Genius

Genius

That beautifully poetic line in the Bible comes to mind, an introduction to the very beginning of creation: "Darkness was upon the face of the deep. The spirit (breath) of God moved over the surface of the waters. He said: 'Let there be light' ". 

With all due respect, in a rather more modest approximation of this dynamic action, today I'm breathing onto my liquid organic watercolours, to spread them over the glass plates of my overhead projectors in my studio, practising how to breathe in synch with the winds and brush-stroke with the strings of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. We shall come together in a Genius Loci (meaning the spirit of a special place), in the magnificent Symphony Hall of course, but more especially in a new shared awareness. For the first time, the whole orchestra and I will tap into the genius of a fellow spirit: artist/composer M.K.Čiurlionis, in a unique audio-visual confluence inspired by his compatriot, Music Director Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla as she conducts the symphonic poem The Sea on February 16th. 

The author, philosopher and poet David Whyte*, in his moving book Consolations, suggests that "genius" is not simply a platform of achievement, arrived at through accomplishment. It is to find oneself in the crossing point, he writes...at a confluence of inherited flows...the meeting place of our particular body meeting all other bodies, corporal and elemental: a body breathed over by the wind.......

*I apologise to David for disfiguring the flow of his thought-provoking writing. (Read that Book!). I am deeply indebted to him for these thoughts and much more.

(Above) a few more "stills", awaiting their moment of live creation through my lyrical kinetic painting with the CBSO on February 16th. in Birmingham Symphony Hall. Take a deep breath, then let's take the plunge.

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