Cuttings (I)

Happen upon a book on Hans Christian Andersen containing his artworks - plenty of predictable pencil drawings, the fairly well-known cut outs, but also - the collages. They could be by Joseph Cornell. A whole new dimension on Cornell's work opens up - did he know of these works by H.C.A. in addition to the stories?

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Lara is worried about having to go to university - she's nearly seven, after all. She wants to be a supermarket check-out lady - like the ones she sees in Delhaize. Mummy explains you probably don't have to go to university to work the till. Good, says Lara, because then I can have all that money ...

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Reading Hegel on Art - not quite so forbidding as I'd assumed.

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It suddenly occurs to me that 'Moby Dick' is a shamanistic text. The whale as Ahab's 'power animal'.

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Thinking about pi, crystals, stone age man, dolmens, earth stars, divining, ley lines, the Golden Mean - all in terms of 'lines of force' - and whether one can work an Olsonesque geophysics of poetry.

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It looks as though Tony Blair is nearing his sell-by-date.* I can vividly remember - ten years ago in May - returning to England after my interview for the job in Belgium. There was a tangible carnival mood in the cafes along Whiteladies Road - at last the Conservatives had been ousted! Listening to the 'Today' programme there was an evident sense of relief as politicians answered questions with apparent honesty. New Labour, a New Britain, a New Start...

Today - Thursday 7 September 2006 - well ... it all went horribly wrong, didn't it?

(* in fact, he is well past it - it would be more accurate to say that the label can no longer be faked).