Sunday morning baking while everyone is still asleep. What I think sourdough bread is teaching me is quiet discipline, going beyond novelty, the instantaneous dopamine hit, creating routines and rituals that don’t change. Noticing details, and incrementally improving, being present, so you notice ahhh when I don’t do that thing, the loaf doesn’t rise as well, or if I don’t slice it right the shape changes. What I do matters and what I don’t do has an impact, but it’s not life changing or threatening, it’s within a safe space so I can receive it and incorporate it into my own private thoughts. Also a small space for gratitude, a reminder that bread is life, that I am connected to my ancestors and we are all part of the bread of life. That I can make the bread each week that is feeding my family, which is a pleasure and a privilege, a job and a choice.
Dearest Patti, what is in a name. A collection of words begin in abstraction, words embossed upon a page - Bread - of - Angels, and then here, weeks later in the quiet of a south east london morning I find myself dusted in bread flour having just read the final page, closing the book on your epic journey only to feel the words rise like a gust of wind lifting the speckled white particles into the air, rising, tumbling -playing-round and round. Your words joining my actions, both past and future, infusing all with questions. Can I dare to walk my own creative path the way you did and still do. Can I hold to my own internal truth, my own divine logic and keep that as my guide the way you have? I know that I want to…even though wracked with fear but even then I’m transported into a different time, I’m in the depths of a ancient dorset forest, somewhat lost, a new father - I push my son in his pram over the knotted roots only to hear a gravel voice , instantly familiar to me. It’s the voice of an angel that’s been guiding me each night across a vast coral sea. My son and I alter our course, like insects in the forest drawn to a beautiful light, we navigate to these drifting words and find ourselves brethren at a small gathering. You’re reading an extract of Just kids, like a church sermon amongst the trees. A smile erupts across my face, is this a dream? I kiss my son and we listen together. Afterwards, you sign my copy of the coral sea, I’m carrying with me. I feel as if I’ve arrived home, even for just a moment. My son is 18 now and here we still are. Your words, flour dust, still tumbling together with my thoughts and actions. And in this moment and forever more, I’m so unspeakably happy they are. Xx @thisispattismith #breadofangels @bloomsburypublishing #thecoralsea #leica #leicacl
Knats commune with the ghosts of northern football legend Jackie Milburn and Newcastle’s long-dead, but never-forgotten, coal miners.
Simon Waldron directs ‘Wor Jackie’ for Knats.
on #DirectorsLibrary ↗
𝘍𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘶𝘭𝘭 𝘧𝘪𝘭𝘮 𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘸𝘦𝘣𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘦…
Featuring spoken word by Cooper Robson.
@siwaldron
It started with a question: How does jazz find its way into two 14 year olds born on the rough side of Newcastle? The answer was richer than I could have imagined. A story that must be told. This is a step towards it - Thankyou @directorslibrary for the recognition and support - check out @knatsncl live and be blown away! Credits: Knats: ‘Wor Jackie’ featuring spoken word by @coopsie_xoxo
Album: A Great Day out in Newcastle
Produced by Geordie Greep.
Gearbox Records
Gray Matter Agency
Directed & edited by: Simon Waldron
Dop: Kyle Macfadzean
Produced by: Simon Waldron film
I will not stop taking pictures untill my hands fall off my arms from frostbite, and when they do I will pick the camera back up with the stumps that are left and persist, firstly to take a picture of my dismembered hands laying beautifully below me - pale and icy against the confusion of reeds and then continue in pure unadulterated futility to capture this intoxication of light and beauty. The reeds endless dance- bending in the icey wind like armies of bowing soldiers - silve r flickers of light catching their bobbing helmets - here, at the end of englands mighty river where time stands still, where Julius Caeser still roams with the old poachers whose rifles strangle their fat necks and lurchers dogs pull their fists furiously forward - f’ing and blinding all the fucking way. Hen harriers giant spans silently flap, circling, the tips of their feathers brushing the grasses below, while solitary little white Egrets stand lonely fishing their black beaks in blue pools of standing water dotted within an endless golden marsh, bearded tits bounce up and down darting through the reeds. Will you seek to destroy what I have given my hands for? Will you steal their eggs and shoot them out of the sky while the reed soldiers silently stare. The violence Caeser wrought here still lingers 2000 years on, but so does all else.#myleicaphoto
