Sunday 21 June 2009

loneliness in pain, loneliness in love






We are as forlorn as children lost in the wood. When you stand in front of me and look at me, what do you know of the grief that is in me and what do I know of yours? And if I were to cast myself down before you and tell you, what more would you know about me that you know about Hell when someone tells you it is hot and dreadful? For that reason alone we human beings ought to stand before one another as reverently, as reflectively, as lovingly, as we would before the entrance to Hell.

Franz Kafka




But I am satisfied with what I did. How can you be satisfied? Cause everything escapes you, you know that perfectly well, you know – even when you are in love with somebody, everything escapes you, you would want to be near that person – how can you cut your flesh open and join it with the other person, it is an impossibility to do. So it is with art, it is almost like a long affair with objects and images and sensations and what one would call a passion. It is very much like that. You may love somebody very much but how near can you get to that person. You are still always unfortunately sort of strangers.

Francis Bacon

48 comments:

  1. so surreal! they remind me of the witches in Macbeth - though here there are only two.

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  2. So shall we then be condemned to remaining islands, from which the view is of other islands stretching away into the distance (like CSN&Y wrote in their gorgeous song "The Lee Shore", "a hundred thousand islands, flung like jewels upon the sea")

    Can a bridge be built from island to island ? A bridge above the gates of hell? A floating bridge ?

    An ethereal photo, spirits in the spirit world ? Snow on the path, blood like stains on the rocks... a winter wind bearing tidings of fog on the horizon... the fields of poppies to fall asleep in are far from here... can't help but shivering a moment, and wondering, what words, what words will pass between these two ?

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  3. http://vimeo.com/1795653

    sometimes we touch each other

    sometimes we hear the same music

    sometimes we can dance together

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  4. coming coming! I swear I'll post them tomorrow. they've been lying in my house sometime now. I feel lazy visiting the post office office - its 45 degrees during the day the post the post office closes at 4 pm. no. that didnt sound like a good excuse I know.
    By the way, who do I get rescued by? this is very important.

    this picture is haunting. how beautifully the landscape and figures complement each other. again, another showcase for your previously discussed magnificent melancholy ;-)

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  5. This is the problem of the margin. We can know only out to the boundary marker, and then what torment, if that we desire most is beyond the margin....

    But --- mabe I am a romantic --- but I cannot believe the long affair with objects and images and sensations is only this. It is this struggle, passion, drive to be beyond the limit, even for one moment of grace, that makes all art, and therefore all else, possible. And it is possible....

    Beautiful, haunting picture...

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  6. Sometimes approaching, then we separate. It is better this way.
    Everything becomes, then goes. It is the way of things.

    I am inside that photo.

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  7. Thank you for the Kafka quote. Exactly the words I was looking for.

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  8. we keep trying, and we hope
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWUfFwoe8ko

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  9. "Monument to the impossible. The best of yourself given, in total loss, to what will never be attained." -PHILIPPE JACCOTTET-

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  10. the photo dreams openess
    with that expansive field, the posture...

    yes, passion. what a word. Love the quotes too.

    thank you!

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  11. ah, SZ, now i think too that there might be some resemblence! i have always had a soft spot for Macbeth, it's perhaps my favourite one, i don't know why.

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  12. funny you should mention 'islands', Owen, and 'jewels upon the sea' (listening to that song right now), i just remembered another post of mine where i touched upon the same topic, however in a more optimistic tone:

    http://roxanaghita.blogspot.com/2008/06/countless-blue-boats.html

    also, somebody talked in a letter to me about a certain affinity with Munch's Melancholy:

    http://www.beyeler.com/fondation/f/images_11son/29munch/Melancholie_500.jpg

    so it seems that the sea/island/loneliness metaphor was - much to my surprise! - present in a couple of reactions to this post.

    and yes, this is a crucial question: what words? and: will words still pass between the two? i think about that too...
    thank you so much for your thoughtful comment.

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  13. Anonymous, lovely!!! thank you, those colourful leaves in the crystal balls are so sweet :-)

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  14. Zuma NONONO - don't go to that post office! i have already arranged for you to be arrested on your way out, under suspicion that you hide some forbidden grass in those tea packages. and there will also be an attack on the prison, what did you think? but if you think that it is important by whom you get rescued on the last page, then you underestimate my devilish imagination, believe me, even the old woman in Howl's Moving Castle would be a blessing :-P

    http://www.opendemocracy.net/content/articles/2864/images/grandma-sophie.jpg

    of course she is actually the beautiful and tender Sophie, but i am still not sure if i allow you the pleasure to witness such a transformation in the last paragraph :-)

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  15. James, i think you are a romantic, yes :-) and not even a well-camouflaged one :-P

    i don't know the context of this quote, which i received from somebody very dear to me a long time ago and has stayed on my mind ever since, but my guess is that Bacon wants to say here that he is satisfied despite the painful experience of this impossibility, because, and this is important, art offered a way to accept it, to live inside that impossibility. there can be this satisfaction, after all. not so different than what you imply. but it is just my interpretation...

