I have this vision of us sitting in a field, this big sprawling field, as it crawls out towards the bottom of a shallow valley. The sun set 10 minutes ago, but the heat is lingering in the air. It’s dry & warm & everything feels good. I want this specific moment to last forever. A moment that hasn’t happened, a moment that hasn’t happened, but it’s just us.
There’s this look on your face, as if you can see through mine, see beyond myself. But you’re looking directly at me, you see me. No one’s ever really seen me before. It’s a strange sensation, it’s what made me fall in love with you. I can never really put my finger on it. I wish I had that ability, I feel like I use my eyes all the time but never for seeing. Never in the way that you can, I’m so lost in the physical details of light, whilst you pass through the wavelengths & look into a soul. You know people, know who they really are. For better or for worse. I would trade anything to see the way you see the world. It must be fascinating.
It’s warm & clear, old as time
The same water as the gods
As Zeus, as Eros
Apollo
Light light light
You can run your fingers through it
You can feel it
It envelops you, comforts you
All encompassing
It feels equally
As if it’s always been there
But a fleeting moment
Too scared to close your eyes
In case the moment leaves
"Superliminare" ~ from 'The Temple' by George Herbert
Thou, whom the former precepts have sprinkled and taught, how to behave thyself in church; approach, and taste the church's mystical repast.
Avoid profaneness; come not here: nothing but holy, pure and clear, or that which groaneth to be so, may at his peril further go.
I wonder if
everyone talks to themselves
as much as I do.
I wonder what
they're saying.
Billions of internal
conversations perpetually
pulsing through the
synapses of the brain.
Would the world be
different if we had
these conversations aloud?
Are we going about this
circuitously? Is this what's
making us all depressed?
I enjoy mine. It's never-
ending. It's where I come up with my best
ideas. I hope it never
stops.
"All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception.
Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes the void.
The imagination is continually at work filling up all the fissures through which grace might pass."
- Simone Weil
We will smash the old world
wildy
We will thunder
A new myth over the world
we will trample the fence
of time time beneath our feet.
We will make a musical scale
of the rainbow.
Roses and dreams
debased by poets
will unfold
in a new light
for the delight of our eyes
the eyes of big children.
We will invent new robes
roses of capitals with petals of squares.
Ernst Neizvestny - 'The 150,000,000'
Translation by Anna Bostock
I find it fascinating to just watch the people walk passed. People are creatures of habit. Tradition. Superstition.
Each lives in their own world, fermenting in their own ideas & fictional constructions of society.
It's funny what people do when they think no one is watching.
When they're so far removed from reality that their vision is practically useless.
Physical existence acting on auto-pilot as they collapse into their sub-conscious.
I wonder where they go.
I wonder what they're thinking of.
I wonder who they're thinking of.
Books of 2023:
"Regarding the Pain of Others" Susan Sontag
"Making Movies" Sidney Lumet
"The Art Museum in Modern Times" Charles Saumarez Smith
"Look Again" David Bailey
"World of Art: Bauhaus" Frank Whitford
"Cinema Speculation" Quentin Tarantino
"World of Art: Artists' Films" David Curtis
"Tales of Ordinary Madness" Charles Bukowski
"Why Men Hate Women" Adam Jukes
"The English Face" David Piper
"Hold Everything Dear" John Berger
"Farenheit 451" Ray Bradbury
"Nineteen Eight-Four" George Orwell
"A Roland Barthes Reader" Roland Barthes
"The Renaissance" Walter Pater
"Art & Revolution" John Berger
"The Philosophy of Andy Warhol" Andy Warhol
"Painting & Drawing" Alfred Daniels
"The Lonely Londoners" Sam Silvan
"Withering Heights" Emily Bronté
"Chronicles: Volume One" Bob Dylan
"The Etymologicon" Mark Forsyth
"A Death in the Family" James Agee
"There is always a danger that the relative freedom of art can render it meaningless. Yet it is this same freedom which allows art, and art alone, to express and preserve the profoundest expectations of a period. It is part of the nature of man to expect more than he can immediately achieve. His expectations are never independent of necessity, but the necessary should never be confused with the immediate."
John Berger, 'Art & Revolution'