Balls 1
In the far corner of the garden which I cleared of ivy [eorþ-ifig] last year, so that the wall was uncluttered, bare, a bit shocking, suddenly shaved as if for surgery or chemotherapy or contemporary body aesthetics, I have decided to work with clay.
Actually I had set myself the intention of finding a place to work with the sugar lumps from the last weekend, but they seemed too dissolute and attractive to ants and other beasts and I wanted to go down the cliff and fetch clay and work it with my hands, turning the heavyweight into the lightweight, the dull into the precise.
So I am calling it clay corner and I have brought from the cliff the same clay that Caroline worked with years ago to make and bake little houses. I love these threaded connections through time and place. Here, I remember this happened. So that this informs the next this that happens, implicitly and explicitly.
As I start I have a pompous thought:
"I am hoping to become an open channel through which the unsullied torrent of desire can flow".
I write the thought down in my book, which is already covered in clay. As is my camera.
It's good that I wrote that down and keep it here. It's too grand. I have to apologise for it. But it's better to have it out in the open. I can roll it around like a clay ball.
Hoping to become an open channel isn't, on reflection, too grand a desire. It may be self-defeating - like hoping for enlightenment. But that's OK. The wording is a bit grand. Unsullied is a portentous word - but portentous is a portentous word too.
I could just say:
"I want to be like a clay pipe through which desire can flow."
That sounds better. And I realise that there is a collection of hand-made clay pipes, used as land drains, which I dug up somewhere and which live at the top of the garden. I could bring them.
Actually I had set myself the intention of finding a place to work with the sugar lumps from the last weekend, but they seemed too dissolute and attractive to ants and other beasts and I wanted to go down the cliff and fetch clay and work it with my hands, turning the heavyweight into the lightweight, the dull into the precise.
So I am calling it clay corner and I have brought from the cliff the same clay that Caroline worked with years ago to make and bake little houses. I love these threaded connections through time and place. Here, I remember this happened. So that this informs the next this that happens, implicitly and explicitly.
As I start I have a pompous thought:
"I am hoping to become an open channel through which the unsullied torrent of desire can flow".
I write the thought down in my book, which is already covered in clay. As is my camera.
It's good that I wrote that down and keep it here. It's too grand. I have to apologise for it. But it's better to have it out in the open. I can roll it around like a clay ball.
Hoping to become an open channel isn't, on reflection, too grand a desire. It may be self-defeating - like hoping for enlightenment. But that's OK. The wording is a bit grand. Unsullied is a portentous word - but portentous is a portentous word too.
I could just say:
"I want to be like a clay pipe through which desire can flow."
That sounds better. And I realise that there is a collection of hand-made clay pipes, used as land drains, which I dug up somewhere and which live at the top of the garden. I could bring them.
Balls 2
There's a bit more to say about the clay pipe that desire might flow through.
Jo and Alex say that there are 'unconditioned essences' flowing everywhere, always.
The ego has to break off [or channel to itself] bits of these essences in order for it [the ego] to exist.
I gather that these essences are things like joy and strength and understanding and compassion and will. They don't seem to include bad things. My badness is not an essence. I'm not sure if they include desire.
The bits that the ego breaks off are facsimiles or 'false' versions of the essences. They have to be because they are broken off and made 'personal'.
So, in this model, I can see that there might be essential desire, which might be the desire of all living things or the desire that grew from (or maybe even created) the Big Bang and permeates through the universe. The first of Andreas Weber's 'Three Laws of Desire' states that all living bodies are bodies of feeling and bodies of desire, and that all life desires more of itself. We could say that essential desire simply desires more desire. This is what turns the world.
And there might be my desire for a cheese sandwich, say. Or my desire to make something striking in the bottom corner of the garden. To be creative in clay corner.
So, could I step aside and let even a little bit of the essential desire of the cosmos flow through me when I'm not looking and let it erupt as creativity or project or love or desire that's not my desire? I doubt it. But if I stand around in clay corner long enough, it might happen when I'm looking the other way.
Jo and Alex say that there are 'unconditioned essences' flowing everywhere, always.
The ego has to break off [or channel to itself] bits of these essences in order for it [the ego] to exist.
