Author: bowlingatvincent

Painting from withinside the head

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

In my last missive I warbled on pseudo-stylee about ethereal connections between Ian Chapell and staccato dance and ready positions. Extraordinary – as David Coleman might have said – given my visceral nature. Today I am ready to move on to further, similarly abstracted considerations relating to art. Because – unbelievably – not only is bowlingatvincent fluent in ECB Coaching Directives, he is genetically predisposed to appreciate yer Miro and yer Vincent ; and wishes to share these things with you.

So bowlingatvincent will roam, sometimes dangerously over diverse terrain.
And
today where I’m pitching up – doctor who-like, though perhaps in a yurt aromatically muggy in (phworr!) a frankincense stylee – is in the over-populated midfield ‘twixt art and theory. Or does it feel more like the trenches? And the thrust of what is emerging is perched upon the following gambit: that everything beautiful now gets painted from withinside the head.

Simon Schama knows this and I gladly refer to him as an inspiration and a teacher. In particular his understanding of the searing magnificence of revolutionary art, for him and me the exhilarating pinnacle of human possibility. What I don’t know is… does he like cricket? But this is irrelevant. Unlike the notion that art’s power is lashed, Simon says, to the exercise of invincible boldness and i.n.s.p.i.r.a.t.i.o.n. – a phenomenon that may be independent of ‘traditional’ painting skills; that may piss all over any sense of the literal, the figurative as god. Because it sails beyond, it pierces existing possibilities, re-defining the wonderful.

I paraphrase, atmospherically, but if you are in any way attracted still to the notion that figurative art is highest and best, classical and irrefutable, you need to get real. And get a life. An abstracted one, a theoretical one, an emotional one; one where you feel the colour of natural human experience and you don’t have to recognise its shape.

On the mighty Vinny’s journey to greatness and excruciating revolutionary triumph, he made the Potato Eaters. It’s a sensational picture in which his workaday (one might say prosaic) appreciation of working peasants is described thus

I have tried to emphasize that those people, eating their potatoes in the lamplight, have dug the earth with those very hands they put in the dish and so it speaks of manual labour and how they have honestly earned their food.

But the picture smoulders darkly – brownly! – with a radical philosophical intent. And it looks like it speaks; a new level of sympathy, of understanding, having being spawned in the moment of choosing feeling before verisimilitude; or rather developing verisimilitude into a newer, richer realness. Van Gogh was making himself – had made himself -a great draughtsman – but the perspectives being dismembered here are (the existing) linear views of art and perception itself. The painting is that important, that wonderful. And I am close to tears every time I read that which I quote above.

Cleverly, I’ve proggled the ear of your half-interest with a rather unchallenging picture. It’s after all relatively figurative; any moron can see what it’s about. There are figures. But greater challenges lie ahead.                 June 25thth 2011.

Unweighting

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

Hey look there’s no point in pretending life/business/relationships/quality of backhand are islands of independence from each other; no point. On the contrary, as I am about to prove, even if your nature is to quietly shriek pallid protest against activity in all its wondrous forms – ya wuss – you cannot deny the power of sport and the need to be ready.

Preparation? Everywhere. Man in sport there’s a spooky amount, an industry – an absolutely sexsational amount of ‘ready positions’ like, for starters. Tennis the currently obvious one; receiver with knees bent, weight slightly forward, hands in front, gusset slightly exposed. Rugby (backs); hands out in front, attracting the ball, offering a target, inviting that moment of caress, of possession.

The talk in coaching is deliciously loaded with this stuff. And the transferability of these sopping metaphors is meaning frankly Frankie, you ain’t got no escape; not in the office, not in ‘sales’, not in bed, much less out-on-the-park. And yet, amongst the daft-punk dribbles, the cod-psychology… there’s some really byoodifull stuff man.

Take fast bowling. It’s an admittedly staccato dance that grippingly, thrillingly transcends its technically-heavy brief. (Sheesh – did I nick that from Ronay?) Whatever, lately think Anderson ‘when it’s coming out nicely’. Jimmy – aka The Burnley Express – in his pomp, does deal in majestic simplicities; purring in, expressing repeatedly creamy smooth bursts; simples.

Simples but superceded surely, by the intoxicating Michael Holding at his peak, ‘pace’ being then at that perfect moment where something beyond words was, really, momentarily described. And during that alarmingly fluent Caribbean blur, amidst the ecstatic barrage from Marshall, Walsh, Garner et al, we strain for … sentences like that last one… where words transparently fail. Or maybe we simply concede, smiling, and not a little awestruck, (that) that was bloody unplayable.

And now we find ourselves marking out the run-up to some truth; particularly if we think of the batter .

Take my word for it here that when you face fast bowling you are shitting your pants. No question. For maybe only a few minutes, but parping like a good’un, nonetheless. So, with apologies to Jessica Oosit Parker in “Sex and The City” mode, if, say Michael Holding is that challenging, that much of an extreme test; How do you get ready for that?

Unweighting. Ian Chappell – yes! Aussie skipper and general arse.

Extraordinarily (and, sharing a birthday with I.T.Botham, I ask no forgiveness for the implied anti-antipodeanism here) Ian Chappell formulated the following really rather beautiful and insightful concept.

Simply put, unweighting is a process necessary for a batsman to enable ‘survival’ against quick bowling. So this usually happens most – and most obviously – at the beginning of an innings, or when the dreaded or lusted after new ball is taken. (See what I mean? Sopping). Pre-delivery or ‘trigger’ movements occur in the batsman, either consciously or not, in order to facilitate, to cope, to avoid getting hurt or out. Because the ball may come down fucking hard and fast. Batters may open their eyes wider/crouch intently whilst setting their neck/flex their knees/give up and dollop one.

Generally coaches identify two movements of the bat before hitting the ball, at that crucial heart-thumping moment when (godforbid), Holding is unleashing. There is bat-lift and then bat-swing; the former involving simply raising the bat from the ground, the latter the judgement and immediate subsequent execution of how much or little you’re going to swing the bat. The minutiae of both can naturally – and I use the word advisedly – vary from player to player but Chappell’s view has been that these ripples of the wrist or micro-steps or other habitual or rehearsed or coached movements are key. Likewise the momentum or freedom engendered by the transfer of weight from one foot to another. Unweighting.

Thus, sagacious reader, the batter’s ready position against extreme pace has to be an exquisitely timed and balanced and consistent and fluent and enabling stance for that which may be unplayable. So can you move instantly (in a balanced etc. etc. way) forward or back? Can you withdraw from the stroke? Can you duck? Can you look in control and not give the bowler and the infield signs of encouragement? Are you, in these milliseconds, rhythmical and composed and absolutely at the top of your game? Man it’s a wonderful, frightening test.

And how do we transfer its richness, its poetry and its latent dynamism to work… to life… to relations(hips)… to bed?!?

Can you find it, this unweighted state? Are you ready? Are you?

June 24th 2011.