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Showing posts from July, 2018

‘Miro in his Studio’, text by Joan Punyet Miró. Photographs by Jean-Marie del Moral.

Day 11 ‘Miro in his Studio’, text by Joan Punyet Miró. Photographs by Jean-Marie del Moral. Translated by Caroline Beamish. (Thames & Hudson, 1996) 100 words on a word in the title: Studio (July) Whenever creative loneliness occurs, July emptiness, January blank, I turn to ‘Miró in his Studio’. He sits there, surrounded by works in progress. I bought the ageless book in swishy Waterstones in Dublin in 1996. Photographs of Joan Miró’s tables of found objects: lead weights, scallop shells, pinecones. I meditate on tins of brushes and paint-accreted benches. Philip Hunter said the studio is where we belong. Meaning, the artworld is nonsense, just keep to work. “Miró with his biro,” he jested with an eye-rhyme. Waiting, I open a page on a bookstand for days: black figures, watery air, full-scale sunlight.  

Ulysses JAMES JOYCE

Day 10 How many people read the same novel every year? I don’t mean the video, I mean read the book. Academics with a syllabus, perhaps. I read parts of James Joyce’s two big books every year to write scripts, seminar papers, lyrics, and other things for the annual festival of Bloomsday in Melbourne. I re-open the pages somewhere and two things always happen: the pleasure aroused by the beauty of his language, and laughter. Odysseus took a Latin turn sometime and became Ulysses. Here are 100 words on the title word: Ulysses (July) Ulysses navigates its way into English in the seventeenth century, the body of a boat, a mast, a prow ploughing waves of esses. You-list-seas, though Joyce’s Irish was Who’ll-is-ayes, or even Ooooh-lessees, a susurrus of Aegean in its wake. His Ulysses is a wanderer, but deceit (an Homeric attribute) is not in him, only an impromptu cunning. He’s cheated in June who by July will be home again, again. Joyce wrote of his “usylessly unreadable Blue

The Book of Psalms

Psalm: Heidelberg West Day 9 The Bible and Shakespeare are non-starters on a desert island. The rules of that game imply that the island consists of the Bible and Shakespeare. Here is the book that I have been reading every year, in one way or another, though especially in church, since I was born. It is the Book of Psalms. All 150 appear in the Bible, but also in every kind of translation in pew notes, overheads, powerpoints, CD booklets, &c. Lately someone has been painting the word around more desolate parts of Melbourne. 'Someone', though it's probably a collective of psalmists, given the varying calligraphic styles of PSALM. In keeping with this exercise, here are 100 words on a word in the title: Psalm (July) Lately we sing the oldest songs. The only book I’ve heard every year of my life. Lately, this July, I heard an explanation of discernment. We live with God within the spacious confines of consolation and desolation. Whoever we are in all t

The personal papers of Anton Chekhov

Day 8 Having met the challenge to post the cover of seven books that I love (no explanation, no review, just the cover), I will come clean with my explanation. All the covers I posted are of books that I read, either in whole or part, every year. Hence the absence of novels. Some are there just for consultation, some to touch base, others are essential to my general well-being. The 100 word entries that go with the books are my creative interest, being neither explanations or reviews of the book. Being thus inspired, I will continue with this exercise until either I or the reader, probably the latter, wearies of it. Today is a book I found in a Hobart second-hand bookshop, ‘The personal papers of Anton Chekhov’ (Lear, 1948) Here are 100 words on a word in the title: Personal (July)   “It’s personal” is an admission you make to fend off discussion about religion, love life, latest argument. Reading Chekhov’s notebook again this July, you’d be pushed to find anything

Hope against Hope NADEZHDA MANDELSTAM

Day 7 I have accepted the challenge to post the cover of seven books that I love: no explanation, no review, just the cover. Today, ‘Hope against Hope' by Nadezhda Mandelstam. Each time I post a cover, I’ll ask a friend to take up the challenge. Meanwhile, here are 100 words on a word in the title: Hope (July) Nadezhda is Russian for Hope. Hope will see through the Salon of Betrayal. She’ll survive departmental politics. Hope will live in a new town to be near his last known sighting. She sometimes wonders why he chose her. Hope is an actress, she can remember lines. July, August, September, she knows the metre. She secretes them around the apartment, where mustachio’ed beetles cannot nibble. She secretes them in her mind where they laugh, gust, flame. Absence makes a manuscript grow. Hope doesn’t give it a title. Hope sits in her bed scribbling memories. Someone else can name the manuscript, afterwards.  

The Art of Living SAUL STEINBERG

Day 6 I have accepted the challenge to post the cover of seven books that I love: no explanation, no review, just the cover. Today, ‘The Art of Living’ by Saul Steinberg. Each time I post a cover, I’ll ask a friend to take up the challenge. Meanwhile, here are 100 words on a word in the title: Living   (July) Lessons from Saul Steinberg’s ‘The Art of Living’ (1945). Half the news is got looking over someone else’s shoulder. Staircases to underground platforms come all the way from the bottom. It takes a tree to make a wooden chair. Art is 90% decoration, 10% indication. Pavements are made to be broken. All ideologies lead to 14th July Square. Grand railway stations were the people’s palaces. Music begins with a bang or a whimper. Martians are just human, after all. If you must faint, have someone to catch you. Some artists draw long bows. A bird’s song is the cat’s whiskers.