Dolphin Address 25
November 19th 2006
About every half year I come to Holland and this trip is coming up soon. I have to, because my bus has to have the compulsory annual safety check and this is only possible in Holland. Let me as swiftly as possible pass by the red tape idiocy of driving over 2000 kilometres and spending the cost of two months living on ferries for a check-up my trusted garage in Lisdoonvarna would be happy to perform in an hour for a handful of tenners, by looking forward to the pleasure of being back for a month.
I long to drink coffee again in the morning with the woman I lived with for two years, before I moved to Ireland 2.5 years ago, my mother. And it has been a year since I saw the vigour of my only daughter contrast against the ocean here. And then, there is my Oldenburg adventure.
On December 16th, at 7 o’clock in the café ‘Ganesha’ at the Schüttingstrasse 5 in Oldenburg I will give a video presentation on ‘Dusty’. Information and tickets can be acquired at Silke and Jay, phonenumbers 0049-441-36162799
and -2198477.
I have tried several ways to organize something similar in Holland, but can not get the right contacts. And it all could be so simple. Just send me an invitation, offer me a reasonable compensation and we could work something out. Basically I want to return to Ireland halfway through January, but I have not yet booked anything definite.
About 25 years ago I gave a lecture about wood in a small castle in Holland. I prepared it for weeks and learned the whole story by heart. I found it to be an ordeal to be like a prefabbed gramophone disc delivering something as accurate as to two decimal places to a gathering of deadly silent people. But fortunately it ended well as, after my sterile story there was room for questions and the last half an hour developed into an enthusiastic exchange of interest. That experience has changed my address and since then I have always had great pleasure speaking to my public in more relaxed situations. Particularly sculpting in public, as I did in the Dutch Dolphinarium of Harderwijk and in the Seal Sanctuary of Pieterburen, was like bringing it all home. When the impact of my mallet lessened I would go to the public barrier and ask if there were any questions. In response to these I would aptly improvise while physically recovering and then resume sculpting.
This time I have something similar in mind. The videos I put on the website this summer show Dusty’s behaviour to me as a film-maker. The camera has been mounted in an underwater housing on a waterwing and thereby integrated into my swimming style as well as possible. Of course Dusty is conscious of this. Sometimes she regards the camera as an intervening element in our relationship, but at other occasions she performs a show before it. In 5 years of swimming with her I have learned to read her body language. As this is mostly visual it is hard to translate into words, particularly as there is no ready made vocabulary available of expressions and references. Also there is no possibility to make a foolproof check of meaning upon her conduct. Much remains a personal interpretation, but how this works out in action I would like to show in footage of her relating to me and to others.
If you see through ‘what and how’ spectacles, you can instinctively access the, sometimes very personal, ‘why’. Often, whatever kind of spectacles, they are just a handicap and you see most if you look for nothing. I have watched these videos dozens of times and still keep on discovering details and connections, which, once spotted, make me wonder why on earth I did not see them before.
As I described in the last edition of ‘Dolphin Address’ you can imagine the dolphin to be a vehicle of your own mind. Like how you steer into water resistance, lead yourself into a slide and an angle with the flattening of your peduncle into a turn, the impact of your fluke like the momentum of a dance. What delicate sense of balance underlies the orbital pectoral finning against the shifting propulsion of the fluke? Just compare this with a car that steers with its back wheels. That is a differential to direct you into details.
Thus also you know, that you can change your body volume with the pressure in your lungs, that at will you can either sink to the deep with a stone in your hand or bubble up with a sizeable fart inside your wetsuit.
Thus you can look through the eyes of a dolphin at yourself and experience the miracle of your own existence in a different dimension. It is all there and you can see it if you want to.
You can reach me at
info@janploeg.nl
Jan Ploeg, Brannockstown, November 19th 2006
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