an animated conversation
Anyway. Where have you been? I thought you were painting watercolours.
“I got distracted.” You do get distracted easily you know. Your problem is … you lack concentration.
“I was making gifs.” Gifts? Well anyone can be distracted by gifts. “No Mum. GIFs!”
“Maybe it’s a self confidence thing. Dropping pins into a glass by way of music-making … someone else might have stood ground and made a case for conceptual art there. Or maybe it’s a matter of timing. A couple of years later everyone was looking for conceptual art … But not that year.
I think you should just get on and put those watercolours up.
Why do you like tiny things. Why don’t you make big, colourful things? … I would. “I do make big, colourful things! My necklaces were very big and colourful. Until everyone wanted tiny, delicate ones. “
“Perhaps liking tiny things is to do with shyness. When I was an art student, one time we each had to make a musical instrument from any stuff we could find.”
“Everyone was rushing around, banging on corrugated iron with bits of wood. Banging and clanging. I sat in a corner dropping pins into a glass of water. The tutors thought that was going too far. Or too quiet.”
(ting!)
Do you know what I’d like to do now? “No. What?”
Get out of this tent you built us.
“Oh me too. It’s really dreadful, Mum.” Well let’s go then, dear. What’s to stop us? “Absolutely nothing. You’re right. Let’s do it.”
“My sister goes off to buy the curtain material you have set your heart on but someone else has bought it. All 36 yards of it…. you write that you “could weep”.
“And when she suggests you come with her and your granddaughter on a trip to the nearest big city one hundred miles away, your first reaction is that you can’t do it. All that traipsing around … You must have been about 80 at the time, Mum.”
But then you think … Ah. Curtains, and off you go. You search and search … but in all the city you cannot find the material you so want.”
“For you still have “that lovely butter yellow” in your “mind’s eye.”
“Your letter to me is dated February.”
“It’s very cold outside and you look at your curtains, thinking – “life is passing me by and I can’t stand them any longer”.
My sister brings you a sample of fabric from the nearest town – “Butter yellow linen with peonies” – just what you want.”
“You choose the paint and can’t sleep that night for thinking how you will redecorate your room.”
“The other day I found one of your letters amongst some papers.”
Is it a nice letter, dear?
“It’s lovely, Mum. It’s a saga, that’s what you call it, about desiring and obtaining some new curtain material. You wanted that fabric so greatly.” Me and my materials. Your father used to call them my “schmutter”. Which curtains were these then?
You forget how old you are, you know, and time does pass. “What do you mean?”
Well, do you know who you look like now … in that hat?
You look just like me, dear.
“Of course you’re in the cartoon, Mum.”
Well I thought you wouldn’t leave me out. After all, this project is called “Syb & Me” … and I’m the Syb.
“Yes, Mum.”
… and then there’s the cat of course.
“Mmmmn.”
