Chalk in The Palm
Reflections on how I am visualising my current thoughts
“Behold is an object that can only be experienced in the hand.
Curling the fingers of the outstretched palm into a fist withholds its gesture of openness… I curl my hand inward only to open it back up with the receptive hearing of an ear.”
Janine Antoni
I recently read The Sick Bag Song by Nick Cave, which has made me think about the ways I return to old thoughts, and how I visualise them. I pick up these parts of me, that are from different times and felt like different interests. I gather them together imagine them being held in a piece of gauze, connected by their membrane and container. They all take on the same translucent haziness.
I spent a lot of time thinking about organs last year, and that hasn’t been such a big part of my work yet in the studios at the Ruskin, but when I read something like this, I’m reminded how important those bodily connections are to my ways of thinking, and that my interest remains.
The river is a pulsating, living artery.
It has nine known qualities.
It is not ashamed of its actions.
It flows without resistance.
It washes its own history away.
It has no memory.
It is eternally of the present and in the present.
It is not dependent on the whims of the muse.
It needs no angels to transport it.
The Sick Bag Song, Nick Cave
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