A careless rapture

A first careless rapture

Today, is the 26^th May, a UK bank holiday. 
I left home at 6:50am to walk the three miles to Sheffield station and buy the tickets to catch a train to Leeds then on to Saltaire for the annual BH Arts trail open up of the houses and I wanted to see the work in Salts mill by Ann Hamilton. 

In Leeds, on platform 4b, I waited for the Skipton train to be unlocked, when a young woman asked me if it was the train to Keithly.  I showed her that beside the train is a platform sign which shows all the stations that the train will stop at because I didn’t know if she was familiar with how our trains run as she was from China or Japan.  We entered the train together – she said that she was going to Keithly for the Haworth train to go see the Bronte house.  We got on immediately with an open, relaxed flowing conversation.   I asked her if she lived in Leeds but she said she was on teacher training – she asked where I thought that she was from by looking at her face, which she circled with her forefinger.    It wasn’t her face that I was entirely reading.  Her English pronunciation was absolutely perfect without any hint of any accent and my experience of Chinese English teachers from living three years in China, is that their pronunciation is recognisable. In China, I was never called Tracey – but Tlacey.  When she said she was from China, I couldn’t help saying that I used to live in China, in Suzhou – and honestly, we are talking of a dot of a Chinese city famous for its classical gardens, with a population of 8.5 million in the huge China with so many cities that I couldn’t believe that we both had a connection to the same place thousands of miles away for a brief collision of place and timing on platform 4b in Leeds.  She said that she was going back to Suzhou in 3 days so I couldn’t help but mention the special people in my Suzhou life.   I told her of my Chinese Jie Jie – (Older sister) who was my landlady and her husband Shu Shu and my Buddhist friend Cai Gen Lin –these three people changed my life deeply when I lived in the old hutong lanes in Pingjiang and I still love them very much to this day, but have not seen them since 2013.   I lived in Suzhou from 2008 – 2010 as an English teacher and felt very grateful for the job because I learned so much about daily life from my adult students.  In excitement, on the train, I found in my purse, a business card of Jie Jie’s property rental business that I have carried since 2008 and only last week, I was wondering how I could get in touch with them as none of them speak English nor have email.   My new train platform friend is called Zhang Yu, I remembered her name after she only said it once and I began to speak with her in Mandarin, something I haven’t done for years.   I was catapulted back to a time and place so loved that I could hear it and feel it.   We parted after only 10 minutes on the same train.  I gave her my email and she gave me a silk bookmark from Suzhou.   I have tried to email her this evening but it bounced back.  I am hoping that she will keep in touch and if she has time, will seek out my Jie Jie and hand her the card that I have carried for 17 years.  On the back, I wrote, Jie Jie, Wo ai ni.  Which means, Sister, I love you.

On the top floor of the magnificent, gargantuan Salts Mill in Saltaire, is the multi-faceted Bradford supported exhibition by Ann Hamilton which responds to the space, its heritage and the future.  Three different spaced out horns rotate slowly in the huge roof space unhurriedly moving towards my face, playing repetitive singing then whistling.  The mechanism to turn each horn is visible on the floor. I’m here early and have the huge space to myself –  I don’t know what it is all about yet but I cannot turn away, intoxicated by the layering of sound.   At the end of the room, great swathes of locally-woven blue fabric hangs in great lengths held down by rocks, like a loom.  In another room, huge images of faces on woollen cloth hang like banners whilst a woman in a, kind of manager’s-box reads letters written by hundreds of unknown and unnamed people as part of the exhibition to their ‘Dear Future’  this is the part of the exhibition that most interested me before I came to see it. The woman reads letters while singing can still be heard from the horns in the vast room next door.   News broad sheet papers hang on rails behind each large printed doll (which are blown up images of Feve’s – tiny ceramic dolls / a small trinket or charm which used to be baked and hidden inside French cakes for luck)  I have walked around the gallery and collected every news print sheet, some I have duplicated, some I may have missed – there are many sheets.   I’m in love with this space.  It’s a space that needs a commanding artwork within its huge vaulted roof space.  Every time I come, I am in love with the immediate old wooden, oiled smell and openness and light in this huge mill which once wove wool. I’m also in love with this work which I am not quite understanding but want to, so much so, that I sit on a bench near the woman reader, to eat my sandwich and to just listen and give it all time.  It is so multi layered that it really needs more than one sitting.  Normally, I look at art and leave quickly.  Here, I am engaged, writing with enthusiasm and speed, trying capture what this work is making me feel.  And here it is. 

I feel alive.   A first careless rapture of something so completely new to me, that I am besotted.

I feel engaged fully.  I’m not off in a rush, not thinking of some other place but I am here, in this roof space in Salts Mill thinking of my own ‘Dear Future’   Something that I have been thinking of for some time but not had a thread of where to exactly, precisely put my energy to reach a goal / aim because I am, for the first time in decades, not sure.   My future aim is staying just out of reach – not unattainable but latent as if I am once again standing at a crossroads.  My choice is not yet clear enough to run headlong towards it or even to quietly walk or even stumble towards it – my time future is precious as I am getting older.  I am hoping that I can make the right choice.   The reader in the box, reads on while pulling strings to ring a bell above the large artworks, she’s opening letters from unknown people who have written to their Dear Futures, mostly thinking of the future world,

But what is my Dear Future self?  A dream or hope is forming involving heading back towards the east and meeting Zhang Yu on the platform in Leeds, seems to be a sign that heading back towards the old lanes in Suzhou and onwards to the base of a mountain in Japan is maybe the path I should take.  

Dear Future, this is my dream….

What is yours?

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