In Queen Elizabeth’s time yeere was a songe sen[t] into England of 30 parts (whence the Italians obteyned ye name to be called ye Apices of the world) wch beeinge songe mad[e] a heavenly Harmony. The Duke of — bearinge a great love to Musicke asked whether none of our Englishmen could sett as good a songe, and Tallice beinge very skilfull was felt to try whether he would undertake ye matter, wch he did and made one of 40 partes wch was songe in the longe gallery at Arundell house, wch so farre surpassed ye other that the Duke, hearinge yt songe, tooke his chayne of Gold from his necke & putt yt about Tallice his necke and gave yt him.
— Cole, Suzanne (2008). Thomas Tallis and his music in Victorian England. Boydell. p. 97. ISBN 9781843833802.
Vanessa Redgrave & David Hemmings on the set of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-up, 1966
(Source: -outlying-)
‘No-one wanted him; he was outcast from life’s feast.’ Joyce, James. ‘A Painful Case’, Dubliners. London: Grant Richards Ltd., 1914
“I mean of course the fields, whitening under the dew, and the animals, ceasing from wandering and settling for the night, and the sea, of which nothing, and the sharpening line of crests, and the sky where without seeing them I felt the first stars tremble, and my hand on my knee and above all the other wayfarer, A or C, I don’t remember, going resignedly home.”
— Samuel Beckett, Molloy
That Irony Isn’t Enough
“…for a long time [I] had known clearly what I’d only sensed before: that irony wasn’t enough, and never would be, that it was only an opiate for a few privileged ones…”
—Heinrich Böll, Billiards at Half-past Nine
We are here:
Diagnostic of Our Situation #1: The time machines with which we would have prevented the great suicides of history cause narcolepsy.
Diagnostic of Our Situation #2: In sleep our hands frequently grope for a neck that is never there.
Diagnostic of Our Situation #3: Cities achieve the vibrant colors of nature only at night.
Diagnostic of our Situation #4: Charles Dickens coined the word ‘boredom’ in ‘Bleak House’.
Diagnostic of Our Situation #5: High energy physicists call Nature (as in Gaia, not the magazine) “The Bitch”.
Rural East Germany is a peculiar place to find oneself ripping off Stephen Shore and Alec Soth, respectively. But here we are.
Summer doesn’t really happen, here. The country appears not to believe in it, though its populace fervently clings to hope, despite a decade of overcast disappointment. There are early mornings, though, in late May, when it seems like a real possibility.
Beckett’s Molloy features a quasi-talismanic description of a bicycle. It’s as much a part of the psychological landscape as overcoats, grim walks across the barren ground of the Dublin mountains, and the problematisation of autobiography. It’s emphatically not a love-object, however. This contraption resides on the fifth floor of his Alma Mater.
Caravaggio’s The Taking of Christ (c. 1602) is on display in the National Gallery of Ireland. It had been considered lost for nearly 200 years, until it was rediscovered in the dining room of a Jesuit residence in Dublin, in 1990.
