Category Archives: Thoughts

General thoughts about life and what it all might mean.

Creativity, Tango, Thoughts, Writing

Tango and Writing a novel – two Big Projects..

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As well as in my working life, where the challenges of building an IT business have always been clear and considerable – I have been getting involved with some major projects  in my personal life – a couple of really big mountains to climb.

  • Firstly I am now about 30,000 words into my first novel. As a newbie 30,000 seems to me to be a great many words – even though its only a third of the way there. Once you get to that kind of size, if you stop for a couple of weeks you have to re-read pretty much the whole thing just to remember what on earth is going on.
  • Secondly I am learning Tango. Anyone who hasn’t tried would probably just think ‘So what – it’s a dance – just learn the steps.. ‘ or something similar. But in reality learning Tango as a beginner – especially for the guys, or “leaders” as we are somewhat ironically described as  – is mind bogglingly difficult.

These kind of big project undertakings need different skills – a different level of dedication. Persistence. The ability to keep going when it gets tough, when you lose your confidence. The  enthusiasm to keep finding the time, to keep practicing even when you don’t feel like it.

They also teach you about yourself – if you are writing or dancing Tango you are exploring your own character and thoughts – a humbling and fascinating process of self discovery. A process that is facilitated by the music, your partner, or by the creativity of the act itself.

Coincidentally I started them both at the same time – February – and so I am now celebrating 6 months of trying. 6 months of not giving up, of having faith, of trying to keep positive and enjoy all the learning experiences that these kinds of undertakings always confront you with.

The challenge now is to start the process of doing them at a higher level than simply awful – so with some basic level of skill. My problem is that I genuinely want to be good at such enormously difficult things, and rightly or wrongly a part of me absolutely believes that I can be. Yes it may be a fantasy – but what fun to really, truly make the effort, to discover more about myself and my limitations.

Whatever the outcome I am so glad that 6 months ago I started both of these ventures – they have given me so much – and even more thrilled that I am still hanging in there. The weirdest thing is that I have even more energy for them both than I did when I started – that seems to be a characteristic of these kind of complex subjects – they are open ended and you get out of them  as much as you put into them, you can never master them and for that reason they remain always fascinating and motivational.

They inspire you in a way that simpler, more achievable interests never can.

 

 

 

 

 

Photography, Thoughts

Bees

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This evening I decided to set myself a nature photography task – I have lavender so I picked bees.

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I like a couple of these – they tell a story – and that of course is so important.

As an aside I just want to sing the praises of bees.. Wherever I sat they were somewhere else… smart ..

Photography, Thoughts, Travel

Lisbon : First Impressions

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Found the hotel, walking around the narrow lanes near the castle, met for drinks at 1am – this city runs late for sure – and a quick visit to the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum this morning and here I am at lunchtime looking forward to my first Tango lesson this evening.

 

So what are my thoughts having never been to Lisbon before.

In many ways it seems to be exactly what I expected, a city with so much history but suffering from long periods of neglect, the recent economic problems – and perhaps most worryingly the fact that most young people no longer want to live in the city centre – they are running for the newer, safer houses in the suburbs.

All this creates great potential for just the kind of photography I love to take – I look forward to the next few days.

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My great surprise is the language – just how different it sounds from Spanish. Having an extremely basic vocabulary in Spanish from a long time ago, I expected at least to be able to understand something of simple basic conversations – but no – not a word.

 

 

 

Thoughts, Uncategorized, Writing

Thank you Charlie

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For the first time in 14 years you are not here. I miss you so much. Your soft intelligent eyes, the gentle sound of you asleep, your enthusiastic welcome whenever I came home.

You were the most constant, loyal friend. To me you are still here, I see you everywhere and I always will.

You fill my heart. I am so proud of you and so very, very priveleged to have been the person you chose to love.

I love you.

 

Business, Thoughts

Innovation Day at Claromentis

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Last Friday we had an innovation day at  Claromentis and the result is a thought provoking issue for me. I don’t post that often about business, but this one really got me thinking.

Basically the engineering team – Desing, Dev, Testing – had a day off away from the demands of scheduled tasks to work on anything they felt like – perhaps a project they had been thinking about but never had the time to do, or new technology that they felt could help our platform. We then scheduled a meeting at the end of the day where anyone could present their idea – along with free beers. Great way to spend a Friday..

As this was our first try at this we didn’t really make a big deal of it, just scheduled it and let people respond as they wished. The results were really amazing – we had 6 great ideas presented to us, with a lot of the outline work done and shown to the team. They were incredibly varied – and I have to say all of them, without exception, were good and valid concepts.

So what’s the issue? Simply that we now have to find a way to select one or two for further development, and I need to do that without discouraging everyone else! Its one of those occasions where you just don’t want to select any winners – you want to give everyone time – and therefore resources – to keep working on their concept.

Sometimes competition produces an unwelcome side effect – someone has to lose. Like any business we have limited resources  .. any ideas how to encourage everyone but still select just one idea to be carried on, potentially into production?

 

 

Creativity, Photography, Thoughts

Tango Festival

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Just finished a bank holiday weekend dominated by the rare sight of the sun, and more importantly by a 3 day tango festival at Ardingly.

