The following sequence of texts - 'The Sea: 6 Waves' - were co-written a few years ago with my friends the artists and performance makers Cupola Bobber (Tyler Myers and Stephen Fiehn) as part of a 'Reading Companion' for their performance Way Out West, The Sea Whispered Me, which toured internationally in 2009-10. Published in April 2009, the Reading Companion is an exquisite 24" x 36" double-sided colour poster in which the texts are laid out to take on the shapes of the landscape - Sea, Mountain, Cloud, etc.
Other contributors of additional texts in the Reading Companion were Ian Abbott, Alice Booth, Simon Bowes, Lucy Cash, Karen Christopher, Ezra
Clayton Daniels, Zach Dodson, Jeff Harms, CJ Mitchell, and Bryan Saner. The poster was designed by Zach Dodson and illustrated by Ezra Claytan Daniels.
The collaborative writing process was simply structured and wholly pleasurable. Over a period of some months, Tyler and Stephen would send me a textual 'wave', and I'd respond, bouncing another one back across the Atlantic to their base in Chicago. A slow writing into and out of what lapped or crashed on to each other's virtual shorelines.
My heartfelt thanks to Tyler and Stephen for letting me post these texts here, and for inviting me to collaborate in the first place, in this play-fully dialogic way.
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We resolve to believe these people who eat their lunch in silence in their sea-facing cars arenʼt waiting for it to do anything in particular. They are not keeping watch over an unruly neighbor, they arenʼt expecting any event at all. They are just sitting at the edge and looking out precisely because nothing much will happen beyond the slow mechanical play of cloud, sky, and water. Speaking of fishermen who catch no fish, Sebald says, “I do not believe these men sit here all day and all night waiting so as not to miss the time when the whiting pass.” (1)
It should first be noted that I am
speaking out of place and that I am not The Sea. I am an imposter with a blue
suit on, standing in the middle of the Atlantic, yelling: “I am the sea too” at
the passing ships. I have been here - listening - for quite a long time. I
imagine that I will be here until my senses cease to work, The Sea has so much
to say. Sometimes the gossip from town(s), about the crabs that tickle the
belly, about so many clouds (they can be ornery), and ...
I will have you believe that The
Sea has just whispered to me: “I have yet to find a home.” I will have you
believe that The Sea has just whispered exactly that, and also that I have in
return asked the following: “What do you mean? You are The Sea.” The Sea looked
down and examined its shoe. It rubbed its forehead. Then it said:
“Iʼm not so sure I can answer
that simply, but I will try. I am contained, controlled by gravity and other
forces, I go where they direct me. But, I am constantly working to find my way
beyond my borders. Sometimes I think I have finally broken through, but I
always find there is a new shore waiting for me. There are some people who have
built their houses close to me, and sometimes during the night after they have
left I sneak into their homes, wet the pages of their libraries, wash over
their cutlery, take the fruit out of the bowls sitting on their kitchen
counters, wash the floor boards and retreat back to my side of the border that
marks me. “
With a wistful note in this last,
The Sea trailed off. I took my sky blue kerchief out of my jacket pocket (matches
my carnation), and made it ready should it be needed (my manners are superb.) I
asked: Why? The Sea started with a faraway look:
“Way out West, way out West, there
…”, but then stopped. I readied the kerchief, but after a dramatic pause and a
few false starts, The Sea continued:
“If there is a shoreline I will
set myself to it, that is my lot. Several billion years of work, digging in the
sand, moving it, putting it somewhere else. Knowing this, the men along the
shoreline have built walls to protect their towns from me. They are also
constantly working, building me new buildings of the same towns a little
further west, something to look forward to. They dig and they build walls and I
slowly grind them down to dust (wet dust), and then they rebuild their churches
and stores and streets and towers, and I work away at it; and so on and so on.
This is just what I do and I cannot speak for them. I am always on the move, I
have yet to be at rest and feel as if rest will never come. Sometimes it may
look like I am calm, or at rest, but I am still working. One would think that I
would grow tired, or that my age would keep me from working, but I do not think
in terms of tired or age or anything really, because I donʼt have the ability to know
if I canʼt go on. Itʼs only that Iʼll go on. Itʼs alright with me.”
Noting a break in the monologue, I
saw a chance to tell The Sea about the delightful little town of my childhood …
there was the small “playground” that was a patch of sometimes muddy earth next
to Mr. Cooperʼs store, and hide and seek with the two neighbor kids and their
imaginary friends, and there was my father’s study and the set of
encyclopedias, the 4th of July parades with the Indians with the muskets, the
abandoned house in the woods where we dug out a fort, the bananas with honey
and milk weʼd eat on the picnic morning in the new sunlight, the door jam with my
height and corresponding year, the red toothbrush I got at the dentist office
(the dentist office smelled like no other place Iʼve ever been.) Just then I
noticed The Sea had stopped listening, so I carried on in my
head but let The Sea have silence. I was lost trying to remember the layout of
every house and apartment I had ever lived in when the sea broke in.
“I have found a set of steps on the
coast just north of Blackpool, I believe they call this area Cleveleys. I spend
a great part of my days trying to climb these steps. That is, to really climb
them the way they were intended to be climbed (one step at a time.) It always
goes like this: I step up three stairs, and just as I reach for the fourth, I
am pulled back to my body. I guess that I cannot go anywhere unless it (all of
it) also goes with me. Sometimes I imagine that I am walking up the steps and
onto the land, and through the town past the church, through the pastures on
the other side, over the privets, and up the mountain to get a look at what
everyone is looking at when they are looking at me. Because I have no sense of
it. Imagine, all eyes on you, and never knowing why. But, if I am on the
mountain, what am I looking at?”
What indeed, I thought. I thought,
can I short circuit my brain by looking at my hand? I watched The Sea.
Concentrated on its face. Concentrated on the creases around its eyes, and they
seemed to brace themselves for something; looking, but not outward. That look
an old Wyoming sheep herder might give when asked if there is anything they
regret about a life lived in a trailer in the mountains watching sheep. And
their answer is the coffee. The Sea concluded:
“We all walk in mysteries. We are
surrounded by an atmosphere about which we still know nothing at all. We do not
know what stirs in it and how it is connected with our intelligence. This much
is certain, under particular conditions the antennae of our souls are able to
reach out beyond their physical limitations (2). These are the shores of dreaming.”
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