she needs a little sparkle

one hundred and thirty-four

2011-09-18T21:38:00.000+01:00

Woods - Louis MacNiece

My father who found the English landscape tame
Had hardly in his life walked in a wood,
Too old when first he met one; Malory's knights,
Keats's nymphs or the Midsummer Night's Dream
Could never arras the room, where he spelled out True and Good
With their interleaving of half-truths and not-quites.

While for me from the age of ten the socketed wooden gate
Into a Dorset planting, into a dark
But gentle ambush, was an alluring eye;
Within was a kingdom free from time and sky,
Caterpillar webs on the forehead, danger under the feet,
And the mind adrift in a floating and rustling ark

Packed with birds and ghosts, two of every race,
Trills of love from the picture-book---Oh might I never land
But here, grown six foot tall, find me also a love
Also out of the picture-book; whose hand
Would be soft as the webs of the wood and on her face
The wood-pigeon's voice would shaft a chrism from above.

So in a grassy ride a rain-filled hoof-mark coined
By a finger of sun from the mint of Long Ago
Was the last of Lancelot's glitter. Make-believe dies hard;
That the rider passed here lately and is a man we know
Is still untrue, the gate to Legend remains unbarred,
The grown-up hates to divorce what the child joined.

Thus from a city when my father would frame
Escape, he thought, as I do, of bog or rock
But I have also this other, this English, choice
Into what yet is foreign; whatever its name
Each wood is the mystery and the recurring shock
Of its dark coolness is a foreign voice.

Yet in using the word tame my father was maybe right,
These woods are not the Forest; each is moored
To a village somewhere near. If not of to-day
They are not like the wilds of Mayo, they are assured
Of their place by men; reprieved from the neolithic night
By gamekeepers or by Herrick's girls at play.

And always we walk out again. The patch
Of sky at the end of the path grows and discloses
An ordered open air long ruled by dyke and fence,
With geese whose form and gait proclaim their consequence,
Pargetted outposts, windows browed with thatch,
And cow pats - and inconsequent wild roses.

On woods, and the way childhood lingers in certain spaces; on wilderness and domesticated landscape; on being of two places (in MacNeice's case, Ireland and England), and of always being an outsider.

And finally, of learning and growing up: 'And always we walk out again.'

In other (less literary) news, Louis MacNeice is a new addition to 'Poets I fancy' list.

one hundred and thirty-three

2011-09-09T19:38:00.002+01:00

A (very almost disgustingly) lovely version of one of my favourite songs.

one hundred and thirty-two

2011-09-08T20:50:00.000+01:00

As part of Canongate's Myths series, Margaret Atwood tells the story of the Odyssey from the point of view of Odysseus' wife Penelope, who remained in Ithica while her husband fought in the Trojan War and afterwards roamed the seas trying to get home, and her twelve hanged maids, whom Odysseus ordered killed on his return. (In case you want to know, the maids had slept with the suitors who tried to steal Penelope and the kingdom away in Odysseus' absence; so their crime was to be desired - or maybe even have desire themselves.)

Reading The Penelopiad, I think back to how we were taught about Penelope at school: where Odysseus and smart and quick, so was she, making and unmaking a shroud to keep the braying, greedy suitors at bay; testing the returned Odysseus to make sure it was her husband. She was her husband's equal, our teacher said, to remind us that a person does not need to prove themselves with exaggerated feats and outrageous deeds.

Other than that, it was all faithfulness, fidelity, modesty and endurance: the ideal wife, I guess.

But I realise now that we studied one text of a poem conceived in a culture of oral storytelling. We didn't look past a particular version of Homer's Odyssey, did not explore the tales and stories that have been changed with region and time. Stories shift, are cut or lenghtened depending on the teller and audience. What else was there to know about Penelope? What hadn't made the version that sits bound on my bookshelf?

Who makes myths? Is there ever a final version? And when we study them, what good does it do us to take one book and read it, like that is the whole story?

one hundred and thirty-one

2011-09-08T20:26:00.000+01:00

'So by the time the morning came, Odysseus and I were indeed friends, as Odysseus had promised we would be. Or let me put it another way: I myself had developed friendly feelings towards him - more than that, loving and passionate ones - and he behaved as if he reciprocated them. Which is not quite the same thing.'

Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad

Odysseus, still dangerous when long-dead and on paper, he stole the hearts of some of my best girl friends; the wily, clever Odysseus, tangling men and women alike in his words, tricking and cheating and thinking his way out of (and into) trouble. A hero of invention; a hero of lies.

There is a gap - a gulf- between what is said and what is felt. How can we be sure someone's words accurately represent what they feel (especially if you love a silver-tongued trickster)? The significance of faith in our lives is huge, even if we are meant to worship the rational, the empirical now.

Every day, we trust that the words of those we love are true. We hope to never discover a disjunct between language and feeling, to feel the world twist around us and finish upsidedown and off-kilter.

one hundred and thirty

2011-08-21T23:48:00.000+01:00

There is nothing about this picture that I don't love. I do not know the original source, sigh.

one hundred and twenty-nine

2011-06-24T22:57:00.000+01:00

how many owl tshirts is too many?

Because I want both of these.

one hundred and twenty-eight

2011-06-05T19:34:00.000+01:00

An excellent way to spend eight and a half minutes:

Andy Goldsworthy is an amazing, intriguing man, and it's great to be able to watch him work.

This is an evening for watching art programmes with my sister, and wishing there was more like the above on television now.

Another of tonight's highlights was a clip of Anthony Caro gleefully exclaiming of his Early One Morning 'And then, I painted it green!' - before the interview cuts to his wife saying 'Tony really has no understanding of colour. He's a form man. He usually lets me make the decisions about colour'.

(As you can see, Early One Morning ended up red.)

one hundred and twenty-seven

2011-05-22T21:46:00.000+01:00

Best bit of advice I've read today:

'Don’t worry if you don’t marry the first dude you fall truly and deeply for because no one ever does.'

I will forget; it is impossible to maintain the intensity of emotions once they're past. I know this because I am already forgetting, and it terrifies me. Nothing is permanent, nothing - even sturdy rock can disappear with the wind or sea - but it is nice to pretend it is.

Even if that amounts to setting yourself up for a fall.

one hundred and twenty-six

2011-05-17T18:28:00.002+01:00

If I were to ever get a tattoo (sometimes I am tempted, but am so fickle that anything involving permanence freaks me out) I would want it to look something like this lovely little fox, a marginal drawing in Gerald of Wale's 'History and Topography of Ireland'.

(ps the British Library's online gallery of illuminated manuscripts in wonderful)

one hundred and twenty-five

2011-05-14T07:35:00.000+01:00

Jellyfish by Suraky

one hundred and twenty-four

2011-04-27T21:01:00.000+01:00

I just wrote a long(ish) email to a friend about why I don't much like the word lame being used to describe things that suck, and now my brain is feeling all tired.

o little blog, how i neglect you!

I very much like this song and video:

The odd, carnivalesque tune is so captivating. And that line 'remember how we shook shook' - rightly or wrongly - reminds me of falling for someone, and getting to know them (nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more).

one hundred and twenty-three

2011-04-22T19:48:00.000+01:00

Tom Vek is back!

This makes me very, very happy.

one hundred and twenty-two

2011-04-22T13:30:00.000+01:00

I love Paris in the springtime

one hundred and twenty-one

2011-04-17T22:04:00.000+01:00

a quick fragment of Paris

Turns out my hair is very much like a Monet.

one hundred and twenty

2011-04-13T21:52:00.000+01:00

The hair on the back of my head is the length of my thumbnail; it is newly cut and for the next few days i will run my fingers through it absentmindedly, enjoying the soft scuff of it against my skin (like a brush you use to clean your nails or polish shoes).

My fingernails are painted black. I once thought nail varnish too girly, but now I like the surprise of oddly coloured fingertips. I have no patience waiting for it to dry, though, and end up with it smudged and rippled.