I spent the days in workshops – although not enough as I am too much of a beginner to be allowed into most of them – and the nights at two Milongas. I only took my camera for a couple of hours – too busy dancing – but here’s a few shots.

I thoroughtly enjoyed everything about the festival. The workshops were excellent  and if the music in the main milonga ever got too conservative – which for me it did on Saturday – then there was a small room playing Nuevo, which was great. The Sunday Milonga featured Otros Aires, and that was indeed a party atmosphere playing just the kind of faster Milonga style that I love messing about to.

Because I am too much of a beginner to do the kind of classes I would love of the 6 workshops I attended 3 were actually about the music – how it is structured or how we might respond to the various rhythms and pacing that are in the sounds of Tango.

 

My last workshop this afternoon –  “Using Phrasing, connecting to the music and each other” – at which these two main images were taken, really summed up so much for me. Tango is a dance, it isn’t a mathematical formula or some kind of exam. Learning yet another step in a wooden, recipe style – oblivious of the music –  isn’t why Tango has really caught my imagination. Yes it is challenging and interesting to learn new figures – but it seems to me that Tango is about connection and expression and the complex messages that exist so naturally in powerful, emotional music. Tango gives you a vocabulary for a deep conversation, but in the end it is a dance and it really should be enjoyed as such.

Of the wonderful professionals that were there Dario and Clair – featured in these two photographs – captured that intensity of connection and celebration of each other and the structure of Tango more than anyone I have seen. On the featured image they are taking the first step to the music to show our class such a simple phrase – yet the expression of radiant hapiness and playful celebration is so totally genuine. In the main photo they are demonstrating how to vary the pace of one of the most basic moves any beginner is taught in their first lessons – look at them – such intensity and celebration of each other and of Tango.

They are dancing.

 

 

 

Thoughts, Travel, Writing

My first Beltain – Impressions

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Yesterday I was invited to a celebration of Beltain at Butser Ancient Farm in Hampshire, right on the border with West Sussex. The site is a working ‘ancient farm’ where archaeologists can experiment to test their theories of now people lived in Iron Age Times.

Beltain itself is the Gaeilic May Day festival – held to celebrate the beginning of summer. As I now understand it Beltain – the beginning of summer – and Samhain – the begining of Winter – are the most important of 4 Gaelic festivals. Beltain seems to have the general positive theme of celebrating light and renewal of life – and is celebrated with bonfires.

In the case of the festival yesterday, the culmination was the burning of a giant Wicker Man, into which during the day everyone could place a small wish – there is something quite moving in seeing all of these hopes written on small pieces of paper, tied to twigs in the Wicker Man – and then to watch them burn and the embers flow into the night sky.

There was much that to me seemed so positive about the afternoon and evening. There was such a range of people, and the underlying themes of folk and Irish music, Jigs and dancing – although always layered with symbolism if you chose to be receptive to it – could just be accepted as a simple celebration of the dawning of summer. There were no priests, no nonsense – just wine food and beer, the making of  wreaths to wear for the evening from vines and plants, music and face painting.

Young and old mingled in this ancient farm, watching small displays, belly dancers or just sitting on the grass and talking with friends – and at the end all watched the burning of the Wicker Man in this ancient site, free to have their own thoughts and responses, and to keep them to themselves.

If this simple, unpretentious, yet quietly respectful celebration is something of the spirit of modern paganism then in my view there should be much more of it in the world.

 

 

 

Thoughts, Writing

A light for me to follow

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The crowd, the anticipation, the opening is a growl of  powerful chords. The deep  sound rolls towards and over me, then silence in the backwash and finally a single melodic phrase on an overpowered guitar reaches out to me. Here it comes, it’s that song again carrying me forwards, that timeless time.

So much connection, I  tense with anticipation –  there’s a space I get taken to that is so full of possibilities – of what I might yet become. The rhythm and the energy are their own vocabulary and they reach into and lift me – effortlessly they carry me forwards.

“There’s hope in your eyes
I wanna love you but I get so blown away.”

The song is so open, leaving so much space for me. The gentle rocking embrace, I am clinging to something that keeps me afloat, cradling it. Chord after chord, and hanging in the air above all the details his so, so individual voice seems always to have been there –  a light for me to follow.

“I am just a dreamer,
But you are just a dream.”

“Once I thought I saw you in
In a crowded hazy bar
Dancing in the light from star to star.”

Where are you? I leave so much space for you. Please come into my life, engulf me.

“I wanna love you but I get so blown away.”

 

Photography, Thoughts, Travel

The calming impact of landscape

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I spent a couple of hours walking in the Sussex landscape today -with the hope that it would clear my confused mind.

It was a cold afternoon – especially just after arriving from Seville – just the kind of weather where it is so tempting not to go anywhere,  instead to sit at home and plan moving to somewhere with a decent climate.

But landscape is so healing. After an hour and a half of stupid thoughts and frustrations I just stopped, and carefully watched what was in front of me. I took this image, the only photo I took in the whole day.

There’s nothing special about the image, it just reminds me of how calm I felt. It was starting to sleet, I was totally alone but for the first time my mind just stilled.

It’s an amazing process. I took  all of my emotional baggage into the Sussex hills and walked –  I didn’t fight my mind, I just walked – and eventually something within me responded to the beauty and presence of everything around me.

So healing. I should do it more often.