Kochi AIR—2016
Everything is
Everything is
waiting for you
The beauty of Indian adornment observed while wandering the streets combined in an unlikey relationship with the words of a Irish poet and brought to life by a suprise act of the salty wind. The installation, Everything is waiting for you, looked to create a surface which accompanied you, adorning and resurfacing your skin, following you out via a window, floating down the footpath and all the time delighting you with lightness, presence and suprise. In the words of the poet David Whyte, the grand array—the swelling presence—the chorus, he saw life everywhere in the everyday things which surround us and asked us to become part of this conversation.
Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice. You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.
Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the
conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.—David Whyte, 2003
This work was made while on residency at Pepper House in Kochi, India, 2016.
*Video filmed and edited by Eugene Howard 2016
*The title of the work is taken from a poem by David Whyte, 2003