Wednesday 21 November 2012

Monday 19 November 2012


Now I see the rocky island again.
I see it quite clearly.
A rocky island far out in the sea, and a second, smaller island.
They lie on the far edge of the inhabited world.
On one island, for centuries, some forgotten men have lived.
And because they live on the far edge of the inhabited world word has not reached them that the Earth is round.
They have retained the belief that the Earth is flat and that the ocean far beyond ends in a yawning abyss.
I see a man on top of the rock.
For years he stood alone looking out over the sea day after day, always in the same place.
He is the first one to doubt.
Then, years later, three other men join him.
For many years they gaze across the sea from the rock.
Then, one day, they decide to risk the ultimate.
They want to reach the edge of the world, to see if there is really an abyss.
Musicians accompany their departure.
Then the men set out, pathetic and senseless.
In a boat that is far too small.

It may have seemed like a sign of hope that the birds followed them out into the vastness of the sea.

- Werner Herzog and Herbert Achternbusch (Island in the Sea of Time - closing segment of Heart of Glass, 1976)

Picture: "Book of Blank Maps" - undated and author uncredited.

Island in the Sea of Time.

Wednesday 7 November 2012


"...it needs a truly foul day to hear the music fair."
- Harry Mathews (The Conversions, 1962)

Picture: Illustration by Franklin Booth from an advertisement for Estey Organs in House & Garden (October 1922).



Louis Moholo - You Ain't Gonna Know Me 'Cos You Think You Know Me.

Friday 2 November 2012


Imagination, the traitor of the mind, has taken my solitude and slain it.
No peace but many companions; the hateful-eyed
And human-bodied are all about me: you that love multitude may have them.

- Robinson Jeffers (from 'Prelude' in 'The Women At Point Sur', 1927).

Picture: "Franz Brasz, The Artist" by Virna Haffer (circa 1937).

Thursday 1 November 2012


"A dreary lassitude took hold of me; Elodie's unaccustomed light-heartedness, that volte-face after her calm and austere bearing, the quiet and luminous atmosphere of my room, the breathing of the sea that lay around us on all sides, those promises scattered in profusion before the child lost and found again - all these left in my mouth a taste as if of stale sweetmeats.
I did not yet dare to admit to myself that, ever since my return to life, I had been missing the sharp savour of darkness, of anxious foreboding, of terror even."

- Jean Ray, "Malpertuis" (1943).

Picture: "Night in St. Cloud" by Edvard Munch (1890).



Derrick Morgan and Hortense Ellis - I'm Gone.