What joy in the mere act of unrolling a ball of thread! And this joy is very deeply related to the joy of intoxication, just as it is to the joy of creation. We go forward; but in so doing, we not only discover the twists and turns of the cave, but also enjoy the pleasure of discovery against the background of the other, rhythmic bliss of unwinding the thread.
– Walter Benjamin, “Hashish in Marseilles” (1932)
Ariadne’s thread is literally a lifeline; for a writer, to hold the ball of string is to have the beginning and end of something, and all the twists and turns in between: to grasp the story, and know its unfolding.
– Moyra Davey, “Index Cards” (2010)
Ariadne’s Thread
At the height of his prowess, brave prince of Athens Theseus took himself to Crete, where he’d confront the Minotaur, a creature with the body of a man and the head of a bull, in Daedalus’ inscrutable labyrinth at Knossos. Upon his arrival he was given an audience by King Minos; there, in the palace, Princess Ariadne, daughter of Pasiphae and the Cretan King, fell madly in love with our just man of action. The next morning she gave him a sharp sword, as well as a long skein of thread. Thus armed, Theseus was triumphant in slaying the beast and finding his way out of the labyrinth. (Adapted from the annals of Mark Cartwright)
This myth is the starting point for a show about writing, architecture, art, and the way out of self-imposed traps: Miriam Stoney has described internal doubts about her abilities and sense of belonging with humility. The means to escape the cave. For Theseus, on Crete, it was the skein of thread clasped in his left hand. He’d tied the other end to the entrance.
All along, the x-axis
Stoney said that the ‘the real consequences of re-constituting oneself in words’ had to do with the inconsistency, hypocrisy, regret, of reifying the self. This detail had been tormenting her for years.
For Stoney, writing the self is a cause for anxiety, a reminder that authenticity cannot be taken for granted. Some of the things Stoney talks about in All along, the x-axis (2022) concern the very things that make me excited about writing the self. For instance, having the power to write about myself, whilst remaining the one subject about which I do not write.
{The image of Kathy Acker drawing all over original texts like Rorschach blots for her book Pussy, King of the Pirates looms over me. In the introduction to Jack Skelley’s book The Complete Fear of Kathy Acker she is quoted by Amy Gerstler (via Neil Gaiman) as saying: ‘I’ve never liked the idea of originality, and so my whole life I’ve always written by taking other texts, inhabiting them in some way so I can do something with them.’ Kevin Brazil shares a similar quote: ‘I knew I wanted to plagiarise, to see if, rather than trying to integrate the “I,” if you could dis-integrate it and find a more comfortable way of being.’}
roter Faden
{the red thread}
I’m back at Brunette Coleman, swayed by the insistent preoccupation with piecing together a theory, namely that the labyrinth at Knossos is easier to navigate than the one inside one’s mind. To see Miriam Stoney: some works are remarkably violent, unsettling; others push up against a different feeling: three pencil drawings of maize play on Daedalus’ structure at Knossos. But–to borrow a phrase from Moyra Davey–is she opening up her veins?
Yes and no. Stoney uses ready-made materials, sampling provisions from building depots or libraries as a means to understand something about them and something about herself. Much of Eckdaten is instantly categorisable, but there are traces of self-scrutiny and awareness, for instance, when Stoney asks “who should I be?”
Her publication reminds me of a text I wrote a couple of years ago in which I set out to channel the unassailable “I” belonging to Annie Ernaux as a means to talk about the indelible marks of my own experiences. Cleaned Out, the story of twenty-year-old Denise Lesur, recalling her childhood and adolescence, featured the ambiguous but anonymous “I” that would figure in much of the resultant writing, a group of texts trussed by the same, very traditional ambition–i.e., attempting to get “close to the bone”–but also, quite unexpectedly, a rare sense of weightlessness.
For Stoney, the ‘power to write about myself, while I remain the one subject about which I do not write’ is ‘unjust,’ even ‘shameful,’ a little like not going “all out.” I find this an incredibly Theseusian sentiment, this way of talking about sacrifice, slaughtering the self. Looking at the reproduction of Daedalus’ labyrinth, I have the feeling she has to lay everything out in the open.
The artist’s desire for transparency, authenticity, sits in direct opposition to the desire, need, to masquerade. In my mind, she suffers a triple blow: these are ‘the real consequences of re-constituting oneself in words.’ But if I'm honest, the feeling has as much to do with the fact that I'm quick to forget Ariadne’s thread is literally a lifeline.
{Theseus sails away from Crete.}
