DAT LIKWID LAND

It has been just over a week since I returned from New Orleans. A city in which the familiar is skewed out of form like a classically gridded American road system warped by the curves of the river it flanks.

What I’m left with is a bank of imagery with more flavours than Elizabeth Shannon’s gumbo. A bank of imagery that began through research into John Kennedy Tooles unparalleled literary creation, Ignatius J Reilly, but grew through encounters and situations that I could never have imagined.

10 days ago I was in Jean Lafitte swamp on self balancing Swegway with Robert Swain. I’d met Robert Swain one day earlier in a challenging morning on a hazy stroll through a park by the Mississippi River. And now we were here… Swain in full Mardi Gras dress expounding on the concept of Liquid Land and occasionally asking other unwitting guests of the swamp where he’d left his drums? This is pretty much how things went down. These are the images I am left with and there are many people (many legends) who I have to thank for them. Specifically though I would like to thank Joris and Maaike who supported throughout the residency almost like the mausoleums below…

SEND EM HOME WITH A MOTHER FUCKIN BANG BITCH…

Books

It has recently become clear to me that in this day and age the only non pretentious function of books is to keep your hat flat.

books

In the past the book on the top of the pile (written AD 523) had another function… it was the mantra by which the fictional character Ignatius J Reilly lived and understood his life in John Kennedy Tooles novel A Confederacy of Dunces (written 1963). Through the outsider Ignatius we spiral through New Orleans to the will of Fortuna: “Oh, Fortuna, blind, heedless goddess, I am strapped to your wheel”. I’m here searching for that wheel. Maybe I can get into its slipstream.