Today, yet another storm is passing over us. Its a portent. The wind and rain lash against our windows with all the persistence of an attention seeking celebrity. Our TV ariel on the roof, is so poorly attached to the chimney, it swans around imitating the mechanics of a musical box fairy. Swiveling all the time in the gale with a depressed groan. We're all so fed up with the wind - its whips, bursts and melodramatic sweeping gestures. Its like living in an H P Lovecraft story. Where the wind may be jeering, but it is also listening closely to us. I have a sense of its empathy.
We're unlikely to be flooded here, just the occasional pond of water collects in one dip in the coast road. That place where, once upon a time, there used to be a fording crossing. In one flash surge it returns, gone by the next day, or the day after. All the roads leading to this coast road come steeply down from the escarpment. Water will always find its way towards the sea, leaving a badly woven trail of detritus behind it. All storms clear out the deadwood and refresh the air. They drag down from the surrounding forests and track ways all that, though unwilling, has lost its vision and vitality for living.
Jnanasalin and I, stay mostly indoors except for our daily walks and the necessary visits to Sheringham or Cromer for provisions etc. January through to February town is normally extremely quiet, but in lock down this has been given a stranger dystopian accent. As the New Year has progressed the number of local cafes open to offer a take away coffee service has rapidly dwindled, at the current count it's - one. We were due to close our shop for 3-4 weeks in the second week of January anyway, then the lockdown was called.
The lockdown has removed our only chance at a holiday away. Instead we have tried a weeks holiday at home, which though restful, had not quite the quality of rejuvenation we required. Soon we were back into planning our new lines for Spring. Placing orders with new suppliers, in an atmosphere of not knowing even when we will be permitted to reopen. Its the mode we've pretty much been in the entire last year, and we are both tired because we cannot stop it, cannot really let go, cannot imagine another way of responding to the pandemic that isn't making something. Making is for the future, it is a form of hope.
We had a plan for the end of January. Jnanasalin would go away for a weeks solitary retreat, whilst I'd have one at home. This has now morphed into attempting to do this whilst we both remain at home. Its an experiment, and like all such things we do not know how it will turn out. The week prior to this had for me felt dispiriting. I couldn't get into a productive groove or a good headspace with my making. Seemingly surrounded by circumstances that just seem to conspire against, to be at odds with, any intention I laid out for myself. I've been frustrated to hell with both my lack if engagement and productivity. Unable to find the right magic spell for the current moment. And yet, as George Grosz put it, 'even as I flounder I am forging ahead'.
Underlying all this is a need, compressed still more by the tense atmosphere of a pandemic, for a deeper form of creativity and self- expression than making for the shop provides me with. Something not bound by the conventions of a sell-able product. Liberated from a predefined form. Instead of working within the parameters of the known, to go off piste and enter into the unknown. Don't get me wrong, I'm very fortunate to be able to make a living from the things I make. But that can only be sustained and nourished by other forms of creativity where I am free to set out for new unexplored territories.
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