You move effortlessly between very different contexts, without adhering to rigid categories. In this constant interaction with vastly different worlds, is there an anecdote, positive or negative, amusing or uncomfortable, that left a strong impression on you and that you’d be willing to share?
I had a situation for a few years where I thought someone had put a hex or spell on me using birds. Which evidently is now hopefully over. Yet I still don’t understand. I was leaving my apartment in England for months at a time to go live elsewhere, and four times in a row, I’d return to something bird-related to greet me home. Firstly, it was a bird skeleton in the walkway to my front door. No feathers, delicate, all bone. Then the second time, I found a dead bird in the closed log burner. It must have fallen down the chimney and got me suspicious of any connection to the first skeleton from before. Third time, I thought I may have lost my mind. I got home, arriving with the wonder if any dead birds would be waiting. None to be found at first glance. Stress over. But then I started noticing bird excretion all over the flat. On the kitchen side, the sofa, the table, the bed. Not tonnes, but little droppings. Say 20 in total. But no birds to be found and the doors/windows had definitely been locked. After about an hour of wondering if I was hallucinating, I made some phone calls, and it turned out that it could have been a swallow, which may have come in under the old wooden entrance door. Possibly sussing out if it could turn my apartment into its nest. Fourth time, I couldn’t believe what was going on. I got back, and no dead birds, no bird shit. Instead, a thin layer of black soot over everything. I live in a small space, so when I say everything, the soot didn’t need to travel far in order to cover the whole place. Anyway, again, I’m confused, wondering how this could be bird-related. And as I look at the log burner, with my memory jogged of the bird found there previously, I see a living sparrow sitting behind the glass, looking at me. And the small air vent open. I guessed the soot was from the panic of flapping wings. Must have fallen down the chimney again. To cut a longer story short, I slid open the windows of my flat, then opened the door of the log burner. The small sparrow flew around for a bit, acted like it didn’t want to leave, despite the windows being open, and then eventually did fly away. And thankfully this was the end to bird drama until… Until around a year or so later, I was living in Paris and having a bit of a rough time in my personal life. One morning I awoke from a dream where a black bird was pecking away at a dead white bird. I sort of woke up, shook it off, but the image stayed with me. So I decided to go for a walk, as I often did to clear my head. And as I’m strolling down the street, wondering to myself if I should just throw in the towel and leave Paris for good, I then see in real life a black crow pecking away at a dead white bird in the road for breakfast, right in front of me. I quickly reached into my pocket for my camera and got a photo or two. I soon after left Paris and made the photograph into a platinum palladium print with a carved frame, which was shown recently in London.