The Pearl Fisher

My dear companion has begun talking in her sleep. I have decided to take notes. Last night she mumbled about our trip to Bath. I have paraphrased the gist of it below hopefully making sense of parts that were not immediately clear to me.

Bath

With the lovely Pearly at the train station. He’s gone stiff and nervous.

Trying to distract the lovely Pearly with pictures of mummified animals in National Geographic.

Flicker of recognition from JJ at the turnstile.

Roll onto JJ going round a roundabout in the back of the taxi.

Ask JJ about his bloodstone ring.

Pearly is quiet I am noisy.

Concrete.

Berlin.

Wet everywhere.

The sound of Pearly stepping into deep puddles.

I relentlessly question JJ.

Dr Dan seems nervous of JJ.

JJ holds forth on the sofas.

He laughs when I say my arse is large (watch it JJ)

Get bus.

Students cocky and annoying. One girl who looks like a shitsu is talking relentlessly about how much men want her. I wonder if this is how Alex feels when I go on and on.

Bath so beautiful and looks like its rendered in halva.

Back to campus.

Lost although a milimetre away from Alex’s show.

Alex has shut down and is in nervous concentration mode.

Dr Dan and Charles seem very awkward in the bar and I worry that I am pissing them off-but wonder if Dr Dan is just worried about the night ahead.

Gin and tonics through the men/women’s loos-like Mr Ben

I like the records and the high up eau de nil ship

‘in conversation’

JJ is riffing on a few themes and wangles some of Alex’s work into them.

JJ thinks Alex is more of a cynic than I think he is.

I pipe up relentlessly.

Unfortunately the obvious brilliance of my argument is fluffed by the gin and I realise I can’t remember what my point was as soon as I start talking.

JJ declares me the new Martin Parr as he peaks on red wine.

I’m in bed

Dreaming – I am holding a baby and I love it

Wake up Alex warm and soft in bed.

Alex tells me he loves me.

Put my ear plugs in and Alex says the prayer-I know he does because I feel his lips

Awake and have a bath with Alex

Take photos of JJ’s room.

Egg and bacon bap with Alex.

Quest for the Bath bun.

The Circus was cold.

The Royal Crescent was colder.

Fell asleep on Alex on the train home-dreamt he was a giant furry squirrel.

Curve of the weir and the water-sad the rubber ducks weren’t there.

The spa.

Seeing the town and rooftops while being in a giant communal bath.

Different steam rooms: Vicks, Chanel number 5 and lavender.

New friends James and Daniel at the baths find it hilarious I am in underwear.

• 
• 

Joy, joy, joy but not all joy. It is all over. The show is hung, the conversation had, the drink drunk and the invoice almost ready to go. I say almost because I don’t have a printer at the moment, an absence that causes me no end of slight logistical nonsense. The management at my place of work is currently striving towards a paperless office. An ideological standpoint that has only served to push my colleagues photocopying habit underground. Pale and shaking we huddle in corners printing and copying papers for our students. Some of us have taken to stockpiling handouts for future use. Now on top of this I find myself sneaking prints of personal documents snatching them away from sight as they appear.

Looking back, many things were discussed and said before during and after the opening at ICIA University of Bath. One thing I was asked (by Doctor Hinchcliffe) not to write about, so I won’t. Another topic, this time during my conversation with Mr Charlesworth, is likely to be edited from the video recording. Later, in the student bar, drinking with my dear companion, JJ and the Crayola Girls a further conversation will remain unreported for other reasons.

I did tell JJ about my (so far secret) plans to apply for an Arts Council grant to cull a large number of Artists in the fashion of Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger. I have always been taken by the efforts Auric went to gather the mob bosses to his home, explain his plans to them with elaborate model and audio visual presentation and then kill them whether they were in favour of his plan or not. Perhaps I should not have mentioned this.

As a sort of performative work I have been trying to grow my sideburns similar to those sported by Peter Cushing in his roles as Van Helsing. They also hark back to my father’s facial hairstyling in the seventies. Back then I wondered how they were produced and half believed that they would appear like the facial growths on a dominant male orangutan. My companion has become rather attached to them.

• 
• 

Some sort of shadowy pall seems to hang over my happiness. Tomorrow I travel to Bath to converse with JJ Charlesworth. I sent him a grovelling email communicating fear and excitement, mainly fear. He in turn replied graciously telling me not to worry. So I am endeavouring to follow his advice and act, at least, with coolness. Another communication came from Bath expressing concern that no one seems willing to look through my carefully placed telescopes. I am now considering a form of words to encourage the viewers’ curiosity. I am considering bastardising a rather poetic section from Coline Milliard’s essay on the Bedford incarnation of the show: “In Roussel’s proto-surrealist book, the narrator (allegedly) first encounters the African coast through his telescope. This circular viewpoint provides a leitmotiv for Pearl’s ‘Goodbye to most of the daydreams’ series, encapsulating distance and otherness, what is both feared and craved for…”

The above has all been via electronic communication. My relationship with real post has been a little more strained as my postman seems unwilling to knock on the door and merely pops his little pre-prepared red cards through the letter box. This invariably involves a rain soaked ride to the collecting office the next day to pick up my packet, letter etc. I have been playing with one such ‘delivery’ today a little circular brass mirror compact. I have been photographing my reflection to prove I am not a vampire.