the shock of your leap

Basement in the Attic

On the pavement in front of the bicycle shop, a boy kneels by a battered leather ball.  Carefully, he starts to pump it up.  Seconds later, with a mixture of fascination, dismay, wistfulness and amazement, he peers into the soul of a strange flower.

Each work could begin with a story, a brief anecdote or an image from which the anecdote is born.  This piece was inspired by the image of a strange construction.  There's no reason why this image should have been remembered above countless others.  But it's now become a physically navigable space all casualties have evaporated. 

On a day not too long ago, an ambitious plan was conceived.  'Basement in the Attic'.  1001 meant games spin at high speed over the racecourse, delighting all as they whist past.  The substance of the hemisphere is hardly enough to transform the jubilation into music.

Question follows question.  What is the theme, what is the central plot.  It is an old piece.

Keep to the right, on a leash, a special dance step, a grindingly long wait, a genetic secret, a subtly induced viral infection.  The blending of processes that shrink away from any final form, an entity that is almost undefinable, the paradox of possible fusions, a confusion of corridors, a woman, popcorn machine, cheese soufflé, nano psychology, green wine.  

A small group of experts joins the discussion.  They tread the narrow path between angst and invention waking in a near-blindness that dissolves on the flank of a Naples-yellow crater.  Words loosened swirl to the peak.  In the grassy foothills a bush of rafflesia blossoms.  The drumskin keeps time. Engines smoke audibly as the creases are ironed out of dry calico.  Just a little longer.  Then the last fold  hanging over the rails of the scaffolding ebbs away in fine furrows.  The double axes are planted in a beer barrel.  The doors suction tightly into their frames.  Shameless footlights snap at the ankles as the last window is closed with a sheet of fine wood.  

Outside, Amsterdam is aboveground in prosthetic simplicity.  Houses dance in a drunken well.  The scent of fungus fades to nothing.  Particles of age-old bones whip your face from beneath manhole covers.  The aniline stamp slaps pile foundations on raw stems that compel the failing connective tissue. 

Wearable, foldout screens affixed to a pole scuttle through alleyways or underneath criss-cross oncoming traffic.  A murmuring chorus crawls unsheltered along the walls.  droplets of rain, peripheral as a fresh cut in your finger's end.  

We stay on the other side of the street, recovering from the shock of your leap. 

We bouwen nieuwe zinnen ¬ We build new Sentences ¬ W139 Amsterdam 2002