Work Log: Tuesday 17 June

Contemplating the emergence of the mimes in the work yesterday which I didn’t understand;

Then this morning, stumbling upon the enormously liberating notion of creating what I dubbed “idiotic things” — work that has absolutely no value in the contemporary capitalist marketplace. (Inspired in part by a discovery of Courtney Cassidy’s fantastic Soft Manifesto via the Creative Independent.) Works of poetry and absurdism, surrealism and deep dream, made simply for their own sake, and perhaps this is the antidote to all the angst I’ve suffered around my practice for so many years;

From Courtney Cassidy’s Soft Manifesto.

Hypothesising to a like-minded friend that perhaps “idiotic things” is in fact, “fool’s work”, and her sage response that fool’s work, fool’s gold and real gold are perhaps all on the same continuum, perhaps in fact, all of a piece.

And yes, being drawn back to contemplate the tarot again (coming full circle, as it were); and the striking role of the Fool in and of it all, at base, at core, at heart;

Nicholas Coghlan as our Fool-King in 2013’s Until Then, Then at La Mama, Carlton.

And then of course recognising that these mimes, who the work had called “ciphers of our city’s innocence” are naturally the very fool themselves — they share the same archetype — and of course they needed to make themselves known.

The mimes re-emerged (more darkly) in today’s writing which shocked me a little, but I understood then why. So I am now just letting the Fool lead me on a journey through these fragments and where they want to land.

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