I am meant to be packing to go to Paris. I am slightly intimidated by the idea of the city. And i imagined my first visit would be with someone else.

one hundred and nineteen

2011-03-25T23:45:00.000Z

old, but good:

I like the length of the dresses. Perhaps the time of the miniskirt has passed (I've been in them since 16).

one hundred and eighteen

2011-03-24T08:58:00.000Z

I'm going to Paris in three weeks (for the first time). Eeeeee!

one hundred and seventeen

2011-03-23T22:35:00.000Z

I had a big post planned, about gender brainwashing and how and where gendered rules are made and reinforced; instead, I watched Masterchef (it's not even very good! argh.)

So in the meantime, here are some shoes I really, really want.

They are vegan, and handmade from recycled cotton and tyres. The company claims to be sweat-shop free and worker driven. Also, cats.

I made a promise at the start of the year to stop buying from high street shops (and to not buy anything first-hand if I could avoid it). Footwear is difficult for me: I have big feet and charity shops have an abundance of size 6 shoes and little else. So these are probably perfect, except i probably can't afford them. Sigh.

one hundred and sixteen

2011-03-18T17:28:00.000Z

Another to add to the songs that make you want to pick up a book list:

First love, Emmy the Great

in other news, today i look like this:

one hundred and fifteen

2011-03-16T23:07:00.000Z

The Museum of London has made me want to buy an iphone.

They've launched an app, StreetMuseum, which guides users to various points in London where, via the iphone screen, historical images of the city appear.

Like this.

The word palimpsest describes a manuscript page from which text has been scraped off, so that it can be used again. These images are reverse palimpsests, then: the past refound and layered again on the surface.

one hundred and fourteen

2011-03-16T21:58:00.000Z

The first, and so far only, time was when I was seventeen.

I stood in the hallway outside my classics classroom, feeling sick and alone, trying to remember when exactly my period was meant to have started. Had it been just over four weeks since the last, or five? I never thought much about it. My nausea was only nerves - had to only be nerves.

Until then, I had not realised what a joy it was to bleed.

I have never wanted children - even less when still a child. Never been able to imagine myself a mother, nuturing a little being that was part-me and not-me at all.

But I saw pictures of him when young, and he told me things he had made and done. And I wondered what our children would look like, what my son's hand would feel like in mine.

'and i would have liked to,
to have something above you
to have something to hold
and know i could choose to let it grow'

(Emmy the Great, We almost had a baby)

one hundred and thirteen

2011-03-13T20:00:00.000Z

'Westron wynde, when wilt thou blow,
The small raine down can raine.
Cryst, if my love were in my armes
And I in my bedde again!'

Some things don't change, no matter how many hundreds of years go by.

one hundred and twelve

2011-03-13T19:52:00.001Z

On Friday evening Hannah and I curled up in The Vintage Emporium Cafe (possibly for several hours longer than we initially intended).

Anyone seen Up?

The cafe's dog - I didn't ask his name.

It's a really lovely place. The staff are friendly (even if they didn't let me buy an avocado they had balanced on some scales by the till); they have soya milk (yay!) and some beautiful looking cakes and pastries (probably not so vegan, alas); and the place is packed full of intriguing little bits and pieces, books and even a scrabble board.

If you are in the Brick Lane area, do go and while away a few hours there.

On the train home I ate (still warm) bagels from Beigel Bake. Yum.

one hundred and eleven

2011-03-10T22:21:00.000Z

Tungsten (W, atomic number 74). Also known as Wolfram. Derived from the German wolf rahm ('wolf soot') which is in turn derived from the Latin Lupi Spuma ('wolf's froth') - a reference to the large amount of tin consumed by the mineral during extraction.

Darmstadtium (Ds, atomic number 110). A superheavy metal that decays after a fraction of a thousandth of a second.

Strontium (Sr, atomic number 38). Used in flares and fireworks, and more recently in the treatment and prevention of osteoporosis.

Iron (Fe, atomic number 26).

Thulium (Tm, atomic number 69). Named for Thule, an ancient name for a northern region (possibly Norway, Sweden, Iceland or Greenland). The term ultima Thule in medieval geographies denotes any distant place located beyond the "borders of the known world".

All from The Periodic Table Printmaking Project.

one hundred and ten

2011-03-10T13:50:00.000Z

'The most worrying side to world events is if Gaddafi and Berlusconi both depart, there'll be hardly any world leaders left to offer Tony and Cherie Blair a free holiday.'

I adore Mark Steel.

(Read the whole article. Or all of his columns for the Independent.)

one hundred and nine

2011-03-06T21:48:00.000Z

I now have hair the colours of a peacock, of an iridescent beetle.

one hundred and eight

2011-03-06T21:27:00.001Z

Stratford-upon-Avon

Outside Shakespeare's birthplace. We walked past just as the sun was setting, making the windows glitter and gleam.

We sat by the river Avon and drank strawberry cider (well, I tried some of Jen's and made a face something like this. I am not a cider fan).

Not Stratford-upon-Avon

There is a very small clump of woodland roundabout where I live, so we wondered there one lazy, sleep-deprived Sunday (after staying up the night before watching Neverwhere until silly hours).

Victorian explorers; it felt especially appropriate as our walk took us to the old house of W. S. Gilbert.

I was held up for half an hour when my train was cancelled (lack of a driver). Fast trains often rush through this station, not-stopping, on their way to the north, creating waves of turbulent air and a slight ringing as the wheels speed on the metal of the tracks. I was so scared of them as a child, and I still automatically stick my fingers in my ears and tense up when one passes.

one hundred and seven

2011-02-28T21:14:00.000Z

When my mum came back to London to celebrate her birthday, she stopped off at her sister's to pick up a big box of old photos.

It is strange to think of people I know or knew - my grandparents, my mum and her siblings, my mum's best friend - being alive in decades that I cannot help but think of as slightly fictional.

Granddad


Nan

My granddad and uncle

one hundred and six

2011-02-28T21:03:00.000Z

Animals that I have recently encountered in the street

the friendliest cat, my street

A white rabbit, Stratford upon Avon

one hundred and five

2011-02-25T22:52:00.000Z

one hundred and four

2011-02-23T23:06:00.000Z

After lavish Christmas come the lean days of Lent
when the flesh is tested with fish and simple food.
Then the world's weather wages war on winter:
cold shrinks earthwards and clouds climb;
sun-warmed, shimmering rain comes showering
onto meadows and fields where flowers unfurl,
and woods and grounds wear a wardrobe of green.
Birds burble with life and build busily
as summer spreads, settling on slopes as
it should.

from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, trans. Simon Armitage

Oh, summer.

one hundred and three

2011-02-22T13:08:00.002Z

This morning, the train to work was so warm I almost fainted. When I found a seat, I cleared the condensation from the windows and realised I was wiping away other people's breath.

Listening to (and pretending to be in the mid-nineties):

one hundred and two

2011-02-21T21:55:00.000Z

The week ahead:

A feminist meetup in a pub in Southwark. So excited!
A trip to the Science Museum, but in the evening and adults only. If you've ever been to the Science museum in London: imagine Launchpad, with no children hogging all the fun. Oh yeah. There's even speed dating (because every adult event has to be about finding romance. Sigh. Saying that, I bet I end up doing it).
Something, somewhere with Lizzie (this counts for well organised in my messy head).
Maybe some music in a church on Saturday.

In other news, I applied for a job today. My fingers and toes are twisted and cramped from being crossed.

one hundred and one

2011-02-19T21:40:00.000Z

I have started to notice people on my commute, or walking round the market on my lunch break - though I haven't quite reached the smiling-at-attractive-strangers point, yet. It feels good.

Tonight I am listening to The National (late to the party, but how amazing is High Violet?) and writing the letters and emails I have put off for too long (as well as watching Glee. Yes, I know). Is there much better than getting something through the post?

My wonderful friend Jennie sent the biggest bunch of white roses and a fruit (plus yellow pepper and goblet) basket to my office on Valentine's Day; it made the day beautiful. Sometime all the hollywood focus on finding The One makes me forget that friendships are just as crucial. Romance isn't the only thing worth having.

one hundred

2011-02-19T15:39:00.000Z

Today's Guardian has some nice pictures of the work of Saul Bass. My favourites:

ninety-nine

2011-02-19T13:24:00.000Z

half planning my summer holiday to amsterdam already... any recommendations?

ninety-eight

2011-02-16T22:22:00.001Z

I've been listening to a lot of Bonnie Prince Billy this evening - why have I not before? Will Oldham writes beautiful lyrics, has a heartbreaking voice and perhaps the best beard in music (why yes, that is crucial and relevant).