I gather that these essences are things like joy and strength and understanding and compassion and will. They don't seem to include bad things. My badness is not an essence. I'm not sure if they include desire.
The bits that the ego breaks off are facsimiles or 'false' versions of the essences. They have to be because they are broken off and made 'personal'.
So, in this model, I can see that there might be essential desire, which might be the desire of all living things or the desire that grew from (or maybe even created) the Big Bang and permeates through the universe. The first of Andreas Weber's 'Three Laws of Desire' states that all living bodies are bodies of feeling and bodies of desire, and that all life desires more of itself. We could say that essential desire simply desires more desire. This is what turns the world.
And there might be my desire for a cheese sandwich, say. Or my desire to make something striking in the bottom corner of the garden. To be creative in clay corner.
So, could I step aside and let even a little bit of the essential desire of the cosmos flow through me when I'm not looking and let it erupt as creativity or project or love or desire that's not my desire? I doubt it. But if I stand around in clay corner long enough, it might happen when I'm looking the other way.
Balls 3
I want to write down my thoughts as I am working with balls, because the thoughts escape like smoke.
I realise at once that thoughts are 'thinked things' - thought is just the past tense of think. But that's not fair to thoughts, which are always in the process of becoming themselves like smoke rings -- until they have dissolved.
I start with these little clay balls - rolling them in my hands and setting them out on a shape that I have made from a clay sausage. I imagined the shape to be that of a very large foot and wondered if the foot might grow up into a neck and a head, so that it became a head on a foot. I quite fancied that as an idea. I google 'clay head on a foot' to see if I can find a picture and save myself the trouble. There is nothing.
The sausage starts to dry out very quickly and I try to repair it. You can see the cracks. Already I am unconvinced by the idea. I will never get the thing made before the bottom layers have dried out. And some of the balls fall off. And why am I doing this anyway? It looks uncomfortably practical, like a fan belt or a bicycle chain.
I realise at once that thoughts are 'thinked things' - thought is just the past tense of think. But that's not fair to thoughts, which are always in the process of becoming themselves like smoke rings -- until they have dissolved.
I start with these little clay balls - rolling them in my hands and setting them out on a shape that I have made from a clay sausage. I imagined the shape to be that of a very large foot and wondered if the foot might grow up into a neck and a head, so that it became a head on a foot. I quite fancied that as an idea. I google 'clay head on a foot' to see if I can find a picture and save myself the trouble. There is nothing.
The sausage starts to dry out very quickly and I try to repair it. You can see the cracks. Already I am unconvinced by the idea. I will never get the thing made before the bottom layers have dried out. And some of the balls fall off. And why am I doing this anyway? It looks uncomfortably practical, like a fan belt or a bicycle chain.
Balls 4
I meant to show my workings. So here's a previous picture.
It already seems unbelievable that I can imagine that this first layer of clay sausage and balls could, in time, become a kind of Easter Island head perched on a giant foot. A kind of cephalopod. My imagination gets ahead of itself. I am only capable of quite small things.
Oh but cephalopod - head on a foot - is what I am reading about: squid and octopus and other molluscs with an evolved, singular foot are cephalopods. We have no need to invent aliens when cephalopods exist. Perhaps this sculpture will be the missing link between these two evolutionary branches - a kind of Squid-Einstein on a foot. Call him hopalong. A genius octopus. Oh but let him be female or indeterminate, not a him.
Call her hopalongue.
It already seems unbelievable that I can imagine that this first layer of clay sausage and balls could, in time, become a kind of Easter Island head perched on a giant foot. A kind of cephalopod. My imagination gets ahead of itself. I am only capable of quite small things.
Oh but cephalopod - head on a foot - is what I am reading about: squid and octopus and other molluscs with an evolved, singular foot are cephalopods. We have no need to invent aliens when cephalopods exist. Perhaps this sculpture will be the missing link between these two evolutionary branches - a kind of Squid-Einstein on a foot. Call him hopalong. A genius octopus. Oh but let him be female or indeterminate, not a him.
Call her hopalongue.
Balls 5
Today I have come back and the sausage has dried out and the balls have rollen away and the project is broken. It was already measly - low and unprepossessing in the corner. Invisible. I had to crouch in the hollow to do the work. I felt like a badger. Let me stand up and see the sea while I am working.
