notes for
RINGAMORE
performed at the opening of
George Finlay Ramsay's exhibition
Volcanoes and Regrets at SET, London
tape rewind -> drum 1
i’ve lived in the moment. i had it all set up to.
on a duvet i took outside i sunbathed in snow. there was no contradiction
in lying there. + growing binaural 3
intimacies were multiple. they raised their arms to toast me. they were me.
arms were toned with the clinking of glass from behind which there is touch. +vivaldi
touch which mutters me. touch which mutters a there there there.
i left myself there when i got up & kept going. doors closing
+ drum 2
i had a feel for how to crawl into expansive places & wring them.
i had a feel for the ringamore of water and bed’s equal tightness.
tight-skied, too, in the forehead. a solid forlorn
with a feel for thinking – out of my throat it came to face me. out of hand. into the grass.
i bent over the thoughts and in
knowing i was bending i bent further, mirroring not snapping.
binaural 3
i secateured the tangible bits off reflection
& kept the tools in my hand, for i was walking,
with all these feels for, through a thicket
made by walking. and i liked to know i couldn’t know
where i was going. + switch off drum 2
i passed time practicing slinging myself
on my own shoulder, and when my shoulders fell under
the weight i picked sleet from above to fit in their past place.
i was walking, walking still undiluted, in thrill.
i had no feel for where to draw the line.
my tools when dropped formed an unhatched figure.
i dropped them in attempt to stop distinction
between which thoughts are hard enough
to be worth having and which are hard enough
to be cut off. between which are worth being slipped into
and which, through that same being slipped, ring lazy. + vivaldi
empty-handed, i can go. i am going to dish you
out horizon. + paint blue line
to sense it, think about something outside the world
think about everything that is – leaving –
and what would be left behind that
+ ship sample
to think about something outside the world, consider too how big a world is,
how important the decision of what to call world.
consider how fickle. does it have a size at all? can it change?
+ i wish i could answer your question
not walkable, not thinkable, not strollable, not feelable
to my mind – so i take you outside, i give you a toast,
i drink fresh glass, i draw no line i have no feel for, i walk off having stayed.
+ plane
empty-handed i can go. i walk off having stayed.
pause -> bin 14
the mind at night calls for different kinds of night.
night in mind listens for different kinds of mind.
+ flight announcement of hrs of darkness
to say infinite is to say not-finite in a hurry.
funny that we use ‘in’ to negate.
as if infinity were in the finite.
the incredible in the credible.
i don’t want to think of the infinite in terms of the finite,
or in terms of extension, or in terms of pushing things a bit too far.
i am lying down attempting not to think in terms.
maybe that means – not to think at all.
i am lying down attempting to hush pull.
i am lying down on the loop around the earth’s core.
it’s called soil, eiderdown, tree crown.
trying to feel wound around the already wound around this.
it’s impossible to get the jist of a whole web.
spiders first touch via silk, one line made by the male,
which he plucks to his species’ rhythm. there are different rhythms.
the female can eat him or mate or just eye him.
my mind pretends to be this male ejecting one path
towards a wholeness that will eat it or mate or reciprocate confusion.
i can do nothing but pretend to be a mind, and so be it.
of course i can’t stand outside and court where i am already
wound around as some form of prey. but i brood over my courtship.
i ask for thinking through things bigger than we can conceive
without making them into extensions of those things.
i ask you as prey to your thought, with enough focus, to feel the silk rub against you.
silk of horizon, silk of core.
my sense of wholeness,
for all i can taste,
is sewn to the soil.
silence
compare the extent to which you are ready for life with the extent to which you are ready for death?
chain
compare ready with prepared.
compare comparison with distortion.
compare distortion with the ringamore of still water.
compare that ringamore with a mind wound through by night.
wish i could sleep on deeper pauses.
i’ve heated the bed to pulp.
pulp has a presence
outline lacks.
lack has a presence present things
can’t seem to tap into.
a spider in the corner makes a palace out of herself.
she performs no shuffling but it’s as if her structures tell me things, tell me
it’s time to get out of the river,
time to start sinking in something still,
like a question.
tell me so that i know something by heart through being drowned.
