Along the way...
From an exercise in finality, self-erasure, and an un-investment in futurity, comes a parallel track. Written alongside, in binary code, is a fatal rehearsal - a mirror image. A flicker in the distance each month. I know that you are there. What is less certain, is my location.
My departure from the event, to the dedicated task, to the rehearsal without a script. A counter-point to a counter-narrative, I have spent the last 12 months dealing with the dynamics of this new space that you helped me to clear. By giving up the thing itself, we traced its outline and I spent that time settled in its empty bed, while you wrote it something new far away. This space has been, by its very nature, a strange one – uncanny in its architecture and unknowable in its trajectory. I did not still don’t know where this space takes us, but I recognize its framework from it’s enforced departure a year ago.
3:37 scraps on a piece of paper… 3:37 meditations on places I can’t get to… 3:37 locations that replay us… 3:37 wonderment at lost souls… 3:37 punctures in the present… 3:37 ways out...
I am clear about the gift. That in taking up this torch song, you created a tear across our year, its perforations dashing in short lines every month. We are forced to remember, but this memory is constructed out of something new. We bare witness, but the act is always elusive and has happened elsewhere. Along this perforated line, I play the dots to your dashes, and vice versa. What are we asking in our collective code, if not for an SOS?
3:37 save our souls…
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
11.59pm, Sydney
Comments along the way…
Looking back to a year ago, I still have such a strong image of sitting in the dim dark light of the Shunt Vaults in London, a group silently gathered around Richard who is sitting on a chair and flicking the light on his mobile in morse code reference. I remember him saying that he has a bunch of songs on his mobile that he listens to and one of these is a favourite. He then announces he is going to share this with us as he listens to it for the very last time. I remember my intake of breath in reaction to this. I remember thinking “oh my God how incredibly tragically beautiful and sad”.
Reading my notes from that day I say –
“This profound act moved me on a deep level. I was immediately sobbing throughout the duration of the piece”
I felt like Richard had really stepped up to the mark in his response to our task, I felt like he had risked something and framed it within such a simple action.
What struck me even more was the act of consciously deciding that this is a last time, consciously removing something from ones life that holds some importance, that gives one joy. From my notes again –
“Richards piece affected me immediately as it was symbolic of the many last times, the many little endings, little deaths along the way in our life’s journey. It taps into this profound letting go and the sadness associated.”
It was my strong response to this act that prompted me to present a proposition. The act of carrying this ending for a year. The symbolic seasons of grief and letting go.
My next strong memory is when we transferred the song from Richards mobile to mine. It was like I had something precious, now, that I was responsible for. I remember again, taking a deep breath in, just before we deleted the song from Richards mobile. It was final.
I didn’t really know what to expect for the next year, it was very much the idea of it at that time. I had no clue what I might do each month besides listen to the track. I had no plan as to how I would proceed or frame the response on the blog site.
I remember the first month in May, I felt very excited about re-visiting this moment. I remember also thinking how interesting it would be to hear the song as I really had no idea what the song was about, the lyrics, or really how it went at all. The song itself had been shadowed by the gesture in my original witnessing. I had had some idea of downloading the lyrics and reading them the first time I listened, but travelling and sporadic internet access did not support this and I found myself on the day not even knowing when I would choose to listen.
It was then, quite ironic, to listen to it sitting in the afternoon sun next to the river Vltava in Prague after just coming out of the Pinkus Synagogue. I could not separate the context in which I was and the action of listening to the song. It was a sombre beginning to the process of ending.
I know now, that the first few months was about the song, about paying attention to the song, about evoking memories and being present at the same time. The song became familiar and almost comforting. It was a joy to be greeted by it, once a month. It became like a rock. The one sure thing I knew I would do. Each month I would hear or read into the song some new innuendo, some revelatory message. It was amazing how the song took on this life within my life. This song I was holding had a preciousness to it by the mere context of what had started this project. I would look forward to hearing from Richard but I really had no concept of where he was placed how he felt in relation to the metaphorical empty space he now had. My focus was on this duty, this obligation this contract I had to uphold.
As the months went on, I started to write less. In the beginning, the words reflected what was going on in my head at the time, often inspired by the place where I was at that moment. Then this shifted, it became more about the listening and the marking.
Then came our half way mark, which amazingly coincided with us both being in the same city again. It was exciting to be able to visit this event, 6 months on, together. We conspired to be in the same room at the same time.
