Ambient Notes #7 (Rock on Top of Another Rock by Fischli/Weiss)

-Hyde Park is very big when it's really hot and crowded and you are dressed in black jeans and a black t-shirt and you walk from Green Park to Kensington Gardens carrying a heavy rucksack.

-On my way I see a child throw a frisbee up in the air near the path where I'm walking. It hits a man and the child laughs and his brother laughs and his mum laughs and then the brothers start shouting 'Incoming!, Incoming! Watch out! Incoming!'. Chaos.

-I'm making a film with Sybella Perry about the rocks but she hasn't arrived yet so I sit in the shade of tree to watch people interacting with the sculpture.

-A man puts his child up on the lower rock and takes a photo on his iPhone.

-A small boy runs up to the rocks and hits them with a stick.

-Two older boys approach the rocks and climb up onto the lower one. Well, one climbs it. The other one is scared and a bit fat.

-The dad comes over and takes pictures of 'his boy' on the rock.

-The fat boy manages to get up, but the dad loses interest and doesn't take a picture.

-The two boys push against the top rock. I imagine the rocks as cynical, but professional, performers. Like, they would really enjoy toppling over and killing the two children, but they 'need the money', it's 'not worth the paperwork', etc.

-The two boys are gone. Another boy gets up on the lower rock. He bounces up and down and shouts, 'Hellooooooo, everybody can seeeee, meeeee! Hello!!!!!' His mother doesn't respond.

-A woman with multiple shopping bags approaches the rocks cautiously, touches the lower one, then immediately loses interest and walks away.

-A man goes past me on wheely-skis, using ski poles to push himself along. He looks at me like, 'What are you looking at?'

-A boy mini-scooters up to the rocks, realises that he cannot mini-scooter the rocks, mini-scooters away.

-A man with his top off, smoking a spliff, approaches the rocks, looks them up and down, then nods at them and raises his eyebrows.

-A weird goose is quite close to me on the grass. It looks cagey. It doesn't even notice the rocks.

-A teenager with a nike t-shirt and a dripping sense of entitlement pushes and hits the lower rock. He cannot believe that it won't move for him.

-A couple smooch on the grass in front of the rocks. Human on top of Another Human next to Rock on Top of Another Rock.

-I laugh out loud when I realise I've written the the word 'smooch'.

-A man holding a pastel coloured straw bag looks at the rocks with barely concealed disdain.

-Some carefree Europeans are playing frisbee behind me and it's making me nervous.

-A mother guides her chubby son up the rocks, helping him climb. At one point she cups his bum cheeks and I have flashback to waiting in the doctors with my mum aged about 11. I was reading one of those cheap women's magazines (like Take a Break, but whatever the equivalent was in the 90s). There was a true confessions section, and in it, a woman wrote about how she masturbated her son for some reason which I now can't remember.

-A man with a very small dog takes a photo of the rocks. The dog looks jealous.

-A man in a purple t-shirt pushes hard at the lower rock. He thinks he is 'getting the measure of them'. Then he makes his wife takes a photo of him on his own with the rocks.

-A couple roller blades past, happily. I think about how I could never be happy whilst roller blading (I don't know it for a fact, but I'm pretty certain). I wonder if it will stop me having fulfilling inter-personal relationships.

-A man lays down next to the rocks, very close, drinking a corona beer and smoking a roll up. He is wearing double denim. He looks warm.

-Two little boys run up to the rocks and throw twigs at it. Some of the twigs hit the smoking man.

-A man walks by in a t-shirt that says 'DO TRIATHLON' on the back. I imagine a very posh woman saying, 'oh please do triathlon, you simply must triathlon while you're here'.