I have a bunch of it in the fridge. It's the size of a small Labrador. That seems to be the way they sell it here. The old woman at the Sunday market had twinkly eyes and an apron like my grandma used to wear, so I didn't like to tell her it was too much. Consequently, I've spent an hour and a half cataloguing ideas for how it might be deployed.
This isn't about watercress, though. Or twinkly-eyed Portuguese farmers. It's about displacement activities. I talk about my favourite all the time – sorting the contents of my sock drawer into alphabetical order. Don't knock it – it can be very helpful in an emergency.
Obviously the spice rack is a good one too. Try alphabetising it first, then see if you prefer it arranged by cuisine. Or colour. Other obvious candidates are ironing (urgh) and cleaning the oven (I don't have one). So I am considering trying to reorder the grains of sand on the beach into an ombre pattern. I have yet to decide whether to go dark to light from the shoreline or the other way round. Hey, it didn't do Andy Goldsworthy any harm.
I have built this ridiculous fortress around one tube of paint. Except that it isn’t just one tube. It's my mum's beautiful pastels. It's all my printing inks. My watercolours. My cold wax. My gold leaf. My charcoal. My watercolour pencils. My oils. My inappropriately large collection of paper from Japan, hand-pulped by generations of master craftsmen using water collected at dawn from a sacred mountain stream. My paper from Temu. My Belgian canvas boards (because Belgian canvas boards are the absolute pinnacle. Apparently)
Displacement is the whole reason that Studio Atlantic exists. That took care of a good three months of procrastination without complaint. Every essay written, then completely rewritten from scratch when I realised I had leaned in too heavily on my LLM, and I suddenly saw my borrowed competence and false smoothness for what they were.
I am magnificent at preparation. I can clean brushes beautifully. Rearrange charcoal. Spend an hour researching the properties of cold wax at 17c with a stiff Atlantic breeze blowing through the open door. I can read about abstraction. I can think about abstraction. I can even, if I put my mind to it, think about reading about abstraction.
My knotty-pated friend tells me that my fear is understandable. That I've spent years getting very good at one thing, and mixed media offers me the chance to be immediately, publicly, extremely bad at something. And all in the comfort of my own home. Of course you'd rather iron, he says.
I am going to start with charcoal. Basically a burnt stick of little consequence and no skin in the game. And some of the 'stuff' I have acquired from Temu as a consequence of long winter nights of mindless scrolling.
The gold leaf and the Belgian boards will stay at the very back. I am not quite ready to tackle the "and then I'll be worthy" tier. It is the tier that keeps my socks alphabetised, and nobody wants a mismatched sock drawer.
I'm not so worried about the public bit. It's myself I don't want to disappoint. My eyes are thirty years ahead of my hand, you see. I don't think I have thirty years in me for them to catch up. I remember the bliss of an untrained eye and not yet being able to see my own shortcomings. I had it when I first started making photographs. The joy of not knowing any better.
And now I've run out of words. There are no more excuses.
I'll be disappointed. There's absolutely no version of this where I'm not.
Watercress, pea & mint soup and other hopeless endeavours.
