Just found this, which I wrote on the back of a receipt in Antwerp a few months ago. Firstly, i couldn’t believe i wrote that much on a receipt. I should really keep my receipts, i forget the insights i keep on them. Of course, i write and make art on everything, but forgot that morning until i re-read it. Maybe I’ll develop this piece to something worthy of a whole piece of paper!
..awakened today to bells ringing and rain sounds-typical winter sonic landscape here, but for my dreams last night. In one, my car could fly. i knew exactly where i would drive. Here,
rain, books, listening…an introverted monk, waiting eagerly for a sunny day…not just for sun, but for illumination. i like that moment when God said, let there be Light, so He could see His own creative process!
Even what i dream here mingles with the bells, gulls and font of words.
This particular morning,
i sit for a while and recall back, turning pages and tossing through oversized art books, looking at what others saw here, the history of vision…with the prophet’s leaning…
at least, before the wars came, and turned us down
towards forward, the downward spiral towards up, falling upwards us all, towards a true ending, through suffering…these bells are also ringing for us here now-they contain compress and resonate the past present and future and keep time still, in lament, and a certain type of hope.
So, i pull my phone out and try to put the bell tones inside it, to press and compress some record, an icon, or something which holds what’s passing always….
so i can carry them with me.
like those who pray at night carry the dead.
And the piano player next door, who has been here for years, is already practicing this morning-the warmth of piano tones sound like Chagall, and
with the sight of cold north sea rain spewing on the vast window, we are all somehow whole in mourning, as are we—that’s what it’s like, just next to an enormous room we can barely see, but know we already live in.
Even today’s sea gulls are trembling in the never finished kirk tower of St Jakob’s across the street, the old pilgrimage way, with its imprinted golden seashells we walk over daily.
Besides and anyway,
the old people (the few who still go to church) couldn’t make it to church to pray today, as the stones are just too cold, and slick on a day like this. So i’ll pray for them, as those who are unseen in prayer.
Or, like those who pray at night. I’ll be like them one day, ok with being entirely unseen, some sort of accidentally seeing saint.