So I already have abandoned my Easter Island cephalopod dream. I judge myself as fickle. Will my whole project on desire be a succession of givings-up or fallings-away, which I construe as a metaphor for my desire itself fading with and into old age? That feels tiresome already.
So I already have abandoned my Easter Island cephalopod dream. I judge myself as fickle. Will my whole project on desire be a succession of givings-up or fallings-away, which I construe as a metaphor for my desire itself fading with and into old age? That feels tiresome already.
Now this is more like it. I have lifted everything up. It feels more like an offering. There can be more desire up here rather than crouching down out of the wind.
I have brought a plank and balanced it precariously. Decades ago my friend Lizzie balanced her dining room table on cotton reels so that it inevitably collapsed during dinner, tipping food all over the guests. This plank seems to be asking for it but I have wodged it with a bit of clay and some pieces of bark.
I am about to get a spirit level when I catch sight of myself aligning my plank with the horizon. Already it is 'my plank' I see. And I had never thought of the horizon as a spirit level. Perhaps I shouldn't, as it is almost certainly curved. Would a very long spirit level curve with the earth's curvature?
But this is interesting. I like the toadstool. And I like the slight openings that appears between the balls. They let the light through. I can imagine a tesselated wall of balls facing the sea. People will come from other counties to marvel and say 'why didn't I think of that?'. Is my desire really only the desire of a 14-year-old to be famous in other counties?
However, the balls roll off, over the wall into the grass on the other side. I have to go on repeated trips to collect them until I think to set a piece of wood behind them to stop them rolling away. But that blocks the light from coming through the slight openings.
Of course. “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”. Leonard Cohen. I was 16. Listening to him on Sunday evenings in despair. I didn't get out much. No light got in. My desire was tucked away lest anyone see it. I always kept my desire under a bushel. It was not, I thought, a good idea to be seen to have an erection of any sort - even a metaphorical one. It smacks too much of enthusiasm and my parents frowned on enthusiasm of any sort.
I have brought a plank and balanced it precariously. Decades ago my friend Lizzie balanced her dining room table on cotton reels so that it inevitably collapsed during dinner, tipping food all over the guests. This plank seems to be asking for it but I have wodged it with a bit of clay and some pieces of bark.
I am about to get a spirit level when I catch sight of myself aligning my plank with the horizon. Already it is 'my plank' I see. And I had never thought of the horizon as a spirit level. Perhaps I shouldn't, as it is almost certainly curved. Would a very long spirit level curve with the earth's curvature?
But this is interesting. I like the toadstool. And I like the slight openings that appears between the balls. They let the light through. I can imagine a tesselated wall of balls facing the sea. People will come from other counties to marvel and say 'why didn't I think of that?'. Is my desire really only the desire of a 14-year-old to be famous in other counties?
However, the balls roll off, over the wall into the grass on the other side. I have to go on repeated trips to collect them until I think to set a piece of wood behind them to stop them rolling away. But that blocks the light from coming through the slight openings.
Of course. “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”. Leonard Cohen. I was 16. Listening to him on Sunday evenings in despair. I didn't get out much. No light got in. My desire was tucked away lest anyone see it. I always kept my desire under a bushel. It was not, I thought, a good idea to be seen to have an erection of any sort - even a metaphorical one. It smacks too much of enthusiasm and my parents frowned on enthusiasm of any sort.
Balls 6
I love these balls. They are much better looking in this picture than they seemed at the time. Like little clay apples. I feel that they are a rather tidy representation of my desire. But there is something desirefull in the act of placing them, positioning them, aligning them. I have a wobbly stool to stand on so that I can check their alignment from above.
This was the pint of the sugar lump experiment - to find the desire that arises in precision and in balancing and in careful placement.
I feel like God. I am able to make choices and there is agency in my creativity. The evening and the morning are the first or second day. This idea might work.
Though it's clear that some of those ones in the top row are not at all round.
Perhaps it's all a metaphor - the imperfections, the learning as I go, the feeling of being God, realising that it's all pointless. I am life living itself. Or just a foolish person making clay balls and putting them where they roll into the field inevitably. Or both.
