My friend was talking about a painting by Magritte, of a pipe that is not a pipe. Straight into my head, with calm fidelity, I saw an image of a pipe, floating in space - the sort of pipe water flows through, with a right-angled bend in its shiny metal. I looked up the painting, to be sure, and I'd got the wrong sort of pipe all together. It was not a pipe, but a pipe. Hmm... Maybe I was thinking of the cover of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells? Out comes the phone again. Closer! The background is as I imagined and the material is similar, but still no pipe. Unsurprisingly, this floating monolith is a triangular tubular bell. So where did I see the pipe? If I did see the pipe. Which is of course not a pipe (of any sort) anyway...
This is desert. The heat drains my energy, until it feels like my soul has been pulled through my crown. When I try to look around, all I feel is my body churning, my head still, as if fixed on a screen. I rub my eyes and they fill with sand. The dunes rise, and lash at my body. I'm simultaneously elevated, to break down in the same scene, and also buried; smothered beneath the weight of sand. This eternal cycle. I rub my eyes and they fill with sand, clarity failing, horizon constraining, I am the water that takes the shape of what is around, and here is shapeless shifting. This is desert. [Inspired by the music of Ben Howard and John Luther Adams]
Comments
Post a Comment