This also coincided with another shift for me. I realised I was starting to feel the weight of this commitment. I was questioning my original motives. Whether, the opportunity had presented itself to allow me to investigate my own grieving my own letting go. On the morning of the 16th, the day we staged our 3.37 minutes, simultaneously, I wrote -
“I said I would carry this for you but now I am not sure if it is for you or me. This is no minor thing. You are empty – you have space. I am full – with responsibility. I am waiting to empty. I am waiting to release your fullness. I am heavy. You are getting lighter.”
I realised something had to shift after this month. I didn’t know where to go, I wanted to let the song go, I didn’t really want to listen to it anymore. Richard and I talked about the form for the next half, we agreed that maybe it would be good to explore using more lines, diagrams, images rather than words. Mapping the trajectories the places without words.
Again from my notes –
“3.37 is for Richard a part of a process of letting go … of emptying out, part of an ongoing investigation of self-annihilation. For me, I realise a lot of the direction my work is going in is about body as vessel, an“emptying out” so I can be a vessel for others. The temporary dis-placement of myself."
So is there an intersection here between our explorations? This emptying and various concepts of annhilation, temporary or permanent. What is the next step or possibility?”
The last three months I embarked on the photo series “Minor Rituals in Emptying”. Again, each month I didn’t know what I would do, it just happened on the day. I was enthusiastic about this new shift and in hindsight I can see that I was indeed emptying to allow something else to flow through. My attachment to the song had shifted, I had held it and carried it, now it had to start to leave. I could invoke it but it was more the essence of it that remained. This was beautifully manifested on the event of the second last post. I was so engrossed in the ritual of creating and documenting the event that is wasn’t till the next morning that I realised I hadn’t actually listened to the song. I had a brief moment when I thought ‘Oh my God! I have failed!’ Then I laughed at the significance of it. I was emptying, I was coming to the end of the cycle, the weight was no longer there, I could release this gracefully and with ease.
The last post was tricky, I struggled with the significance of it. I had all sorts of clever ideas but in the end it just became about a simple gesture and a disappearance. A removal. Conceptually and perceptually.
After the last strains of the song had died, I felt a sudden wish that I had had someone to witness this ending for me and perhaps to carry it for me… and so it would continue.
It was with a mixture of serenity, a strange relief , a happy smile, a sense of accomplishment and a confounding hesitation that I quietly deleted the song from my mobile phone.
I think there is more to write and there will be more to say but I think this is a perfect end to this entry today.
X Julie
Looking back to a year ago, I still have such a strong image of sitting in the dim dark light of the Shunt Vaults in London, a group silently gathered around Richard who is sitting on a chair and flicking the light on his mobile in morse code reference. I remember him saying that he has a bunch of songs on his mobile that he listens to and one of these is a favourite. He then announces he is going to share this with us as he listens to it for the very last time. I remember my intake of breath in reaction to this. I remember thinking “oh my God how incredibly tragically beautiful and sad”.
Reading my notes from that day I say –
“This profound act moved me on a deep level. I was immediately sobbing throughout the duration of the piece”
I felt like Richard had really stepped up to the mark in his response to our task, I felt like he had risked something and framed it within such a simple action.
What struck me even more was the act of consciously deciding that this is a last time, consciously removing something from ones life that holds some importance, that gives one joy. From my notes again –
“Richards piece affected me immediately as it was symbolic of the many last times, the many little endings, little deaths along the way in our life’s journey. It taps into this profound letting go and the sadness associated.”
It was my strong response to this act that prompted me to present a proposition. The act of carrying this ending for a year. The symbolic seasons of grief and letting go.
My next strong memory is when we transferred the song from Richards mobile to mine. It was like I had something precious, now, that I was responsible for. I remember again, taking a deep breath in, just before we deleted the song from Richards mobile. It was final.
I didn’t really know what to expect for the next year, it was very much the idea of it at that time. I had no clue what I might do each month besides listen to the track. I had no plan as to how I would proceed or frame the response on the blog site.
I remember the first month in May, I felt very excited about re-visiting this moment. I remember also thinking how interesting it would be to hear the song as I really had no idea what the song was about, the lyrics, or really how it went at all. The song itself had been shadowed by the gesture in my original witnessing. I had had some idea of downloading the lyrics and reading them the first time I listened, but travelling and sporadic internet access did not support this and I found myself on the day not even knowing when I would choose to listen.
It was then, quite ironic, to listen to it sitting in the afternoon sun next to the river Vltava in Prague after just coming out of the Pinkus Synagogue. I could not separate the context in which I was and the action of listening to the song. It was a sombre beginning to the process of ending.
