A conversation, in the style of badminton
If you’ve been with me a little while, you’d know that I work in the arts. And when you work in the arts, sometimes you…get sick of art. Ha.
Last weekend I went to a performance titled “Across a Small Distance”, a work made my dear friend Shaw En with her collaborator Jevon Chandra. They built a beautiful, moving story…told almost entirely in badminton. It was a game, a sport, a conversation. It’s about a meeting and separation, beginning and end, and what we do with and in the distance between.
Sitting on the concrete floor, watching Shaw wrestle with fabric, I was reminded why I wanted so much to be around art. Looking at art reminds me of reading. In fact, when I look at art I am often reading, not looking. Reading expressions, reading metaphors, reading colours and light and shadow, lines and symmetry, reading contexts. Sometimes they come in chapters: editions, a series, iterations, work-in-progress. Each one a new exploration with familiar rhythm.
I couldn’t let this work vacate my memory. I had to write it a chapter, an affidavit of a reading that took place September 11, 2021. It won’t come close to being as poetic as what I witnessed, but it is, I hope, a fair photograph. Congratulations Shaw. Here’s to many more chapters.
A Conversation, in the Style of Badminton
from “Across a Small Distance” – 11 September 2021
Play a game with me. You may call it a sport, or a conversation. We can decide later if it makes a difference.
The sun is high behind me. We hung the net, one designed to contain not obstruct. A receptacle flows light and easy between us, held high on its ends by deadweights, ready to catch our game pieces. Let’s play. My serve.
The shuttlecock floats in the air, soaring, dipping. It casts a shadow so bold and deceiving my eyes dart and wander away. I bow and I arch, contorting to return your serve. Should it matter if I miss the shuttle? The reserve sways before me: if it catches our errors neither of us must lose. No, wait a minute, if we wanted a competition we would have drawn the court lines. The point was to keep a rhythm, not to blindly retort. I knew that. Was I playing to win? Was I listening only to reply? I swerve, the air hiss. I miss.
I serve you another. And another. Shuttles collect and mount in our reserve. Some were lost beyond, swept under our vision. Never mind that, I say as I pick up a new shuttle, its feathers strong and crisp. Plenty more pool around us, waiting for their turn. Your serve now. I step forward and jump in reverse; the game pulling us a little further apart with a new variable to our distance, elevation, movement, the likes. This too keeps our novelty. But the interspace expands with each game. Each minute, each return of your serve, you move closer to the horizon, to a place beyond my line of sight. Time swells. Time becomes our greatest distance.
What to do now? The game has ended (who called it?). I suppose you no longer have a reason to be here. Nor I. Without the opponent before me I am forced to look at my surroundings. Our shuttles – worn and tired, or captured inside our reserve, nowhere to be reached. This is all that is left of you, of our little game: a reserve of lost things, a cache of failed reciprocity. Show me what you have, I said, show me what you have trapped inside you, show me what we lost, show me what went wrong. I tug on its ends, prod its belly. I rock the cradle and with each swing it cries a letter, a phrase. Writings on the wall that grows longer and clearer: Tuesday morning, it says, and I grow frantic; leaping from one end to the other to shuffle our pieces, extracting them for reason. Another: two loaves of bread, kettle whistling. I stop and let out a breath, gazing now at an ultrasound, pulsing with each movement I make. Was it an illness? It is possible I am looking at the inevitable death of newness; things once cherished that became routine and expected. If we had tried, could it have been new life? The birth of a humble adventure; exercises in domesticity. Maybe. Either way it is history.
Now I am surrounded by shuttles. Scattered, discarded – a gallery view of an open heart surgery. I dive underneath and swim the margins, sweeping, digging, excavating abandoned land until my hands are coated in dirt. Looking for reason and finding none I try to plead, breathing in the fabric of our reserve. A stroke of my cheek, a brush of my hand tracing its seams. Show me, tell me. I lie in its shelter, breathing slow, breathing infinity. I reach a finger for a gentle stroke across its belly. If you won’t give me reason give me empathy, or pity. Anything.
A receptacle, flowing light and easy over me. Whether illness or birth it stands between me and a life after, keeping me hostage. I hold out my hand, stroking its seams. Tuesday morning, two loaves of bread, kettle whistling. Breathing slowly, breathing infinity, warm tears on the highs of my cheek. The game has ended. The game has ended, and so must I.
I am releasing you from duty. Thank you for your patience, I apologise for the delay. Here, your well-earned freedom: I stumble to my feet and trudge to your ends, pulling aside your deadweights. Nothing to weigh you down anymore. Your strings ease and you descend, within my reach now, and I fist your fabric in my hands. I apologise, just a little more, we are almost there. I push and wrestle you to the floor, gathering and locking you out of your form, squeezing out whatever force you had left. I tug on your strings, and you unfurl, wide and majestic as a mainsail. Note to self: You release the tension and it becomes an opening. In the search of lost things you find yourself.
I tip our shuttles upright. Play a game with me, will you? You who can hear me, you who would listen. Look – the sun is high behind me; nothing between us. Just an open distance. Your serve this time.
Play a game with me. You may call it a sport, or a conversation. We can decide later if it makes a difference.
