the sourcerer: April 2012

Monday, April 23, 2012

Rose tinted.

As Wislawa Szymborska writes of Homer in her poem "Census": "No-one knows what he did in his spare time." - Geoff Dyer on Vivian Maier, Street Photographer.

I read voraciously. I pore over the work of other photographers. I play with films and lenses and images. On friday I picked up a pencil and a paintbrush for the first time in years. Cloud watching. Doodling and canoodling. And before you know it, hundreds of days have passed.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Transience.

I took my friend's mother to the hospital yesterday for chemotherapy. It was a perfect day. Mild and autumnal. She said that she hadn't been outdoors in weeks, how strange it felt. I could see that every little movement hurt. I can't imagine what it must be like: not to be able to climb a step, not to be able to stand up and rush off somewhere. Well-used phrases came to mind - being a shadow of your former self.

Today my throat is tight when I think of her world, but there is intensity in things: every sip of coffee, the smell of the mango I ate for breakfast, a walk to the post office to pick up a parcel of books, wonderful books. And much of what bothered me before seems insignificant.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Sine Qua Non.

Julius Ngoh Etah

24 years old.

Born in Kumba, Southwest Province of Cameroon.

Bafaw Tribe.

In Cameroon, at the technical school, Julius did his Probatoire, or Preliminary course in Electricity. When he couldn't find a job, his father helped him to buy a taxi and that is how he made a living before coming to Cape Town. Here he worked at the Hotel School in Mouille Point, but the pay was minimal.

"I want to move forward, always forward" always with a smile.

Julius dreams of further study and of owning his own Electrical company.

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.