A mixed day, today. I am scared that I am not good enough to stop hurt turning into hatred.

ninety-seven

2011-02-14T23:13:00.000Z

every word is shaped by the mouth that speaks it. physically, of course - the tongue rolling sounds and pushing them through open lips - but more than that: each person attaches their own little significances to every word.

speech, a code to decipher, and it is much harder than we are led to believe. so many layers: a past event that frames the way a person conceptualises a word; an imagined future hanging from the letters of a particular phrase (integral to one person, invisible - or nonexistent - to another). how do we ever understand each other? or is the idea of shared language little more than false comfort?

we say the same words all the time, we overlap and seem to agree. but a word is almost meaningless when its consequences - and words should always have consequences - are not similarly perceived by the people using it.

So what should we do? define as we go along? each have a personal dictionary to prevent speaking at cross purposes? to prevent misunderstanding and disappointment?

Or just speak, and hope?

ninety-six

2011-02-12T21:41:00.000Z

I should have known, when he said he wanted to be with me but quoted a song about love that won't work, in spite of everything.

ninety-five

2011-02-11T16:48:00.002Z

I'm off to Stratford-upon-Avon for a weekend adventure, as the Royal Shakespeare Company is having a costume sale (I will be able to afford a bootlace from a 1986 production of King Lear, I'm sure). The press release mentioned Egyptian headresses; if I don't come back looking like Theda Bara I will be disappointed.

1917: Promotional portrait of Theda Bara (1885-1955) wearing an Egyptian headdress and breast plates with a snake design for director J Gordon Edwards' film, 'Cleopatra'.

Theda Bara (1885 - 1955) posing for promotional pictures for director J Gordon Edwards' film, 'Cleopatra'.

ninety-four

2011-02-09T20:21:00.000Z

I'm a bit late to the party, but I came across this song today, an offering from Beck's Record Club (Beck! I loved you! you turned out to be a scientologist. what is that all about?). The idea of the club is that group of musicians come together, record an album in a day and post the results online.

This is a version of INXS's Never Tear Us Apart, by Liars, Annie Clark and Daniel Hart from St. Vincent, Sergio Dias from Os Mutantes and Brian Lebarton. And it is glorious.

What are you favourite cover songs? Any that you (gasp) prefer to the original?

ninety-three

2011-02-08T21:23:00.000Z

I spent a few hours of Sunday wondering around my local library (picking up books, putting them back, touching spines, judging by covers) - yes, my library is open on a Sunday, because it is great. I love being able to pick up a book (because I've vaguely heard of the author, or it has an intriguing title) and know I could take it home for free.

If you don't live here in Britain (or even if you do), you might not know that our public services are being stripped back by a Tory-led government glad to be able to reduce the state with - supposedly - a good economic justification.

One of the upshots of this is that - depending on your local authority - you might find your local library being closed. Cuts have to be made, you see, and in some areas a library may not be seen as crucial. The Government have told local councils the amount they have to save, and the councils theselves have to decide what services to lose. Cases will be made; services pitted against one another in bids to secure funding.

It is terrifying. I do not know what my country will look like in four years time. This speech by Philip Pullman (full transcript here) is amazing, powerful and sums up everything that scares me much better than I ever could.

'It’s imported the worst excesses of market fundamentalism into the one arena that used to be safe from them, the one part of our public and social life that used to be free of the commercial pressure to win or to lose, to survive or to die, which is the very essence of the religion of the market. Like all fundamentalists who get their clammy hands on the levers of political power, the market fanatics are going to kill off every humane, life-enhancing, generous, imaginative and decent corner of our public life. I think that little by little we’re waking up to the truth about the market fanatics and their creed. We’re coming to see that old Karl Marx had his finger on the heart of the matter when he pointed out that the market in the end will destroy everything we know, everything we thought was safe and solid. It is the most powerful solvent known to history. “Everything solid melts into air,” he said. “All that is holy is profaned.”

Market fundamentalism, this madness that’s infected the human race, is like a greedy ghost that haunts the boardrooms and council chambers and committee rooms from which the world is run these days.

In the world I know about, the world of books and publishing and bookselling, it used to be the case that a publisher would read a book and like it and publish it. They’d back their judgement on the quality of the book and their feeling about whether the author had more books in him or in her, and sometimes the book would sell lots of copies and sometimes it wouldn’t, but that didn’t much matter because they knew it took three or four books before an author really found his or her voice and got the attention of the public. And there were several successful publishers who knew that some of their authors would never sell a lot of copies, but they kept publishing them because they liked their work. It was a human occupation run by human beings. It was about books, and people were in publishing or bookselling because they believed that books were the expression of the human spirit, vessels of delight or of consolation or enlightenment.

Not any more, because the greedy ghost of market madness has got into the controlling heights of publishing. Publishers are run by money people now, not book people. The greedy ghost whispers into their ears: Why are you publishing that man? He doesn’t sell enough. Stop publishing him. Look at this list of last year’s books: over half of them weren’t bestsellers. This year you must only publish bestsellers. Why are you publishing this woman? She’ll only appeal to a small minority. Minorities are no good to us. We want to double the return we get on each book we publish.

So decisions are made for the wrong reasons. The human joy and pleasure goes out of it; books are published not because they’re good books but because they’re just like the books that are in the bestseller lists now, because the only measure is profit.

The greedy ghost understands profit all right. But that’s all he understands. What he doesn’t understand is enterprises that don’t make a profit, because they’re not set up to do that but to do something different. He doesn’t understand libraries at all, for instance. That branch – how much money did it make last year? Why aren’t you charging higher fines? Why don’t you charge for library cards? Why don’t you charge for every catalogue search? Reserving books – you should charge a lot more for that. Those bookshelves over there – what’s on them? Philosophy? And how many people looked at them last week? Three? Empty those shelves and fill them up with celebrity memoirs.'

ninety-two

2011-02-07T20:47:00.000Z

I am bored of distractions. I miss him.

Sometimes in the half-awake morning I imagine I see his hair curled on the pillow next to mine.

I have been listening to a mixture of love songs (hopeful for a person whose idea of love does not leave me diminished) and melancholy ones (because it must be my fault). I am very tired.

ninety-one

2011-02-07T18:54:00.000Z

The moon was nice tonight, a proper Cheshire Cat grin. I love the way the stages of the lunar cycle are named: we are currently on waxing crescent.

I stumbled across these photos by a man called Jim Olive in my meanderings round Flickr (nice surname, Jim).

I can't quite get over the first photo. Those colours. There really aren't enough places like this near where I live. You can see more from the same assignment here.

ninety

2011-02-07T07:14:00.000Z

I very much like this song by Jesca Hoop (with Guy Garvey! he has one of my favourite voices in the world and writes lovely lyrics, plus he hosts a very good and eclectic show on bbc radio 6. So, all in all, a brilliant man).

I think this picture sums up some of my recent moods very well.

eighty-nine

2011-02-03T22:41:00.000Z

Turner, Margate (?), from the Sea

Sarah


Ben Cranke, Storm riders

Why go home when you'd rather see me?
Feels like all my heart can do now is bleed
We should go down to the sea

eighty-eight

2011-01-30T19:49:00.001Z

today:

These were taken at Rutland Water, one of the largest artificial lakes in Europe (oh, the places I go!). It was constructed in the 1970s by flooding an area called the Gwash valley (along with the few villages in the valley). This church was rescued - in a sense: the lower part of it was supported, the ground around shored up to protect it from the water, and it now acts as a museum, telling the story of the creation of the reservoir. Which is slightly weird, I think.

eighty-seven

2011-01-30T10:21:00.000Z

I am staying with my mum and dad in the east midlands (the countryside-ish!). things i like:

looking out the sunroof of our car at night and seeing stars unobscured by the streetlamps and smog. you don't get those clear, dark nights in the city. orion (the only constellation i really know) was so bright.
that my mum has a framed picture of george harrison on a windowsill.
i could see my own breath when making breakfast yesterday morning. this house does not retain heat (good excuse for lots of hot water bottles and blankets).
wild damson jam, bought from the market (and chatting to the man who made it about how much he loves damson jam).
that we are going for a walk and taking a picnic and it is minus one outside (maybe you who live in colder climes do this all the time?)

eighty-six

2011-01-27T08:56:00.000Z

Iron men (one by the Thames, one in Camden)

The red light around the edges is a lesson in why never to open your camera before you are sure the film has wound itself all away.

eighty-five

2011-01-27T08:40:00.000Z

that day it was almost like summer.

eighty-four

2011-01-25T21:26:00.000Z

This is one of my favourite songs at the moment. I love all the suprising noises (vacuum cleaner!), the drum beat and melody - but it is more than that; it is simple, and beautiful, and her voice is full and real.

