There's a collection of white plastic garden furniture stood beside the
pool in the hotel basement. Six chairs, a couple of loungers, a trio of
small tables (maybe footstools, its hard to say). On one of these, in
any case, set at an angle like the earth titled on its axis, is a green
apple, from which several bits have been taken. A man is swimming with
his daughter, some blokes come and go from the steam room. Nothing
happens.
Later a woman wearing some kind of semi-uniform (in the general area of
nurse/dental hygenist/pharmacist), comes out from the health-spa
reception and dons a pair of the white latex 'Inspection Gloves' from
the box that's lain on the floor near the entrance. She walks over to
the small table, picks up the apple in her gloved hand, and takes it -
held at a sceptical distance from her body - back out towards reception
for disposal I guess, or some kind of forensic analysis.
On that day and in the days to come, when a boy was going to die, he
would first stop talking. His throat would be too dry and to speak
required too much energy. Then his eyes would sink deeper, circled in
ever darker shadows. He would no longer answer to his own name. His
walk would slow, his feet shuffling, and he would be among the boys who
would rest longer. Eventually a dying boy would find a tree, and he
would sit against the tree and fall asleep. When his head touched the
tree, the life in him would fall away and his flesh would return to the
earth.
The narrator of Dave Eggers' What Is the What circles
the subject of death concentrically - recounting terror, outrage and
anger by turns, as he both fears for his own life and watches his
Sudanese Lost Boy compatriots die in an endless variety of awful,
sudden or slow, often shocking ways; by slaughter at the hands of Arab
horsemen, attack by predators, aeroplanes, disease, infection and
starvation. Mainly though he's resigned to the fact that he can't
predict which of his companions will survive the terrible journey,
cannot know for sure if he himself will make it through. Obsessed with
this question Achak tries for while to use a friend, another lost boy
walking beside him, as a kind of index of his own health.
In the mirror of William K, I did not look well that day. My cheeks
were sunken, my eyes ringed in blue. My tongue was white, my hipbones
were visible through my shorts...
Very often through the book (which I wrote about already here)
Eggers returns to the topic of the flimsy separation between life and
death, puzzling at the all-too-easily passed border between survival
and extinction, existence and disappearance. Its a distinction that he
sees can exist even in life itself, when at another comical and
chilling point in the book he meets a solitary adult living alone in
the jungle, hiding from everyone. The un-named adult gives him food,
and jabbers continuously as he eats, lecturing Achak:
I don't live anywhere, and you should learn from this. Why do you
think I am alive, boy? I'm alive because no one knows I'm here. I live
because no one knows I'm here. I live because I do not exist.
Hugo Glendinning has a re-vamped website here
with images and texts about his work including collaborations with
Martin Creed, Adrian Heathfield, Franko B, Yinka Shonibare, Paola Pivi
(and me!). Arriving at Hugo's place to visit (in the real world)
there's often a moment where we'll end up at the computer, with Hugo
randomly opening folders to show me things that he's been working on
for himself, or with or for different people. From what's there on his
site I'm guessing that the notebook there will be a virtual version of
this 'what's new', which is great because he's always got pretty
fascinating projects on the go. Check out the images (as above) from Forced Entertainment's durational performance And On The Thousandth Night, the text and series of images of his son Louis sleeping and finally this one
of many images that he's been shooting for some Olympics related
project, in which kids create dance in East London locations. I'm sure
I'll be linking back and forth to Hugo's site a lot.
*
Another new blog/site I've been checking out is this one
from theatre director and writer David Gale, well known for his work
way back leading Lumiere & Son with Hillary Westlake. I really
liked this line from David's recent entry on American identity/Paris Hilton:
"Mythical figures are not people, they generally represent single
human characteristics rather than the complex of qualities that
comprise flesh and blood persons. We devise mythical figures for the
purposes of instruction - they’re not supposed to be something you
become".
"Bachelard says that our childhood homes physically form our
imaginations. So in a way we're always there, ripping up carpets
or digging into corners, or building whole new extensions I
guess. For me there's something very physical about [this
relationship to space] too - related to our understanding of our
bodies..."
*
M. mailed me a link to a 1995 sound installation piece by Janek Schaefer, titled Recorded Delivery.
Made by sending a voice/sound activated tape-recorder in a package on a
journey through the postal system from studio to gallery it looks like
a conceptual precursor for the great Tim Knowles Spy Box
piece I wrote about briefly a while ago and which involved a
boxed/rigged camera sent by post to record the sights of it's journey.
Audio samples, and details of a vinyl edition recording of the Janek
Schaefer Recorded Delivery are here.
Second place goes to this one:
Subject: On the site of each disintegration explosion, a fireball rose up first, immeasurably brighter than Sol itself.
First place goes to this one which came from my friend G. who just got
married. He was at the airport heading to honeymoon, sending and
checking last mail on wifi when it arrived.
Subject: In a lively row walking, drinking Sunset, voices, lights,
- all that's there, And at times lowering our eyelids Under someone's
assiduous stare.
The devil got all the best tunes but those spammers got all the best lines.
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Hugo Glendinning has a re-vamped website