the gladness of submersion.
so that when asked, what is a life?
i am ready to say as i feel, to say it’s like dancing through ice.
i turn over
wish i could sleep in deeper pauses
play with binaurals, esp. no. 1
i’ve felt like a deer in tupperware,
eyes locked with the glued-down lids inside me.
no thrashing about. a deer that imagines
imagining in the open.
i imagine conquering siberia in the nude.
though my tupperwared leap hardly wants to conquer.
my limbs call for vertigo.
i remember when we first got in touch.
i was standing in the kitchen with a frying pan
and being hit by an ALL THIS, a completely still everything
passing by so fast it made it known
it could never whirl out of me.
i could be gone now. comfortably. no sound
everything fit in the moment as if it were gone,
did not take up.
there was only a still taste,
taste of the unoutsideness of that everything,
an umami lack of way to look out and check
how mistaken we are to think we don’t get it at all.
korean sample + my tape
how loud the road is paint ears
mind – thistle against thistle –
files itself, sparks, and seduces
till still in mind you hang right over it
your playground your language your playground your grace
you watch yourself below
trying to climb the slide.
tiptoeing over the monkeybars.
you have a dream in which you stand on earth
and look up at the sky, in which you can see the small globe
like a kitsch full eyeball, the globe you are standing on.
yes you can see it up there. it bends you. it feels funny
and right, like when a plant won’t be straight when given a chance
to corner the sun.
like you the vertigo is always getting carried away.
you needn’t start or stop moving to let it come at you.
all that’s required, and all that results from it,
is being right where your whirling is,
just past the end of your person.
the point of thinking about the point of thinking is:
to me: its dense but suddenly breezy here.
the point of thinking about the point of thinking is:
i don’t struggle in that here.
i think to feel vertigo.
to feel diligently.
i think to build webs to fall through. to fall safely. to fall well.
to be gone just right.
i was gone now.
train announcement -> church sample
your safety net starts running overnight
there it is going
down the cheek of the night
there it is going
up a stem of terminal aster
there it is going
tracelessly now
it was and it left and here it is and there it is going
it comes it goes it does not come from anywhere
it does not go from anywhere to anywhere
but it was and it left and here it is and there it is going
church -> sea
think about something outside the world
think about dripping out of it
only to return more within
think about orbiting
the outermost wind that counts as wind
the first thing that would have been a wind
but is too far away
from the core of the earth
we’re skewered to
think about dripping out of that down
outside in
down the cheek of the night
tracelessly now
past the chin of the days
timelessly there
think out the outness
i’ll let you think
kicked in chorus – start painting face
unafraid of death, is that safe from death?
a mind seducing itself, is that a mind seduced?
starkness, is that required for seeing?
don’t think around
what you can embrace
don’t think this over
turn over the water
get my skin paint
think over
the body over the fire
think whether you behave
like a domestic animal
in other men’s houses
take the slowest look
and spend the rest of yourself
briskly looking away let the sea fade it out and click at end of clip my skin brisky looking away
briskly looking away
ready for life? ready for death?
sped up Lauryn Hill - Everything Is Everything -> not recording properly
check the taste in your mouth.
check how the river likes
its run through your arms.
stretch as if to pillar all the way up
the space that cannot be left
after everything is gone.
+bubbleup sample
the whole is unwrappable
yet it would be good to hug it.
you coo what you want to call the world
your call, whether picked up or not, picks you up.
puts a hand to your mouth and cups everything ahead
as you thread full stops between your toes and walk.
walk on tiptoe of water on throat
the wave is a peering of steps toward
walking totally out
+ doors opening
exploring an impossible outside
the way you are in
you become more like molasses
on branches
& moon
comfortable in all manners of waxing and waning.
there isn’t a way of making everything disappear & yet space after it remain.
but you’re dancing in some space after, aren’t you. chanting web.
with bliss in thistles at your ankles.
flexing without a point. climbing up
a slide of ice in the alive of night.
that bliss in thistles round your ankles.
that bliss, your ankles. those thistles. there there there.
what is a life?
say it’s like dancing through ice.
say it’s like dancing through ice.