No.151

You work on Saturdays and Sundays, so Thursday and Friday have become the weekend, which has already succeeded in confusing things. On this un-weekend we wrote a list and did most of the things on it except for cutting your hair which seems to get put off mainly because I’m cyclically worried about not doing a good job after that small incident in the east of France two years ago when I forgot to put the black plastic trimming piece back on halfway through. This un-weekend I put too much laundry liquid in the washing machine and mopped up foam from the floor and peeled beetroots with pink-stained hands, you watered some of the thirsty green things outside and tried to stop the strange droning noise coming from the ceiling in my empty studio and throughout the un-weekend the mountains that sit to the south-west were looked at quite a lot. It it feeling different now, yes, now that the days are longer and the light is more, now that the moods of people are noticeably improved by the warmth and the way the sea glitters twice a day. But I think still, a lot, about all this time we’ve been stopped inside of, over a year now of caution and anxiety and trying not to spend too much time reading the news—it all feels a bit like the bumblebees that intermittently thump into the windows.

WORK-RELATED NEWS:

I know this was mentioned on and off for perhaps a whole year, and so while I can’t post any large excerpts (sorry) suffice it to say I’m really pleased with how my illustrated essay for Orion’s spring issue turned out (an 8-page affair, it wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that hand lettering this piece took a long time and a lot of ache). It is about landscapes, about our existences within landscapes, their histories and mappings and how we might benefit from thinking about them differently, asking different questions. If you’re based in the US Orion ships out swiftly and it’s possible to purchase just this current issue—outside of the US postal charges are higher but things still arrive quite soon and as publications go I believe Orion to be one of the most beautiful, considerate, and thought-provoking of them all (their commitment to truthful and diverse recounting of stories and science, the complete lack of advertising, I could continue).

I have other traditionally very exciting work-related news that I can’t share at this point, which I appreciate is not a very interesting note to end this section with. Some of this can’t-share-yet news was unexpected, some was worked towards for a couple of years, but all of it has left me quite a lot reeling and full of a sense of fortunate—a desire for these things I’m working on to be good, worthwhile. I’ll be able to talk about a large piece of it at the end of this month though, which might be a relief but might also feel like revealing a personal treasure you’ve kept secret and safe through a storm.

(It’s noon now, the sun so present that I feel it’s almost possible to witness the green appearing on branches as the minutes pass.)

THIS WEEK I FELL IN LOVE WITH:

The work of New York-based Karlotta Freier, which struck me as thoughtful and attentive and spacious in its details. I would like to live inside these drawings for a day, or three.

Sometimes, like today, I don’t put socks on because it can be easier to feel focussed with cold feet.

The end.