Sunday

Go for a walk to chase away those Sunday afternoon blues. The Fall's 'Reformation Post TLC' playing in my ears ...

The promise
They portioned to promise
They portioned to promise
Tale of “The Usher”
A. No violence
B. Ultimate sorryness
C. A mutual respect for all in the business
The reformation is coming!
It is coming fastly
And:
D. An even cash flow - this cannot be under-rated
E. Cut down on rhythm machines and have more guitars and minidisks, etc.
F. Treat PR, security people, agents, etc. with the respect and honour that they deserve
6. Enjoy film

'F' - in particular - is delivered with such withering sarcasm by Mark E. Smith.

The sort of thing which cheers me up no end.

architectural menace

Dipping into 'Negative Space' by Manny Farber and find this:

“Antonioni’s speciality, the effect of moving as in a chess game, becomes an autocratic kind of direction that robs an actor of his motive powers and most of his spine ... Antonioni gets his odd, clarity-is-all effects from his taste for chic mannerist art that results in a screen that is glassy, has a side-sliding motion, the feeling of people plastered against stripes or divided by verticals and horizontals; his incapacity with interpersonal relationships turns crowds into stiff waves, lovers into lonely appendages, hanging stiffly from each other, occasionallly coming together like clanking sheets of metal but seldom giving the effect of being in communion.”
( p142)



and later on

“ Antonioni uses a wall or building as a menace” (p197)

later that evening ...

... it's all in that gesture: the photographer grasps the imaginary ball, weighs it, then throws it - to wait and see (will they laugh? will the throw fall short? will it be the right ball? can the illusion succeed?) ...




... is it a smile? then the expression darkens ... then the camera angle shifts: the photographer photographed ...

Happy Birthday ...

... to me.

And to celebrate, as the rain falls upon the Velux, the second part of Antonioni's 'Blow Up'. I'd have been two years old when it first appeared. It's the interiors which I find fascinating watching the film this time - the sheets of glass, mirrors, statuary and, here, the Roger Hilton (?) on the wall behind Hemmings.

... and a Happy New Year

I'm rethinking what and why this Blog is - entries are becoming more and more sporadic, the 'action' is elsewhere (or not at all), is anyone reading it, might it be best to just call it a day?

If you - whoever 'you' are - have any thoughts - let me know.

Meantime, let's wait for the photograph to load.

A Merry Christmas To Our Readers

Jingle bells etc. ...

Collage

'Four x Four' (2007)

The & A by Z

says it all

Zukofsky & Goldfish

and this morning I come upon this:


"Children know we may see poetry with our ears: ABCD goldfish? MNO goldfish! OSMR goldfish. And that is our first delight in words that they hopscotch sequential noise - A poet, we say, has vision. Louis Zukofsky's vision came from excision of all but ears to the language itself, letter by letter: A. Like Nature, he was bent on ever more intricate goldfish. "Homer's Argos hearing/ Handel's Largo as/ The car goes". It is needless to state that this is first a telescope, before it is a poem. Behind the wheel, fiddling the syllables, the finest ears in the business is heading somewhere 100,000 years an hour (or so). Do you not hear them thunder?"

(Ronald Johnson)

To resume ...

... where we left off.

Things that have happened:

1) discovered I like eating mussels

2) decided to read some novels (other than those I am obliged to teach)

3) realised that I should have read Patrick Hamilton years ago - most especially 'Hangover Square'.

4) finally succumbed and bought an iPod Nano

5) discovered

i) that iTunes Store is not all it's cracked up to be
ii) that you cannot buy films from Belgium
iii) that this is just as well since - given the size of the screen - you wouldn't want to watch a full-length feature
iv) how nifty having a screen is (as against the Shuffle) and the delights of Cover Flow

6) enjoyed lying in bed listening to BBC podcasts and hi-jacked Comedy

7) finally read 'The Wolves of Willoughby Chase' - a book which hanted my childhood years of library browsing (starts well and then veers into sub-Dickensian pastiche) - and am currently reading 'The Weirdstone of Brisingamen' (another Surely You Must Have Read prep school favourite).

8) decided that Moleskine notebooks might not be just a marketing gimmick and actually rather well-made and practical

9) not got down to it (for reasons too complicated to elaborate)

10) rediscovered Bjork & decided to listen back through her CDs

11) made a resolution to resist further purchases (Amazon, SPD, etc) due to ...

12) big news that, yes, it looks for real that we'll be buying the house next door

That's it for this afternoon. There is seafood risotto to be made with yesterday's prawn shells and today's mussels.

Rain. And tomorrow is Monday.

Phase Two

Back from the UK, a couple of days in Brussels, now off to the north coast of France. Plenty of sea air, fish soup and quality time 'en famille'. What better way to begin November?