This was the pint of the sugar lump experiment - to find the desire that arises in precision and in balancing and in careful placement.
I feel like God. I am able to make choices and there is agency in my creativity. The evening and the morning are the first or second day. This idea might work.
Though it's clear that some of those ones in the top row are not at all round.
Perhaps it's all a metaphor - the imperfections, the learning as I go, the feeling of being God, realising that it's all pointless. I am life living itself. Or just a foolish person making clay balls and putting them where they roll into the field inevitably. Or both.
Balls 7
There is growth and accumulation. There is the desire to expand. This is how capitalism works. The simple line of balls was best, but I want growth.
I have wondered how many balls to have on the bottom layer. I imagine 7 and find that puny. 13? Must it be a prime number? I opt for 19 and calculate that if I decrease each row by 1, then I will need 190 balls. I can do that.
I realise that the indecisiveness about how many to have in a row is accompanied by an unexpected sense of power. Normally I am frustrated by my indecision but now I realise that it is a sign that I can choose - another sign that I have agency. I really can do anything that I want. I could build a Tower of Babel out of balls. It would be fitting. It might touch the sky.
I have wondered how many balls to have on the bottom layer. I imagine 7 and find that puny. 13? Must it be a prime number? I opt for 19 and calculate that if I decrease each row by 1, then I will need 190 balls. I can do that.
I realise that the indecisiveness about how many to have in a row is accompanied by an unexpected sense of power. Normally I am frustrated by my indecision but now I realise that it is a sign that I can choose - another sign that I have agency. I really can do anything that I want. I could build a Tower of Babel out of balls. It would be fitting. It might touch the sky.
Balls 8
I also see that I can make it all more spectacular by choosing my angles carefully and waiting for the sun to look its best.
Perhaps my kind of art, like my kind of desire, is all smoke and mirrors.
Perhaps my kind of art, like my kind of desire, is all smoke and mirrors.
Balls 9
It transpires that the whole idea is horribly flawed. With nothing to hold my single wall of balls, it threatens to collapse repeatedly. Finally it dissolves, balls rolling helter-skelter over the restraining piece of timber. Outside, picking up dropped balls after the catastrophe [Greek: overturning], I find a residue of feathers in the grass, markers of some earlier catastrophe (perhaps kestrel-based) and wonder whether there is anywhere on the planet where something has not died. And, therefore, whether there is anywhere on the planet where desire has not, at some moment, died.
---In the same moment, I realise that when 'my' desire wants something to happen that someone else does not want to happen... in that moment there is the potential for abuse. ---
After the catastrophe I start to build the wall much deeper, so that it will be stronger. I build it four balls deep, even though that's going to mean making hundreds more balls.
But no light comes through the openings between the balls when the wall is four balls deep.
And, as they dry, they become less sticky and all roll over the wall again.
I want to give up. I am useless. Desire has apparently fled. Ridiculous old man.
---In the same moment, I realise that when 'my' desire wants something to happen that someone else does not want to happen... in that moment there is the potential for abuse. ---
After the catastrophe I start to build the wall much deeper, so that it will be stronger. I build it four balls deep, even though that's going to mean making hundreds more balls.
But no light comes through the openings between the balls when the wall is four balls deep.
And, as they dry, they become less sticky and all roll over the wall again.
I want to give up. I am useless. Desire has apparently fled. Ridiculous old man.
Balls 10
I have a new idea. With it comes new desire. New possibilities. I will reinforce the ball wall with something that will let the light through.
I reject glass as impractical and opt for a humane rabbit trap, pressing the balls happily against the side wall of the trap. This will work. When it's done, the trap will be invisible and the wall will be monumental. Impressive. It will even sustain itself in a gale, which I had been worrying about.
I can only build a wall nine balls high, but it can have straight edges.
I reject glass as impractical and opt for a humane rabbit trap, pressing the balls happily against the side wall of the trap. This will work. When it's done, the trap will be invisible and the wall will be monumental. Impressive. It will even sustain itself in a gale, which I had been worrying about.
I can only build a wall nine balls high, but it can have straight edges.
