Invisible House
I visit the house that does not yet exist.
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I spent last Saturday afternoon on The Hilltop learning its winds and wildlife.
Working on a fabric installation with Stacey Sproule for the next Invisible City (at Double Double Land on Fri May 4th). It may turn out to be a soft architectural byzantine dome.
Things found in the market in Havana: a perfume bottle, image of first communion with cut-out prop jesus, book by surrealist poet Jose Lezama Lima (I’m reading his novel Paradiso), red plastic baby photo pin.
Photographic plate of “Whipper” Billy Watson (1915 – 1990), a Canadian pro wrestler from the 1950s.
Lisa found it on a shelf in an antique barn after we hauled watermelons from my dad’s field and stuffed ourselves on cheeseburgers and poutine from a roadside chip truck. She handed it to me and said that someone was taking it home. The antique dealer with the lazy eye wrote down “Whipper Billy Watson” on the back of his grocery list for me since I tend to forget. He mentioned that Whipper Billy was from Whitby and a man who was hanging out in the booth confirmed this fact, saying that he used to roll with his younger brother. Really? A kid scurried back and forth past my knees, maybe the man’s son, desperately trying to find something to buy with the crumpled $10 bill he had in his fist. Too bad kid, Whipper Billy’s mine.
I just finished Monument Eternal: The Music of Alice Coltrane and am inspired to play the harmonium again and break out all of the bhajans I learned in Indian. Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare.
My favourite parts are Alice’s description of the qualities of the harp vs piano.
The piano is the the sunrise and the harp is the sunset… All that energy, light, brilliance, and clarity that’s in the rising sun - or what we call rising; it’s actually us moving over toward the light - you can hear in the piano. Then listen to the sonorities of the harp, the subtleties, the quietness, the peacefulness; that’s like our sunsets. But the sun is always the sun and a person is always who he or she will be.
And then when she was instructed by a higher being to get a Wurlitzer organ:
In one meditation it was told to me that the organ (I owned) had reached an age where it wouldn’t serve properly, and the precise instrument I should get was revealed to me. I could even read the insignia right there on the wood. So I went out to find the Wurlitzer I now have. I didn’t need to do any research; it was just conveyed to me.
Franya J. Berkman concludes her biography of this amazing woman asking:
How many people realize their potential to this extent? How many are able to watch their creative imagination unfold so vividly? How many musicians hear their compositions in the hands of master players, and in the hearts and voices of their students as devotional ritual? How many people invent traditions that outlive them? Alice is a rare example. Her boundary-corssing aesthetics and her inspiring spiritual autobiography - documented in sound, text, and ritual - tells a free story, testifying to her faith and extraordinary personal history. Perhaps most of all, it reveals an understanding of herself that transcends earthly constructions.
Really, how many people?
More flea market finds. A set that I would take with me to summer camp if I were a weirdo camp councillor. Piece of Finnish fabric (maybe vintage Marimekko?), Ontario hunting patch, empty watch or compass case, sturdy gold whistle with a wooden ball inside made in England, a key to something, and a snake bite kit with all of the medicinal goodies still inside.
Mushroom by Can from the album Tago Mago (1971)
