the sourcerer: Eyes, saws, ships and horsewhips.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Eyes, saws, ships and horsewhips.

Much like a hundred-year-old flirty text message, this love letter is written in a puzzling language of icons called a rebus. It was discovered in the Swansea University Archives, among the minutes of the temperance society (they who abstain from the drinking of alcohol) and dates back to 1890. Transcript follows:

My Dearest Fanny,

I am writing these few lines to tell you that I cannot live any longer without you. I worship you always. I think you are a beauty and the nicest girl I ever saw and I adore you. Oh exquisite Fanny, do not despise me for loving you so well. I shall be broken-hearted if you desert me. Can you meet me on Monday night, when I will take you to the Star Music Hall. I hate that Bill Robinson, who is hanging after you and I intend to horsewhip him when I see him. I shall be delighted to hear from you at once. Do not let my suit be fruitless. Reply by next post to

Your loving

William Weightman

4 comments:

Roy said...: different world, same issues. :(; February 2, 2011 at 3:00 PM
the sourcerer said...: exactly!; February 2, 2011 at 4:00 PM
andreajane said...: faaaaabulous. i would love one of those ;-) the shortest letter taking the longest time to decode...and enjoy. how romantic. what a great find x; February 3, 2011 at 7:31 AM
arcadia said...: ek is mal hieroor ;-); February 9, 2011 at 6:43 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.