I am very very tired. The reason for my lack of sleep last night was a precipitous return to work. The annual recall to the office always seems too early after an adventurous summer and this year has been no exception. Many of my colleagues (more eloquent than I) have taken to referring to the office as “The Shitter” a name that seems to have stuck. One of my first tasks this morning, after the usual welcome back meeting, was to arrange some time off to return to Manchester for the install of “Unspooling”. This is not usually too difficult a task as those in the Shitter are always keen to give each other a leg up. Unfortunately the week I need to escape coincides with the first real teaching of the year and I face leaving my eager neophytes with a note saying “back next week”. The fear in these situations is not that they will be missing out but rather that they might have a better time without me. Otherwise things are progressing well. I am half way though burning the DVDs and have begun the arduous task of thinking up titles. I don’t intend to put them on the films but like amnesiac foundlings I think they should have a name of some sort. Miss Dover (after a Bloody Mary) has been a great help although some of her suggestions have been a little wild. “Coconut Corkscrew” especially so.
Packages
It is astounding the number of spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, formatting gaffes and just plain bad writing one can squeeze into a document of 40,000+ words. On Friday I spent a full day in a London café marking up such errors in my so called novel. I have no doubt I have missed many more but quite frankly I’ve had enough. The final draft has been despatched to the printers, everything is now beyond my control.
Miss Dover and I have had a number of other deliveries at our Ipswich flat. These have included a number of books and DVDs, a gold falcon, a number of pendants with kittens on them, boards and oil paint, a garden shed, garage and telephone box. The hairdressers below who receive most of these parcels for us are beginning to look harrassed.
Miss Dover, who will also be exhibiting at TAP has chosen a far more concise title for her show “Whistlejacket”. Yesterday she sent me a photograph of how she wishes to be represented in a forthcoming Hollywood Biopic.
(she has a cat called Pig)
I am very excited. As well as getting ready for Unspooling my solo show at Tap is also coming together (at least in my head). I have decided on the title which (in part) is already up on the TAP website. I have located a chair (in need of a little repair) on which my novel will be placed and chosen the other works (mostly) that I wish to show. I have also made a new piece for the show which will be erected by the AA on the site marked on the photograph adjacent.
The title of my show is:
I was continuing to shrink, to become… what? The infinitesimal? What was I? Still a human being? Or was I the man of the future? If there were other bursts of radiation, other clouds drifting across seas and continents, would other beings follow me into this vast new world? So close – the infinitesimal and the infinite. But suddenly, I knew they were really the two ends of the same concept. The unbelievably small and the unbelievably vast eventually meet – like the closing of a gigantic circle. I looked up, as if somehow I would grasp the heavens. The universe, worlds beyond number, God’s silver tapestry spread across the night. And in that moment, I knew the answer to the riddle of the infinite. I had thought in terms of man’s own limited dimension. I had presumed upon nature. That existence begins and ends in man’s conception, not nature’s. And I felt my body dwindling, melting, becoming nothing. My fears melted away. And in their place came acceptance. All this vast majesty of creation, it had to mean something. And then I meant something, too. Yes, smaller than the smallest, I meant something, too. To God, there is no zero. I still exist!
The last two days have been taken up burning DVDs for Unspooling. each of the Pearlville films must be looped several times with varying volumes to allow them to come in and out of aural focus (I think I made this up) In reality as they are all different lengths and I have no desire to get into the drudgery of precise cueing sometimes they will all shout together or all whisper. Whatever happens I am sure it will seem planned though I do fear for the sanity of the invigilators. I also made a trip to the studio yesterday armed with a can of expanding filler. I had hoped to conjure something magical with a few well aimed squirts but as usual my manual skills did not quite match my imagination. It is fearfully sticky and sloppy stuff and my studio now has fungal growths where it previously had not. Still I made a couple of sculptures which I hope M will like
