The Man I Love

Just some of the talismanic Men in my life. Masculine touchstones, if you will. All inspiring, all representative of a potential maturity which I have yet to establish entirely within myself. Not just the artistry but the faces, and the stories they tell. Strangely, to varying degress, I see glimpses of my father in each of them (particularly Herzog and Hopkins and Von Sydow). It's these guys who help make up the male side of my ongoing creative pantheon:


Von Sydow

Updike

Herzog

Auster

Roth

Hopkins

Irons (I love the little window you get on early-eighties New York life in this little interview with the man in question: 'I can't! I have a phone call coming through. I've got to go and talk about Liv Ullman!')

Play, Part I

Once the realization is accepted
That even between the closest human beings
Infinite distances continue to exist
A wonderful living side by side can grow up
If they succeed in loving the distance between them
Which makes it possible for each to see the other
Whole against a wide sky--Rainer Maria Rilke

I don't want a lover, I just want to be seen

He could still remember the day he'd scrawled on a hazy, sepia-scorched polaroid of the two of them together on the West Coast in 1975: 'Jane, thanks for the note and keep on the lookout for me'.


This sublime photo comes courtesy of John Harding at Half Moon Bay Memories

Of course, he knew Jane from years ago, but he didn’t admit as much to his wife. When Heather asked him if he’d seen the woman in the cream dress, and whether or not he had thought she looked pretty, he only shrugged, nodded, and clenched his lips around the last of his cocktail. Meanwhile, Jane's Scandinavian-inflected accent was tickling his ears from the next room, from thirty year's distance up the hall.

Bow Spirits

"Boy and Seagulls" Courtesy of Peter Jones in Taschen's Polaroid Book

I heard this today courtesy of Aquarium Drunkard: Strange Overtones, by David Byrne and Brian Eno. I can't stop playing it and taking deep luxurient breaths.



Tonight's Television, or my ongoing Poirot Obsession

Soft Cities and Windowsills

I bought this today for 89 pence and now I'm relishing the thought of it, for some reason. Something to do, perhaps, with its basic, unadorned, unpretentiousness. Its earthy beauty in a deceptively plain little box.

My Evening

Chez Herzog et Morrissey

Shutter Speeds

'I really don't know what it is, or where it comes from,' he said, 'but I have this fascination for women holding cameras.'
'The attention,' she answered.


Liv Ullman

Natasha Poly

Can't Remember (Some Singer)

Linda McCartney

Lina Scheynius

Franciose Hardy

She said I made her heart feel young

'A sad fact widely known
The most impassionate song
To a lonely soul
Is so easily outgrown
But dont forget the songs
That made you smile
And the songs that made you cry'



I've been wondering lately when bands stopped being this pure, this authentic.

A Woman that Rains

When I met her, Iris had just been kicked out of college for stealing art books from the college library. They opened her locker and a stash of lost monographs cascaded down. Everyone just standing there, ankle deep in an avalanche of art history--it was such a thrilling scenario. I found it brought Iris's off-kilter beauty into focus for me. Picturing her there, accused of emancipating art, I couldn't help but fall in love with her.


London Underpass, taken by Me