A Prayer for Clean Water (2021, Work in Progress)

A Prayer for Clean Water

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"Prayer #73"
768 x 1024px
A Prayer for Clean Water "Make a Prayer" Project
Collaboration with Gregory Thornton
2005

Water: snow, ice, tears, baths

drinking swimming rain puddles

ocean ….. life in my body, I can

"H2O” - digital art for AFH proposal for St. Edward’s University exhibit, “A Prayer for Clean Water” (2005)

see the mighty Columbian River from the chair here in front of the computer monitor, the grey churn of clouds in the Astoria, Oregon sky, every day water falling from the sky, the river flowing toward the Pacific Ocean, where they convene, many a ship has sunk, many a sailor met his doom. We ordered Ship Out yesterday for the midday meal, fish and chips - Tommy “Two Crabs” tells me a local legend, a fisherman and crabber who in latter years worked at the Buoy in Seaside passed away and when we drove past the restaurant down 101 his name RIP was on the sign ….. water in my coffee, my smoothie of frozen fruit, protein powder, yoghurt, ice, spirulina plus vitamin powder, water the vehicle for dreaming, an invocation, Neptune, the beasts, the fowl, the orb seen from space, the colors of blue, millions of colors in the Kauai sunset, reflected in the waves, my eyes peering through the digital camera viewfinder, framing the scene, the image machine compressing the spectacle into the code 01 recording the estimated optical values, a simulation, recombined into the still or moving picture, a memory prompt, but the readings are all off, and the derivative barely resembles the original, seeming dead in comparison, like fucking up scrambled eggs on toast, how could you do that, dude? The technology was novel then, our expectations were subverted by the output, the interface did not harmonize with the subject, the moment in Nature, or the feeling in my heart, pumping blood, the rush, the crash against the lava rock, knowing night was coming, and what did I know about destinations, spray in the air, the spirit bird, my island guardian, watching me from a safe distance ….. everything violent, beautiful, the key still in the ignition, no negotiations, a random stop

APFCW Prayer 42 Symmetric Derivation 20 Pixel Pattern

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Cupping my hands to scoop spring water trail hiking in the Glencoe mountains the crisp air burning my lungs adjusting the gear raise the camera and click the memory onto the film before the ubiquity of digital pics taken with a cellular phone pondering the sheep scat I noticed muttering at the one looking at me sideways about mutton and the clearances, Sinclair, the English ….. my feet stick to the ground, my blood and bone ghosts, signs in the pages of the books and the great poems of Sorley - visions dreams and stone the fog rising to meet me as I hop down from the ridge to the valley below to spend the night where Campbells shall never be welcome

“A Prayer for Clean Water #32 (Kauai Surf)”

Proposal concept for digital print wall treatment

Body whomping at Kailea or Waimea the surf spinning me upside down to piledrive my twisting frame into the shallows the salt and fish skellies shells tiny by the pounding scouring my skin under the burning sun feeling the next rainbow craving a Pono burger … One of the lifeguards been peeping me say bruh dose wave gon break you neck, laughing, you ready for a board bruh, approving my progress man good feeling God good day ice a reward water all round above below for miles and miles the currents the storms the breaks the story of Water it tells itself

"Oregon Beach - 1982”

"A Prayer for Clean Water" Small Print Folio*

2005

Always a gift, Water

“The Cuillins, Isle of Skye, Scotland - 1995”

"A Prayer for Clean Water" Small Print Folio*

2005

You can tell the kind of man he is, by his relations with water, how he thinks, by what his thoughts of water were, are, will be. Standing Rock must be remembered for the truth it reveals about twenty-first century Man, the history he embodies, the desires, the force he brought to bear on ancient people, wrapped in robes, sage burning, praying for clean water, being gifted through the hoses that sent jets of water at them like arrows, with soldiers and guns pointed in elder faces or youth, how leaders turned their backs, the banks who used their power to produce an outcome, and those oil men whose fortunes, whose futures, whose ideologies, whose vision for the pipeline would not be denied, the jail cells, the cages into which they tossed the people, bins for soggy rags, crying or the prosecutors, the legislators, who raged at such insolence, and so made those prayers into crimes, turning America into what it is again

“Black Knight Country Club Lifeguard, Beckley, WV - circa 2003”

