Eric's Funeral

 I went to my friend Eric's funeral today and said my public and private goodbyes. I will miss him as a person in my life and as an easy friend. His service was very similar to what I would hope for for myself.  Secular in a lovely spiritual building, surrounded by the people he loved and who loved him.  I will have my body present at my funeral though. I need its visceral already decaying flesh, absent of any mind, to allow my spirit an unlikely chance  chance to attend.  My sadness has gone but the funeral was a reminder of it, pulled it back from the edges and into sharper focus.  Death has an uncanny way to thrust itself into thoughts in a way that takes your breath away.  I would never use the loss of a friend to make a point within my writing yet in writing anything at all serious about life it is difficult to keep death at bay.  In a modern world filled with rationalism it is difficult not to feel that death is a passing, a stepping across some sort of threshold. An extreme edge of at least a singular life, a life that is bounded enough to have an ending.

I did a projection on the Crucible on Saturday and I  have been trying to write for my PhD.  I think last week was constructive, Although I got very little done on my literature review.  I almost felt  like I was at school struggling with my childhood shyness and dyslexia a little embarrassed.  Trying to hide  the bits I don't like about myself from myself.   This is the long journey to having something that looks like a PhD to submit though and I did put the work in. I made a start.

When I read through my blog I noticed some points where I had tried to draw attention to a serious thought or a step change.  This provided a texture and a structure to the writing- it also felt like I was trying to pay testament to a moment. I have gradually stopped doing this so I thought I would have a go at reviving the practice.

 My PhD is about residency as method, there is something residency can do for art practice that helps to let it live through time and space. It is a line of flight that allows art to escape the object in all its ontology.  I have been mapping terrain for an arts practice that unfolds through time within social research.  This is a space I have occupied before but there were no maps and therefore the space was unknown.  My blog and my writing and my thinking has started to map the terrain differently - chart some new waters because the ideas are located in a unique space.  My residencies only exist in all their relations making this new terrain and unique.  There are similar spaces, similar practices but they hold different maps and different insights.  I have woven a series of Deleuzian folds that generate a baroque pattern, a mesh work, a practice, a set of relations.  There is some strong writing some new things, a level of banality and what I can feel now, a raveling towards some degree of closure.

It feels like things are moving on and I am growing ideas that will develop into an acceptance of where I actually am and what I can contribute.