Department of Dislocated Memory

Spatial Report 1: (in response to common(place) — in the order of the infinite commonplaces — irresponsibility (a faint halo to the music), a tendency toward slowness (dormancy)

A report from the outer (cornered) island: where an uneasy quiet has fallen (for nearly thirty years now).

6.30am. Summer. The white nylon curtain flows out the window. There are four steps down from the apartment to the foyer, polished concrete, and then another four down to ground level, white ceramic tiles. Then about ten steps to the limestone blocks that bridge the two metre wide ditch before the footpath. The top of the metal bin is usually open, and the smell of rotting food in the late afternoon heat is gripping. Turn left. There is a long walk beneath the eucalypts to the branch office. A concrete building, white, square, three storeys high. The office is square too, a bench (brown), a chair (gray), shelves (black). The likely things. (Perhaps I have told you this before, in the reports issued late last year, or you may have read this somewhere else (as there are a number of missing pages).

About John Cage’s ‘The Piano Works 3’ and specifically ‘The Seasons’, Stephen Drury writes (liner notes): "… the overall rhythmic structure of 2, 2, 1, 3, 2, 4, 1, 3, 1 is expressed by the relative lengths of the nine individual movements …" This is an architectural pattern, for example: "How white is it! No painting ornaments it; it is all of a piece." (Satie’s comment on his work ‘Socrate’.)

What you do: first instruction: throw the ball/coin/book in the air.

Poem (1)

The result
Was a single
Line in three
Movements —
Rhythmically
Identical to the
Original ‘Socrate’

Poem (2)

to be inscribed on the upper face of a stone step: the step to measure: 3 x 1 metres, 50 centimetres above ground level

An act of piety
An Artist’s dream
A humble homage
(2, 2, 1, 3, 1)

Poem (3)

A slow as possible
It’s a slow journey back
Soft morning city, sjb (4, 1, 3, 1)

The space, the office, is 12 centimetre square (the paper version, translate 12 metres); on the door is a list of words, including: only, 1pm, Friday, marks, due, water.

Architecture as paper; then rain; sade, orta, sekeli (corrupted versions of coffee).

The day: hot, blue sky, white clouds, breeze. (At the time of the early crusades it was but an inconsiderable village with a harbour and castle.)

Submitted: 180602, LMW
Archivist of Spatial Delinquency and Irresponsible Writing

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