Water On Water 2007

WATER ON WATER

Thomas G. Carpenter Library
University of North Florida
March 2007

WATER ON WATER

“With words-in-freedom we will have: Condensed metaphors. Telegraphic images. Maximum vibrations. Nodes of thought. Closed or open fans of movement. Compressed analogies. Color Balances. Dimensions, weights, measures, and the speed of sensations. The plunge of the essential word into the water of sensibility…”
— Filippo Marinetti, "Futurist Manifesto"

As if arising from out of nowhere or nothing, something about this simple line of language – WATER ON WATER – seemed immediately appropriate for the first installation in 2007. For these three words (or two, since one word – WATER – is repeated) somehow fulfilled the Futurist directive for “words-in-freedom,” and for that desired “[Node] of thought,” for “Compressed analog[y]…, plung[ing]…the essential word [OF WATER] into the WATER of sensibility...” After all, the words of this poem stated concisely and precisely what it was at the very moment that it was stating it: a saying of what was being seen (WATER), a seeing of what was being said (WATER), conjoined by its own literal, prepositional placement on water. The power of this poem was that, in all its isomorphic simplicity, its watery meaning was self-identical with its watery appearance, unequivocal and unambivalent. And if, looking out onto the words on the water one day, someone were to ask (as someone inevitably would), “But what does it mean? What’s it meant to mean?,” all one would have to do is point to the pond, to the thing itself floating on the water, an extended index finger silently directed to those “essential” words, as the succinct, the self-sufficient response, of X equaling X, water equaling water, equaling WATER ON WATER.