Find a river, follow it.
Sometimes you lose your own way and need a well worn path to follow, through whatever terrain you need to traverse. Making your own path isn't always easy, sometimes you need it laid out until you find your own way again. Another way to fill up your canvas, another way to find ideas. When you need to, when you find the right course, sail your own ship once more.
Every time you have time (especially if the window is new to you):
Stop and look through it. Really look through it and at everything you can see. Work from top to bottom and side to side, finding things, seeing things, noting things and build up the entire picture.
Take time and take it all in.
Is there a story to be told, a film scene playing out; or is it a still (or a gif) landscape?
Try looking from different angles; try taking a few steps back or forwards, and look from further away or nearer: how does the view, how does the story, change?
Try from the other side, if possible, if safe, and look in, instead of out (or vice versa), and repeat the process the other way round. Don’t try looking into other peoples’ homes or offices, though, please.
If you cannot see through, if it’s only reflecting you, then treat it as a self-portrait.
Or, if what you need is blankness, then just stand and stare, take in nothing of the scene and think. This way lies true infinity.
A video installation of sixty 24 minute films that blend into one another, shown back to back.
Each consists of a single shot of a clear tank of water. Into the water, at irregular intervals, drop different amounts of black ink. Sometimes there may only be a small amount and it dissipates out to nothing, or very little; sometimes there will be enough to darken the water significantly or even turn the water completely black - but no two films are the same.
At the end of each 24 minute segment, the water is drained and replaced with clean water before the process repeats.
A gallery empty except for the occasional bubble machine blowing out bubbles.
Either get involved or stand back and watch the pure joy that bubbles bring to the world.
(Best not to think about the Health and Safety and logistical nightmares that this would bring).
A sculpture garden filled with all the statues of all the heroes you have had in your life. Who would enter your roll call, and when? Would the styles used change over time? Have any of your statues faded over time? Whether from memory or deeds? Are they eroded or mossy, have they become overgrown? Have their plaques, once pristine, become illegible? Have they been unceremoniously removed, an empty plot left to overgrow, or a shiny replacement erasing the memory? Have they been reordered over time, statues gaining new importance or prominence? Do you walk through your garden with pride? Or is there the occasional wince? And, do you feature at all?
Whatever you want it to be.
(Jorge Luis Borges felt that paradise would be a library, rather than a garden, and, for many, this would be paradise. I know I would like it. But it would not fit everybody. Some might feel anxious forever, whether because reading is not for them or because, despite having forever, they still feel like they could never read it all.
For paradise to be paradise, it surely needs to be whatever you want it to be, a completely changeable and controllable tailored experience. Whether gardens or libraries or… well, a little bit of everything you love.
And that’s just the paradise beyond. Creating paradise now is trickier but, in your mind, you can wonder about paradise here, and beyond, if your own patch is not quite there yet.
And, perhaps, this is what our last moments will be. Creating that paradise, whatever you want it to be, as your final neurons fire.)
A stand, or column, of a height and size appropriate for you. Upon it sits the physical representation of something you believe.
