JUGGLING WORK, LIFE AND BEER

As a climax to the commemorations of the 50th anniversary of the June 1956 events in Poznań, the opera Ca Ira has its premiere there on August 25, and it seems it’s taken the composer Roger Waters fifteen years to complete the thing! I empathise and sympathise with the man for sticking with it! After my recent stint of just four or five days locked away with these bloody paintings, which incidentally are currently having as many ups and downs as Caligula's pants, then I just had to get out for a few hours last night! Nothing outrageous it has to be said, just a breath of fresh air to stretch my head and legs before I was due to meet Dominika around ten.

Walking the parks and streets of Śródmieście then, as I surveyed enviously the Posh of Warsaw enjoying one another's company in the beautiful warm evening moments which this gloriously long hot summer is offering up to those who can afford it, it occurred to me just how much time I spend locked away on my own. On neutral turf and away from the studio I'm by nature a sociable sort, but must have spent the best part of the last twenty six years as a painter on my tod and the rest, well, drinking in as much life as I can guzzle – It must be said - there's not many occupations that are quite so solitary yet gregarious at the same time.

Yes, the investment in creativity is certainly a strange and paradoxical obsession in that to truly flourish it needs to feed off the experience to be found in living yet requires a massive outlay in time either spent locked away in the studio, at the ‘typewriter’, or in the case of Roger Waters here - at the piano’s keyboard for fifteen long years during which time living itself is put on hold in favour of travelling in a personal wonder/hell-land for far longer than a single life has to give in this short spell on earth.

Still, it beats having to follow in the footsteps of Daniel’s brother who has had to pack his bags and set sail for England to earn his crust. Like many Polish workers, young Grzegorz now spends his waking hours (for that’s all he seems to have left now given that he never has the time to sleep), in a dead end job British workers have shunned, living in a tiny London flat with a trillion other Poles and working twelve hours a day - seven days a week!

In honour of Grzegorz then, no more complaints, just an observation or two here and there and for me now - a daft wish that finishing off paintings could just be a wee bit quicker to realize! And anyway, what have I to complain about? All be it a one which lacks a grown up bank balance, this particular life-choice isn't all that bad as proved last week when for the first time in ages, unburdened by work commitments as we were, we managed to lock ourselves away in that ‘selfish’ creative space where we could concentrate on nothing but the loftier things in life, and of course, meeting new, as well as old faces, whenever the mood took us down at our favourite twenty-four hour opening watering holes – All in all, it was both sheer bliss and more inspiringly productive than it’s been for a very long time!

Incidentally, by the time it got to ten forty-five last night I made my way home on my own, the text disappointingly outlining more down to earth and pressing concerns for Dominika and her daughter to contend with, such as new shoes and accessories to be hunted down for the nieces’ imminent Barmitzvah or whatever it is Catholic girls go through to be welcomed into adulthood. An overrun, non productive, demand filled trudge around the glitzy late night shopping mall somewhere near Zoliborz then meant she was equally knackered, hairless and couldn’t make it to meet me… All I can say is, thank God all I have to juggle with is whether to paint, eat or simply ‘piss-off’ down to the pub!