Through broken glass

Yesterday on my walk along the Thames, as the city dreamt its lockdown dreams, I picked up a piece of broken glass, a remnant of some smashed beer bottle perhaps, its sharp edges softened by slow grinding of endless grains of sand.

Apparently people dream more vividly right now. I heard that on the radio few days back.

In my hand and with the help of sun rays, the glass became a magic crystal that transformed the city into a hallucination that Turner may have had, on a 39th day of a lockdown, should he have had the misfortune of living in London in the year 2020.

I found a green piece of glass too, adding a particularly nice hue to my Turner fantasy. A kind of instagram effect, only in pure analogue. Could even be a haptic image, this vision of a place filtered through a material found right there, one that bears the tactile traces of its shaping, by the very environment we are looking at.

The sun peaked from behind the clouds and it was warm, I could smell the sea that mixed here with fresh waters and for a long while be transported elsewhere, some different beach, far from this metropolis in suspended animation… Maybe to Patrick Bokanowski’s “la plage”.

Here is a little haptic vision clip I wanted to share with you also, filmed simply on my phone, as I played there, captivated by my little crystal. You may be able to spot St. Paul’s cathedral, where Turner found his eternal lockdown.