Leaving crumbs on sheets.

leaving crumbs on sheets.

can't brush them off lightly.

so leaving crumbs on sheets

typing insomnia.

leaving coins on sheets.

"Heads or tales?"

"Your call or thine?"

"What the fuck?"

It won't add up to 'owt.

counting insomnia

nailing down planks.

corpse limbs skewed 

corpse hymns jagged

shattered, 

mangled, 

unrecognisable,

remains.

tears.

grieving insomnia

no rest in peace.

scratching stubble on cheeks,

hardly alive,

stumbling undead,

sunkenly eyes mirror

looks unkempt,

hair thinning, 

haggard hangdog look,

turns the tap to cold.

adjusts feeble flow, 

takes a sip,

throat's still dry.

one swallow doesn't make it summer.

Drawing out meaning...

I can't honestly remember what I was working on.

It was late in the evening after a long day.

And then....

Accidents will happen...

A three quarters full mug of coffee was spilt over the table, the sketch book, narrowly missed the phone.

It was a sketch book that had already suffered having numerous pages ripped in two.

All that bloody art...lost.

A flight of birds shredded...

I find some consolation and inspiration in Kintsugi.

"Translated to “golden joinery,” Kintsugi (or Kintsukuroi, which means “golden repair”) is the centuries-old Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with a special lacquer dusted with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. Beautiful seams of gold glint in the cracks of ceramic ware, giving a unique appearance to the piece."

https://mymodernmet.com/kintsugi-kintsukuroi/

A moment of joy, a moment of anger, a moment of grief...

In taking the time to gild the grief, I find new meaning in my relationship to what was and what is.

"You lose only what you cling to." Buddha.

Working regularly has made me less concerned about what has been done before.

I note that many artists destroy their artwork.

Deliberate destruction.

I find an article in ART  telling a notorious story of destruction:

"Our favourite story in the long history of art destruction concerns American pop/conceptual artist Robert Rauschenberg. Early in his career, inspired by the work of Marcel Duchamp, he decided he wanted to test the boundaries of what could be deemed a work of art. Could a work of art be created, he wondered, through the act of erasure? He started out by rubbing out one of his own drawings. It didn’t work. He felt that the destruction of a not very important work by a then not very important artist didn’t really test his idea sufficiently. Rauschenberg decided the only thing to do was to destroy a significant work of art by a significant artist. And so, he gathered up the courage to show up at the studio of Willem de Kooning, a Dutch-American painter. De Kooning didn’t approve, but still provided a selection of his paintings to choose from, believing that young artists should be allowed to experiment.

Rauschenberg then took one of the master’s paintings away and tirelessly worked on the act of destruction, eventually erasing all visible traces of De Kooning’s image. He then took the now blank paper to Jasper Johns, his great friend and fellow artist and asked him to create a frame for the piece. Johns did as he was asked and produced a label which read:

‘ERASED de KOONING’ ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG, 1953"

No use crying over spilt coffee...

I sponged up the coffee, put the sketchbook on the radiator to dry.

A couple of days later and I took time to inspect the damage.

Pages stuck together,

Sepia coffee stains had dried in weird patterns.

Suddenly I see the sketchpad and the accident in a new light.

Suddenly I see stories, landscapes, potential for play.

The deliberate accident in art.

After a couple of days of play, I find an article from the Tate museum on deliberate accidents and share it with my friends.

The deliberate accident in art | Tate #clmooc ⁦@NomadWarMachine⁩ ⁦@dogtrax⁩ ⁦@telliowkuwp⁩ ⁦@wentale⁩ ⁦@ronald_2008⁩ ⁦@amyburvall⁩ #febdoodle https://t.co/dSffN6rdgh

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) February 1, 2019

I realise that I have always worked partly in this way looking for meaning in apparent chaos.


I remember writing about how my mother would collect all sorts of objects with no obvious intrinsic value because she saw something in them., here in Driftwood curiosity:

"I am content you see no value.

I see myself standing on a beach.

