17 October 1999

Hi from my magic box ;-)

Hiya Rita :-)

I'm back safe in my magic box, still wondering what proof you need that I really exist! Oh well, come down to London soon, and we'll go and drink coffee and look at someone else's art, and perhaps you'll believe it when you meet me IRL once the residency's over . . . It's a good thing that I have my photographs, and my rubbings of the spring house - thank you so much for helping me to do those - and the feathers you'd strung up (I'm going to get my PA to hang them over the staircase tomorrow), and the clay half-mask to remind me that I was really at Mount Grace, or I'd have trouble believing it myself. Sometimes I feel like we're characters in a story . . .

I've been lying in bed till now, having what my significant ex described as one of my grey days, which I hope refers to my skin tone rather than anything else! Either way, I'm completely shattered, but have come back to life enough now to write this while I'm running a bath, after which I'm crawling back to bed. As always when I'm really unwell, I'm being assiduously guarded by my animals - they'd already expressed how they felt about my going away quite adequately by greeting me on my return with the remains of a dead rat in the office <shudder>! I just had to shut the door on it last night . . .

I've got so many memories of the last two days chasing round my mind . . .

Meeting you off the train at North Allerton, and realising that the one thing email and photographs can't convey is the sound of someone's voice . . .

Being rather taken aback when you said that I smiled much more than you expected from my photographs - I must do a session soon where I'm grinning away like usual! . . .

Arriving at Mount Grace, and feeling rather like the way I felt when I visited the set of Brookside as part of a pr job for the Health Education Authority . . .

Being surprised at the Priory's setting, with the hill going up behind the cloister and the valley in front - none of the photographs gave me a sense of that . . .

Being overwhelmed at how many different colours there are, not just in the setting but in the stones themselves, particularly with all the lichen, and realising how much the colours must have changed over the period of the residency as summer has turned to autumn . . .

Being a Gosling feeding the geese, and insisting that Liz from The Art House took a photograph . . .

Seeing the stoat, and being really stoked when it was so against the odds that I'd see one in the time I was there . . .

Learning to drive the booster scooter, and being very pleased when I managed my first 3-point turn - I think that I could have a lot of fun once my power chair arrives . . .

Realising what a cushy life the monks must have had - assuming that they were there willingly - opting out of all responsibility at the same time as being incredibly morally superior (and high as a kite most of the autumn, if the number of magic mushrooms in the cloister nowadays is anything to go by ;-)

Realising that I'd actually be there when the piece was put into place, and being thrilled about it . . .

Following the gardeners' tractor like some kind of ceremonial procession as the base of the font was transported from your hut over to the cloister . . .

Talking to Sue from English Heritage while the rest of you went back for the font, and finding out that the Goddess themes in the piece were not just relevant to our own spirituality, but also as relevant as the Christian themes to the site, since the Brigantes actually lived at the top of the site and quite possibly used the spring itself . . .

Watching you adjust the font finally into place . . .

Putting our handprints on it together with luminous paint . . .

Remembering that the country is very beautiful, but also very cold and damp and so not an environment where I can ever thrive . . .

Anyway, that's it for now, I'm not even going to put this on the website until tomorrow. I wouldn't be surprised if you're emailing me too, particularly after you said yesterday that we'd sent emails at identical times when I was in Helsinki - I'd noticed a lot of things about the way in which we were communicating over the ether as well as the Net, but I'd never noticed that. But anyway, email me later in the week and we'll talk about how we're going to end the work.

I rather like your idea of smashing it up and leaving only the virtual version behind, re-enacting the driving out of the pagans by the Christians and the dissolution of the monasteries in the process and also getting out, finally, all the frustrations which you must have felt over the course of the residency! But if you do, you *must* get it on video, and then I'll edit it and stream a bit on to the site!

Before that, though, I'd still love to have one session where other people put their mark on the work with the phosphorescent paint, and, ideally, then to get it photographed through a 24 hour period. I know it's a bit art-fart, but I'd really like to programme the resulting pix so that they can change on the website at the times when the bells rung to regulate the monks' lives, and have the pic from that time of day stay on the website until the next bell went. It could just stay up on the Web forever then, marking the way in which, despite everything, the Carthusian way of life has managed to continue unchanged.

If by some miracle we manage this, I think it would be good to photograph the font from the far corner of the cloister on the valley side, which should then also get in the church, the archway to the spring house and the snake of stones and footprints (I'm glad that we even managed to get in your early idea of the spiral winding across the cloister). If we could get access to a time-lapse camera, I think it could sit in one of the alcoves through which the monks had their food delivered to them, and that would protect it from the weather.

Either way, this week I'll add a guest book to the site which can stay there when then residency's over and my photos of my visit, and will put up a transcript of our artists' talk when The Art House has finished it. It would also be good if we could scan in your sketch book, and add the pix of your work that you sent in with your original artist's statement (I only had bw copies before).

Anyway, I hope you're not too shattered by the whole experience, and I look forward to seeing you again IRL. And thanks again for the fossil, it's fabulous.

Love

ju90

Webmaster/site slave and Multimedia Storyteller
Created by Nature Modified by Life

ju90@netmatters.co.uk
http://users.netmatters.co.uk/ju90/ju90.htm