elisabeth

room with a view

2012-01-15T11:20:00.002+11:00

Carey

2012-01-06T11:37:00.002+11:00

The wind is in from Africa
Last night I couldn't sleep
Oh, you know it sure is hard to leave here Carey
But it's really not my home
My fingernails are filthy, I got beach tar on my feet
And I miss my clean white linen and my fancy French cologne

Oh Carey get out your cane
And I'll put on some silver
Oh you're a mean old Daddy, but I like you fine

Come on down to the Mermaid Cafe and I will buy you a bottle of wine
And we'll laugh and toast to nothing and smash our empty glasses down
Let's have a round for these freaks and these soldiers
A round for these friends of mine
Let's have another round for the bright red devil
Who keeps me in this tourist town

Come on, Carey, get out your cane
I'll put on some silver
Oh you're a mean old Daddy, but I like you

Maybe I'll go to Amsterdam
Or maybe I'll go to Rome
And rent me a grand piano and put some flowers 'round my room
But let's not talk about fare-thee-welIs now
The night is a starry dome.
And they're playin' that scratchy rock and roll
Beneath the Matalla Moon

Come on, Carey, get out your cane
And I'll put on some silver
You're a mean old Daddy, but I like you

The wind is in from Africa
Last night I couldn't sleep
Oh, you know it sure is hard to leave here
But, it's really not my home
Maybe it's been too long a time
Since I was scramblin' down in the street
Now they got me used to that clean white linen
And that fancy French cologne

Oh Carey, get out your cane
I'll put on my finest silver
We'll go to the Mermaid Cafe
Have fun tonight
I said, Oh, you're a mean old Daddy, but you're out of sight

lyrics by Joni Mitchell

... Sea, and hill, and wood,

2011-12-26T17:32:00.004+11:00

middle kingdom

2011-12-03T18:48:00.001+11:00

windmill

2011-11-28T18:06:00.001+11:00

red cross

2011-11-24T19:29:00.002+11:00

2011-11-17T13:54:00.001+11:00

You're A Big Girl Now

Our conversation was short and sweet
It nearly swept me off-a my feet
And I’m back in the rain, oh, oh
And you are on dry land
You made it there somehow
You’re a big girl now

Bird on the horizon, sittin’ on a fence
He’s singin’ his song for me at his own expense
And I’m just like that bird, oh, oh
Singin’ just for you
I hope that you can hear
Hear me singin’ through these tears

Time is a jet plane, it moves too fast
Oh, but what a shame if all we’ve shared can’t last
I can change, I swear, oh, oh
See what you can do
I can make it through
You can make it too

Love is so simple, to quote a phrase
You’ve known it all the time, I’m learnin’ it these days
Oh, I know where I can find you, oh, oh
In somebody’s room
It’s a price I have to pay
You’re a big girl all the way

A change in the weather is known to be extreme
But what’s the sense of changing horses in midstream?
I’m going out of my mind, oh, oh
With a pain that stops and starts
Like a corkscrew to my heart
Ever since we’ve been apart

lyrics by Bob Dylan

Within You Without You

2011-11-06T19:18:00.003+11:00

We were talking about the space between us all
And the people who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion
Never glimpse the truth, then it's far too late, when they pass away

We were talking about the love we all could share
When we find it, to try our best to hold it there with our love
With our love, we could save the world, if they only knew

Try to realise it's all within yourself
No one else can make you change
And to see you're really only very small
And life flows on within you and without you

We were talking about the love that's gone so cold
And the people who gain the world and lose their soul
They don't know, they can't see, are you one of them?

When you've seen beyond yourself then you may find
Peace of mind is waiting there
And the time will come when you see we're all one
And life flows on within you and without you

- George Harrison

fragments

2011-10-31T11:56:00.002+11:00

The Sphinx

2011-10-16T19:40:00.005+11:00

The Sphinx is drowsy,
Her wings are furled:
Her ear is heavy,
She broods on the world.
"Who'll tell me my secret,
The ages have kept?--
I awaited the seer
While they slumbered and slept:--

"The fate of the man-child,
The meaning of man;
Known fruit of the unknown;
Daedalion plan;
Out of sleeping a waking,
Out of waking a sleep;
Life death overtaking;
Deep underneath deep?

"Erect as a sunbeam,
Unspringeth the palm;
The elephant browses,
Undaunted and calm;
In beautiful motion
The thrush plies his wings;
King leaves of his covert,
Your silence he sings.

"The waves, unashamed,
In difference sweet,
Play glad with the breezes,
Old playfellows meet;
The journeying atoms,
Primordial wholes,
Firmly draw, firmly drive,
By their animate poles.

"Sea, earth, air, sound, silence,
Plant, quadruped, bird,
By one music enchanted,
One deity stirred,--
Each the other adorning,
Accompany still;
Night veileth the morning,
The vapor the hill.

