Sound of the river

 

by Sabrina Fuller

 

Dear Sonia,

It’s been a while: seven or eight years.

I write to you as ever in my imperfect Spanish: a pleasure for me: its impedance as liberating as its possibilities. You, making allowances, as a Catalan the Spanish language doesn’t correspond to liberation.

I met you by chance one New Year’s Eve in a cosy bar that no longer exists, in a back street in Barcelona. Or maybe not by chance. I think of you often.

Difference – of age, nationality, background, culture, interests, family, the way we were in the world. Correspondence: values and an extraordinarily dark sense of humour. Women friends.

Difference: without hierarchy, without judgement, without explanations.

Difference: without models, without examples, without template, without guides, without safety net, without corresponding to anything, without definition.

Together we navigated the city by night, its people, your friends, my friends, and many strangers.

Curioso: your word for the intriguing. You, always curious: opening possibility: while I, more cautious, seek clues and correspondences.

Night possibility reckless laughing.

Difference: falling, flying, taking the consequences.

The sound of the river by the old mill, deep in the forest. Wild boar in the headlights. The smell and the heat of the wood burning in the hearth.

I am writing this by hand, pen scratching against the paper. But it was by electronic post that I asked, concerned: is everything ok? No, you replied, it’s not. They’ve found a tumour.

Again marked as different, we all knew there wasn’t much time, but you shared what you had left with angry generosity.

Obscured by sediment, does this still correspond to me?

Your ashes drifting in the mountain.

A kiss. I miss you both. Sabrina

 

 

Sabrina Fuller is interested in how groups and individuals respond and react to society’s expectations: how objectification and exclusion from mainstream society can give license to chart other ways of being, and how a classification as Other allows a freedom to develop the language of difference and form unlikely alliances. She works with still and moving image, voice, sound and the written word. She is currently lead artist for the 2018-9 Artquest Lifeboat residency.