A beautiful sight. Mick Fanning's recent adventure—a midnight surf under the Northern Lights. Spectacular.
Blue Glass
I have a thing about blue glass—I love it.
It’s not surprising that when I saw the blue glass sculptures at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice, I was absolutely enthralled. They're situated in front of a window looking out to the water. It was so memorable, I included a reference in one of my art stories, Ann Hamilton's myein. I was reminded again today, as they featured on my IG feed.
The twenty-three poured glass sculptures were created by artist by Egidio Costantini and based on sketches by Picasso in 1964.
Seen filtered against the light, they're exquisite and mesmerising.
Arrival
Just saw the film, Arrival. It was eerily strange which was great for a Hollywood film. That sense of such an unknown entity coming to Earth and humans having to rise to the challenge of communicating with it—to learn about it and its purpose—had my mind whirling with thoughts about language.
Spoilers here.
When the linguist in the film, Louise, cracks the “code” so to speak of what the “aliens” were saying, she had to ask them the “big” question: why were they here? The answer she deciphered was “weapon” or possibly “tool”. Obviously that sent everyone into a panic, with retaliation or obliteration on the military’s mind. But what Louise finally figures out is their purpose wasn’t to proliferate a weapon but to impart a “gift”—language. They were here to give their language so that humans could help them in the distant future.
Language is a gift. As a means to communicate, connect, understand, empathise and help. To make sense of our existence and express what it means to be human. It’s amazing how we take this gift for granted, simply in that we use it every day. In the wake of the US election, I’ve been thinking a lot about how language can also obfuscate, manipulate, erase, harm, rally and damage. The fact that Trump’s proposed cabinet is shaping to become an alt-right (or to be more pointed: right wing nationalist) nightmare, it’s chilling to think of how other extreme right wing regimes throughout history have co-opted language in the most insidious ways, and how citizens became embroiled in that narrative.
So I’ve been turning to other writers for solace. Affirming my belief in the life-giving capacity of language, Toni Morrison in her Nobel Lecture in 1993 spoke of language’s vitality, how “It arcs toward the place where meaning may lie.”
Her discussion of language is couched in a parable, and her words are those of a wise, blind woman having to communicate with her much younger visitors. The challenge is communicating that which seems inexplicable, and how language meets that challenge. Why language matters.
“Word-work is sublime, she thinks, because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference – the way in which we are like no other life.
We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”
Gooey - Glass Animals
Seriously needing to chill, so I'm listening to Gilligan Moss' remix of Glass Animals' song Gooey on repeat. Never fails to make me smile :)
Words + Walls
'THIS IS THE WALL WE NEED'
Words written on a Post-It note and stuck on a 14th street subway wall in New York. The art installation was created by artist, Levee, so that people could put their thoughts on Post-it notes in response to Trump’s election win.
A Yoshitomo Nara Day
Been a while between posts! Since I just posted about di Caprio's doc, Before the Flood, what's on my mind—planet earth. This Nara image reminds me of Antoine de Saint-Exupery's Little Prince, one of my all-time faves. Finding home, self and love.
Frank Ocean: Endless/Blonde
Forget the hype.
That’s what I keep reminding myself when listening to Frank Ocean’s new album. Both the video-album, Endless and the album, Blonde (or Blond??? Yeah it’s confusing).
In the end, it’s the music that matters. With the drop of Blonde there’s been fudged release dates; a video-album that could have been the actual album; the exclusive Apple music deal; huge number of stellar collaborators, pop-up shop promos and a glossy mag accompanying the album.
Too much hype. So, I decided to just focus on the music. Watching Endless was intriguing, seeing Frank going DIY and building his spiral staircase (more sculpture than functional), but I found myself closing my eyes and just listening. Whether the video was a metaphor for crafting, creating, taking time, the ongoing process of making stuff—whatever. In the end, the music felt like submerging myself in a sonic sea. I just drifted along with the current. It’s an immersive experience, like listening to Blonde, and it’s beautiful. Blonde has a different tone, edgier, darker, but equally poetic, with that quality of slipstreaming from one song to the next. Both are mesmerising and it’s been wonderful engaging with Frank’s words and voice once again.
I’ll be listening to both for a long time, because the wait has been worth it.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez: writing the fantastic
"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."
So begins Gabriel Garcia Marquez's marvellous tale, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Marquez's book wasn't my introduction to South American magical realism, that book was Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits. Thoroughly entranced, I went searching for more and discovered Marquez.
In a Paris Review interview (The Art of Fiction no69) I was delighted to read how Marquez found the tone for One Hundred Years of Solitude. This is what he had to say:
GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
[] It was based on the way my grandmother used to tell her stories. She told things that sounded supernatural and fantastic, but she told them with complete naturalness. When I finally discovered the tone I had to use, I sat down for eighteen months and worked every day.
INTERVIEWER
How did she express the “fantastic” so naturally?
GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
What was most important was the expression she had on her face. She did not change her expression at all when telling her stories, and everyone was surprised. In previous attempts to write One Hundred Years of Solitude, I tried to tell the story without believing in it. I discovered that what I had to do was believe in them myself and write them with the same expression with which my grandmother told them: with a brick face.
Frank Ocean: Boys Don't Cry
I love Frank Ocean's Channel Orange, so I'm very excited that he's about to release his next album this Friday, Boys Don't Cry.
Can't wait!
Update—apparently it might not be out until November! So much for the excitement...
The Man & the Sea
A great meditation on one surfer's connection to the sea—check out this short film directed by Andrew Kaineder, The Man & the Sea, featuring Australian surfer, Derek Hynd, getting philosophical at Jeffrey's Bay.
A Yoshitomo Nara Day
Kind of feels like I'm waiting for something...
For Nice
Illustration by @Louison_A
Thoughts and prayers for France, and especially the people of Nice.
Mar
Here's a gorgeous short film from CWS company Finisterre and directed by Andrew Kaineder, Mar:
“Daylight wanes as sky becomes heavy. Isobars compress and warp; cross-sectioned onions on the nightly news. The coast awakens, transformed from the doldrums of summer. Warmth; a flickering memory, like those drawn upon for favourable conditions at half-forgotten spots. The ocean roars, resuming it’s age-old attack on the coastline in a relentless barrage of storm fronts. And so the hunt begins, chasing the nooks hidden from wind and seas. Schedule revolves around brief opportunities, better described as optimistic hunches. A goading carrot dangled, and ever so occasionally within reach.
Winter chasing shapes on the fringes of the North Atlantic. A collections of moments captured along the way. Mar.”
Check it out.
but beautiful
Geoff Dyer’s But Beautiful is a book about jazz.
About legendary musicians Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, Bud Powell, Charlie Mingus, Lester Young, Chet Baker, Art Pepper and Ben Webster. It’s not criticism, although Dyer set out to create something along those lines. Instead, Dyer found himself embellishing fact with fiction, weaving known events, the music, the musicians and experience of that music with his own imagination. As one critic said, he’s writing about music, “from the inside out”.
Dyer captures the sounds of the music and musicians through language; the form and style of how he tells a story acts as a mirror. Each story is unique, but together they produce a complex, sinuous and fascinating improvisation that becomes a whole. The continuous story thread of Duke Ellington’s car journey is like the anchoring melody that musicians riff off to create something new, but return to again and again.
This book resonates for me as Dyer’s way of writing about music is akin to how I write about art. My approach to writing about art in the Arts Stories project is writing “from the inside out”. It’s a process of delving into the maze of the artist’s thoughts, feelings and intentions, their words, the work itself, and what other writers, art historians and critics have also said about it. Coming out of that maze, I’m pulling on a thread, or more than one, to create a poem, short or long form piece of fiction expressing an imaginative engagement with the work of art.
The art story hopefully creates a bridge for the viewer/reader to then engage or interpret the artwork. Maybe. Who knows! That’s the beauty of it—it will resonate for some, not everyone. Like art or music.
For anyone into jazz, Dyer’s book is a must, and quite simply, beautiful.
L.E.T.: I'm beautiful like me
Love this paste-up from street artist, L.E.T. (les infants terribles):
“I'm not beautiful like you, I'm beautiful like me”
Féileacán - (And the Lost Weekend)
Another great short film by the cold water surfing company, Finisterre. Féileacán - (And the Lost Weekend) has that dreamy, relaxed, easy-going and openness to wonder and adventure that makes an excellent road trip. Check it out!
Martin Scorsese: Tisch Salute
I went looking for inspiration today and came across this wonderful and highly entertaining speech by Martin Scorsese that he gave to the Tisch School of the Arts, NYU, graduates in 2014.
A master storyteller speaking about his own time at Tisch; the journey to become a film maker; the ups and downs of following his passion, and keeping that spark of creativity alive.
Enjoy!
The Colour in Anything
Okay—I'm not a James Blake fan, but his new album release this week, The Colour in Anything took me by surprise—it's quite gorgeous. I was especially interested to discover Frank Ocean was one of Blake's collaborators—I'm definitely a fan of his music!
Here's the video for the song, I Need a Forest Fire with Bon Iver.
A Moon Shaped Pool
Love it!!!!! Radiohead's new album—A Moon Shaped Pool. So worth the wait! Truly incredible. Beautiful. Magic.
Just keep wanting to listen to it, which says it all.
small stories: it's so dark
Image: Sonja Braas, The Passage, Week 38, 2011
it’s so dark
I’ve put the lights on
to illuminate the sudden gloom
of thoughts and feelings
my eyes shuttering
it’s so dark
a sudden stripping of the light
by clouds weighing heavy
so I can’t see the sky
and it’s only morning
the day descending
and already I sense the night
so close
yet above
this smother of grey
there is still the sun
© Angela Jooste