"The babe by its mother
Lies bathed in joy;
Glide its hours uncounted,--
The sun is its toy;
Shines the peace of all being,
Without cloud, in its eyes;
And the sum of the world
In soft miniature lies.

"But man crouches and blushes,
Absconds and conceals;
He creepeth and peepeth,
He palters and steals;
Infirm, melancholy,
Jealous glancing around,
An oaf, an accomplice,
He poisons the ground.

"Out spoke the great mother,
Beholding his fear;--
At the sound of her accents
Cold shuddered the sphere:--
'Who, has drugged my boy's cup?
Who, has mixed my boy's bread?
Who, with sadness and madness,
Has turned my child's head?'"

I heard a poet answer
Aloud and cheerfully
"Say on, sweet Sphinx! thy dirges
Are pleasant songs to me.
Deep love lieth under
These pictures of time;
They fade in the light of
Their meaning sublime.

"The fiend that man harries
Is love of the Best;
Yawns the pit of the Dragon,
Lit by rays from the Blest.
The Lethe of Nature
Can't trance him again,
Whose soul sees the perfect,
Which his eyes seek in vain.

"To vision profounder,
Man's spirit must dive;
His aye-rolling orb
At no goal will arrive;
The heavens that now draw him
With sweetness untold,
Once found,--for new heavens
He spurneth the old.

"Pride ruined the angels,
Their shame them restores;
Lurks the joy that is sweetest
In stings of remorse.
Have I a lover
Who is noble and free?--
I would he were nobler
Than to love me.

"Eterne alternation
Now follows, now flies;
And under pain, pleasure,--
Under pleasure, pain lies.
Love works at the centre,
Heart-heaving alway;
Forth speed the strong pulses
To the borders of day.

"Dull Sphinx, Jove keep thy five wits;
Thy sight is growing blear;
Rue, myrrh and cummin for the Sphinx,
Her muddy eyes to clear!"
The old Sphinx bit her thick lip,--
Said, "Who taught thee me to name?
I am the spirit, yoke-fellow;
Of thine eye I am eyebeam.

"Thou art the unanswered question;
Couldst see thy proper eye,
Always it asketh, asketh;
And each answer is a lie.
So take thy quest through nature,
It through thousand natures ply;
Ask on, thou clothed eternity;
Time is the false reply."

Uprose the merry Sphinx,
And crouched no more in stone;
She melted into purple cloud,
She silvered in the moon;
She spired into a yellow flame;
She flowered in blossoms red;
She flowed into a foaming wave:
She stood Monadnoc's head.

Thorough a thousand voices
Spoke the universal dame;
"Who telleth one of my meanings
Is master of all I am."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

2011-09-24T21:03:00.001+10:00

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost

'imperfect'

2011-09-11T14:59:00.002+10:00

I know we're just like old friends
We just can't pretend
That lovers make amends
We are reasons so unreal
We can't help but feel that something has been lost

But please you know you're just like me
Next time I promise we'll be
Perfect
Perfect
Perfect strangers down the line
Lovers out of time
Memories unwind

So far I still know who you are
But now I wonder who I was...

Angel, you know it's not the end
We'll always be good friends
The letters have been sent on

So please, you always were so free
You'll see, I promise we'll be
Perfect
Perfect strangers when we meet
Strangers on the street
Lovers while we sleep

Perfect
You know this has to be
We always we're so free

- lyric from 'Perfect' by Smashing Pumpkins

2011-09-05T22:30:00.002+10:00

'And these are only the work of human hands and brains - impressions of individual genius on perishable material, immortal only in the sense that the silken cocoon of the dead moth is so, because they continue to exist and shine when the artist's hands and brain are dust:- and man has a long day of life before him in which to do again things like these, and better than these, if there is any truth in evolution.'
from 'The Naturalist in La Plata' - W.H.Hudson

cocoons

2011-08-29T18:52:00.007+10:00

2011-08-21T21:04:00.001+10:00

a case of you

2011-08-01T17:14:00.001+10:00

Just before our love got lost you said
"I am as constant as a northern star"
And I said "Constantly in the darkness
Where's that at?
If you want me I'll be in the bar"

On the back of a cartoon coaster
In the blue TV screen light
I drew a map of Canada
Oh Canada
With your face sketched on it twice
Oh you're in my blood like holy wine
You taste so bitter and so sweet

Oh I could drink a case of you darling
Still I'd be on my feet
oh I would still be on my feet

Oh I am a lonely painter
I live in a box of paints
I'm frightened by the devil
And I'm drawn to those ones that ain't afraid

I remember that time you told me you said
"Love is touching souls"
Surely you touched mine
'Cause part of you pours out of me
In these lines from time to time
Oh, you're in my blood like holy wine
You taste so bitter and so sweet

