Is there anything less tactile than a tactile screen? Anything that awakes less the sense of touch?
Hold a book, feel the weight of it in your palm, wet your finger and turn its pages. These are the pleasures of the hands.
But hands serve another purpose, too. They are the worker’s tools, that carry heavy things, pick grapes, mould dough, thread needles. When hands become an extension of the shovel, of the shears, of the rolling pin or of the needle, tactile pleasures may be dulled, and through repetition even turn to pain.
That is the object of Five One’s latest theme: the pleasures and pains of working with one’s hands. It is what feeds us and our families, connects us to our bodies, gets our blood rushing, and, as Paul Verlaine writes in the first poem of this series, magnetises our poor vertebrae.
Olivier Holmey
London, 14 May 2016
Our selection of poetry, music and art for all five weeks of this theme is available by clicking on the tabs above or through the links below:
I. Week One
II. Week Two
III. Week Three
IV. Week Four
V. Week Five