8th September – Easdale Tarn
Richard writes:
Good swim – sunny day – a warm wetsuit – wow – what a difference! More painting on a secluded crag – Paul continued tracing a line in red across the rock. I see it as an equivalent of our journey ‘beyond the rock’ so to speak. I did iconic stick figures swimming into a crack in the rock – into the ‘world beyond’ the rock.
This is our eighth stretch of water – time to reflect …….
Paul’s question – where is the art in this journey? – tentative answer: the art is the symbolic performance of a 'swim home' and the recording of our ‘entopic visions’ (our altered states of mind) induced by the swimming on the way.
Do the marks say: ‘we passed this way’; ‘I was here’; ’ I left my mark on the world’; ‘this is what I experienced, what I ‘saw’’ – all sort of futile in the sense that the world turns and our marks and traces are worn away by the days and eventually disappear – if this is the case then making the marks ‘in the place’ and ‘at the time’ whilst still feeling ‘the heightened sense of existence’ induced by the swim must be the point.
It’s the moment of creation (together with the increasingly feeble marks/records we leave behind) that is really the sum of it – and it passes leaving only a few traces and then only for a while.