Oh I could drink a case of you darling
And I would still be on my feet
I would still be on my feet

I met a woman
She had a mouth like yours
She knew your life
She knew your devils and your deeds
And she said
"Go to him, stay with him if you can
But be prepared to bleed"

Oh but you are in my blood
You're my holy wine
You're so bitter, bitter and so sweet

Oh, I could drink a case of you darling
Still I'd be on my feet
I would still be on my feet

-Joni Mitchell

l'ombre

2011-07-27T19:13:00.002+10:00

web

2011-07-15T18:26:00.004+10:00

repeating myself (at the risk of)

2011-07-01T16:21:00.001+10:00

'Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.'
- e.e.cummings

blue drawings

2011-06-23T14:07:00.001+10:00

Portrait d'une Femme

2011-06-19T17:46:00.002+10:00

Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea,
London has swept about you this score years
And bright ships left you this or that in fee:
Ideas, old gossip, oddments of all things,
Strange spars of knowledge and dimmed wares of price.
Great minds have sought you—lacking someone else.
You have been second always. Tragical?
No. You preferred it to the usual thing:
One dull man, dulling and uxorious,
One average mind—with one thought less, each year.
Oh, you are patient, I have seen you sit
Hours, where something might have floated up.
And now you pay one. Yes, you richly pay.
You are a person of some interest, one comes to you
And takes strange gain away:
Trophies fished up; some curious suggestion:
Fact that leads nowhere; and a tale or two,
Pregnant with mandrakes, or with something else
That might prove useful and yet never proves,
That never fits a corner or shows use,
Or finds its hour upon the loom of days:
The tarnished, gaudy, wonderful old work;
Idols and ambergris and rare inlays,
These are your riches, your great store; and yet
For all this sea-hoard of deciduous things,
Strange woods half sodden, and new brighter stuff:
In the slow float of differing light and deep,
No! there is nothing! In the whole and all,
Nothing that's quite your own.
Yet this is you.

- Ezra Pound

2011-06-08T14:29:00.000+10:00

“I don’t think it’s anything – I mean, I don’t think it was ever put to any use. That’s what I like about it. It’s a little chunk of history that they’ve forgotten to alter. It’s a message from a hundred years ago, if one knew how to read it.”
_George Orwell from '1984'

2011-06-02T13:55:00.002+10:00

"It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes makes its way to the surface."
- Virginia Woolf

2011-05-26T14:10:00.001+10:00

‘But what do the words mean?’ asked the wondering Mole. ‘That I do not know,’ said the Rat simply. ‘I passed them on to you as they reached me. Ah ! Now they return again, and this time full and clear ! This time, at last, it is the real, the unmistakable thing, simple--- passionate----perfect-----‘. ‘Well, let’s have it then,’ said the Mole, after he had waited patiently for a few minutes, half dozing in the hot sun. But no answer came. He looked, and understood the silence. With a smile of much happiness on his face, and something of a listening look still lingering there, the weary Rat was fast asleep.
from 'The Wind in the Willows' - Kenneth Grahame

2011-05-12T14:54:00.000+10:00

‘When it became painful to look any longer, the great size of the view seeming to enlarge her eyes beyond their natural limit, she looked at the ground; it pleased her to scrutinize this inch of the soil of South America so minutely that she noticed every grain of earth and made it into a world where she was endowed with the supreme power. She bent a blade of grass, and set an insect on the utmost tassel of it, and wondered if the insect realized his strange adventure, and thought how strange it was that she should have bent that tassel rather than any other of the million tassels.’
- Virginia Woolf from 'The Voyage Out'

Crossing the Bar

2011-04-30T13:29:00.000+10:00

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For through from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.

- Tennyson

esoteric

2011-04-25T15:05:00.001+10:00

unsettled landscape

2011-04-16T17:11:00.001+10:00

2011-03-19T13:23:00.002+11:00

'All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and re-inscribed exactly as often as was necessary.'
- George Orwell

Tell me Why

2011-03-06T16:27:00.000+11:00

Sailing heart-ships
thru broken harbors
Out on the waves in the night
Still the searcher
must ride the dark horse
Racing alone in his fright.
Tell me why, tell me why

Is it hard to make
arrangements with yourself,
When you're old enough to repay
but young enough to sell

Tell me lies later,
come and see me
I'll be around for a while.
I am lonely but you can free me
All in the way that you smile
Tell me why, tell me why

Is it hard to make
arrangements with yourself,
When you're old enough to repay
but young enough to sell

Tell me why, tell me why
Tell me why, tell me why

lyrics - Neil Young

Loss and Gain

2011-02-25T13:21:00.001+11:00

Virtue runs before the muse
And defies her skill,
She is rapt, and doth refuse
To wait a painter's will.

Star-adoring, occupied,
Virtue cannot bend her,
Just to please a poet's pride,
To parade her splendor.

