Water is something I love too. I remember I did a project in San Sabastian sea coast, taking shots with fixed interval to an ever moving sea area. Horn's text seems clever too. I can not read well, so I bought a book to read. There are lots of similarities with my skyscape project. Horn's work is very enlightening, I mean most of her works, the Weather portrait, the Iceland project etc...
1
My gaze alights on the water, on this spot on the river, here where the
water is turning around, where the currents turn the water in tightening
circles. I can't turn away. I want to feel time twist as I watch these spirals
forming. I want to feel time twist and myself turning as I watch them
disappear. I want to twist with the turning water. I want to watch these
spirals turn themselves invisible. I want to watch them turning from the
surface, turning down into the depths where I cannot see them. I want to turn
invisible with them. I want to turn with them, invisible and keep turning.
Black water is opaque water, toxic or not. Black water is always
violent. Even when slow moving, black water dominates, bewitches, subdues.
Black water is alluring because it is disturbing and irreconcilable. Black
water is violent because it is alluring and because it is water.
Water is lubricant to other places. It dilutes gravity when you're in
it. It reduces friction when you're around it. Almost any form of water—rivers,
lakes, oceans, even sinks—will do. My mind roams freely, breezily near it. My
thoughts take me backward and forward. Time has no direction near water.
Water
is lubricant to other places. It catalyzes memory and aspiration. This water
exists in monolithic, indivisible continuity with all other waters. No water is
separate from any other water. In the River Thames, in an arctic iceberg, in
your drinking glass, in that drop of rain, on that frosty window pane, in your
eyes and in every other microcosmic part of you, and me, all waters converge.
2
Some Thames is literally the idea of a finite thing having an infinite
range of appearance or expression because of its inseparable relation to other
things, which is what water is — its relation to other things.
When I look at water I'm entering into an event of relation. Rather than
an object, water becomes a form — of consciousness, or time, of physicality, of
the human condition, of anything I desire to project on it, of anything I want
it to be.
This water exists in monolithic, indivisible continuity with all other
waters. No water is separate from any other water.
In the River Thames, in an Arctic iceberg, in your drinking glass, in
that drop of rain, on that frosty window pane, in your eyes, in every other
microscopic part of you (and me), all waters converge.
Invisible
continuity is intrinsic to water. This continuity exceeds us even while being
the biggest part of us. It's this continuity that makes our effect on water an
effect on us. That is to say: "I am the Thames!" or "The Thames
is me!"
3
There is one yellowish photograph of the Thames, for example. It shows a
little white froth at the lower right corner, some patches of baby blue and a
few wisps of brown. It looks a little like a desert. Many of the footnotes run
along a brownish crevice in the water.
They go like this: ''28 Is this khaki or beige? 29 Is this beige or
ochre? 30 Is this ochre or yellow? 31 Is this yellow or tan? 32 Is this tan or
brown? 33 Is this brown or black? 34 Is this black. . . . 36 What does water
look like? 37 See Sand (Especially sand dunes.) 38 See deserts, for example the
Gobi or the Sahara. 39 There's a story (it's true) about a man traveling by
Tube to Westminster Bridge handcuffed to a chair. He threw himself in the river
with the chair. He was found some days later downstream attached to a stick of
wood and a section of naugahyde (almond-colored).''
The
color exercise is fun. At every point, you can look at the picture of the
yellowish river and think, ''Is this beige or ochre?'' and ''Is this ochre or
yellow?'' It is strangely absorbing. It is nice to be carried away by someone
else's thoughts while looking at water, to see whether your thoughts match
hers.
