Storm Head

And if every word repeated itself like the hands of a clock? And if every word repeated? If every word repeated like time, the seasons. And what if? They repeated as if it were yesterday, but came back twisted, random, unstable? Spring, summer, autumn, winter, spring, summer, autumn, winter, winter, winter, summer, summer… nothing more is foreseen. Neither compasses, nor windsocks, weather maps, apps, or tide tables. The siren sounded and no one heard. The word turned into the sea long before the hinterland. The siren sounded and no one heard. The storm swallowed the verb and with it speech, warnings, symbols. It’s curious, the expression used to describe the point of greatest intensity of a storm, usually associated with meteorological phenomena like hurricanes, tropical cyclones, or typhoons: storm head. We named it, but didn’t realize.

Restless, anguished – storm head, Kilian Glasner repeats The Great Wave off Kanagawa, homage in pastel and pure pigment. “The drawing of the waves is a kind of deified version of the sea, made by an artist who lived the religious terror of the overwhelming ocean that completely surrounded his country, impresses with the sudden fury of its leap to the sky, with the deep blue of the inside of its curve, with the splash of its crest that spreads a dew of small drops.” The analysis of Hokusai’s work is by Edmond de Goncourt, from the mid-1850s. The drawing of the waves is a kind of deified version of the sea, made by an artist who lived the religious terror of the overwhelming ocean that completely surrounded his country… what if the words came back borrowed with new meanings?

More than 170 years later, two thousand and twenty-one, the house transformed into ashes, pandemic, misgovernment. Kilian isolates himself in the sea. He researches the oscillation of the waters, the mood of the tides. From within, he watches other storms, anxiety, insecurity, distress. No one foresaw: neither compasses, nor windsocks, or weather maps… it is in this scenario that “an essay on the ungovernable” emerges. Before it would have been avoidable, but did anyone listen to the storm? Since then, the Pantanal burned, the tides rose, the mud fell over the coast, and all of us, who deafened in our arrogance, fell together. And “why does the sensation of falling make us uncomfortable? We’ve done nothing but plummet in recent times. Falling, falling, falling. So why are we now bothered by the fall?” Ailton Krenak would ask.

Paulo Kassab Jr.

1. Hokusai, Katsushika. “The Great Wave off Kanagawa.” 19th century, Ukiyo-e, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
2. Krenak, Ailton. Ideias para adiar o fim do mundo. Page 14. Companhia das Letras.