The bard must be with good intent
No more his, but hers,
Throw away his pen and paint,
Kneel with worshippers.

Then, perchance, a sunny ray
From the heaven of fire,
His lost tools may over-pay,
And better his desire.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

To the Muses

2011-02-16T13:56:00.001+11:00

Whether on Ida's shady brow
Or in the chambers of the East,
The chambers of the Sun, that now
From ancient melody have ceased;

Whether in heaven ye wander fair,
Or the green corners of the earth,
Or the blue regions of the air
Where the melodious winds have birth;

Whether on crystal rocks ye rove,
Beneath the bosom of the sea,
Wandering in many a coral grove;
Fair Nine, forsaking Poetry;

How have you left the ancient love
That bards of old enjoy'd in you!
The languid strings do scarcely move,
The sound is forced, the notes are few.

- William Blake

2011-02-05T14:58:00.002+11:00

Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.

from 'Frost at Midnight' - Coleridge

2011-01-20T22:23:00.001+11:00

For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
- T.S. Eliot

Rhapsody on a Windy Night

2011-01-13T13:08:00.002+11:00

Twelve o’clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory
And all its clear relations
Its divisions and precisions,
Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.

Half-past one,
The street-lamp sputtered,
The street-lamp muttered,
The street-lamp said, “Regard that woman
Who hesitates toward you in the light of the door
Which opens on her like a grin.
You see the border of her dress
Is torn and stained with sand,
And you see the corner of her eye
Twists like a crooked pin.”

The memory throws up high and dry
A crowd of twisted things;
A twisted branch upon the beach
Eaten smooth, and polished
As if the world gave up
The secret of its skeleton,
Stiff and white.
A broken spring in a factory yard,
Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left
Hard and curled and ready to snap.

Half-past two,
The street-lamp said,
“Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter,
Slips out its tongue
And devours a morsel of rancid butter.”
So the hand of the child, automatic,
Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay.
I could see nothing behind that child’s eye.
I have seen eyes in the street
Trying to peer through lighted shutters,
And a crab one afternoon in a pool,
An old crab with barnacles on his back,
Gripped the end of a stick which I held him.

Half-past three,
The lamp sputtered,
The lamp muttered in the dark.
The lamp hummed:
“Regard the moon,
La lune ne garde aucune rancune,
She winks a feeble eye,
She smiles into corners.
She smooths the hair of the grass.
The moon has lost her memory.
A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,
Her hand twists a paper rose,
That smells of dust and eau de Cologne,
She is alone
With all the old nocturnal smells
That cross and cross across her brain.”
The reminiscence comes
Of sunless dry geraniums
And dust in crevices,
Smells of chestnuts in the streets,
And female smells in shuttered rooms,
And cigarettes in corridors
And cocktail smells in bars.

The lamp said,
“Four o’clock,
Here is the number on the door.
Memory!
You have the key,
The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair.
Mount.
The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall,
Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life.”

The last twist of the knife.

- T.S. Eliot

nz

2010-12-31T11:54:00.006+11:00

2010-12-23T19:27:00.000+11:00

Paper wings, all torn and bent
But you made me feel that they were heaven sent
Paper wings, not real at all
But they took me high enough to really fall
Your paper kisses faded too soon
Just like a paper rose beneath a paper moon
Paper wings, paper wings
Oh how could I expect to fly with only paper wings
Angels were singing, didn't you hear
If only I'd listened close when they whispered in my ear
Paper wings, paper wings
Oh how could I expect to fly with only paper wings
I tried to fly but found that I had only paper wings

lyrics - Gillian Welch

2010-11-20T21:38:00.002+11:00

Hejira

I'm traveling in some vehicle
I'm sitting in some cafe
A defector from the petty wars
That shell shock love away
There's comfort in melancholy
When there's no need to explain
It's just as natural as the weather
In this moody sky today
In our possessive coupling
So much could not be expressed
So now I'm returning to myself
These things that you and I suppressed
I see something of myself in everyone
Just at this moment of the world
As snow gathers like bolts of lace
Waltzing on a ballroom girl

You know it never has been easy
Whether you do or you do not resign
Whether you travel the breadth of extremities
Or stick to some straighter line
Now here's a man and a woman sitting on a rock
They're either going to thaw out or freeze
Listen...
Strains of Benny Goodman
Coming thru' the snow and the pinewood trees
I'm porous with travel fever
But you know I'm so glad to be on my own
Still somehow the slightest touch of a stranger
Can set up trembling in my bones
I know - no one's going to show me everything
We all come and go unknown
Each so deep and superficial
Between the forceps and the stone

Well I looked at the granite markers
Those tribute to finality - to eternity
And then I looked at myself here
Chicken scratching for my immortality
In the church they light the candles
And the wax rolls down like tears
There's the hope and the hopelessness
I've witnessed thirty years
We're only particles of change I know, I know
Orbiting around the sun
But how can I have that point of view
When I'm always bound and tied to someone
White flags of winter chimneys
Waving truce against the moon
In the mirrors of a modern bank
from the window of a hotel room

I'm traveling in some vehicle
I'm sitting in some cafe
A defector from the petty wars
Until love sucks me back that way

Lyrics - Joni Mitchell

2010-11-16T14:18:00.001+11:00

See what a lovely shell,
Small and pure as a pearl,
Lying close to my foot,
Frail, but a work divine,
Made so fairily well
With delicate spire and whorl,
How exquisitely minute,
A miracle of design!