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  16. merc, so funny, my dearest friend gentle wrote me last night telling me the same, that she was inside that picture. if i were to make a joke, i would say that small picture is getting crowded :-)
    but no, i can't joke about it, this is such a strong response to a photograph, sometimes i think it is really the best one: be inside. become one, for a moment, then separate again, but changed. it should be like this with art, no?

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  17. wow, Alina :-) what a surprise to hear from you again. it is a fabulous quote, isn't it? glad i could be of help.

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  18. Manu, thanks, as i said, i will watch that movie (i don't want to look at the excerpt because i want everything to be a surprise :-)
    of course i will tell you about it!

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  19. ah, Sutton, you have your way with quotes, my dear friend - "in total loss, to what will never be attained." hey, why are you doing this to me? :-)

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  20. dear, dear mansuetude, how have you been? i check all the time to see if you posted again, it will become a compulsion :-)

    about the posture, at first i was not satisfied with the first woman, with her back turned to us, i thought it would have been better if i had caught her while standing straight, like a statue, as the other one does. but then i started to think it was perhaps better that way, the little brokenness of the lines, as is she was on the verge of turning to the right, suggested more frailty to me...

    thank you from all my heart.

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  21. Utrillo would paint people walking away. Infinite sadness.

    ..."be inside. become one, for a moment, then separate again, but changed. it should be like this with art, no?"

    With love, yes.

    "For where love is absent, power quickly fills the vacuum." Jung.

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  22. I adore Kafka. My favorite novel by him is The Castle - which one is yours?

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  23. sophie? thanks for clarifying... I'd have guessed that was roxana ;-P

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  24. I have to take a deep, cleansing breath before I begin each journey here. I'm aware that once I move beyond your page, I'm not quite the same as I was before my arrival...

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  25. what a beautiful quote, merc. thank you...

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  26. Mary-Laure, me too :-) hard to answer, it is so difficult to separate the Process and the Castle, isn't it? it's virtually the same struggle and obsession in both...

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  27. Zuma, of course i thought that you might imagine that :-P well, let's wait and see if i am happy with my teas, then we can rewrite the endings without pangs of consciousness :-)

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  28. S., my beautiful friend, i am so touched by the way you welcome my images and words in your heart, it's always difficult for me to answer, your kindness and sensitivity make me silent...

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  29. thanks for thàt: "For that reason alone we human beings ought to stand before one another as reverently, as reflectively, as lovingly, as we would before the entrance to Hell", and for your photo ...
    (would that btw be why we all visit your blog so reverently, so reflectively & so lovingly??? )

    (also reminds me of a phrase by Richard Powers, less bleak though, almost naively uplifting : "he had this thing about affection for his fellow creatures of chance's kingdom")

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  30. either ou mean "pangs of CONSCIENCE" or this is some strange metaphysical reference that is beyond my meagre intellect...

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  31. of course, zuma, making fun of my english is surely the easiest way out in any situation :-) i won't even ask you what happened on your alleged way to the post office today :-P

    (damn google!!!! i wasn't sure about that expression and i checked it, but google returned more hits for 'of consciousness' ha!)

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  32. and i forgot to mention before your morbid imagination runs more wild - please stop this impersonation of my ol' lady- we Bengalis/ Calcuttans already have a romaninan mother ;-), don't you know?

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  33. see, that's better - fearing my wild imagination is always the best option :-)

    but i think that the stress in my answer was not on 'what happened to you on your way", but on 'alleged way' :-P

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  34. fff, it is a lovely quote, and not at all bleak, i feel - well, it depends on how one understands 'chance' :-)

    (your first paranthesis took me so much by surprise... i wouldn't know about that, would i? :-) now let me check if there exists some ancient representation of the Hell entrance in the shape of a floating bridge, we might be onto something here :-)

    thank you, thank you.

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  35. yeah maybe... and because it is 'floating' and therefore, not condusive to easy access, souls generally engage the services of a boatman....

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  36. do we have an offer here, zuma? :-) but then we should find you a more dignified name, 'zuma's colourful balls' is too frivolous and optimistic for lost souls...

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  37. nonono...I'm not volunteering! I was referring to Charon

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  38. admirable appropriateness and resiliency!! roxana.. welcome back again. :p

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  39. i know whom you were referring to, Zuma, of course, just thinking you might want the job nevertheless :-P that's why i compared the names, Charon is supposed to mean 'of keen gaze', a reference to the gaze of death - very poetic indeed!

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  40. hi again, Peter, i thought you disappeared :-) glad you like it!

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  41. thanks!!!! Your pictures are also excellent. good to comment on my picture, thanks to that I found your pictures :)

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  42. thank you, Inga, for coming to visit, we'll keep in touch, i hope :-)

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  43. curata grozavie.
    este superb cadrul. cu citire lunga...

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