first draft for podcast text called approximation
At some point there’s no pleasure in anything and if there was, having something to was some kind of approximation.
I’d been thinking about it all day... I can write a podcast that has nothing to do with a trajectory or something like video or texts that are like video. It could be or it would be something in itself and this had happened before with a proposal that wasn’t really a proposal.
So I can do what I’ve done before and get up at night, thinking about trajectories or work that has something to do with them or do something else when lights are low. And something else had always been appealing. It could avoid making demands, but stick to passages and numbers.
Christopher Sands, still, 2021
Everything is painful (this morning) and the cost of what I call work hurts. I walk around and oblivion begins when I take too much time... too much time coming up with something. I put something off and can’t get it right. I go back over something or put off going back until later. And something else happens when this work becomes only work in progress. It becomes a performance and a little performance precludes acting out and what happens when the work takes a dive. Here acting out is a psychoanalytic category and this category implies a trajectory.
I could step back it seems, avoiding the question of costs and trajectories. The work can be less like work or not work at all.
1. insistent
Falling apart comes next or first and happens after a while. I put it off having something to do, but falling apart is inevitable. You could say, the work (whatever it is) lacks a trajectory. I once called something like this a drop in the ocean.
There are references to what can't be known. Video and texts are problematic, but falling apart is something else. An inevitability sets in and I'm the setting. Lacan's mirror is there and something settling is unsettling... Maggie Nelson doesn't sound like Maggie Nelson talking about her books and the backdrop in the mirror is a give away.
I think about my father, linking having something to show to moments that seem real.
I start again with looking or looking my best, despite reference to falling or falling apart and looking can be listening and listening is sometimes at odds with an imperative. Standing up straight or coming up with something seems imperative... insistent.
I’ll pay attention to the end of nachträglichkeit and a new beginning, go out with a camera and do some shopping.
2. furore
Work that's ongoing (and it's always ongoing) involves a furore and there's a downturn despite the best intentions. More is more (it seems) and something driven stretches a timeline. There is a timeline and I've stopped looking at this short film on my iPhone. There's a four or five minute limit, I'm over reliant of archival clips and this furore is at odds with looking and reading. The current video, third silence, can be a furore.
There is a sub plot and the sub plot involves something less than a furore. I put off the stuff of dreams and make the most of a text and latest film. Torn apart accompanies falling apart and (Haruki would say) I miss the warmth of Murakami's characters and what's real comes in different guises or future art world formations.
Following the furore and work that isn't first concerned with a trajectory, there's having a body and what to do with it during a digital pandemic and I can always start somewhere. Proposals and projects are a problem and once or twice before I came up with incorporating insomnia and the work in progress of an impossible text. Here there is one unlikely text (talking house(s)) and texts that are sometimes follow ons.
And once again I miss Murakami's loveable heroes, who eventually sit at a desk telling a story.
3. Horace
Horace, it seems, wasn't just a bull or just bullish but had problems first thing in the morning and first thing in the morning is really just an approximation. He remembers coming up with a name once before and having someone (who still rites for a Lacanian journal) talk him down. It was a passing moment and Horace is a second try. And naming precedes having a body in this instance.
4. feet
Wearing a dressing gown in a cool climate, he could begin all over again... with feet for example and movement that's not just looking down at what he could see.
There's nobody looking on in Lacan's mirror and devices simply prompt attention to language and the gaze. He's seen and not seen looking down.
A pandemonium sets in and lunch precedes saying more about his feet... and this sentence is briefly enough... like the bull in the photo, he'd climb out of a hole (with much to do).
And as you will see, too many things happen at the same time.
Being Horace could be a problem, but there is much to do (and nothing to do) most days.
5. someday
Living where and when he lives, he fears the medical gaze and being seen symptomatically and this has something to do with attitudes to his body. He could make the most of it or make the least of it and it would catch up with him someday.
He shared his reticence and his reticence has a long history.
He could be glib and a glib phrase like being in the world comes to mind. He was living in the world (and not living in it) and slow motion work in progress precedes spending all day and night working. It's a turn around and he's passed his sell by date. There were other things to do once upon a time and losing Ruth led in one direction. It's now or never.
6. fading
Passages and paragraphs has something to do with a problematic body and a preoccupation with object-ivity follows having too much to say. His father might have said it's putting on a show, but he'd start with his feet, remembering Nora Batty's ankles.
He'd like to be out and about recording sheep for the third silence timeline but it's cold and wet and talking in the third person doesn't always work. I'm posing and looking on critically. And looking on with and without a body poses problems. Horace can't be in two places at once. He's looking at the work or he forgets someone like Lacan looking on in Lacan's mirror. It's aphanisis, he's fading and the work fades. His feet are no longer his feet and a threesome seems possible.
