I am becoming a human mill. Masticating the pulp in my mouth and forming the sheets with my hands. All the documenting is done by hand also with a homemade pinhole camera which I operate manually of course. What can we make with just our bodies? A sheet of white paper is a symbol of creative possibility and in chewing it I consider these possibilities. Grinding it down to a consumable texture and size before spitting it out as a product of my body.
Today I discovered that the chewed paper nuggets have begun to grow green mould; stark evidence of my intervention on the medium. Chewed, it is no longer of use as a medium for writing or drawing. I have consumed its creative possibilities and now it rots and decays. Its life is over. It’s potential is beginning to come to an end as it greens and furs infected with the poison of my saliva. I have guzzled up the whiteness, it has been in contact with my internal body and now it festers in my contaminated spit.
I feel sorry for the loss of this medium; what it could have been had I not had the desire to have it in my mouth. Like a child with a dummy ‘Babies use sucking to calm and settle themselves. Thumb-sucking starts before birth (there are pictures taken of babies sucking their thumbs in utero) and can be a very helpful way for babies to cope with tension.’ Daphne Metland is one of the authors of Expecting, the pregnancy bible, which she wrote with BabyCenter international editor Anna McGrail. Why did I need to put it in my mouth?
Some facts about the mouth
the mouth is functionally the first part of the gastrointestinal tract – one end of the nutritional tube which starts there and ends at the anus The teeth are the hardest substance in the body Taste is the weakest of the 5 senses The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue (relative to its size) A bolus is a compact mass created by the mouth Saliva is controlled by the autonomic nervous system (involuntary actions) Enzymes in saliva are the beginning of the digestive process There is evidence for sensory feedback from the mouth influencing the expression of the activity of the Central Pattern Generator (chewing motion) Suggestion is more arousing than exposure so male desire is displaced from the vulva to parts of the body like the mouth or the foot which symbolize or resemble it. Certain facial expressions, such as smiling, have been found to be universal, even among blind persons, who have no means of imitating them. The great eighteenth-century zoologist and anatomist Baron Georges Cuvier was once quoted as saying, ‘show me your teeth and I will tell you who you are.’
