Liminality

You’ve only had glimpses of him till now. Striding across the back field. Slipping out of the lecture hall. And then the other day standing lean against a stack of easels, filling his mouth with Sugar Puffs, milky-lipped but beautiful.

So today is feast day. The long warm shock of him, legs stretched out towards you. Close enough to touch, to imagine the licorice tang of his breath. To the left of you sits Chang with his little green notebook, to his left Babette in ripped tights, black-painted lips, a half-empty refuse sack scrunched between her knees. Your canvas is tilted against the wall behind you, woefully unfinished, paint-side facing the brickwork like a blush, a trembling confession.

Jon Devlin is ready, his jacket hung neatly over the back of his chair. The Jon Devlin, who sold a lot of neon art in the Nineties, who told you at your first tutorial that there is something fresh about your paintings, something visceral. That they smack of New Materiality.

Ok, let’s make a start, shall we? Jon Devlin checks his wristwatch, drags a pinkie down the register. So let’s have Jimmy. What do you have for us, my friend?’

Jimmy stands up, a flop of dark hair across one eye, his giant hands dangle at his sides. He steps inside the circle, hovers like a full-sized apparition.

Right, he says, singsong-delicious. You’ve heard that Jimmy is from Cork.

Drawing out a handful of pebbles from his pockets, he lays them one by one in a spiral formation to make an earthwork on the red pocked floor. Like that jetty of rocks you once saw in a book. You wonder if Jimmy’s seen it too. You wonder If he makes spirals like this when he’s all alone. If he smiles in the dark. If you’ve ever crossed his mind.

One foot lifted off the floor, Jimmy wobbles, spreads his arms wide, majestic, evolutionary, then sweeps them into an arc above his head like some ancient winged creature. Like some great Celtic God.

Babette pokes her tongue through a gobbet of gum. She leans forward to inspect Jimmy’s spiral up close, the low cut of her vest, her thickly pencilled eyes almost level with his knees, her cuff-chewed cardigan hanging limply off her shoulder.

‘Anyone?’ says Jon Devlin.

It is mark making, says Chang pointing to the floor, to the spearhead pattern of Jimmy’s rubber tread.

Hmm, says Jon Devlin. Traces of a process, a transition.

Chang scratches a line of wispy characters down the pages of his notebook.

Something you may remember we talked about last time. Liminality. The merging of subject and object. Jon Devlin scratches his beard. What our friend Deleuze calls becoming.

Deleuze. Our friend. And Jimmy’s eyes are sparkling. You’d like his hands on you.

This morning in the cracks of the shower tiles you saw faces ­– noses and slanted eyes. Grinning and winking at you. Like an omen, that this would be the day Jimmy falls at your feet. You tumbled light-headed along the station alleyway, under the thunder of morning trains and out into the rush of traffic, the sky a great palette of white, banana-flesh white, thin smoke, old snow. Past the library, past the smokers on the wall, the Cultural Theory woman fishing in her bag. And up ahead behind the art block mauve clouds like fresh welts rolling in, filling you with the dark, deep thrill of later, this two o’clock convener.

Jon Devlin would like to know more. But Jimmy is still inside his performance, slowly, purposefully, retracing his steps around the spiral and slinking back to his seat. Leaning back, eyes closed, hands clasped behind his head.

OK. Well, thanks, Jimmy. Let’s keep those sketchbooks going, hmm? Capture process, find connections. Maybe people were kind to Jon Devlin too when he first tried neon art.

So. Next up, let’s have Babette.’

Babette pops her gum across her lips, reaches between her legs for her black bag. She pulls out a wire construction adorned with strips of of red yarn, and sends it around the circle.

Chang turns the thing about in his hands and holds it to the light.

‘Valves and ventricles,’ he says, pointing to the tubular protrusions, and passes it to you.

It is a heart. A perfect wire heart. And rattling inside it words scratched on strips of metal.

Nurture. Neglect.

You remember you forgot to call your mum again on Sunday. Are you there, Frankie? It’d be nice to your voice. But you prefer not to think of her too much these days, alone at home and talking to the dogs. And it’s hard to remember a time before Jimmy. Maybe you were only half-alive back then.

Nourish. Need.

Basic needs, higher needs. Different kinds of need, like the Cultural Theory woman said.

Great plops of rain have begun to spatter against the skylight, splintering, wilting, as they hit the wired glass. For an instant you crave a softer, Welsh kind of rain, imagining that later when you step outside there will no four-lane swish of traffic on the A13, no wet brick viaducts and screeching trains. Just the smell of rotten leaves on mushy ground. The damp November logs of home.

Jon Devlin is talking about surface and depth, about affect and intention. He passes Babette’s wire heart to Jimmy. Languid, beautiful, inscrutable Jimmy, who lays it to rest between his knees. You’d like to run your hands along the length of him, become him, know him better than yourself.

Chang is unfolding a tiny drawing from his notebook. His show and tell. Sparing yours until last. Your painting, your trembling confession, still turned to face the wall. You fix your gaze on the floor at Jimmy’s feet, on the spearhead pattern of his rubber tread, thinking puddles of silver and after-rain green, the purples and browns of bracken moor. How later you will spread them across your canvas, these bright and glisky colours of desire.