Day One: Beginning

Today marks the first official day of my nine week residency here at PVI Collective Studio. As I embark on this process, I aim to use this blog platform as an online archive of sorts, documenting process and discovery and probably rambling a lot.

I've brought my favourite book with me (as well as many others), it's called Tales of Freedom, by Ben Okri. I have read it more times that I can remember. The first half of the book is an absurd tale in five parts, The Comic Destiny. The second half of the book is a series of 'stokus'. According to Okri a stoku is "an amalgam of short story and haiku. It is story as it inclines towards a flash of a moment, insight, vision or paradox." "Stokus are serendipities, caught in the air, reverse lightning."

God he is so good.

The final section of The Comic Destiny seems particularly apt today. After the old couple and another figure referred to only as Pinprop have concluded their journey, a new man and woman begin to speak.

(This final portion of The Comic Destiny is separated into five sections, I'm only sharing two of them below).

One

New Man and New Woman spoke in the darkness. They spoke like children discovering light. Much time had passed and no time at all.

'Now let's start again,' said New Man.

'And again.'

'Go back to the earth.'

'To simple beginnings.'

To what nourishes.'

'To what grows.'

'To sunlight.'

'And flowing water.'

'To inner light.'

'And fresh air.'

'Good breathing.'

'And sweet silence.'

'To new dancing.'

'And music.'

Four

'Let's play again,' said New Woman.

'As on the first day.'

'When we were the garden.'

'And the garden was us.'

These verses (for lack of a better term) really speak to me, and inform the way I want to enter into this process. I want to push myself. I want to explore deeply. I want to begin from a strong base. I want to dare to jump off the edge and maybe fail. Who knows? Definitely not me.

I want to be able to feel proud and not apologise for it.