What is it? a learned man
Could give it a clumsy name.
Let him name it who can,
The beauty would be the same.

The tiny cell is forlorn,
Void of the little living will
That made it stir on the shore.
Did he stand at the diamond door
Of his house in a rainbow frill?
Did he push, when he was uncurl'd,
A golden foot or a fairy horn
Thro' his dim water-world.

Slight, to be crushed with a tap
Of my finger-nail on the sand,
Small, but a work divine,
Frail, but of force to withstand,
Year upon year, the shock
Of cataract seas that snap
The three-decker's oaken spine
Athwart the ledges of rock,
Here on the Breton strand!

- Tennyson

awake

2010-11-02T14:33:00.000+11:00

literal

2010-10-24T14:56:00.001+11:00

2010-10-15T21:28:00.001+11:00

Ich bin auf der Welt zu allein und doch nicht allein genug,
um jede Stunde zu weihn.
Ich bin auf der Welt zu gering und doch nicht klein genug,
um vor dir zu sein wie ein Ding,
dunkel und klug.
Ich will meinen Willen und will meinen Willen begleiten
die Wege zur Tat;
und will in stillen, irgendwie zögernden Zeiten,
wenn etwas naht,
unter den Wissenden sein
oder allein.
Ich will dich immer spiegeln in ganzer Gestalt,
und will niemals blind sein oder zu alt,
um dein schweres schwankendes Bild zu halten.
Ich will mich entfalten.
Nirgends will ich gebogen bleiben,
denn dort bin ich gelogen, wo ich gebogen bin.
Und ich will meinen Sinn
wahr vor dir. Ich will mich beschreiben
wie ein Bild, das ich sah,
lange und nah,
wie ein Wort, das ich begriff,
wie meinen täglichen Krug,
wie meiner Mutter Gesicht,
wie ein Schiff,
das mich trug
durch den tödlichsten Sturm.

- Rilke

littoral

2010-10-02T15:39:00.000+10:00

liminal

2010-09-25T15:35:00.002+10:00

2010-08-20T14:27:00.001+10:00

silence

2010-08-13T08:40:00.000+10:00

2010-08-07T16:39:00.004+10:00

My child mistress/mother sister/dream
How acceptable all things would be
Were we to live in that land where
The slow and the long, short and the strong
Die in the dance of being less than one another
In a perpetual summer of imageless desire.
Flagellated and forgotten suns
Drink in the step of my azure lost skies
And move to mysterylessness our chemical miseries
Within which the treadling eyes of indefiniteness
Are no more than the tears of the damned.
Take from my heart, a platinum measure
Free of solitude's false grace
And awkward adolescent pleasures.
Here is the furniture
That caresses the dust of the years
And counts the wrinkled set into the brain
On fingers that have made their own doom.
Evil the eyes that look back at us in dreams,
Evil the touch of the deaths that have not loved us
Evil the sorrow which shelters itself from release
And the evils accumulate
Leaving us idle and alone
Though an Eastern splendor,
An Eastern hatred of the idea of loss
Eddies in the river of slime
That has not won us.
Hidden from the waves in still canals
We sit in a small boat that refuses
To set forth.
To satisfy need,
To accommodate our need of forever,
We sit in the boat
And wait for a clearer sky,
A more propitious moment to launch
While thinking of Cortez'
Miraculous slaughter of and victory over
The children of the sun.

'L'invitation au voyage'-Charles Baudelaire — translation Will Schmitz

2010-07-30T15:06:00.001+10:00

Well, the clock says it's time to close now
I guess I'd better go now
I'd really like to stay here all night
The cars crawl past all stuffed with eyes
Street lights share their hollow glow
Your brain seems bruised with numb surprise
Still one place to go
Still one place to go

Let me sleep all night in your soul kitchen
Warm my mind near your gentle stove
Turn me out and I'll wander baby
Stumblin' in the neon groves

Well, your fingers weave quick minarets
Speak in secret alphabets
I light another cigarette
Learn to forget, learn to forget
Learn to forget, learn to forget

Let me sleep all night in your soul kitchen
Warm my mind near your gentle stove
Turn me out and I'll wander baby
Stumblin' in the neon groves