Vidivodo.com : micachu - turn me well Etiket: mıcachu turn_me_well tv

And then the spinning at the end, sound cartwheeling on and on.

And not least, the words.

eighty-three

2011-01-20T08:25:00.000Z

'Before Will could move, Balthamos said, 'I've decided what I must do. I must stay with you day and night, and do it cheerfully and willingly, for the sake of Baruch. I shall guide you to Lyra, if I can, and then I shall guide you both to Lord Asriel. I have lived thousands of years, and unless I am killed I shall live many thousands of years more; but I have never met a nature that has made me so ardent to do good, or to be kind, as Baruch did. I failed so many times, but each time his goodness was there to redeem me. Now it's not, I shall have to try without it. Perhaps I shall fail from time to time, but I shall try all the same.'

Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass

I think this is a wonderful description of love.

eighty-two

2011-01-15T10:08:00.001Z

Currently rereading the His Dark Material trilogy (books are a fine breakup remedy). I am quite taken with the bookcovers of the Hebrew version of the series:

Northern Lights

The Subtle Knife


The Amber Spyglass

I first read them when I was thirteen or fourteen, and I think that revisiting any book read (and loved) as a teenager is such a powerful experience: it brings back that intense sense of adventure and possibility, of absorbing myself so completely into a different world and into the story itself.

I don't think that 'adult' books are any less imaginative than those for children, but rarely now do I submerge myself in the world of a book in the same way; it's just not the same experience. It isn't lesser, or less-involved... but perhaps it is not quite so consuming - perhaps not quite so selfish (not imagining oneself at the centre of the book, letting the characters be themselves).

eighty-one

2011-01-14T19:07:00.003Z

I was flicking through my ipod recently (I thought I should make an effort to listen to more than four bands) and settled upon an album I like a fair bit years ago, but hadn't had much time for since: Fionn Regan's The End of History.

Somewhere nearish the end of the song above, Fionn mentions a book by Paul Auster, Timbuktu. I read that book because of this song (he also mentions Saul Bellow, but I never quite had the energy to try). And I enjoyed it; it's narrated by a dog, Mr Bones, and follows his life as the pet of a homeless man, Willy G. Christmas.

It got me wondering whether I'd been introduced to any other authors or books in this manner.

In Go Long, Joanna Newsom plays upon the tale of Bluebeard, a terrifying aristocrat who makes his way through several wives, violently murdering each one. The myth follows his newest, young wife and her discovery of the fate of her predecessors. I am in complete awe of the song, and scouted out as much as I could about the myth... which led me to Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber, a fantastical collection of short stories (the title story being that of Bluebeard).

I think they are the only two that have directly led to me reading a mentioned / connected author; has anyone else found a book because of a song?

And of course, songs that reference books or authors is a whole category in itself; maybe I should make a mixtape.... what could be on it?

eighty

2011-01-13T19:25:00.002Z

how to feel:

sad / relieved / jealous / angry / excited / dulled / confused / owed something more.

attachment is so, so strange. what will i miss, what do i already miss? the presence of someone at the end of a phone, knowing that i won't be able to share something i saw (welcomed or not).

and then, the realisation that maybe i have lost nothing, because his feelings had changed. can you lose something you only thought you had?

seventy-nine

2011-01-12T11:49:00.002Z

fuck. heartbroke again.

(any advice?)

seventy-eight

2011-01-10T18:57:00.003Z

little moments of closeness:

State Library of New South Wales

David Herasimtschuk

Vivian Maier

Eadward Muybridge

seventy-seven

2011-01-08T17:40:00.000Z

Music Visualizations, Synchoric Orchestra dancing Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, first performed in 1919 at Shawn's Grand Ave.

I spent a good couple of hours searching The Commons on Flickr. If you haven't yet, I suggest you go and take a look: it's a collection of the world's public photography archive, and contains pictures from galleries, museums and libraries around the world.

Ruth St. Denis in 'Rhada'. (This is not from The Commons, but the New York Public Library's stream).

As I seem to be on a dancey theme: I have just watched the most stunning pas de deux, and will have to watch it at least four more times before I get over this feeling of heartsqueezedness, breathlessness. It's Marianela Nunez and Edward Watson, in Wayne McGregor's Infra:

seventy-six

2011-01-08T08:48:00.003Z

A couple of nights ago, for the first time in a long while, I dreamt about becoming a bird.

How many times I have wished for a metamorphosis, to discard the me that wasn't good enough and replace her with someone sparklier, more at ease, more likeable. From an early age buying into the capitalist doctrine that possessions can raise your social status (that through them you can ensure approval, be liked). Believing that being attractive to men would give me worth. Knowing that the things I liked weren't by the girls I wanted to be, and knowing this made me inadequate. I spent so long trying to change, willing myself to wake up different, and getting more and more angry at the brain that was holding me back, that was innately wrong.

How crushing that mentality; how hard to totally reject it.

In my dreams, I still transform to escape. Feathers push through skin, eyes become keener, and I jump from my old bedroom window to rise above rooftops. Some part of me still looks to this to alter my situation; still holds onto the belief that contentness could only follow such a complete transformation of myself.

photo by Vivian Maier

seventy-five

2011-01-06T19:51:00.003Z

'I looked at Pip and for a split second I felt as though she were nobody special in the larger scheme of my life. She was just some girl who had tied me to her leg to help her sink when she jumped off the bridge. Then I blinked and was in love with her again.'

Something that needs nothing, Miranda July

seventy-four

2011-01-05T20:34:00.004Z

A.J. Russell image of the celebration following the driving of the "Last Spike" at Promontory Summit, U.T., May 10, 1869

'In the course of the nineteenth century, time ceased to be a phenomenon that linked humans to the cosmos and became one administered by technicians to link industrial activities to each other. It changed the way people imagined their world... Midway through that century, Henry David Thoreau was living at Walden Pond, outside the community but near the railroad line. Standard time had not yet regulated America, but the railroad already dominated the experience of time. Thoreau commented, 'I watch the passage of the morning cars with the same feeling that I do the rising of the sun, which is hardly more regular. Their train of clouds stretching far behind and rising higher and higher, going to heaven while the cars are going to Boston, conceals the sun for a minute and casts my distant field into the shade, a celestial train beside which the petty train of cars which hugs the earth is but the barb of the spear... They go and come with such regularity and precision, that the farmers set their clocks by them, and thus one well-conducted institution regulates a whole country.' The railroad had eclipsed the sun.'

Rebecca Solnit, Motion Studies: Time, Space & Eadward Muybridge

seventy-three

2010-09-26T09:18:00.008+01:00

Yangtze, The Long River

Saturday's Guardian Weekend magazine featured Nadav Kander's latest work following the Yangtze river in China.

Yangtze, The Long River documents the people and landscape along the banks of the river, and captures the changes that are happening in China at the moment: the large scale development, the tearing down and building up, migration, the way that history and progression is seen.

In Kander's own words:

“After several trips to different parts of the river, it became clear that what I was responding to and how I felt whilst being in china was permeating into my pictures; a formalness and unease, a country that feels both at the beginning of a new era and at odds with itself. China is a nation that appears to be severing its roots by destroying its past in the wake of the sheer force of its moving “forward” at such an astounding and unnatural pace. A people scarring their country and a country scarring its people.

Although it was never my intention to make documentary pictures, the sociological context of this project is very important and ever-present. Do we have to destroy to develop? The scale of development in China has left most places unrecognisable. Many Chinese will never be able to visit the places where they grew up, because they no longer exist. China is progressing rapidly, and the landscape—both economically and physically—is changing daily. These are the photographs that can never be taken again.”

