Taurus: the name of a 1968 song by psychedelic rock band Spirit. Parts of the track bear remarkable significance to Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven, and it is this parallel that interests me. Stairway to Heaven takes the listener on a journey of mysticality and spiritual self-discovery, reaching powerful emotional crescendos as Robert Plant sings of "a lady we all know/Who shines white light and wants to show/How everything still turns to gold". Then, in contrast to this poetic language and near divine imagery, Taurus seems more rooted in its worldliness: an instrumental track constructing very human ideals of love, loss and desperation. In the same way, my performance piece of the same name has a distinct duality to it: whilst the viewer may interpret my naked ascension of 111 concrete steps (Jacob's Ladder, Falmouth) as an homage to biblical imagery of heavenly pathways (such as Jacob's Dream by William Blake), exploring themes of religious symbolism and the artist as an angelic figure and complex spiritual identity, there is another more physical context to the work. Litter is blown around by the wind at the foot of the ladder, the quality of film is that of a home movie or YouTube clip, and before the artist appears as an angelic figure in the distance it is clear that he is very much human - naked, vulnerable and without meaning.