I know now, that the first few months was about the song, about paying attention to the song, about evoking memories and being present at the same time. The song became familiar and almost comforting. It was a joy to be greeted by it, once a month. It became like a rock. The one sure thing I knew I would do. Each month I would hear or read into the song some new innuendo, some revelatory message. It was amazing how the song took on this life within my life. This song I was holding had a preciousness to it by the mere context of what had started this project. I would look forward to hearing from Richard but I really had no concept of where he was placed how he felt in relation to the metaphorical empty space he now had. My focus was on this duty, this obligation this contract I had to uphold.
As the months went on, I started to write less. In the beginning, the words reflected what was going on in my head at the time, often inspired by the place where I was at that moment. Then this shifted, it became more about the listening and the marking.
Then came our half way mark, which amazingly coincided with us both being in the same city again. It was exciting to be able to visit this event, 6 months on, together. We conspired to be in the same room at the same time.
This also coincided with another shift for me. I realised I was starting to feel the weight of this commitment. I was questioning my original motives. Whether, the opportunity had presented itself to allow me to investigate my own grieving my own letting go. On the morning of the 16th, the day we staged our 3.37 minutes, simultaneously, I wrote -
“I said I would carry this for you but now I am not sure if it is for you or me. This is no minor thing. You are empty – you have space. I am full – with responsibility. I am waiting to empty. I am waiting to release your fullness. I am heavy. You are getting lighter.”
I realised something had to shift after this month. I didn’t know where to go, I wanted to let the song go, I didn’t really want to listen to it anymore. Richard and I talked about the form for the next half, we agreed that maybe it would be good to explore using more lines, diagrams, images rather than words. Mapping the trajectories the places without words.
Again from my notes –
“3.37 is for Richard a part of a process of letting go … of emptying out, part of an ongoing investigation of self-annihilation. For me, I realise a lot of the direction my work is going in is about body as vessel, an“emptying out” so I can be a vessel for others. The temporary dis-placement of myself."
So is there an intersection here between our explorations? This emptying and various concepts of annhilation, temporary or permanent. What is the next step or possibility?”
The last three months I embarked on the photo series “Minor Rituals in Emptying”. Again, each month I didn’t know what I would do, it just happened on the day. I was enthusiastic about this new shift and in hindsight I can see that I was indeed emptying to allow something else to flow through. My attachment to the song had shifted, I had held it and carried it, now it had to start to leave. I could invoke it but it was more the essence of it that remained. This was beautifully manifested on the event of the second last post. I was so engrossed in the ritual of creating and documenting the event that is wasn’t till the next morning that I realised I hadn’t actually listened to the song. I had a brief moment when I thought ‘Oh my God! I have failed!’ Then I laughed at the significance of it. I was emptying, I was coming to the end of the cycle, the weight was no longer there, I could release this gracefully and with ease.
The last post was tricky, I struggled with the significance of it. I had all sorts of clever ideas but in the end it just became about a simple gesture and a disappearance. A removal. Conceptually and perceptually.
After the last strains of the song had died, I felt a sudden wish that I had had someone to witness this ending for me and perhaps to carry it for me… and so it would continue.
It was with a mixture of serenity, a strange relief , a happy smile, a sense of accomplishment and a confounding hesitation that I quietly deleted the song from my mobile phone.
I think there is more to write and there will be more to say but I think this is a perfect end to this entry today.
X Julie
Sunday, March 16, 2008
9.05pm, Sydney
Minor Rituals in Emptying #3
At 9.05pm after 12 months, Julie listened to the song for the very last time.
At 9.09pm Julie deleted this song from her mobile phone.
At 9.28pm the 12 month cycle has come to an end. I have carried this for you Richard. I have held it and now I am empty.
x Julie
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Friday, November 16, 2007
4.48pm, Sydney
I said I would carry this for you but now i am not sure if it is for you or me...
Julie and Richard in Sydney
Julie and Richard in Sydney
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
9:05pm London SE22
I'm searching for a new song. Some new energy to fill out our time. Our investment is 3:37. The best that I can do in this time is 3:34. I have lost us 3 seconds. It was a gamble that I was willing to take. I think it was worth it. I think we can stretch it out, push it over the edges. She had magic in her hands. She could make anything grow. Magic in her hands...
Just hold your breath a little longer inbetween. Let it out a little slower. Just once, and we'll make it back. This house always wins. She had magic in her hands. She could make anything grow. Magic in her hands...
Suck in that air, and blow on those die. Those lucky die. Shake them off with a kiss and let our fortune take its turn. Set sail for pastures new. She had magic in her hands. She could make anything grow. Magic in her hands...