I dipped my fingers into the Holy Water, an altar boy in black and white, at the church a short walk from Colony Drugs, which in a few decades would become the epicenter for the Oxy epidemic. The priest would shake the aspergillum at us to purify and cleanse, reminding the congregants of our baptism in water, protecting us against evil, absolving minor sins, a blessing. Wine, water, oil, loaves and fishes, smokey incense, bloody sacrifice. The Bible tells of many watery miracles performed: Christ could walk upon it to convince his fishermen; Jonah consumed by the whale; the River Jordan - when I set eyes upon it, I could not believe it ….. Was this it? My parents had driven us McLean boys to the New River, below the dam, to picnic nearby and play amongst the Copperheads, which coiled amongst the rounded stones on the banks of that mighty burn, so I knew what to expect, but my expectation proved inordinate, by orders of magnitude. I heard boys speak of catfish the size of sharks living at the base of the dam, engorging themselves on the littler fishes, tadpoles and whatnot, like bluegills, I suppose, crappie, or varieties of bass, trout, the odd redbelly dace, muskellunge, threadfin shad, rosy face and telescope shiners, central stoneroller, bigmouth chub, northern hogsucker, greenside, Roanoke, sharpnose, rainbow, Appalachia darters, gizzard shad, yellow perch, the white sucker

“New River, West Virginia” 2015

Marcel invited me to the annual Desert Son rafting venture down the Rio Grande Box, which was frothy that year, that time of year, with runoff from the winter snow melt. Our guides were tops, plus we got VIP treatment. I got put in the front of the raft, and I loved it. When we hit the rapids, which were big and frequent, the dude would holler instructions to which I attempted to comply, while the splashing churn pummeled face and shoulders, knocking us this way and that, yelling, giggling, screeching, yelping, cursing crew in orange life jackets - what a gas! dodging boulders and holes, whirlpools or hitting waves just right, so as not to capsize. Dude said, if you fall in, keep your feet downriver, use your arms like paddles, rudders, to shield your head, save your skull. It was a half-day excursion. We did the morning one. I wanted to go again. “Fuck that!” Instead we dozy rode the vans after a good lunch - food tastes so much better after - back to Santa Fe, back to the bar, happy, in a good mood, spent, to drink, get drunk, baked, high, into the night again. A few years later, Susan jumped off the Taos Gorge Bridge we floated under that day, into the water below. They didn’t find her remains for months, wedged under big rocks, debris. She practiced before she did it at the railing I heard. We had an emotional conversation sometime before. We were gonna go camping, maybe, but couldn’t agree on terms. She was a brilliant comedienne. There’s more to this story, but I don’t want to talk about it right now.

“Prayer 168” Symmetric/Derivative

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Change the subject. Bridge the data sets. Divergent media, sequencing. Associations. Contingency. The visual texture is impressionistic. Elements of animation. Narrative gaps. Non-linear mind, unfolding. Water is the vehicle for dreaming. Filmmaking, dream makers, weavers, but also nightmare. Like No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy, at the Santa Fe Institute. A book translates to a moving picture. Inhabiting a world existing between theater and real life. A script. H-2 Oh. The code is exact and not simultaneously. There was Mickey and Mallory’s crazy wedding scene in Natural Born Killers. When I scanned it early this morning, I couldn’t find the scene in Quinton Tarantino’s third draft, written in the same time frame (1990) as the events described above. Maybe that iconic cinematic exchange between Woody and Juliette was improvised. “We’ll be livin’ in all the oceans, now.” Raising the possibility an error has occurred. Has the subject mutated, beyond recognition, in a flash, the catalyst a memory that evokes a current pain, an ache that reminds the Author of loss, of mortality, the liquidity problem in existence, the connective tissue of imagination, the veil, behind which is hidden, the real experience of suffering, unresolved narrative, the echo of a voice deep into the cave of Mind. No, probably not. I should call Oliver and ask. Or email QT, or the actors. Someone must have the answer. Why would such a fabulous person commit suicide? Confusion sounds like Confucian, but the meanings are universes apart. Richard Tuttle at Goldleaf would go on about North-South, East-West, poking the index finger of one claw through the loop of the other, thumb plus pointer, but I came away from the chatter, Lou and Marty standing there blinking, with nothing like certainty. An artist has his own language, a map nobody else shares, a vision of how everything fits, what the form is, the space between, a word like “liminal” or interstices” is proper for him to use, as a prop, a vestment, naturally obscuring the process from the device itself, so the container stays half full and empty, so the Void has plenty of room for filling it again, with a watercolor on notebook paper, a few scratches with charcoal or graphite, a tool with a point, so we can come to an understanding, finally, a convergence of ideas, a contract, a means by which the disparate elements might be harmonized, a rationale and justification, unity like a cheap suit folded into the layers of fabric in the drawer, color coordinated, grouped by texture and age, type and maker, into a hierarchy to be adjusted and modified, to be made sense of, to make sense of this world, which apparently has none, or if it does, not one you can fathom. Any library filled with manuscripts and folios, magazines, hard- or soft cover books in the stacks, organized by author, title, numbers, editions, chronology, et cetera - we aren’t even touching media, yet - can claim a sufficient, logical conclusion, a viable explanation for a random challenge to the premise raised by the average hopeless child, that life is fair. That all men are created equal. Which isn’t to say that a building could or should perform that function. Within the written page, however, we find the whispered promise that an affirmative response is possible, if not under the circumstances, immediately, in this moment, here in this place, a remedy for pain, mental physical spiritual is around the bend, coming, waiting to be discovered, or properly administered, whatever. A poetry of solace. An encyclopedia of salves for the soul, the flesh, these thoughts. Illustrated, hopefully. It’s easier to get a picture than a decent single sentence, or paragraph at the most, summary. Hell, most of us wouldn’t know where and how to start. An editor is not an artist. The greatest writer has never composed a novel in water. There is no such thing a water book. An object of any kind is not water. The statement is not judgment, in the pejorative - just an observation, singular and plural. You can point a camera at a stream, but streaming media is not wet. Sure. call us wetware, if you wish. Next, explain to me the concept of programmable matter, demonstrate with the example of programmed water, but please no cheating. No metaphors, estimates, simulations. Do it raw, or not at all. The first mirror is water, the reflection. How do you back up that image, specifically?

