What Holds Things Together

A ghost mine rail spike, an ancient Roman nail, and magnetic dust bound for Japan

Korean Figures translation by W.S. Merwin from East Window:

I drove North with a backpack and a rare earth magnet from my son, and met Brian at a hotel above an old bar in the town of Bancroft. We woke up at dawn in the rain and met a geologist and his aging assistant, a former paint chemist, and an artist I met on Instagram who teaches natural colour and makes her own ink. We drove the back roads of the backroads, deeper and deeper into green forest and swamp, finally past twists and turns and rutted roads to a gate with the beginning of a hunting trail, everything leafy and wet. On our right, what looked like deep forest was the ghost of a huge thriving mining town that had turned back into the woods— all wood rotted, stones reused, and nails collected— just new forest now. A little deeper into the track our guide pointed out a beautiful pond, dark and swampy now but once a deep hole dug hundreds of feet into the ground. A ghost mine. A few minutes further and we were out into the open, a little lake, a silvery rainy sky, a huge pile of iron slag pulled out of the mine, now a hill of glittering iron, green and coppery, crystals and mosses and deep underground rocks. With a magnet on this glittering pile, you could find the the most magnetic rocks. Some of them heavy as a piece of iron. And you could hear the sound of the rain on the little lake and our geologist had a lifetime of stories of the science and history and magic of what happens underground. We were all like kids climbing on the pile of underground discoveries, each new rock a treasure. I brought back solid chunks of magnetite. And a bigger bag of ground magnetic dust from the geologist’s workshop. And a vial of wave water collected at sunset. Back in the hostel we listened to Bob Dylan’s COVID album and drank wine and ate pasta and I started cleaning an old rusty railway spike from a railway car that went deep into the mine. In my pocket a few pebbles of fool’s gold.

Back in my studio I ground and and washed and used a magnet to separate the most magnetic particles, filtering them, and letting the heaviest iron sink to the bottom. I clarified and re-ground and tried to use only the blackest, finest most magnetic bits until they were as fine as dust, and mixed these with treegum and water. I tested and re-filtered and tested again until I had something that was worthy of a trip to Japan to become a wall-size calligraphic work.

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And if you watch The Colour of Ink you will see where this story took me, and maybe you will see here and there a rail spike collected along the tracks I jumped barbed wire to get close to, or some other nail that I’ve collected over the years. I love that the nails are finally breathing oxygen. I love the shape of a rusty spike the way it tapers. Its little hooked head. I love the way old fasteners are common and sturdy, freed from their original use and falling apart while growing new colours. A nail holds things together and holds them down, they grip wood and make houses, and allow doors to open and close and art to hang on walls. I especially love the hand-hammered ancient square Roman nail my friend Marta sent me, which I think of as a character in the film and whose colours I was playing with today.

Below the beginning of my photo essay on nails. To see what I did with the nails this morning you will have to join The Color Lab where you can support the newsletter and find like-minded natural colour people who are the best kind of people. Happy foraging.

Jason