Boy Friends

There was a very interesting book released last year by Max Dickens titled 'Billy No-Mates, How I Realised Men Have a Friendship Problem'. After buying a ring to propose to his girlfriend, Max realises he has no idea who to ask to be his best man at the wedding. He soon realised he wasn't the only guy struggling with friendship and goes on a journey of research and conversations with all sorts of experts about friendship. The book is an exploration of what is wrong with male companionship in the modern age. I've only heard interviews with him, but his summation is simple, that men find it much easier to build relationships with each other when there is a regular activity which allows them to meet. It doesn't matter what that is, whether it's playing a team sport, choir practice, a walking group or drinks after work on a Friday, but it seems like unless it's built into a routine and focussed around an activity or hobby it isn't going to happen.

However if you don't have this in your life there is a key to unlock its absence, and it's you. If you want this in your life you have to either seek it out and take the plunge or be the one who organises it. Now perhaps you don't want to take on the burden of booking the 5-a-side pitch each week and facilitating the whatsapp group to get everyone along, but think about the multitude of benefits that your proactivity might afford not only you, but all of the others who want to join you, and I can assure you they will be very grateful for the reason to meet. 

More recently I have been reading 'Boy Friends' by Michael Pedersen, an exploration of friendship, grief and loss after the suicide of his very good friend Scott Hutchinson of the band Frightened Rabbit. Scott's death happened a week or so before my sister Jess passed away so it really wasn't something I had much capacity to engage with at the time, but as a huge fan of the band I'm very glad to have the chance to revisit Scott's life through his wonderful friendship with Michael. The book is a buoyant and eloquent read and although centred around absence, offers up a beautiful picture of male companionship and a proximity which I feel guys rarely afford themselves. 

It has me wondering what it is that holds us back from getting closer to one another. I think the stereotype of male-ness plays a significant role, the societal expectation to keep your head down, work hard and crack on with life, which feels not only out of date but wildly unhelpful in a time of a terrifyingly high amount of male suicides each year. I'm not here to provide answers but maybe we can all be a bit braver in asking each other how we're getting on, really, not just a quick hey before we start the sarcastic banter, but taking time to check in. Forget what anyone else might think, they're your friends and it's ok to show them you care even if it does feel a bit soppy. When did it ever hurt to have someone know that they feel loved and listened too?

If you feel like you're in the right place to hear the lyrics, then the song below, written by Scott many years before he took his own life feels like a manifestation of how things ended for him. Released on the incredible album 'The Midnight Organ Fight', there are two lines which twist the narrative towards hope, change and a decision we are all invited to take each day, to decide to have a positive future.

If you need to talk to someone, then the guys at the Campaign Against Living Miserably are there to help. 

This article is taken from my January Mailout which also features some of my latest news and cultural highlights.

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Creating for Yourself

The creative journey is always a meandering one, with occasional highlights of public recognition and potentially earning some money from the endeavours, but neither of these are the fuel with which we create, as those exterior fuels can run dry.

In his book 'The Creative Act', Rick Rubin talks about ignoring the audience, creating just for yourself. This can feel wildly indulgent, and often isn't a decision that your bank balance will thank you for, but in order to find your true voice it's important not to create based on the expectations of others. We all start by imitating our influences but as we grow it's important to tune into the elements of our work which excite us, not because someone else said so, or wants to pay for it, but because it rings true. 

That is the thread to pull, itch to scratch, idea to develop etc. etc. 

It might not get you worldly rewards, because our consumerist society doesn't always reward the things it cannot define, categorise or monetise easily. The route to what is deemed 'success' is tricky, can be convoluted (and eventually met with others who want a slice of the pie!). I have friends who have made amazing records which have never been released, written books that haven't been published or taken photographs which may never grace the walls of a gallery. I've made plenty of things over the years which either never made it out into the world or fell flat when they did, and you learn from those, but I had the luxury of time and resource to scratch those itches to see what might come of them, sometimes they connect and sometimes they don't. For all those 'failed' projects their time may yet come, but the endeavour of creating them is the reward. The collaboration, the craft, the distilling of inspiration through a voice you didn't previously have. 

