spines and curses

An unplanned one, ahead of the next letter I’d like to write, in an attempt to puncture my tendency of getting too in my head about a thing before I’ve started. Always this Fanny Howe quote:

The struggle that the writer creates for herself is to make a place where she can get lost without fear.

Last week I had a brief conversation about getting too in your head with the artist Tai Shani at the opening of her show The Spell or The Dream in the courtyard of Somerset House. The work consists of a giant blue boy, sleeping and breathing and dreaming, encased in a transparent sarcophagus. It’s really beautiful. You should go and see it in the early evening when the figure’s face seems to eerily glow, like a giant bioluminescent creature.

At the foot of the plinth is a QR code you can scan to listen to The Dream Radio, a 24-hour transmission curated by Tai that melds archival material with contributions from 80 artists, writers and musicians. Earlier in the summer Tai invited me to contribute to The Dream Radio. The idea was that it could be something as brief as an anecdote, a voicenote, a poem, relating to dreams, spells, wishes, fantasy. I was so happy to be asked, and immediately knew what I wanted to contribute. But I got stuck wondering whether it was enough, then lost a few weeks to a flare, and by the time I emerged I’d missed the deadline.