I like this piece very much. It is of a woman whose fierce love I shall not forget as long I draw breath, in this life or any other.
The relationship was… well…
It was passion incarnate, inchoate. Devastating. Thrilling.
It almost killed me.
I use my fingers with pastels, and in this case scraped them bloody on the textured surface.
And...
And...
Sometimes in my work…
I can witness myself taking leaps of quality and I work in a fever fuge, my eyes are struck as full of the colours as the pgiments and I lose myself in them and they pour from me like hot water or thin blood or cold vodka.
It is an indescribable sensation to see my own hands make something such as this. I begin the with a person, a woman, before me, some materials – paper, chalk, paint. At the end of the slow still hours quickening my fingers, I surface from the fugue and wake from the trance of working. And sometimes I have something before me that is beautiful that did not exist, that what the world did not hold before I began. And it will last for centuries.
I love the idea of obscured reflections and scattered and refracted light – my desire to work is pushed further every time I stumble upon something I know I must pursue.
In many of my works, whenever it is practical, I will place a left-hand print on a wall or smudging a piece of glass or the clean ground next to a sleeping figure.
I am left-handed. Very left-handed. Miss my mouth with the food when I try to eat with my right.
This is probably accentuated (and oh boy! is it ever accentuated) by the lesion I have in my left temporal lobe – it’s pretty big. About 7 × 6 × 5 cm. Roughly two inches cubed.
I have drawn or painted or cuffed the left hand-print for years, and I will never stop.
Recently the idea occurred to me that since this has become one of the defining symbols within my work, I could execute a piece based entire on the idea. So I made it happen. I forced it into existence.
And I am so left handed, you see, that I almost walk with a limp.
and
AND!
“I believe in never.
I believe in all the way.” – Smashing pumpkins
So you don’t take the time take the moments spin the bottle spill the blood?
Ah well ah HELL
The word hell is from the Norse word Hel – this described both the goddess and the place that she ruled. Everyone went there and it was crappy, unless you got stabbed or chopped up with an axe in which case you got to go to Valhalla.
And in Valhalla you got to get into fights. Forever. And there was endless beer.
I remember endless beer.
It was nice. Beery.
So we dip our wings and sigh. Sigh in slightly inconsistent, in-harmonic, clipped shuddering sighs – and only a sliver of love out of synch’.
I know there is no happy ending for this; that there cannot be.
Circles building up in me in that release-less frenetic energy making me blink fast and move fast. Boots hanging off me and the laces really do look chewed though I didn’t not recently at least.
Got that lettered up feeling – heat boiling off me feel the air ripple and coil as I breathe out . Heat for each distil phalange (these are the words for finger-tips do they not slip onto the ends of your hands?)
Still feel the smell of her on me though I guess it’s not pale honey and nightmarish need colouring my eyes not hers though I am hoping hoping.
Forgot what it was like to feel like this so wide open crushable –flawed and ruin-ready – Lit up like a six-fingered passion, a design a metaphor a need.
I remember every point of flesh, mouths meeting over muted susurrations and terrified more than most times.
Toes all bent up and down and pushing so hard not to frighten her that I almost say nothing,
Flood of words damned with sand and ashes and flowers now; flowers.
Real and real and real. And you – here- Stretched against me a catch thickening my throat
And hey -
There might be something windblown and scarred,
A moment for us to press against our cheek,
A plate for us to hold it to.
Out there somewhere. Sure.
My own memory is a scratched cup, a bent fork.
Blown out like surf or a candle,
’a light bulb a curse or a mind.
Warmth and comfort, solace and weight
Wait,
Wait!
I need more than you were and are.
The sum of your parts is less than the whole.
And your voice is gone.
This rage and its partner.
They can bring us jewels, my love
We can have
Jewels.
You.
And I.
- Paul.