Kochi AIR—2016

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