A work in progress...43

Had a dream the other night that I was carrying a canvas about the shape and size of a single bed with another bloke, who was insignificant. I was carrying it through the dark alleyways near the home I was brought up in. The alleys were dark and smelly, full of dogshit etc and it seemed like a struggle to get the canvas home. These alleyways feature in the collection of poems I have written and I was obviously revisiting old territory. The canvas represented my art and the labyrinthe of dark, threatening alleys represents the struggle of trying to breakout of such an environment and create something beautiful. When I woke up I had this incredible urge to read Dylan Thomas's In My Craft or Sullen Art, which I think sums up the struggle in us all.

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

I've spent all week working on a single paragraph and finally got it this morning. It's a very important paragraph as it's link from the present to the past, but with only a slight feel of shifting time.

The book is going to be bathed in colour, the protagonist is an artist and this is how he views the world. I've been reading lots about the pschology of colour and I have a rich and varied palette to work from.

The house move is back on, if we can come up with the cash. Not sure what the weekend will bring. I hope to watch Clockwork Orange and write. May go to the coast with the kids if the weather stays fine.