I see phantoms in the motes, everything I read seems pertinent to my current research. Recently, in fact while I was traveling back from Brighton, I was skimming through the pages of the latest ‘Cabinet’. I was interested mainly in an article on the dust of the universe that is deposited daily in the Antarctic. My previous adventures have left with me a fascination for such subjects though they bare little relation to my life now. The magazine contained many other interesting snippets. There was a quote I liked by Bataille who writes about Dust in his Encyclopaedia Acephalica as follows:
“…as if it were a matter of making ready attics and old rooms for the imminent occupation of obsessions, phantoms and spectres that the decayed odour of old dust nourishes and intoxicates.”
he also describes:
“injurious phantoms that cleanliness and logic abhor”
When Dracula is (temporarily) slain he is often rendered into dust. This dust (in subsequent films) is also often collected and revivified with blood. A bit like Angel Delight. Dracula’s castle is full of dust and piles of rotting, decayed, unregarded, unloved things. I am reminded that dust is mostly human skin. My companion’s lodgings are also full of dust and many many objects piled across every surface.
There is also an article on magic and dust which I don’t remember well (and the magazine is lost to me now). I think of pixie dust, a sleeping spell and a Midsummer Night’s Dream. My magical studies have not progressed one jot. I have a plan for the reproduction of the illusion of “Pepper’s Ghost” but have got no further than repeatedly redrawing it in my sketchbook.
In Brighton I saw a show of three films by Mark Lewis. I enjoyed the strange battle between the camera and its mundane subject matter of broken down landscapes and young love. In one piece an epic crane shot zoomed slowly in on a group of boys playing in a warehouse and rested finally on a spinning top set off by one of them. But the boy seemed too old, in fact more of a young man, an actor creating a moment of delicious disappointment. Another film showed a couple skating in the snow in front of a back projection perhaps of central park or some-such place. I have to admit I did not spot this until I read about it in the accompanying text. On a second viewing it reminded me of the end of “The Big Sleep”, Bogart and Bacall driving – falling in love in an alien way, a mismatched cinema presentation of the immediate past playing out behind them.
My Vision for the Future
A phone call to my father has confirmed that Haigh, the acid bath murderer, and alleged vampire was indeed a notorious old boy of his school. He also recalled one of the boys swimming the channel some years later and an archbishop or two. My mother, overhearing the conversation, was keen to point out that Joan Plowright was an alumnus of her school. My companion informed me that she was the second wife of Laurence Olivier after his split with the rather frisky Vivian Leigh. I wonder if she lived down the road from Bram Stoker’s house. My companion has become something of a passepartout of late and is fast becoming an indispensable asset. Yesterday she managed to contact the lost property office at Norwich station and arranged to have my bag returned on the five o’clock train to Ipswich. Today she managed to charm her way through several echelons of Bingo management and has all but arranged for me to film at the bingo hall in Whitstable. Not only has she done this but she also managed to track down the mysterious and charismatic bingo caller we met on our first visit many months ago. She has learned on good authority that he is “a bit of a ladies man” which makes me hope more than ever that he will be willing to be filmed. I am overjoyed!
The rest of my day was taken up with the painting of more boards and making of my interview video for Brighton. As I write my companion is watching the final edit, she is crying with laughter.
Tuesday, 8 December 2009
Examinations
I am, as usual, distracted. At work, the inspectors are about. It is easy to spot them as they float along the corridors in their anachronistic suits. However this conspicuousness does not make them any less terrifying. We are pale faced and tense shuffling our lesson plans and student profiles in the hope of achieving the perfect order. I am also guiltily preparing for an interview in Brighton. Actually preparing is a slight exageration, rather I am writing a list of things to say and making a slightly irreverent video explaining my vision for the future. My courage may fail and the video may remain unseen. Either way I plan to make it public here. Additionally I am of course continuing to make drawings of spaceships and ordering parts for sculpture. At the moment I am trying to find 20 circular polystyrene discs. They are proving elusive. Furthermore I have emailed the lost property office in Norwich but have had little satisfactory response. I missed my pens today and worried a little about the letter. My dear companion, a little despairingly I think, has made a number of attempts to telephone the Oxford Bingo club so far with little success.
Saturday, 5 December 2009
Lost
Alas the rest of the day was filled with such ups and downs that I am quite discomforted. On the much delayed train home my companion and I found a rail card belonging to a Chelsea pensioner. Filled with such excitement at the idea that we could perform a good deed we rushed off the train at Ipswich to hand it in to the authorities. But disaster had struck as I realised ,too late, I had left my bag on the train. It contained my gold pens given to me by my father, my notebooks (by themselves a disastrous loss), a letter to my solicitor and a DVD of work for a talk on Monday. I must admit I have sulked ever since and have only faint hope that they will be found when the train reaches Norwich. I consolled myself by drinking a cup of Russian Caravan tea and making a small drawing of “Eagle 1”.
I still haven’t phoned the Bingo hall.
— posted abroad
I find myself in Colchester where my companion has a meeting with Laura Early about some work.
Imagine how delighted I was to find my old friends Townley and Bradby hard at work in Firstsite’s temporary artspace. They are making a series of hourly walks to the relentlessly uninspiring Colvert Square to make observations of the goings on.
— posted abroad
