The Shock of the New

THIRD WORD BIRD

Extract from AS CONDUCTOR (coda)

Stay perfectly still.

Let the animals keep watch, and let them watch one another. In movements of tail and ear and flinches of pelt let them steadily project between them the quality of risk in the air. Let them instruct by example, twitch provoking twitch, flight provoking flight.

Move slowly and maintain a loose hold of its limbs, and you can pose the body of a sleeping animal so it appears to be awake. With minutely thin supports you can prop its eyelids open and stare it into the forest blind. Stay down, let it dream. Let the dream direct the movement of its eyes.

Let the animals around believe the life of its sleeping eyes and incorporate its gaze into their watch. Let them project the twitches of sleep out onto the forest floor and flee the dislocated threats they seem to show. Let this go on.

Once, and by chance, let their pattern of flight perfectly correspond with the spectacle behind the sleeping eyes which, in a jolt of recognition, conceal even from the sleeper the instant of its waking. Let the animals continue to dart
as it follows them follow its stare.

Now.

Bottle Collecting

Here are some of the birds:

Fitfully watching these birds as I approached a writing deadline last month I was continually distracted by the thought that they looked a good deal better equipped for writing than me. The birds have certain ways of being that I think would lend themselves to the practice of writing. Ways of organizing ideas, putting sounds together, getting priorities in order. I’d like to learn about writing from these birds. I don’t know how to begin.

I DO NOT WANT TO SHARE THE BIRDS

Note to self: it still works as a worm

I found this in an old notebook today. From the handwriting it looks quite urgent.

Note similarity
worm holes
string theory.
What happens when you cut worm in half??
it still works as a worm.
Cut string in half…
> it still works as a string

*check about worms.

I don’t know what could have been going on at the time but it’s definitely my writing. Here it is with original emphasis and diagram:

Beaks

This afternoon I drew the tip of my pencil with itself and the nib of my biro with itself. I drew them in my line drawing book, which makes them the first traditionally representational drawings on its pages. They continue my exploration of the line as a representational tool that joins word to thing, and here the pencil and biro use the paper as a pivot for representation.

Like a Simile

This weekend there were two art book fairs in London. At the Whitechapel was the achingly official London Art Book Fair, and at Oxford House was the achingly unofficial Publish and Be Damned. I found one thing at each which I want to put together.

(un)limited store had a stand at Publish and Be Damned. They’re a French publisher that produces artist books, objects and prints. I like the way they don’t differentiate too heavily between these three categories: the objects all have ISBNs like books, for instance, and come boxed and labeled to show they’re part of or published by the (u)ls project.

David Lasnier is one of the artists whose objects they publish. I bought a rubber stamp by him which reads ‘stamped’.

days x mice

Belles journées, souris du temps,
Vous rongez peu à peu ma vie.
Dieu! Je vais avoir vingt-huit ans,
Et mal vécus, à mon envie.

from Le Bestiaire, Guillaume Apollinaire 1911

Holidays Vocabulary on Resonance fm

Tomorrow afternoon’s Digestives broadcast on Resonance FM is Holidays Vocabulary, a new work of mine based on the sound files I unearthed on an old dictaphone of mine last month. It’s an experiment in translation.

Holidays Vocabulary airs tomorrow at 4:30pm and is repeated this Friday at 7:30pm, and you can listen by clicking the ‘Listen Now’ mp3 stream at www.resonancefm.com, or tune in to 104.4fm inside London. Afterwards it will be available to download as a podcast at www.antepress.co.uk.