My Fellow Artists 2

Hello all

Below is a text for a sound piece I've made for the show which will hopefully be installed in the toilet corridor. It's called My Fellow Artists 2 and is the second in an ongoing series of works made for people I'm in group shows with. The first was for Zoe and co's Eclections and if you scroll down once you arrive here, it can be discovered next to a cockerel. Missives cryptic but heartfelt, with no sarcasm intended.

My fellow artists:

My name is David Steans and this statement - no, this request - is addressed to the participants of Morphic Resonance. You have all given me so much - and so freely! - that it pains me to ask of you again. Innumerable gifts and offerings: smiles, words, liquids black and hot. But ask of you again I must. I can't repay you in kind - it  would take a hundred lifetimes to reciprocate these mountains of generosity - but perhaps a few well-chosen words can express my grateful sentiments. So, please, indulge me a capricious daydream and remember that my heart, full of love, feels like it's in the right place.

I wish my legs were the length of ladders, and could stretch and bend like rubber snakes; arms just as long, like endless coils of rope. I would hang myself across the gallery like a giant hammock, calmly and contentedly awaiting the close, thick night. At day's end everybody would pack away their tools and materials, wish their fellow artists a good night, and climb up onto my suspended body. Each and every one of you rest prostate on my torso, close to one another, and sleep the sleep of the safe and innocent. My sunken chest forms a huge bowl which I fill with water. If one of my fellow artists should wake up thirsty they can lap at it like a little cat. Come daybreak, hands with spans of spades softly stroke your hair. Roused, you hear my voice, deep and dark but gentle and measured, whisper "Wake up!"  - upon which clarion call each new day of Morphic Resonance would begin. 

I warrant that when the first rolling sheep, braving laughter and derision to surmount the cattle grid's prison bars, felt as I do. The cattle grids - webs of grey metal that can turn ankle bones to splintered stick-rock candy and flock to frieze - were not overcome through hesitancy or petulant disbelief!  The rolling sheep belongs to me as a mascot to its team and by rights should belong to you too.