Ken Jones

Alter Ego

Those erratic movements
and that fixed smile
how like a puppet !

Thrust your hand, glove-like, into this vividly coloured scrap of cloth and papier-mâché. Thumb into the head, fingers into the arms. Ungainly at first, another life stirs. Just like us, it acts out a story. Perhaps a story we cannot live ourselves, except through our fingers. A story in the gestures and the face. With a speechless papier-mâché smile he stills each movement, giving time for us to guess his thoughts

Larger than life, those fixed expressions. The wide-eyed simpleton. The down-in-the-mouth melancholic. The self-important frown. The big argumentative mouth. The scheming eyes like slits.

Madam has made a puppet, Towzer, which she thinks embodies me. And I have shaped and painted her, with even more flamboyant clothes and hair-do. When we feel a matrimonial argument creeping up on us, we put on the glove puppets and leave it to these two to get on with the game. With gestures that are strangely familiar.

Dancing on invisible strings
brightly clad puppets
we enact our lives