Many, many more pictures can be found on his website, and they are well worth a look.

seventy-two

2010-09-23T19:33:00.001+01:00

A blast from the past:

Oh, his back.

seventy-one

2010-09-17T08:14:00.003+01:00

The person sitting next to me on the train this morning smelt exactly like him; the drawback of perfumes. God, it made my head spin.

Things that are good:

I watched a man hoovering the road outside my office. Why? How? No one knows.
I saw a man standing on a station platform holding one of those spools of wire that look like huge cotton reels. It made him look like he was actually really tiny, a Borrower, and this pleased me.
I went to a farmers' market yesterday and bought lots of english apples and plums. Even better, my boss has a plum tree and is bringing me in bagfuls of surplus plums. I am going to make a crumble tonight, I think.
I made the tastiest butternut squash and sage soup; I love autumn food. For anyone interested, the recipe is here.
I'm suddenly responsible for updating the news section of UK Feminista. It is a good responsibility but I'm worried I'm going to post up something controversial or wrong. Eep.

I am stuck in a music rut. I keep listening the the music I love most, and whilst I am definitely not bored of it, it would be nice to love something new. Does anyone have any suggestions?

seventy

2010-09-12T17:37:00.005+01:00

I love Yelena Bryksenkova's sketchbooks.

yes, yes I do.

sixty-nine

2010-09-10T16:28:00.001+01:00

"I think I just like seeing the best in humanity. If you believe in the inherent dignity of people, in justice and human rights, then feminism is for you. It says that rape isn't natural for men, that men aren't inherently violent, and that women aren't just naturally insecure about their bodies and other issues. The best of us is to be found in feminism. I find that hugely inspiring."

The wonderful and inspiring Kat Banyard, on what drives her activism. From The Guardian.

sixty-eight

2010-09-10T07:48:00.008+01:00

The Royal Observatory is currently showcasing the winners of the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2010.

A Perfect Circle by Dhruv Arvind Paranjpye

Paranjpye's photograph shows an annular eclipse, which occurs when the moon is too far from the earth to completely cover the sun (as happens in a total eclipse).

This is such an amazing image. I love how the wispy, formless clouds - lit like they were painted by Turner - obscure the bright, hard circle of the sun.

Like many of the other astronomical photographs, I find this simultaneously compelling and unsettling. I can hardly believe that that pale ring is our sun - and then, that something so bizarre as the sun actually exists. I like being encouraged to see something to which I had grown (too) accustomed - the sun, space, stars and planets - as novel and weird and amazing again.

It is easy for the world to become a habit.

I am also reminded of a particular Rodchenko painting, Composition no. 61:

Rodchenko was inspired by images from old science books, and this one certainly has the feel of the moon and the sun, of eclipses.

sixty-seven

2010-09-09T19:40:00.010+01:00

For over a decade, leading cellist Beatrice Harrison dueted with nightingales.

In 1922, she had moved to the Surrey countryside, to an isolated house surrounded by woodland. Practising in the garden one afternoon, she was amazed when a bird joined in with her song: it followed her own trills, staying in tune with the cello.

She persuaded Lord Reith, the director of the BBC, to send a crew to her garden to record this duet. It was to be the very first live outdoor broadcast and Reith - despite his objections of cost - could not resist.

A million people listened to this first recording, and Harrison was almost smothered with fan mail; the duet became an annual event, carrying on for twelve years until Harrison moved house. After that, the broadcasts featured the nightingales alone. The pieces are lovely and ethereal, marrying human music and bird song in a strange partnership.

The transmission from 1942, however, is more chilling: the live broadcast was pulled when duty engineer realised he could hear the hum of approaching aircraft - not what the BBC wanted to be broadcasting in wartime.

And that distant burring of engines records the British airforce on their way to raid Mannheim, part of the 'Thousand Bomber' policy that would see German towns - most notably Cologne - devastated.

Some of the recordings, including the one made in 1942, can be heard here.

sixty-six

2010-09-07T18:56:00.005+01:00

Apples I Have Eaten, by Jonathan Gerken

Jonathan Gerken chronicles 47 different varieties of apple gathered one autumn in California. Each apple was locally sourced, photographed and then eaten by Gerken - and he made an effort to find those apples not readily available in shops, like the Goldrush, Prarie Spry and Hidden Rose (good names).

Image from Book by Its Cover

This reminds me that it's nearly apple season. I cannot wait.

sixty-five

2010-09-06T18:22:00.004+01:00

New (totally beautiful) glasses!

It feels so good to be able to see clearly again; I had forgotten that the world is not made of fuzzy edges and blurred pink ovals for faces.

I do worry that come the apocalypse I will be utterly useless: my glasses will break and I'll get eaten by a radioactive rat or something. I would probably have been equally useless living at any other point in history - tripping over people in a pleasure garden, messing up my needlework, misplaying the piano, accidently snubbing prospective suitors as I blundered past them in the street, half-blind... (for some reason I can only think of eighteenth century situations. The supervisors who taught me medieval history would be ashamed).

The earliest written record of using magnification to aid reading dates to the first century AD (Seneca the Younger writes, 'Letter, however small and indistinct, are seen enlarged and more clearly through a globe or glass filled with water'), my weak-eyeling ancestors had to wait a few hundred years for wearable glasses. A portrait of Cardinal Hugh de Provence, painted in 1352 by Tommaso da Modena, is the first pictorial evidence for eyeglasses:

Hey medieval dude, nice hat and specs. (And that is the cutting historical analysis that got me my degree in history.)

sixty-four

2010-09-03T08:42:00.002+01:00

Yesterday my manager and I carried out a risk assement of our conference venue.

Our venue is attached to a church. Just outside the main hall, a tall, arched doorway opens onto stoneclad aisles and rows of pews, and framed icons decorate the walls.

There are three floors, serviced by a small, shaky-looking lift; standing inside it, my manager remarked that she pitied anyone stuck in this particular lift.

When I asked why, she pointed at a hatch. Every lift has one: a square door in the wall, with the red outline of a telephone drawn on it. A pretty important feature, you would think. I know I would like to be able to call for help if trapped in a lift.

She opened the hatch with a raised eyebrow. There was no emergency phone.

There was, however, a small icon of the Virgin Mary where the phone should have been.

I guess the venue owners have a different idea of who you can rely on for help in emergency situations.

sixty-three

2010-09-02T18:33:00.007+01:00

danse macabre

From the 1493 Nuremburg Chronicle

Now waggles the leg, and now wriggles the thigh,
As the troop with strange gestures advance,
And a rattle and clatter anon rises high,
As of one beating time to the dance. - Goethe, Totentanz

Holbein

My brain has been in my bones of late - maybe it is because it is already getting colder at night, and a chill has crept in past my flesh and settled in them. I've been drawn to all things skeletal, these lovely intricate illustrations in particular: they depict the dance of death, a popular motif in medieval Europe that reminded people of their mortality and the folly of human ambition; humans may construct social hierarchies, but we are all equal in death.

Book of Hours, Paris, c.1507

Dance of Death, Paris, 1486

Also, I love woodcuts. I wish books still had them.

sixty-two

2010-08-31T19:34:00.003+01:00

Billy Bragg » Joanna Newsom from The Voice Project on Vimeo.

I found The Voice Project site when a search for live footage of Joanna Newsom led to the above video. I love cover versions, love hearing songs sung in different ways (anyone have any favourites to recommend?) and so couldn't resist clicking through to the website.

The Voice Project is a nonprofit company, set up to support the work of women in Uganda pushing for peace.

For decades, children have been abducted by Joseph Kony's LRA and either forced into soldierhood or used by the group's fighters for sex. Those who escape may fear returning home, fearful of being punished for atrocities they were forced to commit.

Women in Northern Uganda have been banding together to create support groups and networks. And doing this, they sing. The songs travel by radio and word of mouth, with lyrics letting the former soldiers know they are forgiven and should come home.

The CHILDREN Song from The Voice Project on Vimeo.

Aiming to spread the word and support programmes on the ground, The Voice Project ask musicians to cover a song, which they record and place on their website. Money from donations, sponsors and advertisers goes to projects on the ground.

