“Willows Diamond”

“The above is *almost* finished — should have rough edges ironed out by at least Monday (2/9/09: it’s finished!). So let’s go ahead and attempt an interpretation. Hucka D., are you my helper again today?”

Hucka D.:

Sure. You’re calling this “Willows Diamond” right? Without any apostrophes. Is it, then, Willow’s Diamond or Willlows’ — plural — Diamond? There are two willows in the picture. Or are there? This is a return of the willow from collage #1 of the series, Benwheeleerworld.

bb;

One of the willows is partially obscured in the collage, though, especially the top. Hidden by the foreground mossman, the one with his (her?) back turned away from us. He seems to perhaps be communicating with the background mossman, who, in contrast, is facing the viewer. He also has a staff; foreground partner doesn’t. The staff’s head is diamond shaped, once more, mirroring all the other diamond related imagery in the collage.

Hucka D.:

I wonder if they’re even shouting at each other? What’s that the background mossman is wearing around his shoulder? Looks like some kind of loose fitting, silver toga or sumtin.

bb:

That is a representation of the Council of 1 who decided not to become the Council of 8 and kick out the lowliest member of their group. This would be, then, SID’s 1st Oz. But it is also the 2nd largest tarn of Seathwaite Fell, also obscured, as it turns out, by the foreground mossman. That is, the tarn, the 2nd largest of the fell itself and which I’ve referred to as Seathwaite Tarn in other places, after the harboring fell.

Hucka D.:

So background mossman here *reveals* what the foreground mossman obscures, huh? You’re doing an excellent job of analyzing the collage so far, btw.

bb:

Thanks. The blurred Council of 1 that the smaller mossman (from our perspective) “wears” was perhaps the last cut object I added to the collage.

Hucka D.:

I wonder if they could be arguing about the formation of the Coucil of 1 itself? Perhaps the foreground mossman didn’t want it to form. He wanted the Council of 9 to become the Council of 8 and kick out the lowliest one instead.

bb:

That would make him the same as [delete name], wouldn’t it?

Hucka D.:

Dunno. Maybe. (pause) The Sprinkling Tarn, the largest of the tarns atop Seathwaite Fell, is also represented in the picture, but more abstractly. We can still see the *trace* of [its prominent] peninsular jut through the diamond that the limbs of the willow or willows make here. That’s, then, their “diamond” represented in the collage’s name itself. That’s the center. Now in earlier iterations of this collages you had the diamond shaped peninsula still present there. It’s about the same size as the diamond the limbs make here. Why was it removed?

bb:

But the image is certainly implied there, despite its absence. I’ll go ahead and take a picture of the peninsula from another collage in the 10×10, namely the 5th from the Oblong series, called “Unexpected Homecoming”. In fact, I believe it’s from the same background picture Hucka D.

2/8/09:

“To continue: It is very difficult to tell, in comparing the two collages, that the same Seathwaite Fell photo is used in both. This is because there’s very little of the photo shared between the two different pictures. In addition, the Seathwaite Fell landscape in Unexpected Homecoming is reversed in respect to the original photo. But one thing is obvious: both emphasize the diamond shape of the peninsular jut of Sprinkling Tarn and also the overall tarn itself, although this is more implied in the newer collage, “Willows Diamond”, since the tarn is not directly shown. The red and blue middle ground, shall we put it, was “cued” on the overall collage, however, through the shape of this tarn. This is a work called “Double Diamond” by [delete name] — that’s how I came across it: in a search for phrase “double diamond”. The top of the central blue “diamond” of this grafted work was cued to the top of the tarn in the base photo. The overall tarn, in this manner, also happened to roughly follow the edges of the painted (drawn?) diamond. So the blue diamond *is* the tarn, symbolically speaking. It fills in for it, in other words. And the diamond shape the two willows make at their center also basically marks the spot of the jut into this tarn — another diamond shape. But, as we’ve already said, the jut has been removed in this final (?) version of the collage.

“Hucka D., I’d also forgotten the fact that we stay focused on Seathwaite Fell, after reaching it in collage #5 of the Oblong series [Unexpected Homecoming], for essentially 10 collages, quite a long stretch. I can see how I needed to talk to S.F. more then than now. Is he still not really wanting to talk Hucka D.?”

Hucka D.:

He’s ready.

bb:

Ok. Great.

SF:

Hi baker b.

bb:

Hi.

SF:

I want to talk about my isolation again. And how I was opened up in 1575 through contact. The Council of 9.

bb:

Ok. Great.

SF:

The Mossman in the foreground is [delete name], true enough. He is about to make an important decision. He’s going to fill in the tarn. The other Mossman is waiting for him to fulfill this task so they can begin to set up the Council of 1 at Seathwaite Tarn, my second largest tarn after Sprinking. The second then becomes all important — the center.

bb:

I did notice that this same Mossman shows up in the Oblong series on one, actually two of those S.F. related collages… *your* collages.

SF:

One and the same. They then attempt to create a microcosm of the whole Lake District on my mountain top, where Lake Grasmere is melded with the spirit of the Seathwaite Tarn, my tarn. Then the island appears. This is the same as the jut.

bb:

I didn’t know that, I don’t think.

SF:

The jut was broke off from the attached shoreline and set free. Free to float in the interior of the tarn. It turns into a monster. Then Grasmere itself is attempted to be recreated. But you know the story to that.

bb:

I know that this re-creation is depicted in “Some Things Were Ill Remembered” from that series. Grasmere was re-created, but crazily, like an M.C. Escher picture of some kind — especially the waterfall one.

SF:

Moire effect.

bb:

It was then [after that collage] that I finally took the focus of the Oblong series away from you [Seathwaite Fell] and onto the Stonethwaite regions again, the focus of the Greenup series. Turns out there were a number of things I’d overlooked when using that region for Greenup collages. I missed, especially, Wet Rock. But then, in Floydadada, you indicated that Wet Rock was yours all along, and that it filled in the needed *center* of you re-created Grasmere. And you even borrowed it from a small megalithic stone circle to the east of you — drew it down through the long, u-shaped Ennerdale valley to you.

SF:

Sent it back the same way. Two in one. Who am I, then?

bb:

Should the Council of 9 had become the Council of 1, SF?

SF:

Tyle is born. Isolation. Sprinkling Tarn filled in.

bb:

But it did not last.

SF:

Didn’t it?

Hucka D. (jumping in): SF says that he’ll continue this another night and for me to mop up.

bb:

That’s fine, of course. In looking again at the collage it’s the willow diamond — or willows’ diamond — that seems more mysterious, perhaps, than the rest of the imagery.

Hucka D.:

Foreground mossman has just removed the jut and is about to fill in the tarn. Where does the jut go, then?

bb:

Well, SF said it was removed and made an island in the Seathwaite Tarn, Hucka D. The diamond in the picture formed by the willows, or willow, is one of absence. Portal?

Hucka D.:

Foreground mossman has just found something baker b.

(to be continued?)