7. holiday
Horace remembers being on holiday or it's the holiday he should have taken six years ago and he's in a toilet with a lot of instructions in an impossible language. Worse still, he's on his own, having been brave for the first time in his life. He's on his own in an indecipherable toilet, not knowing what happens next. He's already soaking wet having pressed the wrong button. He imagines being there a while and a metropolis like no other outside. Horace thinks he's in the shit with no easy way back to the hotel. He takes off wet clothes and sits there, hearing muffled sounds outside.
After a while and it's already too long, he sees an attendant looking at him. She's gone in under the door and seems upside down. He can see just her head and little more. She smiles and tries English. He's quite a sight, but she's seen it before, not just in a professional capacity but at home. His body doesn't worry her or his wet clothes in the sink.
Lying on her back on what looks like a large skate board, she pulls herself further in until her face touches his legs.
Licking his legs, she says, No poo, just wet salty legs and he's quite relieved.
She's glad he's relieved but the job's half done... You've done what you set out to do and comes next comes next.
Explanations seem warranted, but something has happened to his legs. Her tongue is warm and it's all part of the service, Just sit back and make the most of warm legs. She's looking up at him and what he hadn't expected has happened. What she could see wasn't what she'd first seen and it was all part of the job. It happened from time to time and salty legs were a bonus.
She'd whisper instructions and he'd come closer... kneel down with her head between his legs. His chemistry was changing and she would blow dry his clothes afterwards.
Being seen by twenty million people didn't bother him, but looking and listening replaced tourism as never before. He would have something to say when he met Murakami and the outside world would never be the same again. He would walk away as if nothing had happened with a story to tell.
It wasn't what he expected, Murakami sat at the bottom of wells and he felt trapped.
His body was a problem. He'd had radiotherapy and surgery to remove most of his colon and having a body linked new found problems to the outside world. He would walk up and down at night with an iPad and these moments have a lot to do with being in the world, but politics and an art world surrounding illness and getting older warrants meeting Murakami.
He'd had his locked in a high tech toilet moment and was better for it... His legs were salty after all.
8. real world
At some point Horace was back in the real world or back at the hotel, sitting on the bed feeling unwell. He felt tired but didn’t want to sleep. He remembered Murakami, Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and time spent in the house that Ruth chose but never lived in. He started getting up with backache at this time and felt less stuck after a dream mentioned at the end of one text and start of another. He spent time on his own and remembered time in London. It was a long time ago and paid work eventually led to work in progress.
Ruth questioned the work of art as work in progress and now there’s no excuse.
He made a start on the other side of the medical gaze. Arthritis and neuropathic pain were familiar, but he became anxious and anxiety led to an urgency that led to more anxiety. The furore isn’t just a furore and the noise is partly video noise. Sleep is inevitably dangerous.
The real world is an update and a third person update projects what can’t be projected.
Christopher Sands, still, 2014
9. right way up upside down moment
Horace wants to be someone else sometimes and his holiday changes things and he refers to a right way up upside down moment. There are different ways of talking about this and starting all over again happens all the time. It's talking too much, making the most of the third person or the visibly invisible third person in Lacan’s mirror. He mentions letting go and the worst and best that could happen. Ruth let go and changing places is a belated prompt. He puts himself in her place and it’s too late.
It was too late and it’s later still and a Japanese toilet is optional. His dreams are flushed away, but a politics intrigues him. He could be this or that peering into Lacan’s mirror. What he calls object-ivity comes with being less of an object... and he refers to wandering through Marks and Spencer’s at the end of 2014.
But an update is out of date as Horace wanders passed sublimation and Lacan’s sinthome.
Some things are interchangeable and some things are not. Never to be worn clothes were piled high in a left behind house and he still lived in a ghostly world.
Julian Barnes grieving refers to memories... and transference is a psychoanalytic category that includes demands and desire. Desire is sometimes best understood as the Other's desire and the Other's desire is sometimes a ghostly desire.
10. Kwaidan
Horace watched Kwaidan at art school some time ago and remembers reference to language and anxiety and in one instance painted Japanese characters protect the body of a monk from ghostly influences. In a recent update, Horace had just had a session and was wandering through Marks and Spencer's. Unworn clothes were piled high in his world or were part of a backdrop peering into Lacan's mirror.