Well the clock says it's time to close now
I know I have to go now
I really want to stay here
All night, all night, all night

Soul Kitchen as sung by Patti Smith originally by The Doors

2010-07-23T20:38:00.000+10:00

Neon Licht, schimmendes Neon Licht
Und wenn die Nacht anbricht ist diese Stadt aus Licht

Kraftwerk

2010-07-14T11:14:00.001+10:00

Enormous enlargements of an object or a fragment give it a personality it never had before, and in this way, it can become a vehicle of entirely new lyric and plastic power.
Fernand Leger

2010-07-03T16:03:00.004+10:00

2010-06-26T20:52:00.002+10:00

Nous sommes tous de lopins et d'une contexture si informe et diverse,que chaque piece, chaque momant, faict son jeu. Et se trouve autant de difference de nous à autruy.
- Michel de Montaigne, 'Essais'

2010-06-19T15:07:00.001+10:00

hommage à Louise

2010-06-10T14:34:00.004+10:00

blue negen

2010-06-05T16:49:00.003+10:00

blau acht

2010-05-30T18:28:00.002+10:00

bleu sept

2010-05-27T15:33:00.002+10:00

blue six

2010-05-22T14:49:00.003+10:00

blue cinco

2010-05-21T14:00:00.002+10:00

blue 4

2010-05-20T15:05:00.003+10:00

blue three

2010-05-16T14:11:00.001+10:00

blue second layer

2010-05-15T11:40:00.001+10:00

blue first state

2010-05-14T08:32:00.003+10:00

Blue, songs are like tattoos
You know I've been to sea before
Crown and anchor me
Or let me sail away
Hey blue, here is a song for you
Ink on a pin
Underneath the skin
An empty space to fill in
Well there's so many sinking now
You've got to keep thinking
You can make it through these waves
Acid, booze, and ass
Needles, guns, and grass
Lots of laughs, lots of laughs
Everybody's saying that hells the hippest way to go
Well I don't think so
But I'm gonna take a look around it though
Blue, I love you

Blue, here is a shell for you
Inside you'll hear a sigh
A foggy lullaby
There is your song from me

-Joni Mitchell

twilight zone

2010-05-09T13:07:00.000+10:00

The rain is all over, it's only stopped for an hour
And I stop you, and I stop you
When you go too far
And you stop me when I go too far
And it tried to freak me
But I should have known
It's not the twilight zone no, it's not the twilight zone
Yes it's just a party phone, pure honeycomb, honeycomb, honeycomb

You tried to take me in a slow poke draw
Like the cowboy wished
And you got just what you saw
Well, you got what you saw
Didn't you get, didn't you get, didn't you get
So, don't let it freak you
When, when it gets down to the bone
You know it's not the twilight zone, it's not the twilight zone
It's just a party phone, and honeycomb, honeycomb
It's not, it's not the twilight zone
It's just a party phone
Honeycomb, honeycomb, honeycomb, honeycomb

[Spoken:]
It's not, it's not the twilight zone
It's just a party phone

And honeycomb, ya!
You know it's not the twilight zone
It's, it's just a party phone
Honeycomb, honeycomb, honeycomb, honeycomb

You know what it is
Just a party phone, party, phone
Honeycomb, honeycomb, honeycomb, honeycomb
Hmm, hmm, hmm
Honeycomb, honeycomb
Honeycomb

Van Morrison

California

2010-04-29T13:48:00.001+10:00

Sitting in a park in Paris, France
Reading the news and it sure looks bad
They won't give peace a chance
That was just a dream some of us had
Still a lot of lands to see
But I wouldn't want to stay here
It's too old and cold and settled in it's ways here
Oh, but California
California I'm coming home
I'm going to see the folks I dig
I'll even kiss a Sunset pig
California I'm coming home

I met a redneck on a Grecian isle
Who did the goat dance very well
He gave me back my smile
But he kept my camera to sell
Oh the rogue, the red red rogue
He cooked good omelettes and stews
And I might have stayed on with him there
But my heart cried out for you, California
Oh California I'm coming home
Oh make me feel good rock'n roll band
I'm your biggest fan
California, I'm coming home

Oh it gets so lonely
When you're walking
And the streets are full of strangers
All the news of home you read
Just gives you the blues
Just gives you the blues

So I bought me a ticket
I caught a plane to Spain
Went to a party down a red dirt road
There were lots of pretty people there
Reading Rolling Stone, reading Vogue
They said, "How long can you hang around?"
I said "a week, maybe two,
Just until my skin turns brown
Then I'm going home to California"
California I'm coming home
Oh will you take me as I am
Strung out on another man
California I'm coming home

Oh it gets so lonely
When you're walking
And the streets are full of strangers
All the news of home you read
More about the war
And the bloody changes
Oh will you take me as l am?
Will you take me as l am?
Will you?

