a vale of tears…

Mute:
A professional mourner at a funeral, paid to wear black and adopt a grave face.


Drawn down blinds, as if for a funeral:
A practice that lasted well into the the mid twentieth century among the working and lower middle class.

aims & objectives

One of Many, St Bride's, London

I seem to have been talking about recording ideas and thoughts a lot lately. And even doing it. Definitely getting back up to speed with documenting the tiniest meditation these last few months.



And here's someone else who carries notebooks with her all the time: Jo Peel.

Jo also designed a rather lovely poster for Julia Kent, who came to play her cello down in Cornwall this week. Have a listen on the link. It's beautiful stuff.

Studies in Indirect Communication vol. IX

'The "willed silence mark" signifies an intentional silence, the conversational equivalent of building a wall over which you can't climb, through which you can't see, against which you break the bones of your hands and wrists. I often inflict willed silences upon my mother when she asks about my relationships with girls. Perhaps this is because I never have relationships with girls - only relations. It depresses me to think that I've never had sex with anyone who really loved me. Sometimes I wonder if having sex with a girl who doesn't love me is like felling a tree, alone, in a forest: no one hears about it; it didn't happen.'


A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease, Jonathan Safran Foer

Pelt scraps

Peckham High Street, London, 2008

A Lie

'…it is a mistake, this extreme precision, this orderly and military progress; a convenience, a lie. There is always deep below it, even when we arrive punctually at the appointed time with our white waistcoats and polite formalities, a rushing stream of broken dreams, nursery rhymes, street cries, half-finished sentences and sights - elm trees, willow trees, gardeners sweeping, women writing - that rise and sink…'

The Waves, Virginia Woolf

Press

Natural History Museum After Hours, 2008

Saturday After Five

Creative License

Interior to exterior.
A shot at dusk in my studio.

When you've been asked to provide a picture of your studio from interior to exterior but your view is filled with scaffolding, and not at all what you want to photograph, you have to be a bit quick-witted and use a little creative license.

Ok. This isn't that quick-witted, but it felt fortuitous and opportune somehow.

For The Atlas of Graphic Design (a compendium of the best graphic design from around the world), to be published later this year by maomao.

Middle-distance

0 | 1

Binary
On or off

Duality and pairs and interdependency

In multiple

[(Probably) off now until next week]

Solo

‘Taking food alone tends to make one hard and coarse. Those accustomed to it must lead a Spartan life if they are not to go downhill. Hermits have observed, if for only this reason, a frugal diet. For it is only in company that eating is done justice; food must be divided and distributed if it is to be well received.’

Walter Benjamin, One-Way Street, 1928

Daily small risks II

Take the time to complete your first crossword.
Even when there are other more pressing issues to be attended to.

Flee·t·ing

Kairos, as mentioned in a previous post was, according to the Greeks, the god of the transient. When represented in sculptures and paintings, Kairos is depicted as a fleeing figure with a tuft of hair on his forehead [the moment that can be grasped], and a bald back to his head [the moment cannot be recaptured once it's passed].

Lovely really.

Studies in Indirect Communication vol. VIII: Response

Image: John Stanbury, Advice to Sink in Slowly

When a party falls silent…

'The ancient Greeks had different gods for time's different aspects (including the god of the moment for weeding, the god of the moment of horses panicking, the god of the moment when a party suddenly falls silent). One of the most important was Chronos who gives his name to absolute time, linear, chronological and quantifiable. But the Greeks had another, far more slippery and colourful, god of time, Kairos. Kairos was the god of timing, of opportunity, of chance and mischance, of different aspects of time, the auspicious and not-so-auspicious. Time qualitative.'

Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time, Jay Griffiths

47

Things That I Learnt About (Drawing) My Super 8 Camera Today

Daily small risks

Today:

I drank

The Most Expensive Coffee in the World.

Drop

Ideas that didn't come to fruition.
But which should have/will.

Studies in Indirect Communication vol. VII: Response

Image: Kalle Sten.

Back on the radar.

Printer's shadows, shades and tints

Letratone tints, L to R:

LT 93; LT 92; LT 91; LT 189; LT 50.

Ben Day Tints