The Submarines » The Beatles from The Voice Project on Vimeo.

Singing seems basic and universal; as a species, we probably sang before we learned to speak. It can be such a powerful way to communicate. I hope these songs keep being sung.

sixty-one

2010-08-30T20:05:00.001+01:00

Animals

Have you forgotten what we were like then
when we were still first rate
and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth

it's no use worrying about Time
but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves
and turned some sharp corners

the whole pasture looked like our meal
we didn't need speedometers
we could manage cocktails out of ice and water

I wouldn't want to be faster
or greener than now if you were with me O you
were the best of all my days

Frank O'Hara

sixty

2010-08-29T22:28:00.001+01:00

There are no words left for us now. Everything I want to tell you - there is so much I want to tell you - is untranslatable, unpalatable: my mouth is incapable of shaping thoughts into words, of pushing them into the air between us.

Where do I go from here? I have been scouring poems, songs, trying to find the one that will let me explain what I am feeling. None work on their own, I want to stitch them together quiltlike - but I think that would render them meaningless. Change them to a hissing stream.

I want to be neat, surgical. I want to be clean as a cut from a sharp knife. I want to lay out my feelings out for you, categorised and labelled, like a cabinet of curiousity.

I am not. I tumble out of myself, the wrong words like slippery organs coughed up.

How does anyone ever speak about important things? How did they learn to craft words from emotion?

fifty-nine

2010-08-25T21:17:00.003+01:00

I could easily stop speaking and just play Joanna Newsom songs whenever I wanted to express my feelings.

fifty-eight

2010-08-25T20:30:00.000+01:00

Last Wednesday I took a day off work to go and look at art. Nearly everyone in the office was away on a summer break, and I was feeling jealous. I took my holiday in June, and it feels very distant.

I went to see Pyschopomps, by the taxidermist Polly Morgan. A pyschopomp is a 'guide of souls' - the deities, spirits or angels responsible for leading souls to the afterlife. They appear in numerous cultures: Charon, Horus, Woden, the Grim Reaper; pyschopomps all. Nowadays, there is Oscar the cat, who lives in a nursing home and curls up with those about to die. His predictions have been so accurate that staff will now alert a patient's family when Oscar appears on a bed. What else could he be, but a pyschopomp?

Anyone who has visited a natural history museum will be aware of taxidermy, which recreates an image of life using the skin of a dead animal. Those museum exhibitions, with animals frozen still as if in photographs, posed on backgrounds meant to resemble their natural habitat, are oppositional to Morgan's work: she does not aim to create a fiction of natural life, as if to pretend the animal had not been deconstructed and treated and tanned and manipulated by human hands.

I love this piece. Looking at it gave me an intense feeling of motion sickness. It was not a mass of wings, but one bird circling and swooping; it felt like the bird itself was always moving just out of line of my vision, and all that was left was a flurry of wing. I'm very drawn to static objects that nonetheless seem full of potential and movement; it is so impressive, to be able to make something so energetic despite its physical stillness.

This feeling, of movement without movement itself, was also present in this piece.

The little finches are akin to Eadward Muybridge's work: both he and Morgan capture a series of single moments of movement, and compose them in a way that suggests motion.

I read a review that spoke of escape and transcendence with regard to the second piece: the birds are outside their cage, lifting it beyond this world to another. But they didn't seem free to me. They are not inside the cage, but its metal still reaches up and holds them. They wear it. It put me in mind of how we incorporate animals into our service: we place real birds in cages to lift our spirits with song; we create bird deities to lift our spirits from life to the land of the dead.

fifty-seven

2010-08-22T10:20:00.003+01:00

Some things that are on my body today:

Some sounds that are on my speakers (with an eerie hypnotic homemade video, i love you tube):

fifty-six

2010-08-22T08:10:00.004+01:00

We are having (yet another) book-throwing-out session in my house (it never seems to make any difference), so I have been sorting through piles of books, trying to decide what I can make room for on my bookshelf.

I spent this morning flicking through a poetry anthology called 'Favourite Verse', which spans the 16th - 19th centuries (with a couple of 20th century poems dotted about). I haven't read much from the earlier periods, so it will be interesting to learn more about that.

That said, some of my favourite poems were written by John Donne, who died in 1631. He had slipped my mind, and it was nice to stumble across him again.

The Flea

MARK but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is ;It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;
And this, alas ! is more than we would do.

O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,
And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,Let not to that self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou sincePurpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou
Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ;
Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.

Donne is funny, playful, clever and kinda irreverent; I imagine straight-laced christians being a tad offended by the references to marriage and the trinity ('three lives in one') in a poem about the narrator trying to persuade his girlfriend to have sex. And making the flea - a parasite, whose bites could resemble the marks of syphilis - holy, a temple? Hah.

An excerpt from the poem. Donne took full advantage of Renaissance typography, using the famous long S to make visual puns (see line three).

I also like the refusal of the woman to be taken in with the narrator's logic: she rebuffs him, squashing the flea with her fingernail - although, the narrator, wiley and desperate as he is, quickly turns this action into another reason for her to agree to sex.

The Flea Catcher, Georges de la Tour

I want to know more about fleas and their erotic associations now. A cursory search of the internet suggested that the flea made numerous appearances in renaissance literature, connected to sex and intimacy - because fleas have freedom to crawl all over our bodies, can bite and suck the flesh those renaissance men cannot touch. A clown in Marlowe's Faustus states, 'if you turn me into anything, let it be in the likeness of a little pretty frisking flea, that I may be here and there and everywhere. O, I'll tickle the pretty wenches' plackets'.

The possibilities the tiny flea held for sexual and romantic expression were not limited to the European Renaissance; I came across this 12th century Chinese folk poem here:

Suchow mattress has nine springs.
Quilt and canopy
cover the mandarin ducks.
The embroidered quilt
wraps him and me.
The flea biting him
bites me, too.

fifty-five

2010-08-19T20:08:00.011+01:00

A couple of weeks ago I went to a fancy dress party; it was country-themed, with every guest trying to embody a different place. I chose Holland, mainly because it gave me an excuse to dress up as Van Gogh. Well, it was that, a windmill or a tulip (if only i had the resources and artistic talent). I settled for a wearing a windmill charm necklace.

Dressing up as a country is very difficult; there were lots of national football shirts worn that evening. Thinking up a way to represent a whole teeming nation in one nifty outfit is challenging, especially if you'd prefer to not spend your time in the centre of a circle of confused gazes.

So, we settle for well established visual markers. We choose the stories we all know about these foreign places, the facts that have travelled with tourists and imperialists and adventurers over the years.

I know almost nothing of Holland, save a smattering of history and art (and, because we had to bring food to this party, the fact that pea soup is a popular dish). I didn't think about it much before this party, and continued to not think too much about it afterward.

Which didn't strike me as that much of a problem, until I substitute Holland for other countries. What if someone came to the party as Japan, dressed as a geisha? Or if someone had come as Benin, dressed in their best Topshop 'tribal' trousers (yes, Topshop sell 'tribal print' trousers) and holding a spear? If Topshop's too pricey, how about visiting a fancy dress shop, as they have a variety of national or 'ethnic' costumes to chose from; how about Samoan dancing girl? Desert Arab?

Suddenly there's something quite unsettling about the whole thing. Britain's modern history pivots on empire - whether it celebrates it (hallo, Niall Ferguson, you douche) or tries to hide it - and the violent domination of lots of people all over the world. Hierarchies of power were developed by telling stories (and I include science as a method of story telling) about other races that diminished the worth, complexity and plurality of non-European people and cultures. Added to that, Europeans plundered culture as well as natural resources, taking bits and pieces to adorn themselves, their homes and their museums.

Caricatures twist and shape the way in which actual people are treated, and they resonate for years. Stereotypes, usually crafted over long periods of time, can reduce power and status, and be used to perpetuate - or even justify - social inequalities. The act of deciding what story gets told about a group of people, and what images get seen and remembered, comes from a place a privilege.

So what does it mean when we engage with foreign places through stereotypes and famous people? Does it matter, if it's only an evening, only a party? So what, you wear a feather headdress and moccasins for a few hours one evening - does it really have a significant impact?