- Joni Mitchell

Fairplay

2010-04-26T18:14:00.000+10:00

Fair play to you
Killarney's lakes are so blue
And the architecture I'm taking in with my mind
So fine...

Tell me of Poe
Oscar Wilde and Thoreau
Let your midnight and your daytime turn into love of life
It's a very fine line
But you've got the mind child
To carry on
When it's just about to be
Carried on...

And there's only one meadow's way to go
And you say "Geronimo"
There's only one meadow's way to go
And you say "Geronimo"

A paperback book
As we walk down the street
Fill my mind with tales of mystery, mystery...
And imagination

Forever fair
And I'm touching your hair
I wish we could be dreamers
In this dream, ohhh
Let it dream

And there's only one meadow's way to go
And you say "Geronimo"
And there's only one meadow's way to go
And you say "Geronimo"

Fair play to you
Killarney's lakes are so blue
High-ho silver, tit for tat
And I love you for that
High-ho silver, tit for tat
And I love you for that, love you for that, love you for that
High-ho silver, tit for tat, tit for tat
And I love you for that
High-ho silver, tit for tat, hah!
Yeah, yeah
And I love you for that

And theres only one meadow's way to go
And I, and I say "Geronimo"
And there's only one meadow's way to go
And we say "Geronimo"
Geronimo
And there's only one meadow's way to go
And we say Geronimo
And there's only one meadow's way to go
And we say Geronimo

from "Veedon Fleece' - Van Morrison

2010-04-23T21:09:00.003+10:00

'...in the offing the sea and sky were welded together without a joint...'
-Joseph Conrad 'Heart of Darkness'

terra incognita

2010-04-17T16:16:00.001+10:00

There are vast realms of consciousness still undreamed of
vast ranges of experience, like the humming of unseen harps,
we know nothing of, within us.

Oh when man has escaped from the barbed-wire entanglement
of his own ideas and his own mechanical devices
there is a marvellous rich world of contact and sheer fluid beauty
and fearless face-to-face awareness of now-naked life
and me, and you, and other men and women
and grapes, and ghouls, and ghosts and green moonlight
and ruddy-orange limbs stirring the limbo
of the unknown air, and eyes so soft
softer than the space between the stars.
And all things, and nothing, and being and not-being
alternately palpitate,
when at last we escape the barbed-wire enclosure
of Know-Thyself, knowing we can never know,
we can but touch, and wonder, and ponder, and make our effort
and dangle in a last fastidious fine delight
as the fuchsia does, dangling her reckless drop
of purple after so much putting forth
and slow mounting marvel of a little tree.

- D H Lawrence

'...-in-the-world'

2010-04-11T14:33:00.002+10:00

in the white room

2010-04-03T12:53:00.002+11:00

pink palms

2010-03-27T16:53:00.001+11:00

too much Ian

2010-03-18T16:11:00.001+11:00

instant recognition - second state

2010-03-04T14:33:00.000+11:00

instant recognition

2010-02-21T14:02:00.002+11:00

inscribing a line

2010-02-04T12:13:00.000+11:00

invisible

2010-01-15T19:36:00.002+11:00

circa 1960

2010-01-06T15:00:00.001+11:00

circa 1980?

2009-12-28T11:01:00.002+11:00

someone sent an old slide

2009-12-23T20:46:00.004+11:00

2009-11-14T18:23:00.000+11:00

2009-11-06T10:32:00.000+11:00

2009-10-26T15:20:00.000+11:00

And the lights all went out...

2009-09-07T15:01:00.002+10:00

small stones

2009-08-29T17:08:00.000+10:00

walls and bridges

2009-08-20T20:45:00.000+10:00

willow pattern detail

2009-07-30T13:11:00.002+10:00

work in progress

doesn't quite fit

2009-07-11T16:04:00.001+10:00

2009-06-29T18:56:00.002+10:00

"But after all I find in my work an echo of what struck me. I see that nature has told me something, has spoken to me, and that I have put it down in shorthand. In my shorthand there may be words that cannot be deciphered, there may be mistakes or gaps, but there is something in it of what wood or shore or figure has told me, and it is not a tame or conventional language, proceeding less from nature itself than from a studied manner or system."

-The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

2009-06-19T08:55:00.002+10:00

"The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point."
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez - 'One Hundred Years of Solitude'

2009-06-04T11:07:00.000+10:00

In human life, art may arise from almost any activity, and once it does so, it is launched on a long road of exploration, invention, freedom to the limits of extravagance, interference to the point of frustration, finally discipline, controlling constant change and growth.
- Susanne Langer

'Art as Technique'

2009-06-03T14:03:00.002+10:00

"The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar’, to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not important."

