Not mine, unfortunately.
Found on The Lazy Eye
khonnor - cantelopps
"I have been known on occasion to howl at the moon."
- Crash Davis
Bull Durham
Finished up Dorian Gray and i have to say, i was pretty underwhelmed and i don't even know why! Maybe because it was a tough read, not to understand but the language was so dense and you couldn't miss a single word or you'd be wondering what the hell happened. I liked it though, with its insane theories and despicable characters. Youth is fleeting? Yes, well, i guess so.
I've been listening to Radical Face's podcast for the past few days and i can't actually stop listening. He talks about his album Ghost and how it's based on old houses and the stories they bear. The houses with floors that creak and walls that feel almost soft, as if it has seen a lot more than you have. He speaks of how whilst you live in a house it absorbs your story and how inevitably when you leave, you leave your ghosts behind to haunt whoever lives there after you. So the older the house, the more history you have to deal with.
I love that way of thinking, that a house could be alive and brimming over with stories to tell. I wonder what kind of stories my house would tell. It's got me thinking about my last project, about 'the moment of death' and this reminds of that...where exactly do you go after? Can you get stuck? If you are taken suddenly, do you get confused and cling onto the safest place you know? This got me thinking to the way we preserve the life of the deceased. I got an email from the uni about a magazine called Antennae which is involved with taxidermy, i find the whole process rather grotesque but i am interested in why we do it. Why we go to great lengths to preserve what's gone. There are longstanding traditions of memento mori and death masks, which seem to serve some purpose of remembrance.
I think i'm going a bit off track.
I'm just interested in the stories behind things, inanimate objects that seem to breathe and give comfort or even disturb, like the picture of Mr Gray.
Ucht, why can't i be interested in fluffy bunnies and rainbows like normal people?
I think i'd like to illustrate this song by Radical Face, he talks about it in his podcast:
"...the song 'Winter Is Coming' is the story of a man and his family. Uh, in the story the man discovers that the seasons are people, winter, spring, autumn and so on. Sensing a bad winter coming, which he and his family aren't prepared for he decides to kidnap summer and he chains him down in his basement. Uh, the song begins with the wife looking out the window and seeing winter, uh, marching up to the house and she's destroying everything in sight and the song follows them as they try to run, they try to get away."
I really want this album.
Enough rambling nonsense, i'm sleepy and i have more of Perfume to read!
Good day.
When i was little my Dad gave me a book called, The Ankle Grabber by Rose Impey. It is quite possibly the reason that at the impending age of 21, i am still incredibly aware of what may be lurking underneath my bed, readying itself to 'ankle grab' me' and gobble me up. ('gobble's such an appropriate word for referring to bed monsters).
The above photo is probably the best depiction of the absolute terror i have of what is below my mattress.
Perhaps it's a 'misunderstood' beastie, with big eyes, blunt claws and a gummy mouth?
I can but hope.
"There are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, either after one of those dreamless nights that make us almost enamoured of death, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when through the chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible than reality itself, and instinct with that vivid life that lurks in all grotesques, and that lends to Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one might fancy, especially the art of those whose minds have been troubled with the malady of reverie. Gradually white fingers creep through the curtains, and they appear to tremble. In black fantastic shapes, dumb shadows crawl into the corners of the room, and crouch there. Outside there is the stirring of birds among the leaves, or the sound of men going forth to their work, or the sigh and sob of the wind coming down from the hills, and wandering round the silent house, as though it feared to wake the sleepers, and yet must needs call forth sleep from her purple cave. Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern."
- Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray
It took me two days but i finally finished watching the epic Casshern. Think The Matrix being slapped in the face by a stupidly pretty Japanese man =]
You know when you hear a piece of music that just screams 'car chase' or 'fight scene', like Explosions In The Sky or Feeder's 'Shatter' and you instantly start to imagine these grandiose scenes of immense violence...well, you don't have to imagine at all with Casshern. There are actual jet-pack-hip-things. That makes it sound ridiculous but it's very much not. The story was a bit sketchy at points but i can forgive that because of the score and effects and the general mouth-gaping goodness. If the soundtrack wasn't 25 quid i'd by it right now!
Speaking of which, we got broadband finally and i got me an iTunes account. I'm going to be poor, oh so very poor...ucht.
[Hello to my mum, i promise not to forcefeed iTunes all my money even though i really really want to!]
I will post a new drawing at some point, i swear!
olafur arnalds - haust
"Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
I am haunted by waters."
- Norman Maclean
A River Runs Through It
I just finished reading A River Runs Through It and it was inevitably lovely. I don't know why i avoided it for so long. If you can get past the brain spasms each time Norman Maclean bursts into detailed accounts of fishing techniques, you'll find a big thumping heart underneath. Quite possibly a fish heart, but a heart nonetheless. It's actually great to read a book that doesn't need to thrill or amuse or do anything in particular, it just needs told and this is one i'm very glad i was.
"It is one of those books you want to read aloud, following people around to do it..."
- Joe Rogaly
I want to go fishing and live in the country until there's no country left. Yup.
The Picture of Dorian Gray is up next =]
Watch The City of Lost Children, it's brilliant.
ludovico einaudi - primavera
"'When?', said the moon to the stars in the sky
'Soon', said the wind that followed him home
'Who?', said the cloud that started to cry
'Me', said the rider as dry as a bone
'How?', said the sun melted the ground
'Why?', said the river that refused to run
'Where?', said the thunder without a sound
'Here', said the rider and took up his gun"
- The Proposition
I seem to have watched an obscene number of films in the past 3 weeks and i'm nowhere near done yet. Sometimes i worry that i love the music and film world more than my chosen path but i'm told it's quite normal.
Is it?
I'm hoping so, otherwise i'm in a heap of artistic trouble!
I'd quite like to
read The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Wasp Factory, will i ever get round to doing so? Not likely as i haven't even finished The Master and Margarita yet. I suck at the literature game.
No new artwork to share as i'm lazy and haven't photographed anything yet, can you inject enthusiasm? I did however stumble across Alexey Titarenko, who enviably manages to show lamenting souls far better than i have yet managed. Damn him.
cathy davey - reuben
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