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devi(Today's task at the Zokutou meet was to wander off into the Tate Britain and find something to write about. I found myself at the Days Like These exhibition. This was what I came up with...)
I am in a big room, white and bright like when the snow came. The walls are white with colours on them sometimes, square colours. Dad holds me to his red jumper. His arm is tight round my chest. If I stretch my neck I can see his round glasses and his pointy nose and his bushy eyebrows which are grey. His nose is pointing at the colours on the walls. Someone is humming but there’s no one there. I swing my legs back and forth. Dad points his nose at a different wall now and I look too.
This wall is moving! It has lines and lines and lines like my candystriped sheets but much more lines than that and they are swaying in and out and swapping places. They make my eyes do funny things and they twitch and squirm in my head and I don’t think I like them at all. Dad says ‘Hmm.’ It makes his chest buzz against my back and I want to giggle but I can’t because the lines are dancing in front of me and wriggling in my head. Dad moves his arms a bit and the lines are right in my face! Right there in my face! I let out a shriek. Dad says something about food, ruffling my hair. I’m not thinking about food! It’s the lines! I can see now that they’re on a paper in Dad’s hand. I reach out and pull the corner to my mouth and stuff it in. I must get rid of these lines. They taste funny to chew like when I sucked my felt-tip pens. There’s a lot of paper, I’ll have to chew fast. Dribbles run down my chin.
‘No!’ says Dad. ‘Stop!’ He pulls the paper. I dig my gums in. He pulls, I pull. The paper falls on the floor and skids away. Dad goes after it, sees a man with a bag coming towards it and shrugs. ‘You little monster,’ he says, but in his playtime-hugs, bedtime-story voice, as he carries me away from the terrible wall.
We sit in dark rooms then, watching some lights and some flowers and some grannies and grandads. I like the flowers best. I sit there quietly like a big person. Then Dad picks me up again and says it’s time to go home. He takes me through a room and another room and another room and through a door.
The lines! They’re here! They’re all over the floor, and now they’re all spiky and zigzaggy and there’s even more of them and they’re tangling my head up. They must have slid off the paper and grown into the floor when the paper fell down. Oh, no. Maybe the whole world will be covered in lines now and it’s all my fault. I shut my eyes tight and start to wail. I don’t open them again until Dad has sorried his way out and I know we’re outside because I can hear cars. And even then I keep them squeezed shut because what if I look up and there are red and purple and green and white zigzag lines all over the sky?
I am in a big room, white and bright like when the snow came. The walls are white with colours on them sometimes, square colours. Dad holds me to his red jumper. His arm is tight round my chest. If I stretch my neck I can see his round glasses and his pointy nose and his bushy eyebrows which are grey. His nose is pointing at the colours on the walls. Someone is humming but there’s no one there. I swing my legs back and forth. Dad points his nose at a different wall now and I look too.
This wall is moving! It has lines and lines and lines like my candystriped sheets but much more lines than that and they are swaying in and out and swapping places. They make my eyes do funny things and they twitch and squirm in my head and I don’t think I like them at all. Dad says ‘Hmm.’ It makes his chest buzz against my back and I want to giggle but I can’t because the lines are dancing in front of me and wriggling in my head. Dad moves his arms a bit and the lines are right in my face! Right there in my face! I let out a shriek. Dad says something about food, ruffling my hair. I’m not thinking about food! It’s the lines! I can see now that they’re on a paper in Dad’s hand. I reach out and pull the corner to my mouth and stuff it in. I must get rid of these lines. They taste funny to chew like when I sucked my felt-tip pens. There’s a lot of paper, I’ll have to chew fast. Dribbles run down my chin.
‘No!’ says Dad. ‘Stop!’ He pulls the paper. I dig my gums in. He pulls, I pull. The paper falls on the floor and skids away. Dad goes after it, sees a man with a bag coming towards it and shrugs. ‘You little monster,’ he says, but in his playtime-hugs, bedtime-story voice, as he carries me away from the terrible wall.
We sit in dark rooms then, watching some lights and some flowers and some grannies and grandads. I like the flowers best. I sit there quietly like a big person. Then Dad picks me up again and says it’s time to go home. He takes me through a room and another room and another room and through a door.
The lines! They’re here! They’re all over the floor, and now they’re all spiky and zigzaggy and there’s even more of them and they’re tangling my head up. They must have slid off the paper and grown into the floor when the paper fell down. Oh, no. Maybe the whole world will be covered in lines now and it’s all my fault. I shut my eyes tight and start to wail. I don’t open them again until Dad has sorried his way out and I know we’re outside because I can hear cars. And even then I keep them squeezed shut because what if I look up and there are red and purple and green and white zigzag lines all over the sky?
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no subject
Date: 2003-05-20 12:13 am (UTC)lines
Date: 2003-05-20 05:56 am (UTC)The wall of lines is just that - a wall of the gallery covered in multicoloured lines of paint poured out of syringes at the top of the wall and let flow down. If you look at it sideways it looks as if it's swaying like a bead curtain.
The floor covered in lines is where another of the artists (Lambie, I think his name was) covered the floor in strips of sticky tape, starting round the edges of the room and converging in the centre so all the corners and alcoves and sticking-out bits in the walls create a sort of ripple effect and I'm *really* not describing this well, the baby did a better job than me :) It's very psychedelic.
Oh, and the lines the baby is chewing are on the exhibition brochure, if that wasn't obvious.
Re: lines
Date: 2003-05-22 08:44 am (UTC)