hello. It is 18:30 (our time) and I am writing you from the sofa of the small but cosy flat Sam and I are renting for the residency. I am sick. Again. A gravely throat, a woozy head, blocked ears, and a running nose. On reflection I have been sick every single time I have traveled out of England over the past year. Always similar symptoms with varying levels of severity, today I am functional but run down.
I live a lot of my life exhausted, laying down, aching, resting. At home it has become part of the routine. I’ve been working with weights since November last year and I have found it has made a significant different to my ability to move, but there are still days where I seem to spend large amounts of energy doing very short journeys.
At first I thought my exhaustion in Bergen was from travel, that I just needed to settle, but as the week has gone on it appears my exhaustion is from sickness and stress. Even though at a logical level I feel very fulfilled and excited and to be enjoying myself…I wake in the night, I am worried about spending my time here correctly, I feel the weight of an enormous body of work that I need to tell everyone about…my bones feel heavy inside me, my thoughts are getting mixed up, my desire to work is greater than my capacity to work.
I worked from our bed 10:00-17:00 on Friday. Mentally and physically this is a bad situation to be in. I am very lucky to be supported by Sam, cooking, cleaning, making me tea, waking me. The flat we are renting is technically two rooms, a main room and a bathroom, the bed in in a nook behind the kitchen. It is also in the basement of a house and lets in little natural light. To spend the whole day in the flat was ultimately quite dispiriting.
Today I woke up at 03:30 (ish) and I spent the morning listening to the dawn chorus via the many streams already running for Reveil next weekend. Here is a short section of the BEK streambox just after dawn around 05:30
This afternoon Sam and I went into Bergen to see the UiB’s Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design (KMD) MA Grad show at the Bergen Kunsthall. There were fold out chairs available in the entrance way and I was able to sit in all of the gallery spaces. In our 2.5 hours there I didn’t see anyone else using a chair, if people were sitting they were sitting on the floor.
Here are three* works I found particularly interesting. The smell of Helle’s work was extremely strong when you entered the gallery.
*the third is a performance where audience and actors carried in ceramic stones from a trailer ceremony pulled in front of the steps of the Kunsthall. The “stones” made an extremely satisfying sound as we placed them, but wordpress won’t let me add video unless I pay for a more expensive plan…
We returned back to the flat around 17:00, and even a short outing into Bergen was very draining.
I have taken to having long hot hot showers, warming my cold body and relaxing my sore muscles. The stream helps with the congestion. I have a pair of very thick woollen socks I like to put on to stay warm once I’m out. The shower is the one area of the flat that is outstanding. Powerful and capable of producing blistering jets of water, something we don’t have back in London.
It’s 19:58 now. It takes me a long time to write you when my head is so clouded. I’m not sure why I’m even writing to you about this. Maybe because I want there to be some acknowledgment somewhere that things look glamorous but in reality they aren’t. Mostly I think because being exhausted makes me feel lonely, and writing you eases that a little.
Mortimer Drew ~ blog 