It isn't really fair to my more consistent mail art correspondents, but when I get an envelope from someone new who I have watched from afar, sent to but never had anything back from, or get something from someone who rarely sends that I get mightily excited. DVS falls into the second category so it was particulalry great to get this envelope. I shift it in my hands and think, the stamp on the right, DKULT NY, has a NY Jasper Johns kind of feel. The Minxus Alsace is peeling off the envelope - learn to glue, DVS! I notice the rectangle and the circle of the US mail stamps echoing DVS' stamps. On the other side is another stamp. Is that a Zalopian word or a language I don't know? It feels like
France?
Inside the envelope is 'Neo-concrete for Rebecca Guyver' - ME!
I see a figurative element, beyond the print of pottery fragments. I understand suddenly how much we bring to our reading of any kind of poetry, how an 'interpretation' is obviously specific to the person who reads it, that our contexts inform our reading.
Typed at the top are the words THE CRAB ORCHARD FOCUS. I like the sound and the visual impact of the words but I can't help but see Africa in the patterns, movement and structure. I let my eyes take a walk. They pause, quicken and delight! I wonder briefly what DVS intended and then am in a desert, looking at the unfamilar landscape, walking within this other world, perhaps balancing a water jug on my head, or watching one bounce into the horizon.
Recently my sister asked what we (various family members) thought a particular Talking Heads song meant. I was interested to read what people thought but realised ultimately what I care about is what it means to me, or how it sounds, or how it makes me feel, depending on what I need. I think I feel the same about art, about mail art, about Vispo.
But maybe that's just a cop out, maybe I am simply a philistine. Do you know what neo concrete means? I wasn't sure, so looked it up:
One thing about DVS is how he is equally at home making intellectual mail art as he is doing something altogether different. Both great.
DVS, many thanks for your contribution! It means a lot!
