I want to starve myself down to the bare bones and see what emerges. A wild insect soul springing out. A screeching hissing furry thing. A sharp-toothed clawed hairy creature, all flailing limbs and high-pitched howls.
I want to feed her on wine and chocolates and watch her grow fat and inebriated, an old hag with fleshy folds hanging from her body, heavy fleshy folds and bushy mounds. Spittle dribbling from almost toothless mouth.
I want to feed her on chocolate and wine and watch her become the most beautiful of all and hear her sing a song about life filled to the brim with love and feel her body close, so close.
I want to feed her on bones ground dry and make her choke on them and spit everything out that she ever took in, spit, puke, cry it all out until she’s empty and just her own brittle self. I’ll cradle this new old being and hum on her with my warm breath and make her pulse and throb and then I’ll kiss her all over, that bare hollow lovely one and
I’ll feed her tender bits of spicy meat and nuts and marzipan and kiss her again and again, little butterfly kisses that make her skin spring to life and I’ll hear her little chuckle and my happy tears will wash her clean. And then I’ll guzzle her down and I’ll carry her safe in me, warm, content, tickled with love, and feel her tiny gulps of laughter ripple in my belly. I’ll love her and love her and let her grow into whatever she wants to be.
14 comments:
I want to make what you have written. She is so vivid to me.
I have'nt been on your blog for ages because of the move, etc. I am astounded by the amount of work you manage to produce and by the consistant brilliance of every piece. Doing this with ME. My dear, you are a heroine!
Thank you, Kruse, soooo good to have you back. And re: amount of work, it's not all new, or if it's new it's been worked on for ages and ages in some cases. But there is a lot you can do when you're lying down and I just keep at it. Heroine - no. My art is my life-saver, my continuity, my framework, my way to not stop thinking, to not give up. I need it.
your hairy house is beautiful disturbing
do you read angela carter?
your creature seems to belong to her stories.
your work seems gigantic and tiny simultaneously.
i can imagine it in a dolls house or so huge that i could crawl inside.
objcts from an alice in wonderland world.
I am speechless.
I feel still having read that, still in a good way, and focussed.
Ok, moved beyond the speechlessness to realise that the piece fits a post I'm preparing on other people's work in red and black. I'd love to show some of your work if I may?
Oops, I pressed the wrong key, I hadn't finished writing... was going to say how happy I am that you were outside absorbing the silver birch. New folk next door have erected a very high TV aerial in front of my previously uninterrupted view of 2 silver birch from the bed. At first I was irked by it, but it's solidity only serves to highlight the graceful movements of the birch.
I've been finding old textile work of mine and it makes me think of you, pieces I made over long periods of time, but which I have never actually finished. Bed seems like a good place to take them up again, 15yrs later. I like the idea of being surrounded by creamy coloured felt and threads again.
Superb - maybe I use that word too often, but this piece and also your words, are superb. The multiplicity of meaning is what excited me the most. Cathy novembermoon
Um, wow! Like David Wojnarowicz's burning house stencil mixed with Kiki Smith's excreting bodies... an oozing house! Overflowing! and I assume it's made of hair? You're so good at finding that beautiful/disturbing spot and stopping there - queasy and compelling and asking to be picked up.
Lately I've been pondering creatures that sprung fully formed somehow, like Athena or Dionysus emerging from Zeus's head and thigh, but also all kinds of parasitic wasps (like wasps that lay eggs in caterpillars and hatch out of the cocoon instead of butterflies...) You've given me even more to think about - Cronos eats her children, which are also herself?
I love your work and the way you write and I really appreciate you stopping by my blog and the comment you left.
When I painted that oil painting, I had a heavy heart and it's interesting to hear that that was your response to it. I agree with you-we need to be able to be alone with ourselves, but it's necessary to reach out to others.
Thank you again.
I had to read this again and again...haunting in one way,what do I feel?
It's deep existence, deep emotion, not centered and reasonable...pure emotion..
Phew!! Wow!
Thank you, thank you, thank you, all!
Lasuza: I know Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, which I adore. Her language is like sparkling crystals, such clarity, such precision. Want to try her novels soon. And I really like what you say about my work seeming simultaneously gigantic and tiny, it’s all about perception and projection and what we invest objects with, isn’t it, and if an object lends itself to containing so much, that’s great. I’ve been thinking about seemingly opposing pairs of words like waxing and waning, gorging and starving, growth and withering, excess and lack, ties in with that somehow.
Cally: see your blog.
Cathy: delighted to hear that from you as you’re also a wordsmith.
Daniel: Searched the net immediately for David Wojnarowicz’s burning house stencil and found it – thanks!! Many years ago, mid-nineties maybe, I was at the ICA for Itsofomo with Ben Neill where DW’s vocice features. Was in a fever for weeks after. Bought Close to the Knives which I will look at again now. Good to cconnect with that again.
Bridgette – thank you too!
And Uschi: Glad I got you hooked and haunted. Thanks. Pure emotion – yes, and yet it’s processed and brought to its final shape through the coiling entrails of my brain. Strange how art comes about, when you think of it.
hi Marjojo, have been waiting for a more lucid and less-rushed moment to respond to this...
but nothing i write here will really express how taken i am by what you wrote. that perfect sauce you mentioned, arriving at an essence, you totally captured it here.
i have printed it out and reading it again and again, and each time it just fills me and takes me away. each line is already powerful by itself and then to have it all together like that in one breath! how does one come to write like that??
as lovely as the hairy house is, it seems paled by comparison to the writing you have following it. to me, there is constraint/restraint in the red that i ache to overflow even more and be consumed by it like those words you have written. maybe if the writing did not accompany it, it would be received differently? i totally agree with what Lasuza said about your work being both gigantic and tiny at the same time. this house gives me that feeling. i go back and forth on wanting to hold it in my hands and bring it close to my heart and/or imagine it life size (or me tiny-sized) and tread into it and see for myself what all that red is about.
i just saw that my keystroke error in my first comment actually deleted most of the content. sorry, i had written about how moving and powerful your writing was in this post. so moving here i am again reading it for maybe the 6th time, which is saying a lot as i don't visit many blogs at the moment.
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