11. switch
I switch between a third and first person and let go of Horace for the moment, remembering conversations that had to do with changing places when Ruth was in hospital. I remember wandering through Marks and Spencer's and something else happens following the third and fourth dreams in the text called curatorial dreams. Put psychoanalytically, I imagine Ruth's desire and all the texts and videos in my world won't amount to much of a performance.
Let's say it's part of falling apart in a post Beckett world. I've learnt to crawl, having been forced onto my knees and the rest is what I am, not who I am. I dream Freud's castration dream and Lacan's mirror limits possible choices. I see what I sometimes see and the rest doesn't work or the rest amounts to fitful moments with and without Ruth.
I refer to an object-ivity and the place of the psychoanalytic object falls away.
This object is never the object or the object objects in curatorial dreams. It's not a pretty picture and I'm not a pretty picture covering remonstrance in Ruth's hospital room. She came first but left first and protesting turns in objectionable texts. She was the woman of my dreams and I'm Hoichi the earless... and not even naked Hoichi in need of a cover up or cover story.
12. my father's room
I'm in my father's last room and there's no sentimentality despite time spent in the house with Ruth. He made notes doing his best to understand what was happening to him and the medical gaze objectifies. Time travel is a topology that has something to do with Socrates and the word a t o p o s. Places and time collude in a retroactive text and another time hides beneath beneath a surface. We were all there once upon a time and now we're not and object-ivity surprises and isn't a surprise and I remember a lost world.
I had parents, met various people, went backwards and forwards and some things seem quite particular. Narrowing things down the real puts in an appearance, only it's not the Lacanian real.
The room mentioned above puts in an appearance. It's briefly my father's room, then a roomful of paintings and now I remember climbing in and out of window and the flat roof beyond. It's not particular but the air filling a room from long ago is particular. It's not the same room and it could be the same room and my father's notes follow notes made on the beach.
I must have said something about them in passing... know something of that time is still here... upstairs in a cupboard.
Conversations merge, come alive, can be spat out... and I scramble through a window twice or many times.
Christopher Sands, still, 2021
(13) changing picture
Leaving my father's room, I'm in a shop, darkroom and business that smells like the early 1950s. It lingers and I remember things going on indoors and floats passing on the way to the Battle of Flowers. The business closed and I got used to a changing picture. Some time later and not too long later, I looked at art magazines in the library at Goldsmiths, then later still started using cameras around Ruth. And A timeline presses and the photography shop that isn't a shop turns virtual storage into performance. I keep too many back ups and lose sight of the upsides and downsides of collaboration. Language and something shown or what can and can’t be said are short cuts in a collaborative world, but work begins looking after something and looking after something is tricky.
(14) the second part of things
I go out with a camera and working every day doesn’t take me far from that photography shop or from a wager that wasn’t one at the time. A lot happens slowly in my world, then quickly and slowly again in a run up to beach notes and the second part of things.
Showing something … and it's always conjecture… falls short of telling a story and storytelling shows something in digital times.
Something is possibly shown and I haven't moved far from art magazines in Goldsmiths library. I work at home or go out with a camera and options are limited at the moment. Homeless video seems ghostly... with spacing between Socrates, a t o p o s and a sometimes lost world.
(15) full blown
The scene isn't set and looking on is optional. I describe what I see and something full blown follows texts called curatorial dreams and nachträglichkeit. I clean my glasses for the first time in a while. Beyond what I can and can't see, painting involves a different attitude to clothes. I could be a painter who wears painting clothes... and I'm not sure where full blown comes in.
(16) stuck
I photograph a bull in a small grove next to a road at the bottom of a hill and have been back a few times, hoping to turn stills into video clips. I also stop writing in the first person briefly and refer to Horace... the name of a bull in previous texts. A rat going through mouldy hay sees me in a sequel... some passages stick or get stuck and Horace provides a storyline or something like a storyline. Today isn't what I thought it would be. I make a case for the symptom badly and loosely reference desire. There were some things I could have done and some things I can do.
I did very little after art school and I only took things more seriously with what I call beach notes, but this work is also space surrounding it and John Cage provides a few clues. Being stuck sometimes is then only necessary space. Here desire begins flirtation and difficulties starting psychoanalysis.
This text begins with Lacan’s mirror and underlined questions surrounding looking and being seen. I put off rearranging two websites.
(17) time warps
Southampton light looks like rain towards the end of third silence and I'm moving away from Lacan's mirror. This first version of a short seems retrospective rather than retroactive and I don't know what's possible next. I've no idea and keep turning clips around. Moving about is restricted and time warps.
What comes next is a question and I’ve started working on it without knowing what I’m doing.
Christopher Sands, still, 2015
