{We recognise this scene set, with its moon above and stars left on. A collaborative piece made with Louise (when she is not busy drawing dodos).}
The sorting of affairs, no matter how small, always puts my mind at ease before embarking on a new stage or an additional project, be it small or large. Before the task of collating the printed pages of Dear Dad for the Australian Poetry Centre (due to arrive early this week) can occur, I set to updating my large neglected photo albums, washing quilts and thick woolen jumpers, and changing the green water in the fish bowl. Once these things are done, some more pressing than others (I can now see Arthur swimming in his bowl before me), I know I’ll be ready to sit and finish my next part of our collaborative artists’ book. Decks must be cleared for new things, even if at first it appears I am going the wrong way up the mountain.
Some of the things completed are not really tasks at all but things that fall on my own list of Wants, like books by the bed that gather dust and have yet to have their spines cracked open and typed worlds within explored. And so I have read this week Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall and Nicholas Drayson’s A Guide to the Birds of East Africa, learning more of music and birds and all manner in between. It feels good to do the things you’ve long wanted or intended to do.
Tick.
Tick.
{Recently finished, recently framed and recently delivered to Craft Victoria for the exhibition Playing Field.}
+ A short film by George Wu made in response to Nocturnes.
