It's strange to feel so scattered and disjointed…I'm wondering if it's at all possible or necessary to thread together the me that left a year ago with the me that is currently grasping at a present day normality. Not that there isn't a continuous link between the two, not that I think or believe that I am two separate selves…
but it's that time and distance anomaly of having spent so many months travelling, gorging on the delights of new and fascinating cultures, re-visiting places that I left thirty plus years ago, and the self exploratory process in general that creates that vast abyss between now and then…but the merging of that space in-between is always now and present…I guess?….I think!
But a normality in terms of some kind of structure, a consistency that pins me down and confines me a little, it's bizarre for me to even think this when I'm seemingly free from the burden of ownership, property, an abundance of things, personal possessions and stuff…what I do have lives in no particular place, like me, only not, as these inanimate things are somehow fixed in one location, and I identify with them as being mine and not the other way around …but they appear to belong somewhere if only under beds, in cupboards, box's or garages…..since arriving back in the UK I've wanted to attach to and reconnect with my stuff, my art things, my books (oh yes The Poetics of Space) my music…things, stuff, mine, mine, mine things that ridiculously remind me of me, I want the concrete reality that houses them, the four walls to enclose me, even if just temporary…
I manage to grab snippets of time and space to sort through bags, to begin cataloguing the thousands of photographs that I returned with, I've started to look at collected footage, to review notes relating to gathered found objects and documentation…many potential projects….but the challenge of trying to create work while I'm floating around with no fixed abode is a project in itself and begins to raise many questions….
Friday 28th September 2007
It's pissing down with rain, home for the day is the local library… my bike's chained to the post and the very squishy gel type seat is guzzling the downpour as though it had been subjected to the arid mountainous planes of Leh…So I'm trapped, in the most positive sense, a gracious gift from Miss Almighty Universe, enclosed within the concrete reality that I requested only a couple of days ago…I relax into it, nowhere to be, nothing in particular to do…. it's potentially an enviable situation to be in and I bare that in mind as I sit with my shoes of, legs crossed and mind a racing contemplating the concept of self in relation to location…no great epiphanies to reveal just yet, just fleeting transient glimpses that hide in the corner awaiting some kind of delicate extraction…although the one thing that does keep popping into mind and not an original revelation by any means is that the paradox of having nothing is having everything but having everything isn't necessarily the paradox of having nothing, which is possibly the semantic babble of somebody with far too much time on their hands?
But with nothing and everything in mind I went on a search yesterday for some of my possessions, not that I can take them with me or put them anywhere, they'll just add to the collection of things that re-locate with me as I float…it was a bit like having visiting rights to aspects of my self, I wasn't quite sure if I'd been orphaned or imprisoned or both, but among the items that I took were:
- Garage, Book 1 – The Complete Animation Course, I was looking through some previous projects and remembered how I'd got stuck on some technical aspects…I started experimenting with this medium before travelling, something I may reconsider?
- Garage, Book 2 – Introduction to Critical Theory…the post structural references are what really interest me but I couldn't find the Helen Cixous book so this one will have to do…for now at least.
- Garage, Book 3 – A B Guide to Music Theory, to lend to an aspiring young music producer.
- Garage, Walking Boots bought a few years ago, hardly worn as good as new…sold to the girl in the sandals with the very cold feet.
- Friends house – not took but found…not lost but forgotten, a bag with clothes in under a bed…I smelt them, stroked them jumped with glee then zipped up the bag and pushed it back under the bed…begged them a momentary fairwell a see you next week…VO in the post be good now!
