As the sole visitor to this site you may be perplexed at the nature of this portfolio, which contains very little in the way of completed or proficient work.
I built this site, with the bountiful energy that procrastination produces and primarily as a reminder to myself to spend more time creating. It also exists as an additional incentive for me to finish things. I'm forever starting new projects. I have written hundreds of unfinished songs; I currently have a massive unassembled jigsaw puzzle of a novel in my laptop; and the poetry which used to pour through me seems to be slowly trickling back into the reservoir below.
It's a learning curve. I have started painting again and in the process realised I knew nothing about paint. I've been playing guitar for years (self-taught) and have only just realised I know so little about the instrument or even music and its structure as a whole. I've always fluked my way through with a disdain for structure, process or practise and have been pleased enough with the results to feel that there is potentially more to discover.
A lot of people, unfortunately, and a lot of my friends, sadly, have given up the creative work which has previously given them so much pleasure when it started to feel like Work. A lot of what is wrong with the world is contained within this - but I'll not veer off into the polemic at present. It's also easy when you're young - you think you're immortal - and perhaps for a moment you are.
I am fortunate enough to have had a little confirmation from the world, and a lot of encouragement from friends, that I should be bothering with this at all. I've won some short story competitions, and had a little fiction published (The Art of Sleeping is the best of these). A play (Pop Art Tragedy) I wrote at 18 was produced - the play was rubbish, juvenilia, but it made some people laugh and it was pretty amazing seeing characters from my imagination come alive on stage. I self-published a hypertext Napalm for a Calmer Heart which helped me get through a particularly tricky period of my life. I had a great band with friends in Japan (Silence Front), and in New Zealand (Near Sky Project) neither of which we got around to recording and I've taught myself enough about audio production to throw some early tracks out into the ether (Hijiyama Project).
So now I'm on a hiatus - going back to basics, practising guitar daily - learning the names of things and building my knowledge of the mathematics of music (in the tradition of jazz). I'm learning how to mix colours and playing with technique (not being a 'painter' or even having any aspiration to gain recognition in this makes this the lightest, the easiest, the most enjoyable to play with). I'm also learning about structure and cultivating the discipline required to conquer the long and difficult form of the novel - eventually, hopefully, certainly I'll get there. At which point this archive will exist as a record of the journey because it's not that you ever get there.
It's more about being aware.
If you're aware then you've already arrived.
Art is about finding what we can share
so I hope you find something here
that you may take away...