songs for tomorrow
I dream of an image to fall in love with.
This man, this man. He walks between darkness and light!
The ground crumbles under feet ...
For dinner at the golf club, no 'jeans'. So, we all wear my dad's clothes, shoes and all.
Inadvertently, my mother gets to look at a version of my dad, two generations younger.
'Their custom was, as soon as they arrived at a certain age, or that they saw themselves threatened by any disease, to cause a funeral pile to be erected for them, and on the top a stately bed, where, after having joyfully feasted their friends and acquaintance, they laid them down with so great resolution, that fire being applied to it, they were never seen to stir either hand or foot; and after this manner, one of them, Calanus by name; expired in the presence of the whole army of Alexander the Great.'
(Montaigne)
And not knowing quite what to do, the soldiers blew their trumpets to mark the occasion.
Maybe the camera is the modern version of a trumpet.
that one hand might touch another ...
?
Robert lives up above Aberglaslyn in North Wales and without electricity; the wind-up radio brings the French radio station, 'France Bleu'.
Lili 1720 Aged 60 (heart)
A gravestone unique for being of rough slate and inscribed, presumably by her beloved, simply with a heart.
Strangely, it started to rain so suddenly that the negative itself became streaked with water.
Method for preparing paper negatives:
Pre-expose sufficiently to achieve the first distinguishable shade of grey.
This renders the imperceptible as perceptible.
Can I so nudge the invisible?
It’s no fun if you don’t reply.
Maybe you have only sheets of black paper.
The typewriter was invented in 1801 by Pellegrino Turri for the young woman he fell in love with, Countess Carolina Fantoni da Fivizzano, who had become blind. This used carbon black paper.
If you type on black paper, the copy can be read.
...
The photograph is also copy.
distrahere
To pull apart. This is what happens in old age, with dementia, with the loss of memory, or rather the loss of the connections between memories. Distrahere, dis - apart, trahere - to pull. It is from this that we get the word, distract. 'Unglued', you might say. And the opposite? To glue? Is this what we spend our lives doing?
my parents
and my children
A strawberry, reconstructed.
The illusion is not lost. I do not hide my brush strokes. The black and white image of a strawberry becomes red again, by my hand.
As I sit on the train, I am reminded of how it is for a horse.
We are compelled, like a horse, to look at the world sideways.
Blinkers that a man might put on a working horse, I am told, are not just so that the horse cannot see to the side; it is so that it cannot see much at all.
So too, we can look around us and realise that we can only look at those around us sideways.
To meet another, one has to approach not from the front, nor from behind, but from the side.
Looking at the world, like a horse.
From sound, from vibration that emanates out, from a song, the Universe comes flowing forth into the great ocean of reality, and so the humble cow herder can enjoy the pleasure and the passions of reality and relish in the wonder of creation. (A Hindu idea on creation)
As a wedding present, in China, what art can you give? Not an image of someone else's happiness; you cannot compare. Not a Venus. A cow then, rich in nature's delight. We have these in Switzerland, but they are all inside now for the Winter. In Wales they are still out, but no longer by the lake side as they are in the summer. I was looking to find one. I find by the sea or in fields fenced in. In the summer, I see them free by the lake. But not this time. In the end I take a cow to the lake. I wished it so. The cow arrives into this reality, out of the song of two birds; the birds themselves are not of this reality, but of another place. There is another metaphor. Unlike Botticelli's foamy sea, there is stillness here. Suitable perhaps for the couple on their marriage day. You might say that as we struggle, we are in the middle of a lake. At some point when tending someone you love, you reach the edge of the lake, and you look at each other with such joy at the stillness.
