In Holland I lived in a large farmhouse for thirty years. For many Monday evening years, a small, max 5, group of people workchopped with my tools in often some kind of tropical hardwood: 'The Wood Club'. I asked no money for that. Instead I asked them to tell me if, for instance, they spotted a tree trunk, like in a meadow. For them this was a great possibility to in turn support me. Tips and advice from all walks of life wandered in. This was worth way more than money could buy. One cut-out ad, for instance, led within a fortnight to the selling of a five-meter sperm whale in oak in which I was only halfway.
People motivated by allegiance can work miracles together. Competitive forces then all work in the same direction instead of against each other.
Something similar has happened in the setup of my exhibition. Digital wars with the machines were fought and finally won, ideas for display were tossed to and fro by the staff of the Courthouse Gallery, rendering it into a virtual dolphin temple and on opening night scores of visitors shared the celebration of the dolphin.
Then, as always after completing an intense time stretch, the sudden absence of pressure threw me. Days filled with the pleasures of showing visitors around looped into verbal repetition and for a while words could not inspire meaning. My solace, though, was dormant in the incredible over a hundred of photographs I took only days before the opening. They also show Dusty clad in a golden refraction of sunlight, the patterns of which are infinitely varied and even more delicately enhance the splendour of the dolphin. Fortune smiles indeed.
Meanwhile at White Strand, the summer circus is in full swing. Ever more boats try to appropriate a take-away Dusty, lure her far away from the swimmers and revolve her in imbecilic runarounds. They mostly flag greed and feature the worst examples of conduct to children imaginable. Truly the dolphin brings out the best, but regrettably, also the worst in people. Smothering memories of the Dingle disaster come to mind.
And above all this hovers the arrogance of the German Jumbo who sinisterly states her philosophy on her car registration: ME. The question 'what can we learn from a dead whale' to expose the scientific sophism for killing whales translates at White Strand into 'what can you learn from a dolphin out of a boat'.
Someone had tied two bottles together with a string. Dusty loves them to be thrown far away so she can fetch them. Not my favourite game and slightly embarrassing to see a character of such original intelligence degrade herself to a servile repetition ritual. So be it. The farthest I can throw is by holding the string in the middle between the bottles, spin them above the water and use the centrifugal force to sling them away. When I twirl them around, Dusty follows them with her eyes and when I let go she directly swims in the same direction. Apparently she can see above the water when she's under the surface. This may not seem to be a revelation, until you go down and look up yourself. Then you will notice that you can only see what is straight above you and that every divergence bounces on the rocking reflections of the subface. Ergo, Dusty has a rather more extended eyesight than we have.
To dare one supposition further. Oftentimes way before I go into the water there is no sign of her, but when I go in suddenly she's there as if she has been waiting. This suggests that from under water she can keep an eye on what is happening above the water. But to see across a distance the sight line would surely bounce against the subface as the angle of incidence is too small. Therefore one could venture that she uses the light deflection of a wave to aim her vision.
Also when such an observation cannot be substantiated by hard evidence it is way more inspiring in tapping the mind of the dolphin than the 'research' our motorised 'dolphinologist' claims to exercise from a round-trip boat.
I will keep scrutinising boater abuse. This ain't over till the fat lady sinks.
Maybe, and only for a little while, the Courthouse Gallery will do justice to the spirit of the dolphin, will be a haven where imagination is weightless, a dolphin to moor your sorrows. And to those self-appointed guardians who think they mean well by advocating sanctions against swimming with dolphins I can only say: 'Ban the boats, ban the fathermocking boats instead!’