Finally, I hope you all have an enriching and revitalising festive period, enjoying time with family, friends and some treats along the way. It can be very easy to become self-indulgent over the next few weeks, and without wanting to get preachy please know that there are those around you who may well find this time of year difficult. For many reasons, Christmas and the New Year puts added stress and pressure on areas of our lives which may have already been hard, so spare what you can for those around you, through your generosity of time, money, food, hospitality or simply being a friend to someone who needs someone to listen. Please don't underestimate what you can offer to those around you. 

This article is taken from my December Mailout which also features some of my latest news and cultural highlights.

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In Your Incompleteness is Your Authenticity

I recently heard Dr. Martin Shaw share this phrase on a podcast interview, and it was like breath flowing through me. In that moment it's what I needed to hear, so I wanted to share it with you in case it's what you need to hear today. 

We live in a society which seems to demand perfection. On a daily basis we are asked to perform to a standard which stretches and bends us to reach beyond our true selves. Although many of us live searching for what our true selves might be I would suggest that it probably isn't found in the pursuit of perfection. 

In a similar vein, it is so easy to fall into the trap of aspiration, to make huge relational sacrifices that affect those we share our lives with in order to achieve something, perhaps a creative or work goal, perhaps something more materialistic. How often do we get to the end of those journeys only to find that having achieved what we set out to achieve that life doesn't feel tangibly different at all.

I'm not suggesting that we all stop trying to achieve anything in life, but it's important to carry those pursuits in context of our wider selves and those around us, the people who see our incompleteness, who know what our authentic selves look like and love us for it without question. 

For me, it's a question of accepting my flaws whilst holding onto my values, which I hope will encourage me to be the most authentic version of myself that I can be.

Martin is a wonderful writer and storyteller, director of the Westcountry School of Myth and carries a faith filled wisdom which always seems to resonate and ignite something within me. Listen to the interview with Martin Shaw & Felix Marquad on The Sacred Podcast here. I believe the quote comes from his book 'Courting the Wild Twin', which you can find here.

This article is taken from my November Mailout which also features some of my latest news and cultural highlights.

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Uncle Graham, The Beekeeper - Audio Story

In the summer I went down to Cornwall to spend some time with my uncle, a former dairy farmer who now keeps bees. He showed me some of the hives and we sat down to talk about his experience of keeping bees and how it keeps him motivated and energised after his diagnosis for Parkinson’s.

Thanks to BBC Radio Solent and BBC Radio Cornwall for playing the piece, you can catch up on BBC Sounds

BBC Solent - 36mins (excerpts of story with interview)

BBC Cornwall - 18mins 45secs (story in full)

Polycopies - Paris

Polycopies - Paris - Dear Kairos, - Book Signing

I’ll be signing copies of my latest book ‘Dear Kairos,’ at Polycopies in Paris this Friday - 6pm at the Skinnerboox table.

It would be lovely to see you if you’re in town!

'Dear Kronos' - New Zine

I've just released a new zine titled Dear Kronos ... a compatriot to my book Dear Kairos, exploring the ancient greek notions of time.

http://simonbray.co.uk/bookshop

Limited to 50 copies.

Relying on Permanence

A few months ago I picked up a copy of Jonathan Michael Ray's book, UBI.UMBRA.CADIT recently published by Antler Press, down at the Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens in Penzance. Having never encountered his work before, it was a wonderful insight into his artistic practice, engaging sculpture, photography, found objects and the surrounding landscape. His engagement with religious iconography through rearranged stained glass windows and gold lettering carved into stone really reverberated with some of the themes that I've recently been exploring in my own work. 

Considerations such as religion can be extremely loaded for some, but thing aspect which I found most intriguing was his willingness to use these mediums for artistic expression. That's not to deny that any of the previous iterations of these objects (or those that inspired them) weren't artistic, yet they were crafted for a specific purpose, their intention was for something with a great longevity, a symbolism that can be affirmed or denied, but as an object, something that feels like it should be maintained, preserved and kept, forever. Windows open to black and white sea views, boulders are cracked open to reveal their inscribed poetic interior. Shelves are adorned with items that speak of the natural, sublime and spiritual, so many of which appear to be found or collected, yet so intentionally placed that you can't help but sense they were born to be together. 

The weight of these objects is what makes their permanence feel so at odds with their reinvented state. The physicality of the stone and spiritual meaning of the windows make us presume that they are untouchable, to remain in their given state forevermore. Jonathan's reworkings along this theme allow us to see the symbolism in a new light, they have been reframed, altered aesthetically, abstractions of a previous state (whether perceived or actual). It requires us to reassess the versions that we hold in our mind as something that may have been permanent.

