Sphere Of Influence

Sharon Lockhart from Double Tide (2009)

Thu, 23 May 2013 03:36:18 -0400

Sharon Lockhart from Double Tide (2009)

C. Ruf James Joyce (1918)

Mon, 20 May 2013 22:32:55 -0400

C. Ruf James Joyce (1918)

Nick Duggan ‘Frank Sargeson’s desk’

Thu, 09 May 2013 22:25:00 -0400

Nick Duggan ‘Frank Sargeson’s desk’

"There have been nights, admit it, when you’ve thought you heard your name in the air, your..."

Sat, 04 May 2013 21:21:43 -0400

“There have been nights, admit it, when you’ve thought you heard your name in the air, your name being sung, a recognition that you’re a part of the star-resplendent sky, and the must vapours of the earth - they know who you are, you owe them for this special focus.”

- Albert Goldbarth

Rosamond Purcell ‘Bird of Paradise’ from A Glorious...

Sat, 04 May 2013 21:16:18 -0400

Rosamond Purcell ‘Bird of Paradise’ from A Glorious Enterprise

Rosamond Purcell ‘Cleaned and Stained Specimens of Young...

Sat, 04 May 2013 21:15:00 -0400

Rosamond Purcell ‘Cleaned and Stained Specimens of Young Horse-Eye Jacks’ from A Glorious Enterprise

"Estrangement shows itself precisely in the elimination of distance between people. For only as long..."

Fri, 03 May 2013 18:06:19 -0400

“Estrangement shows itself precisely in the elimination of distance between people. For only as long as they abstain from importuning one another with giving and taking, discussion and implementation, control and function, is there space enough between them for the delicate connecting filigree of external forms in which alone the internal can crystallise.”

- Theodor Adorno from Minima Moralia: Reflections of Damaged Life

"To be a bird is to be more intensely alive than any other living creature, man included. Birds have..."

Thu, 02 May 2013 02:57:52 -0400

“To be a bird is to be more intensely alive than any other living creature, man included. Birds have hotter blood, brighter colors, stronger emotions… they live in a world that is always present, mostly full of joy.”

- Norman J. Berrill, quoted in Caspar Henderson’s wondrous Book of Barely Imagined Beings

Rosamond Purcell from Illuminations:a Bestiary (1986)

Thu, 02 May 2013 02:57:04 -0400

Rosamond Purcell from Illuminations:a Bestiary (1986)

"Heidegger’s term Geworfenheit: being thrown without explanation into an existence governed by..."

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 22:45:08 -0400

“Heidegger’s term Geworfenheit: being thrown without explanation into an existence governed by obscure rules”

Fyodor Dostoevsky and Charles Dickens

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 20:21:46 -0400

Fyodor Dostoevsky and Charles Dickens

Elizabeth Frink Eagle Owl (1972-1973)

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 02:25:29 -0400

Elizabeth Frink Eagle Owl (1972-1973)

Photo

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 02:11:21 -0400

"How conscious and rarional and controlled is poetry? Can poetry afford to be? There is in poetry..."

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 02:10:11 -0400

“How conscious and rarional and controlled is poetry? Can poetry afford to be? There is in poetry something deep, obscure and powerful that can neither be explained nor disregarded.”

- Randall Jarrell

The Green Knight

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 01:40:40 -0400

The Green Knight

"Perhaps ‘hearing’ is not quite accurate, since the colour sensation seems to be produced..."

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 04:35:00 -0400

“

Perhaps ‘hearing’ is not quite accurate, since the colour sensation seems to be produced by the very act of my orally forming a given letter while I iamgine its outline. The long ‘a’ of the English alphabet has for me the tint of weathered wood, but a French ‘a’ evokes a polished ebony. This black group also includes hard ‘g’ (vulcanised rubber) and ‘r’ (a sooty rag being ripped). Oatmeal ‘n’, noodle-limp ‘l’, and the ivory-backed hand mirror of ‘o’ take care of the whites. I am puzzled by my French ‘on’ which I see as the brimming tension-surface of alcohol in a small glass. Passing on to the blue group, there is steely ‘x’, thundercloud ‘z’, and huckle-berry ‘k’, while ‘s’ is not the light blue of ‘c’, but a curious mixture of azure and mother-of-pearl. Adjacent tints do not merge and dipthongs do not have a special colour of their own, unless represented by single character in some other language (thus the fluffy-grey, three-stemmed Russian letter that stands for ‘sh’, a letter as old as the rushes of the Nile, influences its English representations).

I hasten to complete my list before I am interrupted. In the green group there are alder-leaf ‘f’, the unripe apple of ‘p’, and pistachio ‘t’. Dull green, combined somehow with violet, is the best I can do for ‘w’. The yellows comprise various ‘e’s and ‘i’s, creamy ‘d’, bright-golden ‘y’, and ‘u’ whose alphabetical value I can express only by ‘brassy with an olive sheen’. In the brown group there are the rich rubbery tone of soft ‘g’, paler ‘j’, and the drab shoelace of ‘h’. Finally, among the reds, ‘b’ has the tone called ‘burnt sienna’ by painters, ‘m’ is a fold of pink flannel and today I have at last perfectly matched ‘v’ with ‘Rose Quartz’ in Mertz and Paul’s Dictionary of Colour.

”

- Vladimir Nabokov from Speak, Memory

"I had no sooner made a sound on the A string, or D or G or C, than I no longer heard it. I looked at..."

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 04:19:00 -0400

“I had no sooner made a sound on the A string, or D or G or C, than I no longer heard it. I looked at it. Tones, chords melodies, rhythms, each was immediately transformed into pictures, curves, lines, shapes, landscapes, and most of all colours. At concerts, for me, the orchestra was like a painter. It flooded me with all the colours of the rainbow. If the violin came in by itself, I was suddenly filled with gold and fire, and with red so bright I could not remember having seen it on any object. When it was the oboe’s turn, a clear green ran all through me, so cool tha I seemed to feel the breath of night. I saw music too much to be able to speak its language.”

- Jacques Lusseyran from And There was Light

Starlings at Gulgong

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 04:05:25 -0400

Starlings at Gulgong

Photo

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 05:28:09 -0400

"All writing, all composition, is construction. We do not imitate the world, we construct versions of..."

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 05:25:26 -0400

“All writing, all composition, is construction. We do not imitate the world, we construct versions of it.”

- Robert Scholes from Structural Fabrications