Film Short of Anish Kapoor, Shooting into the Corner, Mixed media, installed at the Royal Academy, 2009.

Anish Kapoor provides ‘a succession of physical and psychological experiences to draw us into his search for a poetic sculptural language that seems to reach beyond the object’. As Kapoor himself explains: ‘I have often said that I have nothing to say as an artist. Having something to say implies that one is struggling with meaning. The role of the artist is in fact that we don’t know what to say, and it is that not knowing that leads to the work’.

We ended up on the phone again, not talking in that way we do. I suppose I wanted to take you on a virtual tour of the Anish Kapoor exhibition, but I was doubly prevented. Firstly, of course, I’d end up with the kind of ’struggle with meaning’ that Kapoor quietly displaces. It is not about what can be said. His work is all experience, all corporeal. Secondly, and I did trip this wire eventually, there was the gulf between our days, which meant it was unfair of me (or just untraceable?) to give you something of my day. So I too said I had nothing to say, though I hardly think I gave it the kind of positive spin that Kapoor suggests. …but what if we don’t know what to say, and if that not knowing actually leads to us?

Kapoor all began for me when I stuck my head in this pigment filled piece of sandstone, around the time he won the Turner Prize (in 1991). You might want to play on the metaphor of me sticking my head in the sand. But I’d claim it one of the most formative experiences of my life. All alone and all at once I learnt something about voids, pleasure and untapped beliefs. If I stuck my head in the sand back then, it was to detach it and wo/ander in my body framed by this delicately (un)touching aperture. (Is this what I’ve recently recovered, or am in the process of recovering?)

And it all came flooding back as I walked with the springing step of a child at the Royal Academy…

It was like someone’s birthday before even getting through the doors…

A room overflowing with potential… (If the other pieces are Kapoor painting, this is him drawing; a sculptor’s sketch pad)

Pity this one is called ‘Slug‘ – I know how you hate them so…

Almost imperceptible to the eye, this ‘train’ of wax was making its way into the room (funny at the time I didn’t make any association with my recent loss of hearing).

A liberation of pigment…. ‘The drama of Shooting into the Corner takes place in a space set apart, rather like a boxing ring, a ritual arena in which a symbolic act of violence is allowed to occur’.

Yellow: ‘It is as though colour exists as a state of being’

This is when I missed you the most, though I probably could never say why… The piece ‘hints at a future development: this is an object in the state of becoming. We can trace the shape as it grows out of the wall and then, as we stand directly in front of it, it is no longer there; the wall has turned white to light. “The apparent ambiguity that this object presents is central to one of the themes of the show, in which there are various instances of sculptural form that seem fully grounded and yet remain elusive.”‘

So… do we have nothing to say, by way of leading to exactly what we are all about?

[But then, as I write this, you send me someone else's words: 'Because it is very practical, writing becomes a substitute for actually doing' (Monty Don, 25 Oct 2002, The Ivington Diaries), which continues, ' For the past few months it is as though I have been on a dream journey, visiting my own garden at every stage but never actually being there.' ...I can't help thinking how today has been a set of role reversals, complete with your use of referencing. About all I could do for now was mention how I had spotted that (magnificent looking) tome beside your (on your side of the) bed. I remark it's not really a storybook (again the reversal). ...and how strangely, I thought, you didn't seem to agree that perhaps it's best for me NOT to write... ...though, I think there is validity in undoing any divide between writing and life, which is as much a construction as writing itself... and I'm accidentally listening to the Pet Shop Boys' 'Love etc' and, whilst its not the track I was listening to on heavy rotation that time, just their sound transports me back to our proper time in London (and still it comes back to that time for me and yet why - other than for the little body breathing beside me - am I here in London alone again?)... 'When the sun doesn't shine and a boy needs a girl / It’s about getting out of a rut, you need luck / But you’re stuck and you don’t know how, oh.... / You need more / Than the Gerhard Richter hangin’ on your wall...]