I must add, however, that if you look at the picture I took of her grave back in March versus the one I took last Saturday, you could argue that I was merely ‘pruning’.

31st March 2021

17th July 2021

Whatever side of the felonious fence you sit upon, here’s a photo of Exhibit A.

Anyhoo, after sticking the leaves in my sketchbook and pondering them for a while, I decided to write a poem about them.

So, here it is

Lady Lazarus

by David Milligan-Croft.

A leaf stolen

from Sylvia Plath’s grave.

I wonder if the atoms

from her decaying, mortal flesh

have permeated terra firma?

Her nutrient-rich essence

seeping into the soil

absorbed by the roots,

rising up through the stem,

branching out into the veins.

Verdant leaves vignette to aubergine,

unfurl to the scintilating light,

as though – with eyes closed –

she stretches out her slender arms

to the glorious, morning sun.

Just add water…

Looks like I’m back on track for my quarterly review. Which is a bit tardy really, as I used to try to do a couple of blog posts a month. That’s the price of working in a hospital for a living, eh.

I still do art every day mind. (It’s a promise I made to myself a couple of years ago.) Now, when I say ‘art’, it can be doodling for 15 minutes, writing a piece of poetry or prose, taking photographs, or starting a painting.

And the reason I made myself that promise is because art is the thing I enjoy doing most. The key word there being ‘doing’. So I just concentrate on the process of doing art rather than the end result. Obviously, it’s nice when the end result turns out to be something you’re pleased with, but that isn’t the objective. The only point to it is to be lost in the process of doing something I love. I think they call it mindfulness nowadays.

Some people might achieve the same pleasure from meditating or gardening. For others, it might be walking in nature or reading. Whatever it is you love doing, try to make time for it – even for ten minutes, you’ll feel better for it.

Right then, what’s all that rambling got to do with these scribbles then? Well, I was getting ready for work one morning and I had about 15 minutes to spare, so I did a quick sketch with a felt tip pen. I then went over the lines with a paintbrush dipped in water so that the ink bled. And this is what came out. So I did a few more over the next few days and I was quite pleased with the process and the result. I appreciate they won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. But I don’t like tea anyway, so there. I prefer fresh coffee.

This was the first one I did. It’s fresher and looser.

A common theme in these pictures (and a lot of my other work) is that the person who is the point of focus is reacting to something unseen that is out of the image and it is up to you the viewer to wonder what that might be.

The last one I did, (which is the one at the top on brown paper), took a little bit longer because I thought about it a bit more and used soft pastel as well as ink and water.

Top tip: the coarser the paper, the more the ink will bleed. If you’re doing it on fine paper it probably won’t bleed much and you’ll just have a soggy drawing.

Toodle-pip.

Nothing rhymes with orange.

“Turtle rhymes with purple,” I said to my daughter, as we drove around the winding roads of the High Peak.

“So?” my daughter replied.

“They say, ‘nothing rhymes with purple’.”

“You’re wrong,” she said flatly.

“I-am-not-wrong!” I replied indignantly.

“It’s orange.”

“What is?”

“It’s, ‘nothing rhymes with orange’,” she said, gazing wistfully out of the window.

“Oh.”

Challenge accepted.

NOTHING RHYMES WITH ORANGE

By David Milligan-Croft

I feel a twinge…

Does that rhyme with orange?

The thought makes me cringe.

That nothing rhymes with orange.

That girl’s fringe is orange.

It’s a lunatic-orange-fringe.

Her name is Georgina.

She’s drinking a bottle of Orangina.

I once used a syringe,

To extract the juice from an orange.

I saw a sunset go down over Stonehenge.

I think you know what colour it was.

Japan tsunami – in memoriam

It’s hard to believe it’s been 10 years since the cataclysmic earthquake and tsunami struck Japan on March 11th 2011 claiming the lives of 18,500 people.

Here are some incredible before and after shots capturing the devastation and the rebuilding that’s gone on in the past decade.

At the time, all I could do was write a poem as I, like billions around the globe, bore witness to the calamitous event unfolding before us.

I felt impotent. I tried to sell prints of my poem for $1 online to raise funds, to no avail.

I wished I was something useful like a doctor or a nurse, or a rescue worker that could do something practical to help.

Then I thought of all the creative people I had encountered during my long career as an art director in the advertising industry and I asked them for help. The response was phenomenal. I got donations of works of art from all over the world to be put into an auction to raise money for the Red Cross who were working on the ground over there.

Less than a month later, we held the Japan Art Auction at Jonathan Oakes photography studio in Manchester, hosted by The Smiths drummer Mike Joyce. It was an incredible success and, thanks to a great many people, we raised quite a few grand.

A lot has changed in 10 years. As you can see by the photos in The Guardian link above.

Things have changed for me too. I am now a Nursing Assistant at Stepping Hill Hospital in Stockport.

And, whilst my poem did not raise a single dollar, it did inspire Austrian composer Albors Pascal Askari to write this hauntingly beautiful piece of music. All the proceeds from which also went to the Japan relief effort.

And, unbeknownst to me, my poem was on the English curriculum at several schools in London for a couple of years.

Who says poetry can’t make a difference?

My back garden.

These shots were taken up at Errwood Reservoir in the Goyt Valley.

It was dusk and a mist had descended over the hills. It was eerily calm, quiet and beautiful.

Followers of my Instagram account would be forgiven for thinking that I live in some sort of moorland idyll judging by the photos I post. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. I live in a mediocre suburb of Stockport in north west England. However, I am extremely fortunate to have the aforementioned idyll on my doorstep within a half-hour drive. And even luckier to have a car to get me there.

Many of us yearn for foreign climes, but I have discovered so many beautiful places close to where I live.

When I say ‘I discovered’, I think someone else might’ve been there before me. Judging by the roads. And the reservoir. And signposts. And farm buildings.

Winter is Coming

Actually, it’s already here.

Apologies to Game of Thrones fans as this post’s title is literal rather than a metaphorical reference to House Stark.

I just wanted to share a few photos I took in Etherow Park near where I live in the north west of England during a bit of a snow flurry.

So, I took the opportunity to shamelessly piggy-back off of one of the most successful TV shows in history. (Not that I’ve ever watched the show, mind.) There can’t be many of us left.

Etherow Park is in Compstall, which is near Marple Bridge, which is near Stockport, which is near Manchester, which is nowhere near North Westeros.