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.