I search for smoke and realise I'm searching for symbols.
The warped and distorted faces of passerbys in the city. The silhouette of a bird, suspended against a grey sky. A tiny clay figurine I spot on my table in a cradle of mess.
An uncommon word read in a book, repeated later by a friend.
I search for signs emerging from the chaos like a magic picture. Gestures against the noise of the everyday. Vessels to be filled with meaning. Meanings which are often unknown to me but registered as a ‘something’.
For the small god who resides in the shadow space just beyond the corner of your vision.
Painted across the sky are my arms outstretched.
In the dead of night, peering through the window of a dark room. Rain dances in the dustlight of the streetlamp. A fox dashes across the shared green of a housing estate, followed close by its companion. A door opens, they hesitate for split second and run on.
Sometimes the act of seeing, of my apprehension, begets the symbol.
The roar of cars in the countryside. The grey wet murk of everything. The swishshrup of a filthy sheet of white plastic covering an opening in an old dilapidated shed.
My full body pressed up against the outside wall of a warehouse down the port. I’m faced inwards, and looking up I see a near endless concrete expanse towering above me, meeting its lip with the sky.
The chimes outside our bedroom in the old house, a gesture in the storm, during the patterned noise of wind, rain and the everyday, a melody climbing chaotically through the gap in the barely open window.
The oil burner in the new place sends out tiny plumes of whitegrey smoke. They curl in the open space of the yard and with a light wind are sent dancing across the window. Signals and messages for something. For the small god who resides just out of frame - waiting.
A shorter newsletter this week - since setting myself the task two weeks ago for this regularly published newsletter I’ve been quite busy but that was always likely to be the case. I’ve thankfully had plenty of ideas for future newsletters and have been working on them piecemeal but some of these may be a good deal longer and require a great deal more work.
The above was initially longer and a little more grounded but parts felt tangential while at the same time possibly the topic of a future newsletter, so I’ve cut it and saved it for later.
Been listening a lot to zlo by uon this week, released in 2017 on the fantastic Motion Ward label. Kind of dub techno, ambient gear. Also the new Joanne Robertson album, Blurrr on AD93 has been the soundtrack to our house move. Lots of driving back and forth, usually in horrible wet weather, while absolutely wrecked from days of packing and cleaning. I’m sure its quite nice when not doing those things too.