Jonathan's work asks us what we perceive as permanent, what are the things that we are propped upon that will not remain?

We affirm ourselves with a sense of control, a misguided idea that once things are as we want them, they will remain like that. It is not wrong to consider what we are building, creating and offering to future generations, we can dream to create for them more than we had for ourselves, but the transitions of life continues, the flux, the grey areas, the questioning.

This article is taken from my July Mailout which also features some of my latest news and cultural highlights.

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Moving in a Circular Way

I know I've mentioned it before, but the recent book Faith, Hope & Carnage, conversations between Nick Cave and Sean O'Hagan, is such a beautiful exploration of loss, religious grappling and creative exploration. It has filled me with assurances and questions and moved me. A very special book. I was going to attempt to sum up one of my favourite sections but I really couldn't do it justice, so here's a short excerpt and I would encourage you all to find a copy for yourselves.
 

Sean: What do you mean, exactly, by a 'point of arrival'?

Nick: That feeling we all have at times that we have reached a certain level of self-awareness about our place in the world, a feeling that all our travails have led to this point, this destination.

And you're saying that, with hindsight, those points of arrival are deceptive?

Yes, because that sense of awareness and certainty often turns out to be just one more mistaken belief in a long line of mistaken - or discarded - beliefs. And when you are engaged in making art, that process by its nature can also continually appear to signal a point of arrival. Like, if I look back at my past work from the certainty and conviction of the present, it appears as if it was a series of collapsing ideas that brought me to my current position. And what's more, the actual point I'm looking back from is no more stable than any of the previous ones - in fact, it's being shed even as we speak. There's a slightly sickening, vertiginous feeling in all of this.

The sense that the ground is constantly moving beneath your feet?

Yes, exactly.

So how do you deal with that?

Well, I have learned over time that the creation itself, the thing, the what, is not the essential component, really, for the artist. The what almost always seems on some level insufficient. When I look back at the work itself it mostly feels wanting, you know; it could have been better. This is not false humility but fact, and common to most artists, I suspect. Indeed, it is probably how it should be. What matters most is not so much the 'what' as the 'how' of it all, and I am heartened by the knowledge that, at the very least, I turned up for the job, no matter what was going on at the time.

Even if I didn't really understand what the job was. I feel I have committed myself to the work in general, and given my best to each project in particular. There have been no half-measures, and I take a certain amount of pride in that.

So essentially what you are doing as an artist is constantly stumbling forward.

Stumbling forward is a beautiful way of putting it, Seán, but I wonder if the notion of forwardness is correct. Perhaps what I mean to say is that although we feel we are moving in a forward direction, in my estimation we are forever moving in a circular way, with all the things we love and remember in tow, and carrying all our needs and yearnings and hurts along with us, and all the people who have poured themselves into us and made us what we are, and all the ghosts who travel with us. It's like we are running towards God, but that God's love is also the wind that is pushing us on, as both the impetus and the destination, and it resides in both the living and the dead. Around and around we go, encountering the same things, again and again, but within this movement things happen that change us, annihilate us, shift our relationship to the world. It is this circular reciprocal motion that grows more essential and affirming and necessary with each turn.

Do you see this circular motion in your songs, too?

Yes, I feel as if I am perpetually revisiting or rehearsing the same concerns that have always been there, from childhood to the present day. They just keep coming around, time and time again, like a big wheel, from as far back as I can remember and into the future, but beautifully so, wonderfully so. Does that make sense?

I'll have to give it some thought.

This article is taken from my June Mailout which also features some of my latest news and cultural highlights.

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Dear Kairos - Shortlisted for Arles Prix du Livre

Putting a book out into the world comes as a real relief. The period in which it’s released isn’t always filled with the great sense of joy and accomplishment that you might imagine. The real beauty of it is knowing that once it’s in the world that countless people can encounter and engage with your creation. They can judge for what they perceive are your intentions, or they can dig into the layers that you put between the pages. Take it or leave it. By that point, it’s not up to me. Which makes it all the more rewarding when something you’ve made gets recognised by total strangers, people who have been drawn in by elements within the work that has encouraged them to dig deeper.

Getting nominated for prizes is far from my motivation for making books, and this one is a real surprise, because I had no idea that my publisher had submitted it. What a treat to be acknowledged alongside so many other wonderful publications.

