Hermit Shelter

Hermit Shelter
Weaving Reflections during the 2020 Lockdown

Hermit Shelter
2020
Markermeer
silk yarn
100 CM x 80 CM

Hermit Shelter 
Weaving reflections

“If the world is woven on the weft of the waters, on what weft are woven the waters?”

During the first covid-lockdown in the spring of 2020 I was weaving on the waters herselves. As I read in a book named Ka apsaras, water, is considered plural and feminine. From the boat who carries my nickname, the Jannie, I watched the horizon. The waters mirror the skies. Inspired by the colourful blankets woven according to the horizons of lake Titiqaqa in the Andes, I started to weave the twofold view daily. The pattern on the blankets show a series of colourful mirroring patterns: the Markermeer waters reflecting the skies with a line in between, the horizon.

Every day I spent at the boat, I wove a horizon. The resulting textile is a record of the 2020 spring lockdown. I recorded the reflections that emerged accordingly and bundled them here loosely into text. Text and textile share a root in ancient Greek, the woven structure of a narrative sprout from it.

The quote is from a book I keep reading and rereading, Ka by Roberto Calasso. In it I find metaphors based on textile, together with bricks, one of the early humanmade ways te create shelter. Bricks and textile strike me as very useful materials to express tensions and tendencies to be felt within and without.

“If the world is woven on the weft of the waters, on what weft are woven the waters?” This question is asked by a female philosopher from the Vedic times, the India of 3000 years ago. Her name is Gargi, she asks this question within the frame of a tournament, the way philosophy was practiced at the time.

The warp is the set of threads that are stretched lengthwise into the loom. The weft is the thread that gets woven sideways into the warp. Exploring the grid being both supportive and supported, Gargi challenges the wise on the understanding of understanding. This is what I gather when the notion of Brahman is discussed, a topic that never seems to cool down; the nature of consciousness.

The loom was a gift from a friend who calls me Jannie. The warp is the horizon on the day I threaded the loom. The weft would be weaving horizons into this set of coloured lines. “It will result in a crazy tartan”, suggested Alex the Scottish painter who lives on the boat. We found ourselves in the beginning of a love relationship and called each other Lockdown Lovers. Now I framed the woven record I think the checked pattern says more about the grid of the loom than about the horizon, but it still is an interesting thought experiment to imagine Scottish horizons from a boat.

In this corner of the world, the Netherlands, the purpose of weaving is not to create shelter. It costs less money to buy clothes than to make them, let alone to weave the fabric. My weave will not be a shelter for my body, neither by way of clothes nor as a tent. It will not be a sail for a boat either.

Consider my weave imperfect. The silk yarn, another collection of leftovers, is too thin for the loom to create a solid surface. It doesn`t tie closer together than a loose mesh. A loose mesh, I read in Ka, is sampad, a metaphor to understand equivalences. In a battle with Death, the understanding that equivalences will not die when he does lead Father Time to victory. I try to feel dismissed to wrap my head around every single thing. In quarantine time I think it is extremely important to occupy myself with the utterly superfluous.

Weaving is one step towards understanding what a grid is and can do. I enjoy running a program for my hands, while both my mind and my body can feel rhythm. To me weaving functions as a gate into the realm of the abstract. I find it interesting the word abstract refers to an idea abstracted from form. I understand this realm to be a source predating any from. Looking Brahman up in the laptop dictionary I find: “the ultimate reality underlying all phenomena in the Hindu scriptures: Brahman is formless but is the birthplace of all forms in visible reality.”

Gargi is known to be dressed in garments of the most beautiful colours, woven by herself. One wonders about Gargi: Whether she weaves as a pastime for thinking or is she thinking as a pastime for weaving.

Choosing between these two answers seems like embracing time as a linear phenomenon to me. This is a comfortable thought for a mortal human being. Or an unsettling thought for the one figuring a way out of the mind, seeing it as a maze. 
Time in the lockdown had a special quality to it, engaging in a love affair. It felt as if we experienced the full parabola of a five-year relationship over the course of three months.

I am looking for a third option. Perhaps she weaves thoughts as she texts while she is thinking textile. I mean the image of a thread, linear like a narrative, can bring comfort exploring the nature of consciousness. If a grid helps as a structure to categorise experiences. I develop an understanding towards the series of Gargi`s questions, using the loom as a support.

She is travelling through time. She finds a way out of the grid. She finds a way to grasp the movement and transcend dualism. I conclude there is no fundamental support. The constant shift of support and being supported is the only constant.

Weaving provides temporary shelter to my mind, as textile provides a shelter ultimately impermanent. I enjoy it as a colourful way to wrap myself in an idea.

A thread, as long as it lasts, is a product of material available in space and time, a testimony of the resources. Apart from slowing down from high speed production and consumption of market economy, weaving provides access to a space where I can take emotions seriously. Craft offers me a way to embody this space and to feel free. I wove a shelter for a hermit in isolation times of a sick earth.

Back home after this capsule relationship I dismantled the spring lockdown loom to frame the record of daily weaves and sent an image to Alex, who still lives on the boat. He says:
“Looks tartan.
Love the colours. Natural.”

I ask:
“Does it resemble in any way your view?
To me only codified.”

He replies:
“Phone Photography will never capture the truth of it. I have a visual memory of this, on and off the loom. Anything made at the boat, leaves its imprint. Yes! this is early code.”