Project - Beauyboy
An artistic exploration of the places and memories of childhood and youth.
As a child, born to boom in postwar optimism, my secret messenger, my early confidant was the running postman, flashes of red flowers on the sandy earth beneath my bare feet. Kennedia Prostrata shared my solitude, my secrets, my joy at being alone in nature. It was in these heath gardens of my childhood that I entered a pact with nature. The suburban gods held no sway with my heart, I was sworn to the adulation of the natural world.
Patti Smith reminded me of the altar piece of Ghent, wherein Hubert & Jan van Eyck challenged the claim on art by religiosity, and filled the scene with depictions of the beauty of nature. As a cultural refugee in modern Europe my journey followed the pattern of my countless roadtrips in the Australian big nature. A motorcar, an open road, an open mind, just sliding across the surface of the earth, the slow rhythm of spokes of tree shadow, watching the logic of the hills & rivers, still defined after 1000's years of human occupation.
The swag is my time travelling magic carpet, it delivers me into dreams, within the cocoon I lie upon the earth, I see my childhood earth mats and ant wars, I let the universe sit gently on my eyes. The night curtain draws and I am a quiet observer lying vulnerable like a foal on the spring grass. The zephyr passes between my atoms and the starlight bounces deep inside my reflection.
The cacophony of silence slowly takes shape and my breath and aliveness respirates with the myriad of life, of gas, of light & dark, of smells and movement. I can sense the minutiae drifting to orchestration, like stringed instruments falling into rhythm.
My swag, where in solitude I receive visitors from past joy & fear, the court of my other self, missed observations take on a life and discarded sensations return with the volume turned up. On snow & red sand, with coolibah standing over, windbreaks of granite tors, and umbrellas of leafy tree, my hobbled horse nearby, or my Toyota gently cooling, swagging between the fires of dawn & dusk.
I recently visited old mate, the running postman, still in the company of greenhood & correa bells. We shared our old secrets and knew the time had passed. The boom has reverberated and is shaking the ground, the sky is cut to pieces and the clouds have become teasers. Fluffy white fake news.
The postman tells me quietly that the message is unchanged, down close to the sandy soil, little dry seeds hold tomorrow's mail, the ways of humankind are slippery and reactive, risk takers seeking profit and power, denying culpability on the scales of existence.
Steve Baird Travel Journal #10 2019
Patti Smith reminded me of the altar piece of Ghent, wherein Hubert & Jan van Eyck challenged the claim on art by religiosity, and filled the scene with depictions of the beauty of nature. As a cultural refugee in modern Europe my journey followed the pattern of my countless roadtrips in the Australian big nature. A motorcar, an open road, an open mind, just sliding across the surface of the earth, the slow rhythm of spokes of tree shadow, watching the logic of the hills & rivers, still defined after 1000's years of human occupation.
The swag is my time travelling magic carpet, it delivers me into dreams, within the cocoon I lie upon the earth, I see my childhood earth mats and ant wars, I let the universe sit gently on my eyes. The night curtain draws and I am a quiet observer lying vulnerable like a foal on the spring grass. The zephyr passes between my atoms and the starlight bounces deep inside my reflection.
The cacophony of silence slowly takes shape and my breath and aliveness respirates with the myriad of life, of gas, of light & dark, of smells and movement. I can sense the minutiae drifting to orchestration, like stringed instruments falling into rhythm.
My swag, where in solitude I receive visitors from past joy & fear, the court of my other self, missed observations take on a life and discarded sensations return with the volume turned up. On snow & red sand, with coolibah standing over, windbreaks of granite tors, and umbrellas of leafy tree, my hobbled horse nearby, or my Toyota gently cooling, swagging between the fires of dawn & dusk.
I recently visited old mate, the running postman, still in the company of greenhood & correa bells. We shared our old secrets and knew the time had passed. The boom has reverberated and is shaking the ground, the sky is cut to pieces and the clouds have become teasers. Fluffy white fake news.
The postman tells me quietly that the message is unchanged, down close to the sandy soil, little dry seeds hold tomorrow's mail, the ways of humankind are slippery and reactive, risk takers seeking profit and power, denying culpability on the scales of existence.
Steve Baird Travel Journal #10 2019