floor text 1991

The twelfth text. This text closes with the words, "he also is afraid". Much of the writing concerned two relationships, and was deeply emotional. Now I would hesitate before using such intimate material, unless I buried the content by the same process of erasure, overwriting, or fragmenting the text.

floor text 1991

The eleventh text of the twelve. This is perhaps the most intimate of all of the texts, describing as it does lovemaking in the early hours of the morning.

floor text 1991

The tenth text from the twelve. This text poses a question in the third person; "how long has she been responsible for other people's emotions?", the tone suggesting the context of a therapeutic interview, or perhaps a self reflective passage in a novel.
The words do not refer to me, but someone said them to me in the first person, and I altered them.
I felt at liberty to write anything I chose on the floor, the practice of erasure, and overwriting enabled me to transcribe very personal material in the knowledge that most of it would be inaccessible to the viewer. Thus, threads of conversation, reminisences, and self revelatory diary entries were written, scrubbed out, and re-written over each other in an intense, mobile process.

floor text 1991

A ninth text. The words of this text can be read plainly, on looking closely at the image. They read, "I cry often and uncontrollably for no reason at all", and are taken from the questions and responses of psychometric tests, heard one morning on the radio. This particular phrase lodged in my mind, something about the rhythm of the words caught my attention, and the image of someone giving way to uncontrollable weeping without an apparent cause made it a phrase impossible to resist writing on the floor.

floor text 1991

An eigthth text. It is possible to read certain words; " sudden and palpable", " suddenly empty", "and I realise". Although I can recall fragments of some of the texts with ease, this text, and some of the others, remains obscure, the meaning of the words irretrievable. It is almost as though they were written by another person, even though I remember the intensity of the experience of writing on the floor, and the feeling that with these texts I had achieved something of a breakthrough in terms of my work.

floor text 1991

A seventh text.
My mother told me of how as a child at school, during an afternoon rest period in the summer, she took a small pillow and lay on her back in the grass, to gaze up at the sky. The pillow upon which she laid her head was covered with blue parachute silk, a detail that I find most poetic. Whilst staring at the passing clouds, she was overtaken by a feeling akin to vertigo, and the fear that she might be swept upwards into the sky, and lost forever. She told me that she held onto the grass at her sides to prevent being carried aloft.
Her words engendered a powerful image in my mind.
This text ends with my transcription of her experience.

floor text 1991

A sixth text. This image is perhaps the most ephemeral of all the floor texts. It suggests absence to me, not presence. One can feel the absence of the writer. Perhaps these texts are about loss, and the passing away of things.
It is curious to look upon them now, at a time when I am unable to make visual art, or even to write very much. All has fled, and I am bereft of images, or words that shape images. The feeling of loss attends me constantly, and I do not know how to find that which is lost.