i n d e x                 d r a w i n g                       s c u l p t u r e                     i n s t a l a t i o n                      c v                      c o n t a c t                     l i n k s


e l i z a b e t h  p o r t e r

all that I have

performance/sculpture
Royal College of Art
ash and gold
2012



   




I thought we would be meeting here in this city for thirty - forty years.
Actually I didn’t. I just didn’t imagine anything else was possible at all; that what ever state we were in, our hair grey, fatter, thinner, sober, drunk, that we would have moments, places, where we would meet,
go on meeting until our memories had blurred and misted, until we no longer cared.

 Sometimes you did not come, often you would rush away, but I never thought, never dreamt, that there would be a last time.
That I wouldn’t know it was the last time.

Because you are not here I stepped off the path I was taking.
I’ve had to learn to walk another way, tripping over, falling down, failing, frailing. 
Because you are not here, I can blame you. I feel that your ghost should haunt my hands some how, when I measure, or make, or write.
That I might become deft and sure of what I am doing, where I am going.
Where the beginning is, when to start; where the end, when to finish.
Or I could bring these words into their proper order so that they flow off my dancing fingers,
do not have to be fought for, stumbled over, like swarming insects, escaping from where ever it is I look for them.
They will not be trapped but must be coaxed and tamed, like the Prince’s fox, like Ged’s brindled otak,
over days, years, yet still they have a life of their own, growing into something I could never have foreseen.
Strange, other, creatures.

I still dream some mistake was made,
that I had not recognized your body, your face, you had just been somewhere else.
In New York or Anjuna, riding giraffes, feeding buff coloured pigeons in the park, late home from a party.
Then in that instant after waking, remembering.
For a few seconds, uncertain which life is real.
This one when I turn to look into your face and the next when I see that you are gone
 There are moments in each day when I forget.
Like giving up smoking - sometimes there’s an overwhelming urge to pick a dog-end off the street and light it, even after 20 years.

There are still moments when I think I’ll text you and ask for your help, or tell you that I’m here,
not far from where you are;
 meet me for coffee.



in memory of my brother
Mark