Of course it does.

And when non-western national and racial stereotypes get sold to white westerners as a great idea for a party costume (or a 'sexy' party costume, if you are female), and no one bats an eyelid - more than that, people buy and wear these items and it's GREAT FUN - then it hugely fucking matters.

And of course, I didn't bring any of this up; I was at a party. It's a stark reminder that I have the privilege not to think about representations of nationality - and linked to this, race and culture - when I would rather not.

fifty-four

2010-08-18T22:13:00.001+01:00

how can you properly forgive someone for betraying you? answers on a postcard, please.

fifty-three

2010-08-08T09:38:00.002+01:00

so, you have to find her, and you know that it will be the death of you.

she is famous - the stuff of myth - and you can't not look for her; you need to know for yourself if the rumours are true. it's the major flaw of growing up in such an empirical culture: seeing is believing. word-of-mouth counts for nothing now. still, the stories have been told and told again, words of darkness, and ice, and a look so monstrous that life cannot escape it. men become more solid - permanent - and make dull ornaments for the frostbitten caves that are her home. there, death sounds like a whisper, her whisper behind you, coaxing you to turn.

medusa does not solicit attention. she does not want the droves of brave adventurers coming to her with their violence and overblown confidence, believing they will be the one - the only one, the lone victor - who will not succumb to her glare. men cannot resist the urge to prove themselves unique.

they all come to the same end.

fifty-two

2010-07-20T21:01:00.002+01:00

Collar Bones by North Highlands

Collar Bones by North Highlands from Big Ugly Yellow Couch on Vimeo.

'i often worry if i let you go, one of us would die

and i often worry if i held my breath one of us would die

and i often worry if i let you go, one of us would die

and i realised, that's what love is supposed to feel like.'

this lady's voice, oh, i could listen to it for days on end; in fact, i have been. this song makes me feel wrapped up and safe and sad and hopeful. it makes me think of summer and days that haven't happened yet (and might not but could).

yesterday i confessed to my sister that the thought of getting close to someone else scared me - that i sometimes wanted to fall back into my old lover, for safety and comfort and ease. she reminded me of how breathtaking it is to discover a tiny piece of something about someone for the first time; something that is not big or significant, but is newly yours in that moment, like breaking open a stone to find the ridged swirls of an ammonite.

this song reminds me of that. it feels full of possibilities.

fifty-one

2010-07-17T14:33:00.002+01:00

Elif Shafak is amazing:

"literature has to take us beyond. if it cannot take us there, it is not good literature... the sufis say, knowledge that takes you not beyond yourself is worse than ignorance. the problem with today's cultural ghettoes is not lack of knowledge. we know a lot about each other - or so we think - but knowledge that takes us not beyond ourself, it makes us elitist, distant, disconnected."

From the TED conference in Oxford, which I would love to be at.

fifty

2010-07-11T20:54:00.005+01:00

All nature has a feeling: woods, fields, brooks
Are life eternal: and in silence they
Speak happiness beyond the reach of books;
There's nothing mortal in them; their decay
Is the green life of change; to pass away
And come again in blooms revivified.

John Clare

walking over the hill yesterday morning was like being in a van gogh painting (my phone camera does no justice to the scene, unfortunately).

the grass was beautiful, whip-long and full of thrumming grasshoppers. there's not much real green space in the london suburbs, but our pockets are lovely.

i bought some new shoes, as i realised that all my footwear was black (and foot-baking in the sunshine), and i was been wearing them nonstop; they dye my feet red sometimes, but it is a small price to pay.

forty-nine

2010-07-07T20:38:00.005+01:00

of all the trite, overused sayings that i hate to hear, 'life imitates art' is high up on my list.

(it's not that i disagree with the sentiment, and i think wilde probably had a lot more to say on the subject than those three words. it's just one of those phrases that people casually throw around, hoping it reflects their good taste and superior brain - and it becomes almost meaningless with its ubiquity.

it's a bit like when a song you like reaches the top of the charts and is then played in every shop that wants to be 'hip' for the next year until you've forgotten the time when you did not know this song. Indeed, you have forgotten that the song isn't in fact a natural part of all human existence, so imprinted is it on your mental wallpaper, written into you like 'Brighton' is written all through a stick of rock, the lyrics ('The dog days are over, The dog days are doooonnnne, The horses are coming, So you'd better run") incorporated into you (admittedly nonsensical) life philosophy).

but hey! did you know, life sure imitates art!

i say this because my recent experiences have been taken right out of the Camera Obscura songbook of life; if you know the band at all: yes, there is exactly as much half-tearful sighing as you would expect.

Camera Obscura were already pretty much my perfect band; they understand that misery is crucial to good pop, and traceyanne's lyrics cut right to her heart, without any fussy description or overwrought language. i have yet to find an emotion they do not match: i can listen to them anywhere on the scale from cheerful (upbeat piano or warm horn sections) to morose (sparse guitar and verge-of-tears-vocals), though often the songs actually deal with a whole bundle of conflicting emotions at once. Saying that, they are brightest when dealing with the sad little aches of love gone wrong.

so it's not much of a surprise that i have been listening to them on repeat recently. it's comforting to hear my own feelings sung back to me over (really rubbish ipod) headphones, and i'm continually surprised by the way in which their lyrics and melodies exactly express that which i find i cannot.

i do wonder in part if this is because over the past few years i have spent an unhealthy amount of time listening to them. have i just tagged my feelings onto a familiar, similar resource to help me articulate them to myself - or even, have my feelings been shaped by my exposure to traceyanne's particular kind of melancholy? if i was a fan of grindmetal (is that a genre?) would my feelings be significantly different - would i approach them and recognise them in a totally different way?

in any case, i'm glad to have you, Camera Obscura.

reappearing is a tricky act to get right.

2010-07-07T19:59:00.003+01:00

i loved someone, and we are over. words seem to have no substance - little flutters of love said and retracted in nearly one breath have left every letter hollow. words become noise when unbound from action, and my head is filled with the hum of promises never fully intended to be realised.

of all i have lost this is the most unbearable.

so i come back here, to learn to trust words again, and to use them until they have meaning.

forty-eight

2009-09-15T09:42:00.003+01:00

Wise words from John Ruskin, in a letter to Charles Eliot Norton, 4 November 1860:

When I begin to think at all I get into states of disgust and fury at the way the mob is going on (meaning by mob, chiefly Dukes, crown princes, and such like persons) that I choke ; and have to go to the British Museum and look at Penguins till I get cool. I find Penguins at present the only comfort in life. One feels everything in the world so sympathetically ridiculous; one can’t be angry when one looks at a Penguin.

forty-seven

2009-09-11T21:14:00.002+01:00

starbucks seems committed to making me think of you. whenever i go in there, the first song i hear on sitting down is always house of cards by radiohead. it's funny, because this is your least favourite song on the album; this is why it will always remind me of you. when it plays, i can hear you tell me - your voice overlapping thom yorke's - that you think it's an unspectacular track in the midst of the sublime. i can see your shrug of dismissal when i play it (because i love it and want to listen to it with you).

i am constantly surprised by this, even though it keeps happening. the little shock of remembering you, as though your hand (that i didn't see coming) had just touched my shoulder. as though i knocked for you the one time in ten you happened to be in, or awake, and the door was suddenly open, and you were standing there wearing a silly woollen hat.

our brains keep people wrapped in particular places, or poems, or songs, and with one word or note, with no warning, they come (uncontrollably, shockingly) swooping forward in half a second, sweep us off our feet. and we try to control or arrange these associations - alway without success. i remember one boyfriend and i choosing 'our song', trying to carve a little niche for ourselves in the chorus. it didn't work in the slightest; i could listen to teenage kicks for seventeen hours on end on not think of him once. and yet, this one song, that you don't even like, that we listened to together once, makes me catch my breath.

when it has finished, i listen to it again on my ipod to keep the feeling a tiny bit longer. it makes you clearer - brings you into focus - and i am worried that you are fading.

forty-six

2009-09-09T16:42:00.005+01:00

it has been a long time since a what i wore post. voila - and yes, the moody face was part of the outfit. as you can see, my fringe is the same length as the entire history of humanity. i think it has some kind of sentience, coupled with a vendetta against me (since it does its best to blind me/make me walk out in front of cars). i am getting it cut in two weeks, and that day can't come soon enough.

i spent some of today in the british library, as i have done for many days recently. i get to do a morning commute, which i love. travelling on a just-after-rush-hour train is great, as the train isn't like a can of sardines, but it is still early enough for a few business type people to be journeying to work. when i am dressed somewhat smartly (translation: in a blazer) i pretend i too am an adult person with a proper job who Reads Newspapers and has Responsibilities (the job changes daily: today i worked in an small, eccentric architect's office, as a PA). the library visits are because i am doing some research for the Guardian newspaper. this is incredibly exciting because:

1) i love the guardian! it is the middle-class leftie paper of choice.

