SARAH DUFFY
It’s Sunday the 18th of March 2018 and I am writing this for you to hear through my future body.
I’m thinking about whether there is a gesture or phrase or a sound that could transport me to another place or time, a thread between where I am now and where I stand before you now, in a month, a year or even 30 years time.
You are my imaginary disembodied audience and we will meet somewhere between pen and paper and the stage. When I eventually stand before you, my body will have undergone significant changes:
My fingernails will have grown 0.1 millimetres a day
My colon cells have regenerated every four days
My skin every 3-4 weeks
My liver cells are replenished every 6 months
And my white blood cells every year.
In ten years time, I will have a whole new skeleton.
We are all subject to wear and tear but neurones can last a lifetime, theoretically even outliving the body if they are transplanted into a new living host. Each type of cell has its own life span and when we die, these cells will die at their own rate; some continuing to survive for several days after the rest of us has shut down.
Recently scientists successfully bioengineered vocal cord cells, implanting the vocal cord tissue into the voice boxes of dead dogs. Incredibly, when air was pushed through them, dog like vocal sounds were produced. A form of resurrection of the dead dog so to speak.
The Dead Object moving around
Around The Dead Object it moves
Wah Wah Wah Wah (Repeats in a descending scale. As it goes lower and lower it grows in intensity, and then an abrupt stop.)
Imagine every door in the house is ajar, letting things in and out that should not be let in or out - simultaneous entrances and exits -something is gliding through, moving through time.
At 16.27 on Sunday 18th March 2018, my bedroom door is ajar. There is steam on the bathroom mirror, my hair is wet and I can still smell the shampoo. I am crouched, half dressed in a sort of foetal position as I scribble in my notebook.
Perhaps my words are like an artefact that can be resurrected and performed by a surrogate, a fuzzy recording on an old tape; all the changes in my body become a kind of modification of the player, with all its aging and decay.