Woven territories #1 – Angela – Utrecht, Dutchland
It took her a little while to take me there.
It’s normal.
One does not take someone to a temple without any preparation, one takes some precautions, it is important to take our time, to prepare, to put on the proper attire – or to remove unnecessary peels -, to cross concentric circles with the slowness necessary to touch what is beautiful and sacred inside, as one would experience an initiation into something larger than oneself. It is a place that we find with caution, or that requires that we refer our attention to it. It is not a very small memory that she gives me, it is an important memory, a kind of gem in a case, and it requires attention, time, care, a particular temporality so that you can approach it and touch it, smell the scent that still exudes. One does not reach the heart of the sanctuary without deserving it. One passes through ante-rooms. We prepare, we prepare who we are to receive something important, even if – above all – we do not know exactly what it is.
United States ? Turkey ? Mountains, famous ruins, historic frescoes? – No. We need something stronger. And for it to be stronger, it has to be weaker. Something shared one day by a few young people on a beach whose name has been forgotten, in a country we ignore. Just a detail in the large canvas of memories printed in the Universe.
She took me to an almost mythical place – a place she has not located on any map. In what she tells me, this place no longer has a name, is no longer really precisely located. There is only her in this place, she and a few others who look like stars whose light still shines, even faintly, and whose glow is still pulsating – I observe an event passed by the telescope, I know that it has passed but it appears to me in the present, as we know of certain galaxies that they have gone out but that we still see shining, witnesses of the passage of time and of its course to us.
… It’s a group of friends on a beach, a falling night, sleeping bags under the stars, and then a midnight swim. A slightly chilly lover, the regret – searing, no doubt – of not really sharing the intensity of this moment in his company, and the water, however transparent, warm, almost electric, sparks between the fingers when they are spread on the surface, the arms which draw large liquid movements around the bodies, the laughter of friends in the water who respond to those of those who stayed on the sand.
My friends Isabelle Guérin, La Déroutante, started a new art project. She asked me for a memory. I wrote to her about a place and time I’ll always remember. Both for what was there, and what wasn’t there. Isabelle too my words in, and then wrote hers. She transformed my memory into a new possibility, where time and place don’t matter, but where feelings, dreams and desires do. Somehow, she turned my personal memory into something universal and timeless.
You can read the rest of her magic here.