2) i get paid to sit around reading about kings and queens, picking the most quirky or scandalous things to write about.

3) um, did you see the two above points?

i love the british library. you get a seat number and you have to collect your books from the front desk (leaving me to imagine the labyrinth within. i do like searching about for books myself, but this is the one place i will embrace other people doing the fetching. sometimes things are better left to the imagination). there are reading rooms on three floors, in a kind of receding balcony arrangement; this means that one wall reaches from the bottom to the top, a white cliff face, giving the rooms an airiness and sense of magnitude. when the sun shines through the windows, it leaves little bars of light on this wall, like DNA coding. it is very lovely.

today i was reading about queen victoria, who is actually quite amusing, and william iv , who once complained that he missed england - because the nice westminster girls didn't give him the pox when he fucked them. oh, you dignified royals. i am slightly concerned about my ability to finish the project on time... i shall just breathe deeply and (thankyou, hitchhiker's guide) not panic.

forty-five

2009-09-04T19:22:00.003+01:00

last friday somebody stole my coffee.

wandering from euston to waterloo, i decided to curl up for an hour in caffe nero. i have started to drink soya milk in my coffee, and always feel silly asking for a white americano, which are black by definition. ah well. i ordered my drink, waited for them to make it, and watched the barista put it on the counter; the man who had ordered just before me took it.

oddly, i didn't feel i could say anything to him. i watched him walk to a table and settle down, then turned around and asked for another coffee. the barista was happy to oblige, muttering something along the lines of 'what kind of person can't tell the difference between a cappuccino and an americano?' - a very good point, seeing as one is covered in milky foam. this time, the cup didn't have a second's rest on the countertop before i snatched it up, raced away, and folded myself up into a squishy brown armchair.

soya milk acts very oddly in very hot coffee. it separates, from itself and the coffee, settling just under the liquid's surface. the milk particles jostle with each other, grouping together and constantly moving in tiny circles, the way starlings flock in the sky before roosting. dark veins run through these clouds, coffee for some reason untouched by the soya. looking into the cup, it is hard not to see a small brain, those dark coffee ribbons the sulci that ruffle the brain's surface.

considering this quite distinctive effect, as well as the nutty taste of soya, i did not believe that the man would fail to notice that he was not drinking a real-milk cappuccino. so i watched him. i watched him drink the entire cup of coffee, waiting for a look of confusion/disgust/anything to pass across his face. it never came. he stirred it, took sips, looked around, crumbled a muffin, sipped more, gulped down the last mouthfuls, and did not react in any way to the fact he was drinking something totally different to what he had ordered.

i hope he enjoyed it.

forty-four

2009-08-14T09:16:00.003+01:00

almost makes me want to smoke.

via thedieline.com

listening to: taken by trees, written by tracyanne campbell

forty-three

2009-08-03T19:05:00.007+01:00

recently i have been simultaneously busy and unbusy; that is, although i have nothing very productive to do (being an unemployed graduate) i seem to have no time. days fill up, pass by, and mostly i am left wondering what exactly i have been doing. photos are easier than trying to find the words, i think, so - recently (this means the past month and a half):

graduating

cooking

exploring (on which i shall do a proper post)

and of course -

add to the mixture: art, museums and books. i am reading my first sebald - how have i not before now? and now that i am, he seems to pop up everywhere i go, even the Tate galleries.

forty-two

2009-06-28T23:20:00.008+01:00

today we went to the horniman museum in forest hill, perhaps my favourite museum in the whole of london town:

nice, nice.

forty-one

2009-06-22T19:53:00.001+01:00

sleeping is a skill, and one in which i feel unpracticed: recently my sleep has been more staccato than usual. my nighttime is a routine of sharp dreams and clock-checking half-consciousness. even with the window wide open, i wake up sweating, the bedclothes snake-coiled round my legs and my t-shirt half pulled off. i feel oddly violated, the victim of some ethereal assault: muscles hurting, breath shallow, body wet.

in my dreams, the metal stairs that spiral up the sides of buildings unwind, become gigantic mechanic millipedes; they are huge and heavy, but lithe, twisting fluid through the streets, with a terrible sound of grinding joints. i am immobile, can do nothing but wait for them to reach me, and crush me. the sky starts to strobe, and with each cymbal flare the insects appear paradoxical- static yet always moving closer. and then suddenly, stood in a small room, with green chairs and floral curtains (pulled open to let in a desperate, dying, half-light) i watch real millipedes circle the floor around my feet, becoming and unbecoming shadow. they move so fast that my eyes can't fix them; they move so fast that i see them only in sound: a long, high, hissing, the noise of angry, boiling water.

wake up.

forty

2009-05-22T19:45:00.004+01:00

my life orbits coffee shops and libraries, the pull of caffine and books sending me in certain, slow arcs across the city. the staff at caffe nero can serve me before i order; although, since i always drink americanos, and not some complex concoction of cream, coffee and chocolate whipped up to a frenzy, there is little memory work to be done.

in the morning:

i leave my room as the market is being unpacked from the back of trucks, the frames of stalls being dressed by strong-looking boys in hoodies. A couple of men huddle round a van that sells hot drinks, steam rising from the cups in their cupped hands, and chatter from their lips. it is barely seven, but one of the cafe-restaurants is already unfolding out into the street, promising alfresco lunches- very continental- if the weather holds.

thirty-nine

2009-05-10T20:22:00.001+01:00

this is what my justhandedin coursework looks like in wordcloud form:





by wordle

thirty-eight

2009-05-10T18:51:00.002+01:00

this is one of my most favourite photographs.

thirty-seven

2009-04-05T22:27:00.010+01:00

stand dead centre of london bridge, and look down at the river. here, it stretches 265 metres wide, all brown and murky from the churned-up silt. that's what thames means: dark. darkness. it used to be far, far wider. shallower, too, but still daunting. count how many steps it takes to walk that bridge, times it by five and you'll get the idea. we hemmed and tamed it, building embankments and barriers to keep that dark water at a distance.

the city grew around this sprawling of water, with celts and romans and anglo-saxons all settling and resettling the land: Plowonidonjon, Londinium, Lundene. letters shift and disappear but something remains in each name, the thread of an idea, an echo of impossible water, saying: ‘too wide to bridge’. here, we cannot cross. the city is named for the thames. london is not people or buildings, but a memory of humans defeated by a river.

whenever i sit by the thames, i think of you, of us, years ago, bellies flat on the embankment wall, watching the water, watching it swell, and break. do you remember the boy we saw, how beautiful and sleek he was, like a fast running stream? and how, when he saw us staring at him, your hat, an old army cap you found in your garage, fell from your head and sailed downwards? you tried to catch it, arms flailing like those cartoon characters who run straight off a cliff edge and scramble in the air, trying to hold on to nothing, trying not to fall. by the time it reached the surface of the water, the boy had disappeared. later, breathless from running along the bank, following your hat until it got dragged under a boat-restaurant, we called him angel, spirit, nymph, and your hat a votive offering for us having seen what we were not meant to. it could be worse, you said, we could have lost our sight, been turned into spiders, been turned into men. the gods, you said, had a strange sense of justice.

in certain places, when the tide is out, i climb down onto the bed of the river, to be where the water was, will be, imagine being under it. i pick up shells, and later at home i put them to my ear and hear the river moving, embedded in me, keeping me here.

thirty-six

2009-04-05T21:19:00.003+01:00

from the girls rock! movie, via frl.zucker.