Where to now...?
Just hold your breath a little longer inbetween. Let it out a little slower. Just once, and we'll make it back. This house always wins. She had magic in her hands. She could make anything grow. Magic in her hands...
Suck in that air, and blow on those die. Those lucky die. Shake them off with a kiss and let our fortune take its turn. Set sail for pastures new. She had magic in her hands. She could make anything grow. Magic in her hands...
Where to now...?
Monday, October 15, 2007
10:38 am, Sydney
Three minutes and thirty-seven seconds of words un-edited:
Sitting, what the hell, these obstacles!
But I found this pony and he was so sad.
Discarded in the lane-way
But he never played with the big cats or intimidated the main man.
But what a sound he had made because he actually is very wise
Knows everything
In silence
Yellow mane, waterfall down
Reaching below to stretch up
No trusting but much belief
Shadows on the floor remind me of the speckles on the flank
Together with the dreams that keep re-occurring and telling me something that I have forgotten
Or need to remember from the past…
Sunday, September 16, 2007
7.16pm Melbourne
There is an exhilaration, a sense of play and a freedom that comes from not being in the place that is usually “home”. Add a dash of Spring and a glass or two of alcohol and you have a buoyant cocktail. I am in Melbourne and it seems that all I have to think about is creating and generating work with a dash of critical questioning, no other commitments. I walk the freshly washed early evening streets, everything sparkles and there is a promise, a jewel hidden round every corner. That one song I keep on my mobile greets me and urges me on. Colourful hats and whimsical fabrics laugh at me from shop windows. I would never wear such a thing but the frivolity of my mood taunts me, saying “come on – it could be fun! You can do anything!” There is an energy, at the moment, that is very much about living fully, no half measures, no undue compromise! This has been fuelled, once again, by the ever-present spectre of immortality. Life lost and life taking its final curtain call. The players having strutted their stage brilliantly, brightly and with inspiration. May we all aspire to this! May I aspire to this and never self censor a moment based on judgement by another.
5:03pm The Castro, San Francisco
I have bought a book of knots. An instruction manual. A diagrammatic narrative on holding things together. A short story on the ins and outs of taking two previously distinct entities, and binding them.
Let's wrap this one up...
I am casting out a line (as I did once before), and I am closer than I can believe. I am pondering the possibilities of being in two places at once; touching two surfaces at the same time.
A knot;
a fold;
a double helix.
I have spent some time now researching the possibilities of sending myself over to you ahead of time; of drained blood, neatly packaged in a second skin, and mailed across the ocean. This blood saves time. It holds it tight in every molecule a singing bio-hazard. Touching two surfaces at the same time. The space between can no longer be measured by the feet of my long intestine, but instead, by the time it takes for oxygen to burn. Three minutes: thirty-seven seconds. How much oxygen can you burn in threeminutes:thirtysevenseconds (if you don't mind the gaps...)?
This is my gift to you, at a time when I know that you are waiting for gifts. Wrapped up, packaged, and sealed with a carefully tied bow (a Japanese Parcel Knot). I offer you threeminutes:thirstysevenseconds of my burnt-out, fucked-up oxygen. I've heard it said that every breath of air on Earth has been breathed before and will be many thousand times again. Recycle it, and use it how you will.
Richard.x
Thursday, August 16, 2007
10.46am Newtown Sydney
The familiar intro kicks in, I feel strangely at home. This song has become a marker, a stable, the one sure thing that will be there every month. I take a big deep breath in and out. The stop point. Oddly, the lyrics have become a bit like a mantra and whenever I listen I feel like everything will all work out no matter how chaotic. I do think about you, Richard, your journey in this time, the song that is silent. So I send this out as a bit of a reminder, that to readjust you've got to trust.
x
Julie
Monday, July 16, 2007
3:56pm Downtown, San Francisco
Walking the streets of a strange city, I understand that I am alien. I am homeless in my own country, and between addresses in this new state. I spent last night with a famous border crosser. My borders have all been breached. I've kept telling you about this new place that I've been looking for, this space for something new to grow. I think I've found it. It's ground zero. I am handed the simplest of forms, with the most basic of questions, and I don't have the answer. I'm in the middle of a fog, with sunlight beating down. Distinctions that used to be safe are melting on a blurred skyline and a hot tarmac. I talk to strangers. Most of them are homeless too. If I close my eyes for just 3 minutes 37 seconds I think I might melt too. There is no point in keeping your eyes open in a fog, you just have to feel your way through...
r.x
5.20pm Newtown Sydney
The evening sky presents a beautiful magenta slash, could it be a fishbone or a strange beetle? The new moon slither delicately places itself. I am in St Stephens cemetery in Newtown. It is an old cemetery, by Sydney standards and is completely walled in. It is an oasis in the inner city, a quiet place to read, picnic, sleep, contemplate, caress, listen to music. On the way here I overheard a woman say to another in passing - " It was 5 degrees this morning! Disgusting!". I think about that, now, as I listen. "Disgusting", such an odd word to describe a temperature measurement, or maybe the oddness is about where it was placed in the statement, at the end, a definite, a solid opinion, there is no negotiation!
