the sourcerer: Tonsil Monkey Twilight Zone

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Tonsil Monkey Twilight Zone

So I've been pretty occupied with thoughts of chimpanzees and my favourite childhood toy has crossed my mind a few times. About thirty-seven years ago, I had my tonsils out and returned home to find a toy monkey waiting on my bed with open arms. He was holding a little bunch of flowers from the garden. I was very scared of the dark and Peanuts became my pillow and held my hand every night. In my twenties I gave a box of old toys to a children's home. It was really sad to see him go. Then, yesterday, I walked into a prop house on the foreshore and there he was. Flea-bitten and grubby. One wonky eye. Still has the stitching on the back of his neck done by my Mom. Some nail varnish courtesy of my six year old self. Hey Buddy. Where've you been?

1 comment:

tanjawilmot said...: no way! what are the odds? lost treasure indeed...btw I also had monkeys, a whole troupe of em, but none had such a natty top. d'you reckon he was once a right sailor boy?; March 11, 2010 at 3:41 PM

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You could tend a garden at night, only at night, pouring dark water onto leaves, and into the earth, like pouring midnight onto midnight. You could hold your soil-stained hands up to the moon. The stars would gleam on the bottom of the shovel. It would smell the same as a daytime garden - it would smell green, violet, red, white. But come back, in daylight. Come back, to see the colours without closing your eyes.
- Sean Michaels. Accompaniment to the song "Immune" by LOW. Said the Gramophone

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don't bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: "It's not where you take things from - it's where you take them to."
Jim Jarmusch (1953- )

You got very hungry when you did not eat enough in Paris because all the bakery shops had such good things in the windows and people ate outside at tables on the sidewalk so that you saw and smelled the food. When you had given up journalism and were writing nothing that anyone in America would buy, explaining at home that you were lunching out with someone, the best place to go was the Luxembourg gardens where you smelled and saw nothing to eat all the way from the Place de l'Observatoire to the rue de Vaugirard. There you could always go into the Luxembourg museum and all the paintings were sharpened and clearer and more beautiful if you were belly-empty, hollow-hungry. I learned to understand Cézanne much better and to see truly how he made landscapes when I was hungry. I used to wonder if he were hungry too when he painted; but I thought possibly it was only that he had forgotten to eat. It was one of those unsound but illuminating thoughts you have when you have been sleepless or hungry. Later I thought that Cézanne was probably hungry in a different way.
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) - from A Moveable Feast.