Leaving Paris
This is the song I want them to play as my coffin leaves at my funeral
I should get Thomas’s book and read it as I like WG Sebald so much: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo27256207.html
Ulysses: I have only read small sections it is my project for this summer.
I started listening to Ulyssses read out by authors from Shakespeare and Co, but it started with dreadful Will Self who reads like he is wielding an axe.
Coming back from Venice I was sitting next to lady in the plane I sat next to a woman who was just recovering from a divorce with a guy who had brought the family to bankruptcy and ruin, leaving her and her three children homeless, no pension, no savings, nothing to live off for the rest of their days. Imagine!! I was just on my normal flight, normal seat, but she had changed her flight and then changed her seat and boom there we were sitting next to one another. INCREDIBLE COINCIDENCE
Good news at the beautiful birthday party I went to there was a fortune teller. I had to think of a question and I asked “Will the children and I be ok?” and I had to pull out three cards. I was so scared to get her answer but she said “Relax and be happy, there is someone looking out for you in Heaven and you have all the talent and loving heart to flourish and be a great success, all of you”
What a relief. It might sound absurd to be relieved that a fortune teller tells me it is going to be ok but I am very very glad about it
I had a wonderful very long conversation from airport with my love-adopted nephew Fernando. We were in a motor taxi, so we start with the beautiful sound of engines. He is a musician and music student, also loves cars. I found it so interesting I took notes:
Lexus LFA is tuned by Yamaha. Lexus being a subsidiary of Toyota. The car engine and exhaust was actually tuned by physicists, musicians and car engineers
Told me
If you get a car with 6 cylinders, a car with 12 cylinders, the sound of them will be an octave apart
We listened to the sound of different engines on his phone. Best sounding engine is a small piston, small engine, no forced induction ie “naturally aspirated” rotary engine. In his opinion best sounding engine is that of a Mazda 26B 2.6 litre rotary engine. Also the Mazda 787B which can do 13,000/14,000 RPM
He showed me YouTube videos of the engine it is the shape of an ellipse with a triangle spinning inside. The corners of the triangle are tipped with graphene infused high-fired ceramic
We got this idea of making music with car exhaust pipes
Like the sound project I did with Kostya in Singapore (include link) we could change the sound by changing the order go the exit of the exhaust
Eg an ordinary exit for exhaust is eg 1,3,4,5 and finally 6
I also loved Fernando’s idea of making music out of the city of Venice by recording the accoustic value of underneath each bridge and making sound work out of that
We sat in the Smoking Lounge of the airport and had cold beer, and he told me about his love of biomorphic engineering. Hummingbird wings move in the shape of infinity, that is why they can hover so perfectly
He loves the precision of kingfishers which I shall look up
I know from Jane’s Magazine that most military aircraft are based on the study of birds
My favourite book of all time is The Peregrine by JA Baker
Fernando also told me about Terence Tao an artist who works with maths
https://www.math.ucla.edu/~tao/
He told me music to listen to: Like Minds
What he likes is the good quality of the stereo recording
Well placed instruments
Most old big band recordings are not well recorded
Coltrane was always recorded on the left
He had a breakdown, came off drugs, played on the Williamsburg Bridge for a whole year, then recorded this album
F’s favourite song “Without a song”. I told George Lewis about this and he said yeah he was friends with Sonny Rollins in the day
Early Coltrane
Blue Train, Giant Steps, Coltrane Sound, Coltrane Jazz
“My Shining Hour”
Heroin slows down time, slows down bodily functions,
Eventually comes to Love Supreme and free jazz
John Coltrane “First Meditations” good song: “Joy”
Listen to OMEGA by Emmanuel Wilkins, song ”Warriors”
This is new wave jazz he is super young
I am to look at Emmanuel Wilkins On the Radar on YouTube
What F likes about this is that the melody is always there, but not too abstract
Hat. I gave my hat to the guy at the airport as he told me he needed a hat. He was so happy and ran off to bring me masses of sweets
Kids on the flight to Venice
L’Ebauchoir: terrible restaurant, food served at 10, it was very hot.
No wine for 2.5 hours sarcastic staff. At dinner all lesbians super stylish and successful it was a thing.
Switched on pop about Imogen heap
Mallarmé fan with Severine while I cut out letters
Party to say goodbye to the institute was so nice. It turned into a salsa party
There was a crazy storm that blew down trees
Mo Gawdat podcast
Gabriel happy doing deals
Alexandra in Himalayas
Theodore happy (but not writing or calling so I am missing him a lot)
Sorry for haste I am really so busy packing up to leave and doing as much as I can of this commission
Here is the draft blurb about my show in Zurich:
This exhibition, a gesamtkunstwerk entitled “Where I’m Calling From’, was inspired by events and new friendships made this year in Paris as a Fellow of Columbia University’s Institute for Ideas and Imagination.
Prior to starting in September 2024, I swam with my best friend and his wife in a race across the Hellespont strait. This is the body of water where Hero and Leander drowned, which Lord Byron swam, which Christopher Marlowe wrote about etc. This swim was a turning point for me and gave me a sense of confidence and alignment.
In Paris I made several new friends including the Mexican writer Guadalupe Nettel, with whom we tirelessly discussed books. I also become friends with the Colombian novelist, journalist and poet Juan Gabriel Vasquez, and the Russian poet and writer Maria Stepanova. Conversations with these inspiring individuals got me back to thinking about writing, my first love.
What’s more, being in a new environment with no materials with which to make work, but rather two simple desks in an office, I started writing again. I wrote not just short stories (of whom in my opinion Raymond Carver is the great master, with his set of short stories “Where I’m Calling From” hence the title, as this show represents a snapshot of my frame of mind as I crossed the Hellespont in August) but also poems. I even started illustrating poems and have been commissioned to make a book of my favourite poems by Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca and Irish poet Seamus Heaney.
People are always a great inspiration for me and for my work. Another Fellow I loved was the translator Daniel Levin Becker, a member of the literary group Oulipo, which is famous for the challenges it imposes on its members. The members meet once a month to play with language and innovate through creative mathematical and literary tricks. Oulipo is founded on the principle that constraint provokes and encourages the search for original solutions: “It is necessary to thwart habits to achieve novelty” says Raymond Queneau Thus, the founding members liked to describe themselves as "rats who themselves build the labyrinth from which they intend to escape."
So, as well as the writing and poetry, the total unbinding of my imagination at this wonderful institute, I also felt the courage to impose new constraints on myself as a means of forcing myself to create truly original and innovative work.
For the body of work I am making for Madrid about incremental change, and man’s relationship with nature and history, I have decided to make work with and about honey.
For this show in Zurich with my galerist Lea Bischofberger I thought up some constraints for myself:
Make a site-specific work in just ten days
Use a restrained palette of locally sourced ink, paper and felt, in order that the work be ecologically sound
Focus on this recent year and my relationship with water as a medium of self expression, and of evaluating our current position past/present/future.
I am grateful to Lea for placing the confidence in me to do this, as it was quite a leap of faith for both of us. I feel honoured and proud to be working together with someone who understands and loves what it is to be an artist, and in whom I can entrust my future.