the sourcerer: My Familiar.

Thursday, November 1, 2012

My Familiar.

When I was a child, most people in South Africa didn't know what Halloween was. I remember wondering about it whilst reading the Archie comics, but the holiday itself and all of its' customs passed us by.

Now, with the world becoming a smaller place, you find some Halloween candy and big orange pumpkins at Pick'n'Pay and a few people actually go out trick-or-treating.

Yesterday at twilight, as I turned into the driveway, I saw a gathering of people in costume up on the hill. There's a cat who lies at the end of my driveway more often than not, and the ritual is that I go and have a chat at the end of each day.

While we were talking, I heard a woman call my name, rather sweetly. Then a man joined in, but he sounded really irate. Lily! Li-LY!! Eventually with a growl: "She just never listens!"

I walked out and there they were. She: top hat, skull make-up, short red cloak. Him: swirling orange cloak with a big black bat applique on the back. Further down the road, looking disconsolate but rooted to the spot: shiny brown sausage dog.

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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.