Check out the really quite extensive list of books that have been shortlisted here.

(Thanks to Sarah for the portrait, one day the world may get to see more of what a stunningly talented creative person she is.)

Listening is risky

Do we ever dare to actually hear what we have to say to one another? Or are our minds so preoccupied with ourselves that we aren’t really listening, not because we don’t want to, but because we’re afraid to. 

Listening is risky. It involves an investment of emotional energy, of empathy and understanding that perhaps in that moment we don’t feel equipped to offer, but if we don’t, we miss out. We might even be missing out on the most important thing that that person will say all day, maybe even all week. It might be a coded cry for help, an admission, an apology or something that goes on to inform the relationship, but we won’t know unless we listen and admit that if we do, there might be consequences. 

Often listening is all that’s required. As an external processor, my wife knows that more often than not, all I need to do is verbalise something and that’s enough, to let the thought out and move on from there. However, sometimes we are required to actively listen and then act accordingly. It’s all too easy to hear something and park it away as if it was never said, but the foundation of a relationship and caring for someone is to have a level of responsibility for them, and sometimes that involves the risk of actually having to do something about what they’ve told you.

I’m speaking to myself as much as to anyone else, my brain seems to fizz around with so many of my own thoughts that it’s hard to switch off and not assume that whatever I’m hearing has to inform my own preoccupations. For me, I need to pursue ways in which to slow down, quieten my mind and be open and receptive to what people want to say, because how can we care for them if we don’t listen to what they have chosen to tell us.

This article is taken from my May Mailout which also features some of my latest news and cultural highlights.

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Dear Kairos - Out Now

My new book ‘Dear Kairos’ is out now! I’m so excited that you’ll all get to hold a copy for yourselves!

Over the next few weeks copies will find their way to regional bookshops, but for now you can get a copy directly from the publisher. It will also be available next weekend at Offprint London (Turbine Hall at Tate Modern) from the Skinnerboox table.

Purchase from Skinnerboox here.

Dear Kairos - Launch at Fotograpfia Europea

I was very fortunate to be invited to present at Fotografia Europea to talk about my new book ‘Dear Kairos’, winner of the FE+SK Book Award 2023. The book will be published by Skinnerboox and be available to order in the next few days.

Boredom & Epiphany

I’ve recently been reading ‘The Courage to Create’ by American psychologist Rollo May. In a similar way to reading John Berger’s writing on creativity, he manages to put into words so many of the unconscious elements involved. It feels both affirming and inspiring to read what feels like a timeless assessment of what it means to create, not solely within the arts, but within the realms of science and maths, any discipline that involves a sense of discovery, of trial and error. 

One of the key elements of the creative process for me is the way in which the conscious and unconscious worlds unite, something which May analyses as a moment of ecstasy involving the whole self. Ecstasy is not merely a moment of hysteria, but that of ‘ex-statis’, an intensity of consciousness which fuses the division between the person and the object, a freeing sense of standing out from a prior understanding. 

Perhaps those heightened moments aren’t a daily occurrence, but his allusion is that of a heightened state, something which seemingly out of the blue offers clarity, a sense of seeing the world more vividly than before. As an artist, this is what I labour for, not as a means of gaining a temporary high, but that sense of purpose and breakthrough which allows for a greater understanding of the world. 

May goes on to dissect the notions of the unconscious meeting the conscious and how ideas can seemingly pop out of nowhere, but only if the groundwork has previously been laid. He draws a link between the fruitless graft, the research and testing which seemingly always comes before the moment of revelation, which more often appear when we are disengaged from the activity itself. 

Nick Cave alludes to this in his recent book of interviews with Sean O’Hagan when he comments that boredom is next to epiphany. I don’t think he necessarily means a religious moment of enlightenment, (although maybe it can feel like that at times) but more in the sense that these moments of inspiration do seem to appear when we are disengaged and doing something mundane like having a shower or doing the washing up. Our brains need space in order to process and invite these ideas in. We’re all aware that we can fill every moment with relentless scrolling, so perhaps it’s about taking more control over those habits in order to create space for our ideas to flourish. 

I thoroughly recommend reading both the Rollo May and Nick Cave books as a means of understanding more about the creative act, and in particular how the conscious and unconscious worlds can unite and blossom to generate something more fruitful and beautiful than we could otherwise fathom.

This article is taken from my April Mailout which also features some of my latest news and cultural highlights.

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