for Bas Jan Ader (1942–1975)
‘because gravity overpowers me’
Things tilt,
fall
over and we
do: stasis a moment
before the forwards-
jolt.
In a slippery-shingled world
gravity became your ludic conspirator:
your avant heavy with visions
of afterwards.
Your early work
charts falls: ‘Broken Fall (organic)’ from a bike
into an Amsterdam canal;
‘Broken Fall’ into a trestle;
from a chair perched
on the roof, becoming
again the bundle your mother
threw to make
an impossible escape. ‘Fall I’
Los Angeles 1970
can neither forget nor recall
Winschoten 1944.
For you at two
your father’s execution
meant only abandonment.
Resistance, courage, harbouring
the persecuted: ideas beyond
the world of your days.
The words of your work collect
a toddler’s small syllables:
PLEASE DON’T LEAVE ME
Later, a film so stark
(then a postcard, another
film, a photo)
that unstopped tears
collect all tears:
I’m too sad to tell you:
testimony of one who saw
but could not phrase:
particles of innocent witness.
And learning through this
grief’s isolation
and the falling of all art:
thoughts unsaid
then forgotten
At the end
in Search of the Miraculaous:
a lonely voyage to
break a-
cross
the Atlantic
fall into the vanishing point
no roof, windows
tilt, no earth
all
tilt: the sea’s windows
opening to the miraculous.
(Note: Dutch-born conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader disappeared at sea during
a solo voyage and artwork called ‘In Search for the Miraculous’.)