Brett Davidson
the artist
Anyone perhaps...someone. Known. Known to some. Someone who is
tracing a line. A time line. Feeling that they are moving at a
different rate. The line is long and taut. That is what they
feel. Moving fast. Grasping the line here. Holding. The
friction burns. Slows. Fearful. Reflexes take over and the hand
opens. They slip along. Skip along. At this rate...at these rates.
This is the artist. This is how they feel the time.
the art
This is the art. Moments. The burns on the hand. No...the burns
on the flesh. The flesh of the mind. The moments. The single
moments of touching the wire. This is one moment. This piece is
called now. As all of them are. There is the sound of rain on the
roof. The sky is grey. The air is as cool as the water that fills
it. I drank that air. When it was now. That moment. That moment
was the art. It will be a moment that I will give away and it will
be another art. Another moment.
the beret
I bought it. A while ago. One of those other nows, yes. I bought
an ordinary black felt beret. It was black. It was plain. It
fitted my head. I sewed rainbow piping around its circumference.
My head now enflanged. Its shape was altered somewhat. Short,
cylindrical. Domed somewhat at the top where my skull rises.
Flaring out to the piped ring. My hair is long. It is close
under the felt and then unruly becomes a wave, a mane over my
shoulders. The felt, in its new form is strict. The two converse
in their way. On this they agree, my hair, my hat, the flesh of my
memory: the rain. I remember that. The wool felt smells faintly
of damp now and it is slightly heavier with the water that it
remembers by carrying. We agree.
Submitted by Brett Davidson (brett@arch.vuw.ac.nz), on Wednesday, June 15, 1994