“A Prayer for Clean Water” 11” x 8.5” Flyer

Steam rising from our skin and hair, wrapped in towels, emerging from the sweat lodge soaked, spent in the middle of high desert winter. The red orange glow from the fire at violet dusk painting the snow a blue hue. Scott with the smudge pot of hot coals, a coffee can bailing wired to a couple of sticks, smoke billowing, chewing sage, in bare feet, sitting inside the womb, cross legged, the ancestors already in the pit, tarps rope and blankets door still open, Scott squatting, pitchfork in the sand beside his knee, peering inside at the Old Man who will pour the water. The pipe on the altar. The bags for sacred herbs: cedar, copal, osha… Preparations complete. It could be ten thousand years ago or ten thousand from now, but it is today, yesterday, two, three decades behind me. Soon he will close us in, the songs will begin, prayers, the hiss of the mni as it hits the volcanic rocks from up by San Juan Pueblo I think, the heat overwhelming, praying real hard, then later the stars are out in the New Mexico sky, being alive and stronger, full of gratitude, humility and love. When he passed the gourd we drank and water never tasted as good. Did you recognize how precious a moment that was? I was still pretty new to those ceremonies, but was keen to memorize every detail, the way I used to study Latin words, or the Won-Loss records of pitchers, or the way she stood on the steps in her skirt, talking with her eyes, the turning of her wrist, the painted lips, the sound of her heels on the tile, her perfume in the air, our voices sound like someone else, both of us tweaking, nervous, excited, but going with it, wondering what will happen next. The inipi was so different from anything I knew, which remains true. No two the same.

“A Prayer for Clean Water” Invitation (frontispiece)

As often as possible, I would trek to beloved Barton Springs, on foot usually, in that brutal Austin heat, to plunge into the 58 degree spring water. In winter the mind had to resign its government of the body for one to momentarily ignore the fact of frigidity’s impact, that visceral shock, consistent with every initial immersion. Using the stone pebbled concrete steps or hurling oneself from the edge or lowering oneself by ladder into the green grey liquid. All methods had their features and drawbacks. Prolonging the process, a blast to the system, breathing as offset, exhalation, strategies and tactics for transition from the dry hot world to this other one, its opposite. Once, acclimated, I had a routine: warm ups, of twists, flips, hops, rotations, et cetera; then some laps, long and middling, passing fellow swimmers, some familiar by repetitive practical observation, others distinguished by belonging to established amateur clubs and competitive teams; then more aerobic exercises adapted from fighter regimens, for instance for opening hips, improving round kicks, extending flexibility; then a period of meditation, floating, being present, staring upwards at the clouds passing overhead, the big birds circling from time to time; 45 minutes to an hour, before the muscles started to cramp from the cold. Afterwards, slowly dressing after drying on the hard surface of the amphitheater, or the clipped lawns sloping upwards from the sidewalk around the pool, an historic WPA project, under the shade of the big trees, on a blanket or towel, watching the boys and girls enjoying or performing at the diving board, or scanning the groups of sunbathers for friendly faces. At different times of the day and night, in a seasonal affect, Barton Springs assumed a mystical dimension, verging on the sacred sensation.

