David Marriott

Back from a short stay in Dublin, where I saw this Ogham stone. The art of lines taking on meaning from other lines. Rulering the ruler. I thought of how I’d learned to build Chinese words in little cubicles of squares, to connect them in the streets of lined pages, and (1/2)

立夏. My memory of summer is windless. An old woman bent down to catch what was rushing into her arms. Not a child, but the broken head of a rotating fan. And the child, who has now grown, learns that wind is just air moving too fast for either of them to catch.

For those at the foothill having a crack at the made-up writing system, this wine label might be a good pointer. And also link to the installation cafa.com.cn/en/news/details/…

With Xu Bing’s English-cum-Chinese script I always ride a seesaw of love-hate. This one, for me, was a riddle at first, then a gimmick at most. Then, a linguistic seppuku at its best. My thoughts:

But here I dither. What sounds more like a lie has somehow turned out truer. Maybe that’s what I’ve always wanted to tell, in a lie: the truth. The sweet, soggy truth, the myth-making truth, of nostalgia. (3/3)

To lie is to get lost, purposefully, amongst the honest road signs of nouns and verbs. Between plum and rain, between falling and falling, the path forks into forks. Plums fell like rains. Or, rain fell like plums, one drop here, another there, taking its time. (2/3)

One hot sticky day in Shanghai plums fell like rains, which changed the local calendar forever. Since then, there’s a fifth season: plum-rain. I’ve always wanted to tell a lie made up of truths. (1/3)

For months I've been watching a guy in Hunan training his bonsais: the desire of roots and branches, the language of wounds and scars, the grammar of clippers and wires. Myth is the wire that wasn’t before, isn’t after. Myth is the absence of the wire that grows into a presence.

My new old thing. Whatever arrived by post on the 14th of Feb carries the curse of the pun. Even a post-Valentine post cannot redeem it. So here we go:

For the precious few who might see this post, and the fewer who might see a riddle in it, the answer is.. 不再执牛耳的朱耷 and 不在皇家的黄胄 2/2

Of all the new acquaintances I’ve made in the past twelve months, these two handsome fellas certainly stand out. Not quite the birth of a zoologist yet, but here’s my layperson’s comparative study of quadrupeds. 1/2

the granite duo who have always known a younger me. The thing that, though half a world away, I can now withdraw. Is it a secret that statues are international banks for memories? Is it a myth that childhood can be yours again whenever you find yourself in their shadow? (2/2)

There’s a statue of Engels in Manchester, salvaged by some history-minded artist a few years ago. Seeing the picture, I know it has in its keeping the very thing I want, the thing that is mine. The thing that I deposited way back in Shanghai, in Fuxing Park, with (1/2)

when it is not there. (3/3) 《快雪时晴图》黄公望(元) Clearing after Snowfall - by Huang Gongwang (1269-1354) *The painting is a response to the eponymous calligraphy work by his mentor Zhao Mengfu, who also drew inspiration from an earlier Jin calligrapher Wang Xizhi (4th C).

the way a wall lives its life backwards: the last brick laid down is often the first one envisaged. Follow the painting to where it began – a blank page, a phrase, an idea. In all art, as in all stories we tell ourselves, the sun has always been the forethought, even (2/3)

The sun hangs there, like an afterthought: after the snow has settled, the ink dried up, after a canopy of washed-out grey turns clouds into mountains, and mountains into clouds. An upside-down world, sealed with a smear of cinnabar. But thoughts can be temporally deceptive,(1/3)