Balls 11
Because of their irregularities, the balls in the ball wall do not all touch or support one another as they should. I should have found a way to make them all the same size. And I should have kept them sealed in a plastic bag until I was ready, so that they would not dry out.
One has to endure constant setbacks. As the balls keep falling - even from the side of the humane trap - I find that more pressure is required, so that they become gradually deformed by dint of being pressed onto the wire of the trap. The clay representations of my desire dry out and become misshapen as my desire seeks to impose its will on them.
[Well, now am I displacing my own intention - blaming 'my desire' when I should be blaming myself?
If desire is what keeps me alive and breathing, how am I different from my desire? Am I desire on legs? Like a head on a foot? Is desire a kind of foot that sustains us?]
In fact, the whole building thing is no longer about precision - the precise placing of sugar lumps or balls (as I had imagined at the outset). It's become about being quick and decisive and keeping my balls wet and pressing them firmly. It's about deftness rather than precision.
More fall. The success can be very transient.
One has to endure constant setbacks. As the balls keep falling - even from the side of the humane trap - I find that more pressure is required, so that they become gradually deformed by dint of being pressed onto the wire of the trap. The clay representations of my desire dry out and become misshapen as my desire seeks to impose its will on them.
[Well, now am I displacing my own intention - blaming 'my desire' when I should be blaming myself?
If desire is what keeps me alive and breathing, how am I different from my desire? Am I desire on legs? Like a head on a foot? Is desire a kind of foot that sustains us?]
In fact, the whole building thing is no longer about precision - the precise placing of sugar lumps or balls (as I had imagined at the outset). It's become about being quick and decisive and keeping my balls wet and pressing them firmly. It's about deftness rather than precision.
More fall. The success can be very transient.
Balls 12
The light is going. This is as far as I can get tonight. The rows are a little irregular, but that could just be the quirkiness of hand-made. I think it's looking good.
Balls 13
What was I thinking?
A wire cage covered in balls isn't art. It's ridiculous. And I can't even manage that. In the morning the balls have all dried up and fallen off. I remove the humane trap and wonder how to start again. I am not giving up.
Today I bring cheese for the robins as if I can somehow work more magically with the wildlife on my side. At least I will feel a little like a wizard if the robins come. They don't.
I had wondered about wearing my Moroccan jellabah for a similar reason. If I give myself the air of a madly gifted, eccentric old artist, perhaps art will manifest itself. It doesn't.
I go to fetch a watering can to try dampening my balls, and a sieve - I think it may be my father's sieve. Since everything here is a metaphor, let the sieve be a a metaphor for my father's desire. Helping my mum to clear up his things after he died, she handed me some jars of hollyhock seeds that he had collected and colour coded and a box of porn magazines where he had neatly annotated his thoughts about each of the girls featured.
I had never imagined him doing that.
His thoughts were rather sweet. Tidy. A bit abusive. I read them in a service station on the M5 on my way home - before pressing the magazines into a rubbish bin in the car park.
A wire cage covered in balls isn't art. It's ridiculous. And I can't even manage that. In the morning the balls have all dried up and fallen off. I remove the humane trap and wonder how to start again. I am not giving up.
Today I bring cheese for the robins as if I can somehow work more magically with the wildlife on my side. At least I will feel a little like a wizard if the robins come. They don't.
I had wondered about wearing my Moroccan jellabah for a similar reason. If I give myself the air of a madly gifted, eccentric old artist, perhaps art will manifest itself. It doesn't.
I go to fetch a watering can to try dampening my balls, and a sieve - I think it may be my father's sieve. Since everything here is a metaphor, let the sieve be a a metaphor for my father's desire. Helping my mum to clear up his things after he died, she handed me some jars of hollyhock seeds that he had collected and colour coded and a box of porn magazines where he had neatly annotated his thoughts about each of the girls featured.
I had never imagined him doing that.
His thoughts were rather sweet. Tidy. A bit abusive. I read them in a service station on the M5 on my way home - before pressing the magazines into a rubbish bin in the car park.
As I walk to and from fetching more things, I start to make a path in the grass. A desire path. But aren't all paths desire paths? Even paths in graveyards and crematoria? Because we seem to want to go even where we don't want to go.
I can just make out the path through the grass.
I can just make out the path through the grass.
