This was supposed to be a life project but its turning out to be tricky to keep it in the forefront of my mind. As with lots of art projects they slip in and out of focus and so has my commitment to this. I have started filling in my sheets again and trying to resist. I can feel the inches coming back on a little and I know its perverse but the thing which makes me want to refocus is seeing others about me who have extra weight. In this country we hear common phrases like " I just don't know how I got like this." " I hate myself for being this fat." and people passify with phrases like " Your not fat your just cuddly." or " There are plenty of people bigger than you are." or say of you " You have lovely hair." which is a sure fire distraction from the issue. I haven't decided if we should hate ourselves for being overweight. Not because it looks bad and might turn others off their dinners but because of the moral obligation to eat our fair share and nothing more. This has made me think of an art experiment, possibly the opposite of the extreme Starvation diet where I ate only rice and porridge. In this new work I would have a big cheap and nasty cake, I would chop it into slices one huge and one just a slither. The tiny bit I would give to someone, maybe my son to eat. Maybe I wouldn't tell him why he was only getting a small piece and I was going to eat every other bit. The other I would plough through myself. Maybe it could be filmed with flash images of the needy, too fast that they don't register on the concious. Maybe this is just striving after novelty again though and I just need to keep on with the mundane, both for the sake of the art, life and the message. I shall ponder on the validity of this one.
