When commissions go bad…
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Thursday
Touched down in a quagmire of aesthetic agendas. Aquarius rising on Nordic time. A tingle in the parietal lobes, though the urban migraine lies behind me.
The studio will do, as I suppose it must. A workstation needed removing – what am I supposed to use a workstation for? Yrjan (?) does the what must be the usual routine, moustache-petting. Complete artistic control – ja, august tradition – ja, home in our special place – jaha. Aha. Tack tack tack. Now clear the fuck from my ontic champaign.
2.40. Telecoms severed, rocks taken in – the monzonite is scuffed. I can’t hear myself for the aqueous drone out the back. Only twelve boxes of free-range were left at the ICA. Won’t even wrap round that transom where the bulk of the din will come through. I REQUIRE NOTHING LESS THAN ABSOLUTE FUCKING TRANQUILITY. And omelettes.
7.00. Not even one mail. Well let her be knobbed by that Uzbek director. She’ll be back when she sees that I’ve done it for her, when this commission rises triumphal in an arc of golden piss all over the crumpled tits of the establishment.
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Friday
This:
… The enclosed directive finds you scheduled to unveil in the newly condensed interval 1952-58 on said date in the Convivia Foyer prior to the Prosecco Reception and Keynote Address launching our ‘Allied Petroleum: The World’s Local Drilling Conglomerate’ Campaign. We keenly await your assent.
Well, the river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. Not six fucking minutes. Have they just no idea of the meaning of the term sous-destricted psychogeologic installation?
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Saturday
I’m being assailed by the Brownian noise of a maladroit ecosphere. There is nothing as fucking inane as a babbling brook.
In short there’s been no evolvement so far. The stones must be correct. In what must be well over an hour I haven’t been able to strike down upon the single constellation beyond all reproach. And yet at the same time I am concerned my conception may be in grave peril of self-collapse from the weight of its massive integrity.
3.00 – Sat eating a granola slice and thinking ‘My God, these berries are only accidentally strewn. Where is the proper, necessary alignment?’
Office bolting up for the vacation. Yrjan – perhaps be so kind…not too much trouble…possible…so as to maybe water the plants? Water the plants? Doesn’t he realise I’m a fucking artist?
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Sunday
I am engaged in lengthy preparations which are sorely impacting upon my true and predesigned labour. Brunch of the eggs (Florentined?) was a nightmare – all this DIY now Yrjan has cleaned off, the lazy Fin fuck.
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Monday
A breakthrough. After a gruelling best-part of an hour I gave way and allowed the macrocosm to slowly perfuse. In the car park I came across a particular configuration of gravel which was an almost perfect expression of my ongoing subconscious intent for the work. It is almost as if nature had somehow miraculously aligned itself to mirror in its own constellations those of my design! Eavesdropping on my reveries no doubt, like a jealous titless slut.
Yet back in the studio the same array was listless and dull. I have moved the picrite basalt seven times already this morning to no avail. I am starting to think that pissing furrow outside is conspiring against me. I will give the stone one more chance before hurling it in.
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Tuesday
Though I shouldn’t have done I thought about her, and in a heated moment trialled a Piscean deployment via Rilke’s lily (My whole life is mine…is infinite… I attract the beyonds of mirrors) – expressed as a sum of its lexical values and mapped on a binary grid – one lot of rocks by the wall, one by the door. The hydraulic inspiration is surely to blame.
7.00 – No, the dacites are ruining everything, they’re so fucking inert. Into the river.
7.05 – Still she hasn’t replied. I am hearing her everywhere. Maybe she’s not on the screw. Maybe her time?
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Wednesday
I thought I’d hit on the purest expression of my design when I took the useless array from this morning and simply moved every rock round one place in the circle. But to my despair when I moved back the effect was completely trite. In fact conspicuously Neolithic. When I squinted it started to improve, but then a whoosh of the stream ruined everything.
And only then did it strike me again, like a pickaxe up the urethra: The rocks cannot align whilst she’s in flow.
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Midday
Code Red? The moon must be waxing, Jupiter in ascendancy, Mars in the 9th house. The rocks are still fucked. And that Kazak prick producer earning his redwings.
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Despair for my oeuvre. A river of discharge runs through it.
I’m in the kitchen, eggsactly alone with the foetal abortions. I’ve baked and braised and broiled and breaded, pickled poached creamed coddled curdled roast rolled scrambled steamed stuffed scotched scalloped sautéed souffléd seared and singed. I will now fucking julienne one.
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Down to the chalcedonic shingle alone
Moontime. THE CRIMSON TIDE MUST BE DAMMED
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Our father
Show me the true expression of my genius
And forgive the bitch if you can
For cascading against it
For mine is the vision
For a minimum of six minutes
Amen
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Visby, London
2009-11