I listen and think about the many years I have come to this cemetery, the visits marking my life, tide markers. This place holds many secrets and not just the ones that lie with the dead and buried. My 1st visit here was when I was 24, it was the middle of the night, I was high on life, inlove and on acid. My boyfriend, at the time was high on too much scotch. Always one for an adventure, on a whim he had bundled me into a taxi, from the party we had been at, and sped me off into the night leaving the revellers behind. We left the cab in some backstreet, and with suitable melodrama he proclaimed we must approach from here, the view is beautiful! As we walked along, I was floating, suitably distracted by the glow-worm sparks in every dark corner. Then I looked up to see the grand gothic spire from the cemetery church, looming in the night sky. It was quite breath-taking. As we came closer, a suitable hush descended upon us, the streets seemed quiet and deserted, there was a tension as if the air was holding its breath. At the gates, my boy suddenly let out a mischievous chuckle and with a flurry and a turn of his dark cape,raced head on into the darkness ahead. I smiled, I was still on a high, playing the game, unquestioningly following. However, after 30 metres or so the darkness enveloped me, I had no idea the lay of the land, so to speak, I did not know how extensive or large this place was and it was quiet and pitch black. Up till that point, appropriately enough, I had been pouring a length of heavy chain from one hand into the other. I had picked it up at the party and become obsessed with its feel and sound. However, in the stillness of the cemetery, it had started to sound booming and loud. A marker, a beacon for the denizens, that inhabit such nocturnal places. I waited for my boy to jump out from behind a grave, and laugh, hoping to make me scream. It didn't happen. i wandered a bit more, but the unfamiliarity and the aural and visual distortions of the drugs only served to halt my progress. At some point I found solace in a large morton bay figtree. Nestled in its fleshy limb, I waited and waited. A night bird sounded its forlorn chime. I must have stayed put for nearly 2 hours, listening to the occasional screeching cars and shouts from beyond the cemetery walls. I couldn't decide what was scarier, to stay inside here or venture out there. When the cold finally threatened to drag me down into the ground with its icy fingertips, I knew I had to leave. Plucking up more courage I prepared myself for the walk home, alone.
I survived that night, and my boy did come home not long after, when large droplets of rain had fallen on his face and woke him from his drunken slumber upon his favourite gravestone.
As the song comes to a close, I think, I never did find out which stone was the favourite gravestone of that fateful evening. Now, I have a selection of my own favourite gravestones, places to sit or lie or picnic or seduce. Not to mention the special grave, host to a thriving beehive, whose delicious pungent heady scent hangs in the air on those warm summer evenings as I lean over to kiss my lovers lips.
x Julie
Saturday, June 16, 2007
9.32pm Nottingham
I'm thinking about anchors. Y'know, big, rusty, wrapped in seaweed and busty mermaids, held in burly seaman's arms. Tagged with worn out ropes, there's nowhere to go but out. Or down. When are they useful, and when do we just cut them loose and sail on out? Or down.
I'm thinking about our track. Y'know, 'our song'. A kind of anchor that we drop every month, wherever we are we stop and chart our position by the clank of its rusty metal against the seabed. I don't hear it anymore, but I still wait for the waves, the ripples. And I wonder now about the distance still to travel, the gaps between the ripples.
I'm trying not to think about anything. I'm going with the flow. I'm skipping those ripples and surfing in those gaps. I'm treading water that's yet to be mapped. Those places that we talked about, those spaces for something new to grow...
Richard.x
I'm thinking about our track. Y'know, 'our song'. A kind of anchor that we drop every month, wherever we are we stop and chart our position by the clank of its rusty metal against the seabed. I don't hear it anymore, but I still wait for the waves, the ripples. And I wonder now about the distance still to travel, the gaps between the ripples.
I'm trying not to think about anything. I'm going with the flow. I'm skipping those ripples and surfing in those gaps. I'm treading water that's yet to be mapped. Those places that we talked about, those spaces for something new to grow...
Richard.x
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)