FOUR F E A T H E R S
AN OPEN WINDOW
Of late I have been collecting the feathers that float through the window at the Eastern end of my open plan living space. The feathers seem to be from pigeons that habituate their movements in flight by dipping under the bridge across from my window frame and landing reversely within the suspensions and metal constructions that hold it together. Its as it the pigeons sacrifice one part of their wing span in order to be given permission to ‘land’ or to ‘rest’. I often watch from the interior side of the window as the birds, encased in silhouette against a background of light, grace the last inches of sky and then join the black mass of the bridge and its hinges – then, slowly but surely, a feather falls and gains drifting momentum towards the vacuum that is my open plan flat. The feathers enter and fall lightly to the floor – from there I pick them up and take them to the stair case.
The stair case, as I am sure you will know by now, makes up the centre and dividing space of my studio-cum-living arrangement. Apart from the occasional obvious spell of a line between where I work and where I sleep, the flat is currently in disarray – and the feathers add nothing to what should be a goal in clarity for me to define what is work and what is not. My old sofa now exists on the studio side as a sculpture, a broken function that folds in orange display with wooden feet jutting out from the top rather than the bottom. The coffee table also now exists on the brink of my studio space, on its side. It just needs one last push over on to its back and it will be ready for painterly affect.
I have four feathers in my hand and as I approach the stair case I trip over the cable for a light fitting, a four meter line of black wire affixed to the ceiling. The fitting comes loose as a result of my momentum, and the energy from my forward steps transfers like a pendulum making my body top heavy. As I fall head first to the ground my hands involuntarily follow my arms and spread out in a wing-like fashion, the four feathers again reach the air. My nose hits the ground with a tremendous force. The feathers float with a slight sweat taken from my hand, which affects their gravitational balance. The interior conditioning of dust momentarily contorts their time in the middle of the room directly above the stair case. I turn over on to my back and watch them above – they create a perfect circle in slow motion, a perfect mobile with no attachments and no armatures. A new art work by mistake?
There is a gust of wind and its as if the vacuum of my interior habitation flicks a switch, the pressure in the room reverses and in one fell swoop the air is sucked out of the window – the feathers follow this gulf stream and rush for the outside. I lose them in one blink on an eye.
