of RAW COLOUR

Heidi Gustafson's Book of Earth

I have written a bit about Heidi Gustafson who introduced me to biogenic ochre under a stormy silver sky on farm-cut red trenches, the hem of her coat and the inside of her arms brightening yellowy-orange in the wind— a moment filmed for the documentary film, The Colour of Ink. This same Heidi Gustafson who shared a sip of some fiery drink from a flask with my cousin Roma Lake, who wrote a book about her garden, on the way to a Mexican Restaurant after the workshop in the rain where I met the geologist that works for the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Heidi Gustafson who sent me to the hills of Oakland to find a thing I did not know I was looking for, where I came to love the fuzzy yellow snowballs of the acacia blossom and found a soft rock that felt like my own and a gift from the oak trees. Heidi Gustafson who sent me a still dreaming piece of vivianite in the mail that I let sit on my wrist when I was trapped in the COVID hotel in Queens, and then later, that I ground into kind of makeup for my trans non-binary alien teenager to try, to try and toget the two of us to talk through what the portal of makeup can be. Heidi Gustafson whose dreams have rewired me and all of the people she has infected with her feeling kind of thinking. The Heidi Gustafson who runs Early Futures who couldn’t be more famous in my network as whisperer / channeller/ protector / esoteric medicinal/ dirt-spirit translator/ magnet for the iron rainbow, or in short, one the world’s most important ochre practitioners.

Anyway she wrote a book called THE BOOK OF EARTH: A Guide to Ochre, Pigment, and Raw Colour. It’s having a moment. Including an art show, talk, and book celebration in LA which I will be at with some of my favourite people. The book is published by Abrams who published, MAKE INK. It’s so good that I almost don’t want to tell you about it. It so good that it opens up slowly like a good wine kind of unfurling with half-remembered tastes and possibilities, hints of things you might call mineral, or desert spicy, or like fallen leaves or other adjectives, evocative but useless against the reality of just sharing this bottle of wine in the right place at the right time with the right food and the right person across from you at the table. It’s so good that I wrote something like this to Heidi in a series of notes:

I have been limiting myself to one chapter a night.

At first I went in with sense of excitement. Like learning. Like curious to compare what I have already learned about her work and words and worlds to this reference book. And there is a thing to learn about the connection between heart and head, shit and sky, blood and beaks, intestines and the magnetic field that enfolds our planet. Hills with their heads chopped off and the colour of Russian mines crying. This is real information. Crucial information. Life in death and death in life kind of information for our moment. Prayers and Pills. And all tucked into a beautiful book of craft, edged by handmade carpentry holders of pigment and secrets. Geometry and number systems and a kind of magical library-puzzle. But then it didn’t feel like that. Not a thinking thing to be delighted in and consumed, though I do sometimes feel it with my hand its glossy letters on fine grainy field. Heavy and beautiful and I feel a bit proud to own it.

But at night in bed it feels not like a collection of knowledge but like it loosens something. Like it is not a dream but a dream-maker. Or a tarot deck. Maybe I understand why people say they are moved by a book. I feel cast out into the world in such a good way. Freed. Raw. That is my review: The Book of Earth has made a space for derangement. I want to lick this book tip of tongue to pulsing battery.

I wanted to send a note to Heidi and I sent some version this letter you are reading now as a kind of interview but I didn’t know how to ask the questions. And I’m not sure that this book wants to be decoded like that. But still. Things rose to the surface.

I finished it last night and slept soundly in its poem.

I woke up with my sketchbook on my bed.

And number 19 in my head.

I told her I want to say happy birthday to the book while recognizing its billion deaths too.

I said I want everyone to read it, feel it, and roll with this gorgeous dirt-ball.

Heidi wrote back:

“no. 19 is where I am today, offering the book back to the rocks…, but I am not sure I need to say more.”

Next Week: A Letter from Los Angeles.

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Yours,

Jason