london UK 2011
london UK 2011
week 2 (July 25th till 30th 2011)
with Sally Marie at The Place, in London
first day
Miranda’s observing and writing exercise:
Wood-Braille.
You need to touch it, to see it.
Someone wrote/carved ‘noodle’ in it. What was she hungry for?
My body is coughing because of/against the ventilation system.
Someone used this chair to paint with. What was she painting? The wall? A ceiling?
You need to touch it, to see it.
My fingertips screeching the wood.
My fingertips are like the nerves – unique.
If you touch it, you ‘ll hear it.
Someone sat on this chair. Was she reading? Was she?
You need to hear it, to feel it.
Someone was carving time in the wood. Hours? Days? Weeks? Years?
How many of these marks were made deliberately? How many by accident? How many just by time passing?
Like the scars, traces on my skin.
Would wood also transform from the inside, creating wood pimples?
There are all these wood ripples, like on a sandy beach. What created them? Wind or fire?
Would someone be able to read my age from the scars on my skin?
Hidden underneath, someone left a fingerprint in white paint. Who is she?
You have to feel it, to know it.
second day
Stepping into the landscape is different from looking at it from a distance.
We like to live in rooms with walls, with a roof. We need to contain ourselves.
Farmers in prairies wear baseball caps to contain and to frame their view in order not to get mad.
Gertrude Stein: writing as landscape. Being in it. Looking at it.
There are landscapes that root better than others.
third day
It is Filip’s 26th birthday today.
The marks on the door remind me of footprints of animals and humans in the snow. I have a very concrete memory of walking up the sacred mountain in Banff. A mountain of and for the ancestors. I walked it four times but only the last time I got to the top, i.e. when I had all these memories of my grandparents and felt I had to recite their names. I was accompanied by Stephanie and a reincarnation of Puck. They gave me energy and strength to make it to the top.
I remember having a conversation about how people spoil mountain tops by building snack bars on them on and how nice it was that there wasn’t any here.
On the way down, Puck climbed in a tree and asked us to take a picture of his naked feet which was a ritual he promised to a friend he would repeat every time he climbed a mountain. Whenever one of them would reach a mountain top, they would send each other a picture of their naked feet on the way back down, to honour the mountain, each other and their feet who brought them there.
Further down, our path crossed some deer and I was reminded of the wounded one, that was hiding from us, a couple of days earlier when I walked only half the way.
At the bottom of the mountain on the other side of our lodgings, towards the village is the graveyard. On the last day I visited it and discovered this gravestone with a quote/poem on it, that seemed to be the definition of an artist:
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions perhaps it is because he listens to a different drummer. Let him listen to the music which he hears however measured or faraway.”
How every one walks and listens to a different beat and how we should allow for this diversity.
The marks on the door have this amazing texture and colour diversity: black and white, brown, red and blue, …
I wish Filip on his birthday that he continues to listen and walk to his own beat and that one day his children and grand children will climb a mountain and recite my name.
Gertude Stein: ‘how to bring your audience in the same time as the performer’.
fourth day
Some confusion. Nature of confusion:
Lin giving priority to actions. Guy to spatial positions. Sally to the order of events.
The nature of triangulation. Two elements bonding with the third element left out.
Cfr. Goethe’s ‘Die Wahlverwandschaften’.
fifth day
The different positions we each took at the writing table.
Touching each other with our hands, feet, heads.
How objects become animated.
The connection between space, action and chronology.
To be moved by you.
The eye of the photographer beautifully framing our shared universe.
The power of the microscopic.
A sentence has no emotion. Only a paragraph has.
The power of whispering.
How to connect.
-
Are you writing about me?
-
Possibly.
How to enter and exist (slip of the tongue).
How to…
The song of lo… In the book of la…
Low – Lowe – Lowin – Laughing lioness
To follow the fly. The thread of the story. Ending up underneath the table finding his head with your feet.
We don’t argue. We converse. Talk in verse. Move together. Tell fairytales. Once upon… a place. How dance enters. Taking off hers shoes. Where has the witness gone? …Done…
Guy Cools
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