diary (n) one

my mother calls on the landline. i am sure it is her. as i respond she becomes alarmed. are you alright. yes, it’s okay. for the first time she seems to be listening to how it is here (besides: i am glad you are not ill). there is a spaciousness in her listening that wasn’t there before and so i tell her a few of the arguments across home, work, friends, futures.

is there some fun you can have.

i tell her some of the fun.

she proceeds to tell me what to tell the neighbours downstairs. i rarely follow her advice on social interactions. it often seems a little brutal. but i know what she says.

right at the start i realised how i switched into her crisis mode. i felt it in my spine, in my walk and in my focus.

the district with the town i grew up has no single death from covid-19 nor a single infection.

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diary (d) #6

it reiterates like so much. the numbering.

diary (d) five

diary (d) d

i loop. time loops. i am repeating myself. time is repeating itself.

i remember a conversation from weeks ago. was it online. was it on the street.

he says: i can’t think straight. i am strangely confused. i seem to go round in circles. i am worried about my cognitive capacity.

i say: ah, yes, mine goes like that as well.

then i continue and say: you know, my mind is a little trippy most of the times. i tend to let it fold into the art stuff. my dream and fantasy sequences are generally a good site for that part of my thinking. what i started doing since mid-March is to let it fold into my day-to-day stuff and conversations more than usually. i almost consciously step into that mode and let it guide me through this strange now. it seems fitting. as i say this i realise that that is precisely what i have been doing. i have a series of messages that give evidence of how my dreams become a thing that is less closely guarded than normally. even my day dreams are the subject of my talking and writing now. as it write this i begin to wonder if my movement also gives evidence of this.

what happens to my walk

what happens to my sense of touch (notably when moving from plank to sphinx to locust and back towards downward dog.

what happens to my core muscles and my stomach when the latter gets nervous and worried.

how does fantasy manifest bodily

is this even a thing.

 

below the dandelion i correct myself: my dreams were never closely guarded. but what i would guard closely are the bodily sensations, the effects on movement and perception these would cause in me.

diary (d) iii

i keep saying it. this: it don’t want it to become infected. yet, if i don’t, all this is past. it is a nostalgia piece. i don’t make nostalgia pieces. how can this be current. what would that look like. i make work about the now, the moment that is just about to be and that has just about been. it is of longing in the present. it is not nostalgic.

diary (d) 2

i am uncertain of this numbering. it is all wrong in any case. they are not unfolding, they are in fact memory pieces. or rather: to fold forward what was to make it pliable again, to point towards soon.

2 concerns my walk route. it is new(ish) and while all the pavements are familiar, none replicates what was before. there is a short stretch that marks the start of return that is part of before but once removed: now i cross the road to catch the sun, all this started when the sun would make it worthwhile. so, i walk 200 mtrs of very familiar but now on the northerly side, not the usual one.

come to think of it: the whole start is at first familiar, it denotes the main road if i know i take the subway or train. but now i turn right at the lights, then left. this is almost entirely new but as it’s probably become the most often walked turn for the past two months it feels no longer new.

yesterday i notice as i walk on that my stomach is turning. or rather: it bounces to right under my throat. it continues and i need to change my pace. does it settle? it is worst furtherest away, then it begins to ebb a little. as i walk on i remember his comment of how there are three cafes selling takeaway things. i find two but make a point to look at the bakery too. it is newly open, what were seats where E. and i sat not long ago now houses bags of flour. i remember their rolls and their sweets. they were nice things. will i go to acquire some soon? i am not sure. it is most certainly not essential.

a flat white. a coffee made as espresso.

as i walk on i recall the things that have become familiar along this old/new loop. the day with the goldfinches, the heart line, again, again, then a single remained, no none. the runners, the mothers and college-age daughters, the ones that stand in the middle of the pavement. the flower bouquets on the park table, the single child that had climbed the fence to the playground. the four who stood apart and drank a beer. and so it continues.

when i am back on the road from the shops, i realise what remains: how i enquire, how i observe and how these things mingle with each other, poke each other occasionally or run off into the woods. that remains. my mood in which they mingle is changing, or rather: it seems to be more volatile than usual. the detachment has changed as much as my attachment and touch has changed.

 

diary (d) #1

i tend to write my way through and out. there are two formats for this. one, tested, tried, is the response to ‘What’s on your mind, Gesa’, on a computer screen, occasionally a phone. i need to go and check twice what that box says exactly in the process of copying it to here. i am sure the invitation changed over the years too. and still: it is the box that foregrounds a slightly darkened background that focusses my minds and thoughts. once i press post. i read again, i edit, i read again and so it continues. over the day or the one after i add further comments.

two, i open the large moleskine cahier, black cover, mostly, blank pages and click on the top of the 2b mechanical pencil and start with the date of the day and then it continues. the longwriting across the page, the indentations, occasionally an underline, arrows (>>) are favoured. earlier, i sometimes retraced the letters of a word or two to highlight it. i turn the page and marvel and new and older tracings and marks.

oh, and then there is my camera roll.

there is always my camera roll. it sometimes accompanies one.

 

here, i am stumped. i test over the weeks a numbers of routes, routines, patterns and processes and discover much in the process.

how do they relate to all that i collected until mid-March?

how can i conclude something as current when it already feels outdated?

how can i address my desire to leave it untouched and thus uncontaminated?

yet, my processes were always current and would find resolution in the little sliver between present and soon (i steal this line from Warhol and invert its temporal ordering). i am stalling, undecided if that is helpful or not.

 

i pause one. initially in anger, then i realise what the absence offers. i contemplate absence as ending and it seems good. it is spacious. unexpectedly so, was i not just now contemplating loss.

i find a new site for two. then i realise what the discovery offers. i contemplate discovery as opening and it seems good. it is spacious, temporally too. unexpectedly so, was i not just now contemplating loss.

 

distance…pets 2020

This week is the first that I spent any length of time with my coursework (or other art for that matter). For the past few weeks I have a regular working-alongside zoom for a couple of hours one afternoon where I started to collate and organise my artistic work but this week has me returning to the dissertation draft.

I joined two of the recent tutor-led sessions, one by the London group on Keeping up the momentum (Bryan Eccleshall); and one for the CA pathway on Doing thinking (Rachel White); both of them are in two parts, the latter concluded today, the former will conclude tomorrow.

For the Keeping up, Bryan proposes a series of prompt to work on and let them fold onwards. I do this fairly early on, a couple of people pick my chain up; yet, I fail to return to it. What happens however in the intervening period is that I am becoming a little clearer as what my practice wants to do with social distancing. There are four ideas at the moment:

1. Drawing/ encounters in socially distanced times. I meet online, offline, accidentally or kind of so a few people. I take note, often in camera form, sometimes in FB posts, none of them yet folded onwards like what I did with the drawing/events in my BoW but they are similar kind of things, only the parameter has changed. I collect.
2. I explore the role and form of my walks. Previously they were commutes which were so familiar that they often mistake themselves for drifts. These have disappeared and with them my creative thinking/writing space. I no longer find the latter at the end of the former. Instead, I watch and observe the city and its pavement. I also begin to think of some interventions of my own. I have all that chalk pastel in one of my cupboards
3. The space between my laptop camera and myself. It comes into focus as it feels extensive. It is hidden from view, yet when I am quite distracted it is visible to others. I begin to explore it.
4. There is possibly a fourth which is the computer camera and screengrab as photographic medium.

Let me add a few documents for these (not ordered) (later)