- Viktor Shklovsky

2009-06-02T14:20:00.000+10:00

THE SADNESS OF THE MOON

The Moon more indolently dreams to-night
Than a fair woman on her couch at rest,
Caressing, with a hand distraught and light,
Before she sleeps, the contour of her breast.

Upon her silken avalanche of down,
Dying she breathes a long and swooning sigh;
And watches the white visions past her flown,
Which rise like blossoms to the azure sky.

And when, at times, wrapped in her languor deep,
Earthward she lets a furtive tear-drop flow,
Some pious poet, enemy of sleep,

Takes in his hollow hand the tear of snow
Whence gleams of iris and of opal start,
And hides it from the Sun, deep in his heart.

- Charles Baudelaire

Hmmm

2009-05-13T18:54:00.002+10:00

A painter takes the sun and makes it into a yellow spot. An artist takes a yellow spot and makes it into a sun.
- Pablo Picasso.(never got called an ---hole)thank you Modern Lovers

oh boy

2009-05-02T18:50:00.002+10:00

The Duchess: You're thinking about something, my dear, and that makes you forget to talk. I can't tell you just now what the moral of that is, but I shall remember it in a bit.
Alice: Perhaps it hasn't one.

.....

The Duchess: Be what you would seem to be -- or, if you'd like it put more simply -- Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.
Alice: I think I should understand that better, if I had it written down: but I can't quite follow it as you say it.

from 'Alice in Wonderland' - Lewis Carroll

new moon

2009-04-20T17:57:00.000+10:00

2009-04-05T17:31:00.001+10:00

All in the golden afternoon
Full leisurely we glide;
For both our oars, with little skill,
By little arms are plied,
While little hands make vain pretense
Our wanderings to guide.

Ah, cruel Three! In such an hour,
Beneath such dreamy weather,
To beg a tale of breath too weak
To stir the tiniest feather!
Yet what can one poor voice avail
Against three tongues together?

Imperious Prima flashes forth
Her edict to "begin it"--
In gentler tones Secunda hopes
"There will be nonsense in it"--
While Tertia interrupts the tale
Not more than once a minute.

Anon, to sudden silence won,
In fancy they pursue
The dream-child moving through a land
Of wonders wild and new,
In friendly chat with bird or beast--
And half believe it true.

And ever, as the story drained
The wells of fancy dry,
And faintly strove that weary one
To put the subject by,
"The rest next time"--"It is next time!"
The happy voices cry.

Thus grew the tale of Wonderland:
Thus slowly, one by one,
Its quaint events were hammered out--
And now the tale is done,
And home we steer, a merry crew,
Beneath the setting sun.

Alice! a childish story take,
And with a gentle hand
Lay it where Childhood's dreams are twined
In Memory's mystic band,
Like pilgrim's withered wreath of flowers
Plucked in a far-off land.

- Lewis Carroll

2009-03-14T17:37:00.001+11:00

Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

-T.S.Eliot 'Choruses from the Rock'

2009-02-23T14:48:00.002+11:00

"For in the past decade, there has been no art too sorry to be sold at auction, no art too brainless, slapdash, repetitive, obnoxious or devoid of originality. More millionaires bought and sold art than at any other time in history. More art was constantly required.It hardly mattered whether the work had any meaning, let alone quality. Practically the only rule was that it must be advanced art, what used to be called the avant-garde; all this meant was if second-rate, then knowingly so,and if kitsch, then in an ironic rather than innocent fashion."
from an article in The Guardian 13/02/09 'Hard times will improve improve public and private art' by Laura Cumming.

old painting, old story, new chapter

2009-02-15T15:13:00.000+11:00

from 'Renascence'

2009-01-26T16:18:00.000+11:00

All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked another way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I'd started from;
And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood.
Over these things I could not see;
These were the things that bounded me;
And I could touch them with my hand,
Almost, I thought, from where I stand.
And all at once things seemed so small
My breath came short, and scarce at all.
But, sure, the sky is big, I said;
Miles and miles above my head;
So here upon my back I'll lie
And look my fill into the sky.
And so I looked, and, after all,
The sky was not so very tall.
The sky, I said, must somewhere stop,
And -- sure enough! -- I see the top!
The sky, I thought, is not so grand;
I 'most could touch it with my hand!
And reaching up my hand to try,
I screamed to feel it touch the sky.
I screamed, and -- lo! -- Infinity
Came down and settled over me;
Forced back my scream into my chest,
Bent back my arm upon my breast,
And, pressing of the Undefined
The definition on my mind,
Held up before my eyes a glass
Through which my shrinking sight did pass
Until it seemed I must behold
Immensity made manifold;
Whispered to me a word whose sound
Deafened the air for worlds around,
And brought unmuffled to my ears
The gossiping of friendly spheres,
The creaking of the tented sky,
The ticking of Eternity.

- Edna St.Vincent Millay