Artwork: Auguste Rodin, Danaid, 1889
laid bare
unstitched and
incomplete
in the cradle
of your
lap
© Angela Jooste
A Yoshitomo Nara Day
a snarly, twisty, frustrating kind of day—a set of fangs would have been great...(grrrrr!)
Bright Star
Jane Campion’s film, Bright Star is exquisite.
The love story of poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne is told with grace, honesty, humour and an emotional intensity that had me enthralled from the first time I saw it. And every time I’ve watched it since, the ending still has a gut wrenching power that reduces me to tears.
As Fanny comments in the film, the beginning of Keats’ poem, Endymion is “quite perfect”, and I find these lines express something of my feelings about this film:
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Love: the word
Artwork: eLSeed (@elseed), love you mum, 2012
Thinking about the word—love. One word in English to express so much.
So, following that train of thought—this is from one of my favourite novels, Ahdaf Soueif’s, Map of Love, the many ways “love” finds its expression in Arabic:
“Hubb’ is love, ‘ishq’ is love that twines two people together, ‘shaghaf’ is love that nests in the chambers of the heart, ‘hayam’ is love that wanders the earth, ‘teeh’ is love in which you lose yourself, ‘walah’ is love that carries sorrow within it, ‘sababah’ is love that exudes from your pores, ‘hawa’ is love that shares its name with ‘air’ and with ‘falling’, ‘gharam’ is love that is willing to pay the price.”
A Yoshitomo Nara Day
Trying to focus, but I'm travelling in my mind...
Four Tet + Jamie xx + Romy = Seesaw
I've been a fan of Four Tet since I heard the album, There is Love in You. Gorgeous. So, happy start to the day when on my IG feed, a post from Four Tet (Kieran!), of a remix of Seesaw with Jamie xx and Romy (the xx). Check it out.
free fall
Sometimes, you just fall.
Tom Dosland's recent free fall on the big, big wave, Jaws (Peahi, Hawaii), is hard to watch. But he made it without being injured, although his board got shredded.
Big wave surfers amaze me with the risks they're prepared to take.
Toni Morrison: in between the words
Just read a wonderful interview with Toni Morrison in The Paris Review on 'The Art of Fiction' (no.134). Here's just one of her observations on writing:
“The difficulty for me in writing—among the difficulties—is to write language that can work quietly on a page for a reader who doesn't hear anything. Now for that, one has to work carefully with what is in between the words. What is not said. Which is measure, which is rhythm, and so on. So, it is what you don't write that frequently gives what you do write its power.”
small stories: if my heart
If my heart
was enough
I'd reel
you in
© Angela Jooste
Nobody Really Cares...
Love this—thanks Courtney Barnett!
Paris
Jimi Hendrix: “ When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know Peace.”
Imagine Peace by Yoko Ono
Image: Yoko Ono's instagram message 15/11.15
Peace and love—we need them like air...
For Paris
For Paris—thoughts, prayers and love
Isobelle Carmody: on finishing the Obernewtyn journey
I've been wondering how Isobelle Carmody must have felt finishing the last Obernewtyn Chronicles book, The Red Queen—a 30 year epic writing journey! In an interview with The Guardian to mark the release of the book, Carmody reveals she wrote The Red Queen while staying at a friend's place, and when she finished, she packed her things and took a bus and train journey home:
“I arrived home in the night and it felt very symbolic, that journey. It was a lovely feeling of blissful separation, of floating away into the future.”
The Red Queen
FInally!!! The last of the Obernewtyn Chronicles has been released—The Red Queen. And it's a doorstop! I'm very excited to see how the journey ends, and also slightly daunted at the 1,100+ page length. I came late to reading this series (read Obernewtyn a few years ago), so I can't imagine how it must feel for readers who have been there from when the first book was released in 1987!!!! Truly epic and mind boggling.
A Yoshitomo Nara Day
Kind of sleepy, kind of dreamy...
evolution
Evolution...huh!!!! Stencil work near Melbourne University (no coincidence...).
The Assassin
Just saw the movie The Assassin—haunting, beautiful, visually stunning—a quiet heartbreak permeates the film, never heavy, but powerful. A film about love, honour, dignity and the choice to follow one's own sense of what's right. To find one's own path.
Grimes/Aristophanes: Scream
For anyone with the urge to rip free a horror-flick worthy howl—Grimes and Taiwanese rapper Aristophanes' song Scream, from Grimes' soon to be released album Art Angels is kinda perfect. Been listening to it quite a bit lately—yep—says a lot for my current headspace!
PJ Harvey: songwriter & poet
Poetry and song are entwined.
Historically the Greeks had two types of poetry: epic poetry such as Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey, and lyric poetry which was a song accompanied by a lyre.
Ballads have been sung since the Middle Ages and are simply ‘story songs’, passed on from singer to singer. The ‘ballad stanza’ is a common verse structure (the quatrain or four-lines of alternating rhyme) present in both poetry and song lyrics. Interestingly, many of Emily Dickinson’s poems are in ballad form, although her influence is said to be that of the hymn with its similar meter.
Lyrics and music are bound by rhythm—beats. Rhythm and movement go hand in hand, hence the notion of “measure” or “meter” in poetry.
Some argue for a distinction between songs and poetry, with an emphasis on poetry being printed and self-contained as an internal dialogue, while songs require voice and performance to be fully realised. Bob Dylan is often called a poet, but he’s remarked: “Anything I can sing, I call a song. Anything I can’t sing, I call a poem.” Yet it can be said that the roots, structure and purpose of both forms seem inextricably connected.
Leonard Cohen wrote poems before writing songs, navigating the genres of fiction, songwriting and poetry throughout his career, much like Patti Smith who doesn’t see much difference between songs and poetry. Many songwriters quote poets as inspiration, and many have written poetry distinct from their songwriting.
So, it’s not much of a surprise that the wonderful songwriter PJ Harvey also writes poetry.
Harvey is about to release her first book of poetry, The Hollow and the Hand. She wanted to explore the people and places of Kosovo, Afghanistan and Washington, so between 2011 and 2014, she went on a series of journeys collaborating with friend, Seamus Murphy, who took photographs to accompany her poems. Previously the two collaborated on Harvey’s album Let England Shake, with Murphy taking photographs and producing 12 short films.
Here is PJ Harvey’s poem The Hand:
