Welcome to Musings - The Loom Room Blog

I know I’ve said it before, but Sunday is a good weaving day for me.  I don’t know what it is about Sunday that makes it feel different from the other days in the week, but I often find I get into my weaving and that it flows easily on a Sunday.  Today was a good one again.  I had a piece of Tchaikovsky running around in my head (one of the movements from Symphony 5 or 6 – the one that goes da/ra- dadaa/- da da /dara da/da;- da /ra-dadaa/-dadaa/- dadaaaaa;- da/ra-dadaa/- dada /dara da /da;- da /ra- dadaa/- dadaa/- dadaaaaaa.  Da/ra-dadaa/-da da/da da da/-da da /daa da/daa da/daaa/~~~da/ra-dadaa/-da da/da da daa/-da da /daa da/daa da/daaaaa  repeat….   Did you get that???? <G> Handy hint – it’s in 3!)

Anyway, it was providing me with a good weaving rhythm and my legs and my arms were working in perfect synchronicity.  My selvedges were perfect, the beat was pretty even and I was ‘in the zone’.  I just love times like that!! 

After this lovely session of weaving, when I took the dog for a walk this evening, I was thinking about rhythm and I remembered listening to the shower this morning whilst I was drying myself.  It was dripping – as showers always do after they’ve been switched off – and whilst it was mostly fairly regular, there would suddenly be a short period where it went erratic and whilst I was listening, it did one of those irregular patterns – it sounded exactly like the rhythm at the end of Tchaik 5 or 6 before a dramatic pause (the new listener in audience always thinks the piece has finished and starts to clap!!) just before the final coda.  Anyway, this particular section just before the pause is one of those nightmare bits that you really have to know by heart as a performer and I always feel for the poor percussionist on the cymbals – it has to be the career ending part for them if they get it wrong ! – and the rhythm seems totally random.  Now, where did Tchaikovsky get that idea from?  Was he suddenly aware of his shower dripping or did he hear it as rain drops splashing off a tree?  Or something else?    

This kind of sudden thought always makes me smile and that put me in mind of a sudden thought I had whilst walking Charlie earlier this week.  We are very fortunate to have hedgerows criss-crossing the countryside here, delineating the field boundaries, and most of those hedges are of hawthorn.  This time of year, of course, we can actually see into the hedge itself, and I love to spot the rabbit holes and other roosting places of various animals.  What made me smile was when I saw about 3 or 4 rabbit holes all clustered together under a tree, I had a sudden recollection of a childhood memory.   I used to read the cartoon books of Rupert Bear, with his red jumper and yellow checked trousers and scarf, and his friends who were other sorts of animals like badgers, mice, foxes, as well as people such as the Professor and Tiger Lily, a Chinese girl, and imaginary creatures such as fairies, elves, pixies and the like.  They used to disappear down rabbit holes into caverns and wonderful homes under tree roots.  In a way it was related to Alice In Wonderland  (another book I love) and the cartoon still appears in the Daily Express newspaper.  It was put into book form and I loved the adventures of Rupert Bear.   His parents would give him good advice and morals – you know the sort of thing – and were always fair!!!! 

I love the feelings that these kind of thoughts and memories evoke.  The sudden warmth of that memory not only made me smile, it made me very thankful for books and imagination, and authors.  We have so many creative people to thank for making our lives more beautiful – composers, writers, artists.  I guess I’d also like to be a creative person who makes other people’s lives more beautiful through weaving. 

I was threading up my loom this morning, getting ready to weave my Complex Weavers Collapse, Pleat and Bump Study Group samples for our annual sample exchange, and I was listening to a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No 5 performed by the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Antoni Wit.  I was enjoying the performance of a piece which I have played many times as oboeist in several different orchestras over the years, and noticing the differences between this particular recording and some of the live performances I’ve played in.  Then it suddenly struck me….

Music and dance can be performed many times by many different artists.  Many conductors, orchestras, soloists, dance troupes, and choreographers use work composed by someone else but interpret it in a personal way. That is an accepted part of the music and the dance world.  And it happens with classic works and with contemporary works.  We get cover versions - other artists covering a song written by someone else, and often performed originally by someone other than the creator. 

However, in the visual and written arts, that rarely happens, and when it does, it is regarded as plagiarism and a bad thing.  This dichotomy interests me!  Why is it that such different methodologies appear so polarised depending on what art form you are engaging with?  There are exceptions of course.  If someone in the visual arts already famous in their own right does something reminiscent, say, of Bridget Riley, then that will usually be accepted as ok because they are already established in their own oeuvre.  However, if I was to re-interpret a Bridget Riley piece, then I would be copying or not showing originality.  Isn’t it curious? 

And as a writer, if I was to write a story based on a writing style of someone famous, then that would probably be ok.  But having just recently read Swiss Family Robinson, and currently reading Robinson Crusoe, it strikes me that the two books are more than just superficially alike!  Daniel Defoe got there first, a couple of centuries earlier!! 

As I straddle both camps - that of a musician and that of a visual artist through my weaving - it is interesting to note what I can and can’t do, ethically speaking.  It is not expected of me as a musician that I should compose my own work.  It is expected that I can play my instrument to a high standard and perform and re-interpret other people’s compositions.  As an artist, it is not expected that I re-interpret someone else’s compositions.  It is expected that I create my own visual language and have the skills to interpret my thoughts in the way that I chose to express myself.  As a conceptual artist, it is enough to have the thoughts and have followed them through to a conclusion.  It is not even expected that I have the skills to realise them - it is the thought process, not the physical manifestation which is the important element.  Hmmmmm.

What do you think?