half patterns

About

“…but I consider play to be

A deeper outside thing, a dreamed role-pattern,
As in the division of grace these long August days
Without proof. Open-ended. And before you know
It gets lost in a stream and chatter of typewriters.”

• John Ashbery, Paradoxes and Oxymorons (1981)

This is a piece primarily concerned with notions of play and interplay – a form of game, but also a conversational experiment between somewhat disparate elements. Constantly in a state of flux, half patterns explodes a world of inflections and suggestions that grow, fray and turn in on themselves in shuddering stop-start motion.