“Bone #9 (Scene, LA Natural History Museum) 2010”

Image output in variable formats and dimensions (print, web, animations)

For me, in the beleaguered phase of grief-stricken existential desperation, which is a peculiar transitory condition, visits to Barton Springs - and other city pools were basic survival measures, instrumental in placating the negation of mortality as a presence, for staving off the contextual oppression of spirit. The antidote being offset impressions, encounters, resonance, community - balancing the hovering darkness of persistent waste, loss, brutality and the banal. The odd sequencing of apparently disparate phenomena suggesting unfounded conclusions conceded territory to the nymphs who frequent the municipal swimming holes of Austin. The tenuous psychological shift between first- and third-person perspective visitations within the haze of grief could be supplanted by precise coincidental visitations by the normal fellow on break, or the life guard, whose role in the drama is obvious. Life is worth saving, and the application of salvation in the controlled environment of a public pool is a technical, practical operation. The logistics of life guard life unfolded throughout the sessions, for exercise, for entertainment, for socializing, available to the people of Austin, a city susceptible to savage summer temperatures. Through the art lens, the visual scenario connected Texas beyond Seurat or Monet, to ancient animal Man, to behavior pre-dating art beyond collective memory into a fossilizing record, estimated in the dioramas of the LA Natural History Museum. Water is Life. Perhaps science is right both ways. Humans emerged from water. We return to it. We are made of it and in it.

“Doug and I, New Mexico -2005”

"A Prayer for Clean Water" Small Print Folio*

2005

David, Doug and I for some reason drove the van to a park outside Flagstaff on a ceremony run. We entered a piney woods through which a trail meandered. Not too far along, we came across a strange little pond, more a sinkhole filled with rainwater, or maybe another invisible source. The scene was primordial. The murky earth-hued surface was covered partially by big leafy plants. Doug and I peeled off our clothes and waded in, while David watched like a child from behind a tree, a little freaked out. The bottom was muddy. We kept badgering him to join us. He replied, “No way!” I had (have) an aquatic practice that I performed whenever I could, consisting of movements related to Muay Thai and Kali, mostly, with additional sequences drawing upon Okinawan Hard-Soft Kung Fu, T’ai Chi and other traditional martial arts systems, integrated with lap swimming, plus a bit of water-based PT and aerobics, for knees, range of motion, focused muscle strengthening. I started my routine - it was refreshing and awesome. I think David started back to the vehicle without us. As far as we could tell, neither Doug nor I experienced any ill effects as a direct result of our unplanned dip. One is hungry after cavorting in liquid.

I have no recollection of my Baptism. I know folks who do, or say so.

"Cape Cod Lake, Sunset - 1984"

"A Prayer for Clean Water" Small Print Folio*

2005

Returning from Israel, after a near-death trans-Atlantic flight caused by an allergic reaction to medicine, the family met me in Boston. The culture shock was extreme. Rather than heading back to West Virginia for the remainder of summer, the idea of which was bleak, I found an opportunity: I would be a YMCA camp counselor on Cape Cod (Hyannis); in a cabin housing inner city kids. Many of our activities occurred in and around the water. We fished, canoed, visited the beach, swam, and so on. Close to the camp there was a mile-wide pond. I made it habitual to swim solo across it and back, even though we were advised to use the buddy system. One could get a cramp. Lightning might strike. I wasn’t too rigorous about doing the length completely. The exercise itself felt worthwhile enough. The awareness of breathing. Developing a long-distance stroke. Modulating pace. These were physical and internal matters, more or less. The consciousness of temperature, of the water, of my body, of the air. The effective difference between sunny and cloudy weather. To a degree “feelings” of significant variety merged into a spectrum of sensation, entwined with the impulsive. Fear. Bliss. Relief. Satisfaction. What is meant by “well-being,” as prospectus for a complex of emotional, corporeal, psychic states conjoined to one of the elements - water. Thinking of the “depths,” which exist beyond the level one’s feet can touch the bottom. The place of suspension, where one is not just a land-based mammal. The air-born correlate is flight.