You have left me quite alone.

Objects are washed up by the ocean.

Something catches my eye.

I bend down to pick it up."

Drawing means and drawing out meaning.

I am torn between drawing "well" from life and drawing out meaning from the abundant well of life.

I am torn between deliberate and accidental in my artistic acts.

I feel comfortable with what is accidental but also love the discipline of technique.

I find a quote of Camus.

"I said that the world is absurd, but I was too hasty. This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart." 
Albert Camus

Engraving a rose.

I paused, grief pitched.

It was leaking, ground up.

It was decaying, sky down.

Its canvas was crumpled.

Its fly sheet was fraying.

 Its frame was haggard.

All shrieked of decomposition.

I salvaged a bag of pegs.

The A's, I kept, as keep-sakes

I took four photos.

Its was an unwilling engraving.

It, however, had already become something else.

engraving.

a rose.

Lest we forget.

Yes, they were still there on my phone.

His photos were there.

They were the last of the very few I had kept from those taken while clearing out my uncle's house.

He refused to be buried, to be trashed.

I had only been vaguely aware of his existence when I was younger.

He was one of those half-remembered names among those half-remembered lists of family names. 

He was my grandfather's brother.

He was the one brother who didn't get through the war. 

In the last years of my parents life I was driven to capture every last story. 

I spent hours going through names, relationships, addresses, anecdotes... 

Before they spoke no more.

Who are those sepia people staring so blankly at us?

What are they trying to say?

Why do they refuse to be forgotten?

Rekindling memories

I left messages on forums, in the hope that someone, somewhere might give me a scrap which might rekindle long forgotten story.

A distant relation emerged in Canada, an Irish second cousin,  I can never remember how many times removed, responded too.

Suddenly, I had my name connected to 14 generations. 

I had an Excel file with a family tree.

I was discovering my plot among the stories. 

I started to make more sense to myself. 

I was one among many, so many.

Our crosses on a map

A visit to a war cemetery in Flanders on a website brought me face to face with a stone cross bearing my great uncle's name, age, rank and regiment.

It was him. 

"His" stone cross, was one among many to scroll.

Wilfred C. Hunter. 24. 2nd Lieutenant. 121st Heavy Battery. Royal Garrison Artillery.

He was 24. 

Grief salvage

Sorting through my uncle's papers, a few years on, my parents long gone, I came upon his name again.

I took a photo of a document before filing it away with others salvaged in the grief. 

He was there, resolute, on my phone.

I find it hard to let go.

2015 seems so much closer now to 1915.

Histoires d'identification

2014, he appears in my writing, for an article for a French teaching  journal.

In the article I speak of how digital tools enable us to give new life to the past.

Noman's land

2012, he appears as inspiration for a blog post written here three years ago: 

http://tachesdesens.blogspot.fr/2012/03/nomans-land.html

"Dust to digits" 

2015, he appears here again on reading a blog post written by Michelle Pacansky-Brock with a memorable title:

"Dust to digits"

http://www.digitalwritingmonth.com/2015/11/10/dust-to-digits-writing-our-stories-through-family-photographs/

These stories of loss are alive still. 

"Befallen" 

"Fallen"

Lest we forget.

Radio silence.

Weakening signal.

Crackly interference.

Do not adjust, 
Do not adjust,

.....your set.




Unplug aerial

Turn knobs
Clockwise.

Turn knobs
Anticlockwise.

Replug aerial.


Twiddle thumbs.

Pace up,

Pace down,

Unplug set.


Bang hand on box.

Run fingers through hair.

Slap palm on chest.


Wait, wait, always wait.

Go out for walk.
Go out for air.

Come back.

Plug in.

NO.

Signal clear.

No moving picture.

NO.

Sign of life.

Bang hand on box.

Shake fist.

Stroke temples.

Clap hands.
Wring hands.

Breathe in.

Sit down on chair.

Gaze at box.

Look up.

Listen. Listen. Listen.
........
Radio silence.