Following my path, camera in hand, I am surprised by the upsurge of primroses, snowdrops and the honey fungus that takes a tree each year - a seemingly destructive desire body, not unlike the Minotaur demanding an annual virgin.
The honey fungus is perhaps the most beautiful. Another alien. An avenging angel like its famous relative. I wonder who or what it is avenging.
The honey fungus is perhaps the most beautiful. Another alien. An avenging angel like its famous relative. I wonder who or what it is avenging.
While I am admiring this upsurging I see that mole has upsurged. She has upsurged just next to the bag of soil that I laboriously dug out. Her effortless velvety scooping makes my heavy shovelling look ridiculous - as ridiculous as my wall of balls on a wire cage. Clunky.
Balls 14
Wandering in the garden, I am further distracted. I allow myself to be distracted. My desire is flippant. Fickle. It is not consistent or constant. It wavers. It moves around. It flits. Everything people say about me is true. My desire's attention is finally caught by the metal bird which I could surely fill with balls.
The balls immediately fall out, of course. So I try with metal mesh. I am enchanted again. This could work. I get 5 balls in place... then the familiar happens.
This time I relent quickly. I am learning to accommodate catastrophe and move on. Perhaps it is only a disaster - ill-starred.
This time I relent quickly. I am learning to accommodate catastrophe and move on. Perhaps it is only a disaster - ill-starred.
Balls 15
I am tempted by this mesh though. It is designed to keep a queen bee from marauding through the honeyed supers of her hive. I take it to the wall in clay corner and, recognising immediately that it will not hold the weight of a lot of balls, I tie it in place with white cotton, learning more about retention and tension and the capacities need to match and hold the desire of these balls to roll away.
I manage a pyramid of sorts but my attention and interest quickly wilts. It looks ridiculous. What do I think I am doing?
I manage a pyramid of sorts but my attention and interest quickly wilts. It looks ridiculous. What do I think I am doing?
Balls 16
But what am I thinking? Yesterday I spoke to Spencer, who is a theatre director.
He immediately suggested larger balls. He started life as a set designer and he has a strong aesthetic sense. I thought he would ask about my intention. But he focused on ball-size immediately - suggesting tennis ball size as they will have more surface area in contact with one another. He also suggested cement. He is a practical man.
He asked nothing about my intention.
What is my intention?
To have an impact? On the environment? On myself?
To find meaning? To make sense? To impress myself?
Here are the new improved balls. I think of cannon balls. This is better. Especially when I see the photograph. It excises the clutter and just leaves the drama. And the horizon. These balls have more body. I am moving away from the sugar lump towards the pendulous, stockinged shapes in the hall. This is better.
He immediately suggested larger balls. He started life as a set designer and he has a strong aesthetic sense. I thought he would ask about my intention. But he focused on ball-size immediately - suggesting tennis ball size as they will have more surface area in contact with one another. He also suggested cement. He is a practical man.
He asked nothing about my intention.
What is my intention?
To have an impact? On the environment? On myself?
To find meaning? To make sense? To impress myself?
Here are the new improved balls. I think of cannon balls. This is better. Especially when I see the photograph. It excises the clutter and just leaves the drama. And the horizon. These balls have more body. I am moving away from the sugar lump towards the pendulous, stockinged shapes in the hall. This is better.
The cannon balls seem to be working. I am tired of the dissipation of these little balls. I realise that I long for containment and drop them contentedly into a bell jar. 150 so far. I shall fill it. It seems like a fitting metaphor - let my desire be contained. There is relief to be found here. Not relief in expression or ejaculation or dissemination but relief in simple containment. Like putting a cloth over the parrot's cage. My desire is a parrot. In a bell jar.
Balls 17
Here we are. Now this is something. I have my smaller than tennis, cannon balls and they are fitting. They are particularly because I am pre-emptying them rolling off by joining them with wire. This is progress - my project has become a metaphor for technological progress. And the newly weighty balls look magnificent where they stand. There is something about they grey of the clay and the grey of the sea and the grey of the cloud. They are in proportion and everything seems to be fitting. Even here my desire is somehow contained but harmonious. This feels like a small achievement of desire. It has taken three full days to make this little pile of balls.