Bob drew my attention to a Time of Gifts (still unread!). A fab. article today draws comparisons with Laurie Lee's A Walk...
Strange that you're drawn so much to travel writers when you remain so rooted and fixed in your ways (and all that stuff about the greatest journeys taking place in the mind...well...)
Today you asked little r: will you be like Van G or Gaugin. Will you paint what you see around you or will you paint what is in your head.
"I will paint what I see"
Good for you, little one!
"And then I will keep it in my mind"
Is 'and' the most important word in the English language?
~~~
When it comes to language you still have MDF's Debts of Honour in reserve. Something to save for when the light becomes too strong and you've run out of escape hatches...
In terms of 'travel writers' Byron's Road to Oxiana has some sublime passages but for some odd reason comes across as superficial or at least light weight. M. Asad's Road to Mecca remains a classic-at least up until the point in which he becomes a Muslim. Chatwin, of course, but more for his open, inquisitive mind-which seems to have been attracted to everything- rather than for his descriptions. Thesiger for his old fashioned refusals and lovely black and white photographs.
~~~
To walk is to think a little, to be prepared to get lost (in fact, to will it). To sit in a room filled with books is as one-sided as sitting on a beach in Rio (you suspect). The world is always either too much with us or not with us enough. Is there a pleasure that knows nothing of itself, a weightlessness that retains a sense of verticality?
~~~
'A thousand years of village life come to an end...'
I wonder if a way of life really truly ever comes to an end. I suspect it does, though elements of it survive in a word, a phrase, a pause, some distinctive gesture fashioned through the centuries. The land, the stars, the seasons that roll on by, timelessly, weightlessly, above us, through us.
A sudden nostalgia for the broadsheets, a slower pace of life encapsulated by the dreary, stretched hours of a Sunday morning. It is not true that we now live without rituals and repetition..it's just that these instincts/needs get displaced onto trivial, mundane things and routines.
Summer is the forgetfulness of time, the great beach on which we find ourselves stranded, blinded. The longest day of the year, like memory's peaks in the distance. Solstice, the turning of the heart, the shortest and frailest of shadows, reminds me of a name I once knew...
Strange that you're drawn so much to travel writers when you remain so rooted and fixed in your ways (and all that stuff about the greatest journeys taking place in the mind...well...)
Today you asked little r: will you be like Van G or Gaugin. Will you paint what you see around you or will you paint what is in your head.
"I will paint what I see"
Good for you, little one!
"And then I will keep it in my mind"
Is 'and' the most important word in the English language?
~~~
When it comes to language you still have MDF's Debts of Honour in reserve. Something to save for when the light becomes too strong and you've run out of escape hatches...
In terms of 'travel writers' Byron's Road to Oxiana has some sublime passages but for some odd reason comes across as superficial or at least light weight. M. Asad's Road to Mecca remains a classic-at least up until the point in which he becomes a Muslim. Chatwin, of course, but more for his open, inquisitive mind-which seems to have been attracted to everything- rather than for his descriptions. Thesiger for his old fashioned refusals and lovely black and white photographs.
~~~
To walk is to think a little, to be prepared to get lost (in fact, to will it). To sit in a room filled with books is as one-sided as sitting on a beach in Rio (you suspect). The world is always either too much with us or not with us enough. Is there a pleasure that knows nothing of itself, a weightlessness that retains a sense of verticality?
~~~
'A thousand years of village life come to an end...'
I wonder if a way of life really truly ever comes to an end. I suspect it does, though elements of it survive in a word, a phrase, a pause, some distinctive gesture fashioned through the centuries. The land, the stars, the seasons that roll on by, timelessly, weightlessly, above us, through us.
A sudden nostalgia for the broadsheets, a slower pace of life encapsulated by the dreary, stretched hours of a Sunday morning. It is not true that we now live without rituals and repetition..it's just that these instincts/needs get displaced onto trivial, mundane things and routines.
Summer is the forgetfulness of time, the great beach on which we find ourselves stranded, blinded. The longest day of the year, like memory's peaks in the distance. Solstice, the turning of the heart, the shortest and frailest of shadows, reminds me of a name I once knew...
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