Bella Syszkowska A Word of Warning to Those in Search of the Miraculous |
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Bas Jan Ader has remained a myth and though a thousand travellers have searched for the miraculous answer to his riddle, he is still little more than a figure on the sea’s edge, resolutely looking away. We have riffled through his widow’s drawers, looking for him, and though there is stuff, lots of stuff. A mountain of bits and bobs, rats even. He remains pointedly at the bottom of the ocean, a strange scrapbook of a man. Like the boy who fell over Niagara Falls, Ader has become a pop cultural reference point in the Reader’s Digest of Art. There is very little, almost nothing to add to his pages. To begin with you will need a glass of water, nearly full on which to sip at intervals throughout the following. (Sip) Ader fell. He fell from branches. He fell off his bike. He fell sideways and backwards and forwards. His last was to fall off the radar when crossing the Atlantic in his final act as an artist, ‘In Search of the Miraculous’. It is clear that it was never the fall that was truly important but that millisecond, at the point of which ‘he let go of everything he had been holding onto’1, that fraction of a moment at which he succumbed to gravity and floated eternally in conscious oblivion, before hitting the ground. It is a beautifully subtle moment to watch. (Sip) I found Ader’s story haunting and catalogued it away with some others; Charles Stephens, daredevil of Niagara falls. Also Donald Crowhurst, who on the two hundred and forty third day off his round the world boat race held up his arms, succumbed to madness and jumped overboard clutching the boat’s clock. There is a very definite obligation for the romantic to follow in Ader’s wake and try to capture this grand but elusive moment. Each time I recalled these figures I felt the need to jump up and run screaming after them like a crazed fan, desperately wanting their collective myths to combine with my own. Which decidedly is not. Tragic. Or Heroic. And though I schemed to come up with my own final act, it was never, quite, a bit too, just never really appropriate. There was a personal lack of bravery and organisational skills on my part, which would have been vital to carry out and plan such an event.
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(Sip) So to excuse any others and myself who may have experienced the personal tragedy of this failure, (to not only fail in the act but also fail to act on the act) I discovered there is a clear 243 reasons not to go to sea. (Sip) To avoid this watery tick-tock, to pull against this duty is a denial of a most sublime experience. Imagine the waves crashing over onto the deck, the torn sails, your fingers raw, and the rope slipping, the delight and the pure sense of your own existence and oh so much more powerful, comprehending the enduring myth that you will become. But consider that tearful moment of panic when you realise that you may never win the race and the only rational thing to do is to take your place on the ocean floor with the boat’s clock. Consider also, your loved one crying from the pier ‘Please don’t leave me’. It’s hard to resist the romance, the tragedy, the heroism, and your duty! (Sip, don’t drown)
1Rene Daalder, Director, Here is Always Somewhere Else, The Disappearance of Bas Jan Ader, 2008. bella_szy@hotmail.com
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