Flux Without Pause

Found a stone and told me to smile

Part 2

Brooklyn subway

2 days later on a busy New York subway, I saw a woman wearing the same seed on a chain placed on her neck. I was shocked as I had never seen this seed before, it felt like I being guided and my eyes was already seeing things a new light. When I came back after being inspired in such a creative space like Brooklyn, within a month I decided to quit my job and move to Ipswich. I had wanted to quit my job for months but with the fear of the recession over the past year frozen my desires to wait until I had found something. But what was that something This was my second job in the media sector I knew by the end of my first job that the post production field was not as creative as I thought it would be despite meeting some great people and working in the west end. My second job had been more of a do add while I was exploring my 5am experience via sound, poetry, photography this was my purpose at the time I didn’t know why but it felt right to explore it. So by the end of my second media job I had taken my project to its limit while being in an environment that I have come into with a passion for sound and video. Over the 6 years I had transformed and now I needed a place that reflected that. I had been toying with the idea of making an installation piece but that felt like a distance away with no arts background. Everything felt away including a new career or chapter in my life. Somehow I had lost that sense of fear after meeting half of me was he a trickster? I don’t know half of me felt yes the other half said no but he did do two things. The first thing he did was that he gave me a choice to believe or not to believe. The second thing was that by giving me the seed and then seeing someone wear the seed he changed my perception on seeing. Around that time I came across a video clip of beat poet Gregory Corso talking about being a poet and how I can be a hard path but how it is all worth it for those rare moments of incite. Seeing this clip was like writing the first sentence on a blank page of a new chapter.

The floating signify and the trickster go hand in hand as they are amoral figures who perform their task no matter how it affects others which could cause bad or good luck. For me it was good luck as I write these words for a degree in fine art blog. The encounter with the yogi was an major catalyst in ending of a chapter in order to start a new chapter of exploring project 5am in depth an finding a langue to describe it others. Since that moment when ever I’ve seen a stone that stands out for some reason, I’d unconsciously pick it up. It reminds me for a moment of a connection with the universe and act almost like a restart button of awareness. Over the four years I picked up stones all over the country. A lot of the times I given the stones to friends or people I’ve just met over a night as a gesture of a moment. It has been amazing to see those people again who have kept the stone. The idea to collect all the stones and put them in a jar came from the term psychogeography where you approach landscapes with an awareness of walking Russian theorist Mikhail bakhtin concept chronotope, a temporal space for a meeting to take place. In the jar each stone captures footsteps space and time and memories and stones that were passed on to others. “Found a stone and it told me to smile” comes full circle in my 5am journey as the beat poet Allen Ginsberg who wrote the 5am am poem that inspired me was inspired by the poems of William Blake who performed psychogeography when walking the streets of London and describing it in his poetry. .. maybe the yogi did help me get to know more about my 5am project after all.

Gregory Corso discusses choice

Found a stone and told me to smile

Part 1:

2010 London Victoria

I was in the area on my day off from work buying travel items for a trip to Brooklyn a day later. I was crossing a zebra crossing full of people then I saw what looked like a yogi walking towards my direction. Our eyes meet for a moment then he said to me that “There is something about you”

Normally I would of said “whatever” and walked on but what he said intrigued me so I asked him what he meant by that. We went to on to the pavement and he pulled out a card which had a picture of him sitting under a tree I guess it was his business card. He spoke broken English and looked a bit dishevelled but there was a presence about him that I had not experience before. He went on to say that there was something special about me and that he could help harness this power/gift. While he was saying he was performing magic tricks making pieces of paper disappear in his hand. My sense where split down the line, half of me feel that this was bloody awesome while the other half thought this is a big wind up. He asked me what was I’m seeking? Money, fame, love, I said I wanted to know more about my 5am project then I told him about my experience. I wasn’t expecting that response but he said he would help me. The yogi went one to say that I wasn’t happy in my job and that I was surrounded by bad energy. This was true, I wanted to leave my job and some of the people who I worked with were projecting a bad atmosphere which mad the job even worst. I knew that there was an option to move to Ipswich but I was not sure what to do. But everybody hates their job. Half of me was impressed of half not. The yogi went on to say that there was a bad energy inside me and that he would help me get rid of it if I performed a ritual and repeated his words. This was exciting so a Wednesday afternoon so I went along with it.

For the ritual I had to walk 140 steps and back carry a red string in my hand at the front of Victoria cathedral. As I was walking, my other half thought I this a channel 4 prank show then I am done for. I returned back to the yogi he took the string from my hand put it in his mouth, pulled it out and it was white. The things that he said to me to recite are a blur now but for those moments it felt like he knew me more than anyone knew me in my life all starting from that one glance. He then gave me rudraksha seed to keep and I was to wear it at all times while keep on praying for me. Then he hit me with the following words that he would need so money to help him get the materials to pray. My other half said to myself I knew it, How much I said “£100” he said. No way I laughed but then I looked at him, I thought I he had given my an experience that I had never shared before and looked like he need money and I had some holiday money on me…so I begrudgingly gave him £40. I took my number (yogi have mobile phones) and he said he would call me when I got back. I knew that I would not be seeing him again we thanked each other and went our separate ways.

The encounter lasted around 20 mins but I felt like we were in no time like something out of the matrix. Then everything went back to normal with the hustle bussle atmosphere of the London streets in effect. I sat on the tube look at this seed thinking I paid £40 for a seed. half of me was buzzing the other half repeated the word you idiot.

Blind men and an elephant

The story of the blind men and an elephant originated in the Indian subcontinent from where it has widely diffused. It has been used to illustrate a range of truths and fallacies; broadly, the parable implies that one’s subjective experience can be true, but that such experience is inherently limited by its failure to account for other truths or a totality of truth. At various times the parable has provided insight into the relativism, opaqueness or inexpressible nature of truth, the behaviour of experts in fields where there is a deficit or inaccessibility of information, the need for communication, and respect for different perspectives.

The story

In various versions of the tale, a group of blind men (or men in the dark) touch an elephant to learn what it is like.

In some versions, they stop talking, start listening and collaborate to “see” the full elephant. When a sighted man walks by and sees the entire elephant all at once, they also learn they are blind. While one’s subjective experience is true, it may not be the totality of truth. If the sighted man was deaf, he would not hear the elephant bellow.

During August to October 2013 Elephants where around my surrounding in many different ways I would see pictures of them on the walls, being mentioned in songs and films titles and in a poem that I was going to make a to a visual for a project called Telephone – An International Arts Game

This game works almost exactly like the kids’ game “telephone,” also known as operator, ear-to-e…are, and many other names the world over. One player devises a message, and that message is whispered to the next person, who whispers it to the next and the next. The message evolves as it travels, surprising and confounding the players.

My message was a poem which mentions elephants but I didn’t have time to make work from it as I was doing my dissertation. I decided to research any mythology about elephants and it led me to the story about the blind men and the elephant. In some ways this made a connection to the telephone game that I was going to take part in and some of the films that had elephant as the title like the Alan Clarke film which focuses on the problem of violence in Northern Ireland from different points.

During the period I had captured an image in Brick lane of the street image from an outdoor broken mirror which produced an interesting view of the shops buildings and the sky.

One day I sat on a small mirror by accident which gave me the idea to capture an image of an elephant via a broken mirror. The broken fragments would represent different views which for me would represent the world.

So I bought a mask of an elephants head which reminded me of the Hindu god Ganesh who’s enormous head of the elephant signifies Wisdom and Knowledge.

So this piece shows me that a fragmented image is a whole image if you appreciate and understand each piece.