Everything can probably be remembered but it’s the linkages & the lack of space to keep them near that make it difficult. Memory is not linear. That’s for planning the future where you write yourself preliminary notes & leave them in strategic places. So that whenever it is you arrive at wherever you were going you can open them up & see what happened along the way.
Saturday, June 29, 2024
#542 L'Espoir Rapide
Thursday, June 27, 2024
#541 Excuseer, Juffrouw, is het een sprekende film?
Does that really matter? Even if the film is silent, the continuity — or discontinuity — of its contents, the things we are seeing, provokes an inner mono- &/or dialogue. Not necessarily in words. Could be images, fragments of a past or figments of a future, that have nothing to do with what was en- visaged by the auteur, but triggered by it even so. Could be sounds, birds on the roof, trains passing in the night, what we grew up listening to, what we associate with the wider screen where they appeared. Or maybe we approach it in the same way we partake of a day at the races. The colors, the numbers, known & easily discernable; the purpose clear, but not yet the outcome. As complement, a gallery full of the works of an almost contemporary Belgian master which presents a nominally silent narrative, but has within it a host of interwoven speaking parts.
Tuesday, May 21, 2024
#540 The Art of Conversation V (1950)
Knit & pearl alternately for four rows. Underneath it, in white wool, long enough to interest, yet not long enough to tire, with the words written in a clear, legible hand, this note: "This is not a dream." Written from the heart, the simple eloquence of the words forces the ideogram to arrange itself accor- ding to the laws of a simultaneous form. Avoid postscripts, punctuate carefully. Render the outline as a thin skin that must be pierced in order to follow, word for word, the outpouring of its internal text. A lie is not locked up in a phrase, but must exist, if at all, in the mind of the writer. In its millennial tradition the essence of rhetoric is in allegory. Never point. It is excessively ill-bred. Sources: This Is Not a Pipe, by Michel Foucault The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette (1860), by Florence Hartley
Wednesday, May 15, 2024
#539 L'Aube à Cayenne (2)
The tree trunk taken, & turned into a book. Dürer is praying a miracle may occur — as he has done for several centuries — & the tree become whole again. Yes, he knows trees reach up to the sky, but they should have a base to support them, not be silhou- etted against the rules of nature. Now his hands hold a ball of thread to tether it to the ground if he can get his magic metal sty- lus to draw it closer. He has to hurry, for the candle burns away.
Saturday, May 11, 2024
#538 La Magie Noire (1946)
Antarctic winter imitated. I am living inside a refrigerator set up in a cold store. Beside me there is a bird that would escape if it could. It is my first Assumption; & I am trying to keep it by keeping it as close to suspended animation as I can. The bird is unhappy. It is a summer bird. When I first felt it fluttering a few ingested pellets of dry ice were enough to quieten it. But as it grew I was forced to move lodgings, was forced to move my chilling mode from solid boulder blocks to gaseous intake. Now when I exhale my frozen breath is fuel that drives rockets to the moon. It does not wake the bird but something inside it awakens. I sense its struggles as it recognizes flight, is driven mad by its proximity.
Saturday, April 27, 2024
#537 L'Avenir
Everything in the distance seems so picture perfect — the stars, the hills in shadow. & those things up close — the open window, the pristine bench with that loaf so fresh you would swear you could smell it — refresh that first impression of perfection. Then doubts start creeping in. Why are there no lights dotting the hillside? Why are there no knick knacks around the house to indicate some evidence of human inhabitation? Who, therefore, baked the loaf? Is it really real? Or is this image of the future a wry obser- vation by the painter that life as we currently know it might eventually vanish from the planet because hu- mankind cannot live by bread alone?
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
#536 Elseneur
The trees grown up & shaped to repli- cate the castle that once stood here. The place no longer a hamlet. Now over- grown. No longer a place for Ham- let to call Home.
Monday, April 15, 2024
Friday, April 12, 2024
#534 Le Monde des Images
The window pane cannot encompass the setting of the sun. It cracks — obviously not double-glazed. & that image, not on the floor, camera ob- scura style, but, in a similar fashion, trapped at a point in its pathway, imprinted on the glass. Now, on the floor, shards of sunset — clouds, reflections on the sea, sun. Later, after he had initiated the shattering of the glass, Magritte wrote: If what is at least possible should truly hap- pen one day, I would hope that a poet or philosopher... would explain to me what these shards of reality are supposed to mean. I leave that in the inexplicable basket. But, if there is some- one out there…I'm listening.
Thursday, April 11, 2024
#533 L'Ocean
He gets excited when he's near the ocean. She is more reserved, thinks of the scallop shell she emerged on, wonders where it now is. It looks at first like an unequal relationship; but it seems to work.
Saturday, March 23, 2024
#532 La Saveur des larmes (1946)
The stalk broken, perhaps in preparation for pesto or some similar condiment. Not used. The flavor unconducive for garnish — too much sad- ness, tastes too much of tears.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)