"Floating in the Dead Sea (Israel, 1984)"

"A Prayer for Clean Water" Small Print Folio*

2005

In the Dead Sea, buoyed by the salt in the water, I lay on my back and floated, left hand in the air, to protect the bandage on my middle finger. Moving a big round hundred pound stone from a Roman wall, the last obtrusion in her perfect archeological inset square in the land, for the nice French lady, I tripped on a string marking the edge and heaved the rock up the side of a mound of loose dirt then grabbed the corner to steady myself. The stone rolled back down the embankment and crushed the tip of the middle finger, even though I yanked the paw away fast as I could. I staggered to the center of the square, wobbly, woozy, looked down at my digit, which appeared briefly to be undamaged. I think the matronly Frenchwoman called over one of the Sabra dig foremen, Shlomo or Meir, I can’t recall which, they were brothers. He looked at the wounded mit, then in my eyes, then back and squeezed the fingernail between his index and thumb, and I briefly passed out, sunk to the ground. So began a long adventure through Israel to fix it, which involved the Red Star of David soldier medic comedians, who laughed at the wound, then put a gooey ointment that became gluey concrete in the gauze bandage wrapped around it. Pulsating, swelling, infected. I was supposed to change it and reapply it in a few hours. Oh my God. Someone took a picture. One of the most painful things I’ve ever done. Pulling at the nail. Then one of the principles on the project advised me to take a bus to the medical center in Tel Aviv, or I might lose the finger/hand/arm/die. The nine-hour ride bouncing around in the front row seat, ready in case a terrorist jumped aboard to blow us up or gun us down. Israel was at war with Lebanon, Beirut only 60 kilometers from Capernaum. Then, instead, the most beautiful girl, climbs the steps and gracefully takes the seat across from mine, backlit by the light by the driver cabin, curly Sabra sun-kissed blonde sepia hair to her shoulders, blue eyes, a color to her flesh unlike any before or since, so tall, a tube top and tiny denim shorts, greek sandals, rings on her long lovely toes and fingers, full lips, the half-smile at my prolonged, delirious study of her magnificent features, each more wondrous than the last, I was nineteen or twenty, I guess, I wanted to cry, but I could only awkwardly stare, dumbfounded, partly because the pain enormous, consuming, incalculable, my broken digit now three times normal size, full of blood and pus. The halo, white glow blurring contours of her extent, better than any movie or dream. When she stood to leave I rushed/stumbled after her, called to her, stuttered a question, “Do you know where the hospital is?” It was just a few steps away. Then: “You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Do you have a boyfriend?” She: “Yes, but he’s British. Here’s my number. Call me.” The surgery. The follow-up. Re-infection. Hadassah in Jerusalem. The Chagall windows. The confrontation in the market. The rest of the story of how I almost converted, became a Jew. Floating on my back in the Dead Sea. The allergic reaction on the trip back to the States, thirty thousand feet above the Atlantic, out of Zurich. The Doctor: “Give him water or juice and an extra blanket. There’s nothing else to do.” (He will live or die.)

“Girl & Iguana, New Mexico - 2001”

Will was six months old. I traveled with him to Myrtle Beach for a few days with my father, who could not imagine a journey with an infant without the mother. He photographed me introducing my son, his grandson, to the ocean. Back then, the pictures were only film, and Dad had a very good NIKON camera. His portraits of us, documenting the ceremony, are still a shock to revisit. My long locks unkept. Newly sober, very skinny. A tee shirt and cut off white scrubs. The look on the child’s face. He is a Pisces, too. Water baby, in the sun, on the shore, in the shallows. The smells and sounds of the beach. What did he know of the uncertainty into which he had been born?

"Will and I at Myrtle Beach, SC - 1992 (Photo: WD McLean)

"A Prayer for Clean Water"

Small Print Folio*

2005

*The APFCW Small Print Folio was presented on whitewashed grids in the first phase of the installation cycle. Each image was output on 8.5 x 11" EPSON (satin) archival paper. These were affixed to the structure by clips to copper wire strung between wood screws at regular intervals.

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“American Artist”

Mixed media on canvas (48” x 36”) with copper stripping, washers and screws); installation view, “A Prayer for Clean Water” [Painted 1985-6; presentation at St. Edward’s University Fine Arts Gallery (Austin, TX - 2005)]