When I was approached and asked if I’d like to take part in this project I knew nothing of Le Roman du Lievre. I decided to undertake no research in advance of receiving my copy of the text. I had an expectation of what would arrive through the post both in terms of content and format, but neither was really what I’d expected. On the day I received my copy of the text, my wife brought it to me in bed before she left for work that day. I unwrapped the parcel and read the text from start to finish alone. It made me cry. I do not cry easily, and I can’t remember crying after reading a text before. My response surprised me. I have not read the text again. I have done nothing to the book at all. It has been kept wrapped in the paper in which it was sent to me and I am returning it as such. I am aware that it may seem that I am not undertaking this project as was initially requested, but there are reasons for my approach. I very rarely write notes in books. I feel it is in some way disrespectful. I treat texts much in the way that I treat images – as objects. If I am researching a particular text, I write notes in a notebook and place annotated bookmarks where relevant. Generally, I only undertake book-based research when preparing written papers. My initial response to this text affected the way I dealt with this project. I had intended to follow the instructions and write notes in the book, but after reading the text this seemed inappropriate. Without wishing to sound a bit flaky, I wanted to keep my response holistic. It felt wrong to mark sections and point out areas of interest. The text had such an effect on me, that I decided that it should be treated as a whole. I did not want to analyse it to the point where I began to pick holes in it (which I am prone to doing). I have not reread it, but decided to work from what I remember. So over the weeks I have thought a lot about what I’d read. I avoided the temptation to use the internet as a research method. I kept reminding myself that this text was little to do with hares and not to fall back on my one brief encounter with a hare as the basis for this project.(i) I can’t (and don’t really want to try) to put into words explicitly why this text had such an affect on me. It is an optimistic text, it is liberating in it’s message yet also sobering. I thought about different things over the subsequent months that I could make; paintings, drawings, video, photographs, a cover for the book even. None of this seemed right, it seems arbitrary. This text deals with such heavyweight ideas that a few noodlings in the studio seems ridiculous. These days I try not to make big claims for what my work deals with. Some things seem too much to tackle, maybe it’s unambitious? I don’t know. (ii) I was unsure how to proceed, so one day I decided to go out. I got in the car and set off. It was a weekday, late morning. I had no idea where I was going. I don’t do this kind of thing very often, in fact, as far as I remember, not since I passed my driving test seventeen years ago. I spend half my life stuck in London traffic, car journeys are rarely enjoyable these days. On this day I took the most direct route out of town. I drove south out of East London down the A12 then onto the A2 westbound. The extreme industrialisation of where I live rapidly gives way to suburban housing and London quickly seems to exist only in small pockets. Driving in this direction is surprising. You can move and cover a distance fairly quickly. After about an hour of this I left the main road. I had no idea where I was heading. I was trying to find somewhere remote. I had thought of following the signs for Dover but I didn’t want sea views, border police and cross-channel ferries. Instead I just headed for randomly chosen place names. I was in Kent. I drove along dual carriageways, which became B-roads and then single-track lanes. It got very quiet. The sun was out. I saw very few people. After a while I realised I hadn’t seen anyone for about 15 minutes and I saw a gap in some trees leading into a dense wooded area. I drove the car off the road, into the woods, parked, and switched off the engine. I thought about the text. I was worried I was trespassing and would be confronted. It was very quiet; no cars went past nor any people. I thought about the text. I waited for an epiphany. None came. I knew it wouldn’t. I took a few pictures from the driver’s seat. I thought about the relationship between my car, myself, and the woods. I thought about where I lived. I thought about paradise, expectation, reality, moving through space and existing inside a body. Nobody came past. I took my satellite navigation from the glove box and entered a new favourite location. I selected ‘choose current GPS location as a new favourite’. I named it ‘Place’. I didn’t know what else to do. I ate a banana. Nobody came past. I started the engine and left. Not until ten minutes or more did I see anyone else. A car passed and then up ahead I saw a horse drawn cart coming towards me down the road. (iii) I stopped the car on the side of the road to let it pass. The cart was being driven by a young woman. She was sat on a bench seat flanked by two children under ten years old wearing safety helmets. The horse was a small carthorse, like a small shire horse. There were two dogs freely running alongside the cart, they seemed to be smiling. I thought about the text.



(i) There is a friend of a friend from my hometown Manchester who I don’t know well, but I’ve been told that she has a big interest in hares and had always wanted to study them professionally. I was at her house one time for a New Year’s Eve party. I had no idea she actually had a hare, I didn’t think they were really kept as pets. At the party, she had the hare in a cage under the kitchen table. I couldn’t see it for all the straw, but a friend told me that it was sick. It had some form of muscle wasting disease maybe as a result of being confined and not allowed to run around. The hare died not long after this party. Another friend, who is the king of bad humour, has subsequently always referred to this house as Hare Auschwitz.



(ii) In one of my first tutoring roles on an undergraduate course, I spoke to a student who had a series of small, scrappy lumps of clay on his desk. I asked him what he was up to. He told me that for the last two weeks he had been trying to make a sculpture that represented infinity. He told me that though he wasn’t quite there yet, he thought he would get there soon



(iii) I’m not making this up.