You know when you chew on something, and it leaves an aftertaste that you only recognise afterwards…

Anyway, as usual I’ve retraced, unpicked, put it back together, jiggled it a bit, and new or further meaning has revealed itself. So I have a little bit more to add. I guess the first post wasn’t enough for today.

I was thinking about how, when asked to reflect on what “kindness is like…”, so many of us took something which, in many respects, is quite abstract and described it through sensory or embodied experiences. There were existential and relational reflections too, but what interests me is how often we reach for something tangible, physical or experienced through the body to describe something felt in the body.

A hug. A cup of tea. A warm blanket on a cold night. Breaking bread with a stranger. Listening. Smiling. Nourishment. A warm embrace.

It’s like some things are easier to recognise through how they feel than through how we define them.

Perhaps that is what I found so interesting about the exercise. None of this is necessarily new to me. The limitations of language, and the idea that the body might contain forms of knowledge that are difficult to articulate, are already central to my practice. But it brought me back to something I keep circling: how do we give the body a material language? Can making approach something that words can’t?

I don’t mean simply using materials to represent an abstract idea, although that can be fun. I’m interested in whether something might actually become known through making. Perhaps bodily knowledge — the things we carry but cannot necessarily articulate — can be encountered through material, action and repetition. And perhaps what remains afterwards carries some trace of that encounter.

A record of knowing? Not knowing? Remembering? Forgetting?

I don’t know yet.