another place

For flowerville, antonia, anton...who likes to look out to the sea.

Through the blue summer evenings, I'll go down the pathways,
I'll let evening breeze bathe my bare forehead.
I'll speak not a thing: I'll think not a thing:
And, I'll go, far, far away, like a gypsy...

We stand here alone. Surrounded by wind, sand, and sea. Grey reflections, flecks of ash in the eye of God. We stand here together, alone. Motionless. Gazing for ever at the distance between us, the space within us.

From 'the consolation of the elemental', The Independent, July 1, 2005:

AG. What is the consolation that we seek into going into the elemental world?
..the rhythm of the ice forming, freezing, melting, breaking, the sense one had that those things have been going on for time out of mind...
When I think of Suffolk I think about hedgerows, trees, plantations, the amazing huge sky over and above this quilted mas;that's a relationship with a place that is qualified by human history. But what's wonderful about the sea is that it is not like that. It's an element which is endless and uninscribed.

the beach: It is also a deep memory of the early times, the sense of sun and wind on the skin. I love the way we regress at the beach...the human perceptual world is limited by a horizon but there is always that human need to imagine what's beyond it. [A place] where they witness that they themselves are part of a field of witnessing.

IM: Another Place seems to suggest the power of collective dreaming. All these figures are facing out to sea. The work has power because they're facing the same direction and thinking the same thing.

AG: I believe it has something to do with the weather being the thing that everything suffers but is also the elemental condition that carries on, and in it there is another form of consolation.

IM: To abandon all hope of progress is a meanness of spirit.