bhikku

2008-05-12T16:27:23Z

I learned to drive so that I could read Los Angeles in the original.

- Reyner Banham

2008-05-07T14:33:36Z

In the crumbly silt undercliff at Lulworth Cove, just to the north of the caff and the well-spoken artist painting Flecker poems on pebbles in script too small for me to read, there's a sizable colony of Osmia rufa, the red mason bee. They seem to be doing more-or-less fine, although some of them are landing randomly and casting about for their holes and not finding them and going away again. Maybe this is a defence mechanism against the attentions of a rather standard-looking dipteran fly (but oh, how sinister its body language). Among them, there's another mason or miner bee I can't identify (answers welcome) - larger, slimmer and dark blue-black, less cuddly and more on the ball. A torpedo among teddy bears.

2008-04-20T18:28:29Z

Through bushes and through briars
I lately made my way
All for to hear the small birds sing
And the lambs to skip and play.

I overheard my own true love
Her voice it rang so clear
Long time have I been waiting for
The coming of my dear.

Sometimes I am uneasy
And troubled in my mind
Sometimes I think I'll go to her
And tell to her my mind.

But if I should go to my love
My love she would say nay
If I showed to her my boldness
She'd ne'er love me again.

If I showed to her my boldness
She'd ne'er love me again.

2008-04-17T14:22:42Z

Futuro House, designed 1968, Science Museum London

Guest blogger Sir Philip Sidney takes time out from his busy schedule of being a Renaissance Man to tell us how a poet operates

2008-04-06T08:15:51Z

"I know not whether by luck or wisdom, we Englishmen have met with the Greeks in calling him a maker, which name, how high and incomparable a title it is, I had rather were known by marking the scope of other sciences, than by any partial allegation. There is no art delivered unto mankind that hath not the works of nature for his principal object, without which they could not consist, and on which they so depend as they become actors and players, as it were, of what nature will have set forth.
So doth the astronomer look upon the stars, and by that he seeth set down what order nature hath taken therein.
So doth the geometrician and arithmetician, in their diverse sorts of quantities.
So doth the musician, in times, tell you which by nature agree, which not.
The natural philosopher thereon hath his name; and the moral philosopher standeth upon the natural virtues, vices, or passions of man; and follow nature, saith he, therein, and thou shalt not err.
The lawyer saith what men have determined.
The historian, what men have done.
The grammarian speaketh only of the rules of speech; and the rhetorician and logician, considering what in nature will soonest prove and persuade, thereon give artificial rules, which still are compassed within the circle of a question, according to the proposed matter.
The physician weigheth the nature of man's body, and the nature of things helpful and hurtful unto it.
And the metaphysic, though it be in the second and abstract notions, and therefore be counted supernatural, yet doth he, indeed, build upon the depth of nature.
Only the poet, disdaining to be tied to any such subjection, lifted up with the vigour of his own invention, doth grow, in effect, into another nature; in making things either better than nature bringeth forth, or quite anew; forms such as never were in nature, as the heroes, demi-gods, Cyclops, chimeras, furies, and such like; so as he goeth hand in hand with Nature, not enclosed within the narrow warrant of her gifts, but freely ranging within the zodiac of his own wit.
Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry as divers poets have done; neither with so pleasant rivers, fruitful trees, sweet-smelling flowers, nor whatsoever else may make the too-much-loved earth more lovely; her world is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden."

2008-03-18T18:38:23Z

A little man is standing among the trees:
He wears a scarlet cloak down to his knees.
If you know, then you tell me what this little man might be
Standing still and lonely there among the trees.

Referenced in a book of English Folk Songs as being Trad by Anon. This was the whole thing, just one verse. I knew the tune (the staves were printed, too) but can't name it. The lines seem to me to be dead sinister, or allegorical, or both. Is it a riddle?

2008-03-08T21:22:18Z

John Minton, Surrey Landscape 1944

2008-02-17T14:32:45Z

SCENE FIVE - Exterior of Myles na Coppaleen's Hut.

Enter MYLES singing 'Brian O' Linn':

"Brian O' Linn had no breeches to wear,
So he bought him a sheep-skin to make him a pair;
The skinny side out, and the woolly side in,
'They are cool and convanient,' said Brian O' Linn."

(locks door of cabin) Now I'll go down to my whiskey-still. It is under my feet this minute, bein' in a hole in the rocks they call O'Donoghue's stables, a sort of water cave; the people around here think that the cave is haunted with bad spirits, and they say that of a dark stormy night strange onearthly noises is heard comin' out of it - it is me singing "The Night Before Larry was Stretched." Now I'll go down to that cave, and wid a sod of live turf under a kettle of worty, I'll invoke them sperrits - and what's more they'll come.

Exit.

from The Colleen Bawn, by Dion Boucicault

2008-02-11T19:28:25Z

John Minton, jacket illustration for Le Grand Meaulnes, 1947

2008-02-02T15:16:03Z

Some things are so obvious that you might overlook them. But the ever alert Ms Miranda Gaw has noticed that the place for a Little Magazine in this century is somewhere among the internets. Issue #1 then, of Peter Parasol. And no, I didn't know that about Stevens, either.

nostalgie d'eaux

2008-02-01T16:35:19Z

The lake was moved by strange tides. Sometimes, as at the present moment, it sank to a single, opaque pool in a wilderness of mud and rushes; sometimes it rose and inundated five acres of pasture. There had once been an old man in one of the lodges who understood the workings of the water system; there were sluice gates hidden among the reeds, and manholes, dotted about in places known only to him, furnished with taps and cocks; that man had been able to control an ornamental cascade and draw a lofty jet of water from the mouth of the dolphin on the South terrace. But he had been in his grave fifteen years and the secret had died with him.

- Evelyn Waugh, Scoop

On my meanderings through these dry, white hills I have come across crumbling irrigation works that date from the time when Andalucia was joined with northern Morocco as an Arab province known as Al-Andalus. When the Moors lived here this part of Spain was a garden; now it is a desert.

- John Hopkins, Tangier Diaries

2008-01-24T18:59:34Z

All we have to do when reading . . . is to relax and let our spines take over. Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between the shoulder blades. That little shiver behind is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained when evolving pure art and pure science. Let us worship the spine and its tingle. Let us be proud of our being vertebrates, for we are vertebrates tipped at the head with a divine flame. The brain only continues the spine, the wick really goes through the whole length of the candle. If we are not capable of enjoying that shiver, if we cannot enjoy literature, then let us give up the whole thing and concentrate on our comics, our videos, our books-of-the-week.

- Nabokov

2008-01-06T14:45:01Z

Wim Wenders, Alice in the Cities

"In this city, when you come to an intersection . . . it's like coming to a clearing in the woods."

2007-12-19T10:07:41Z

Bob Rafelson, The King of Marvin Gardens

2007-12-16T19:12:29Z

Muriel Rukesyser said: "The universe is made of stories, not atoms."
Let's tweak that a little, shall we?
The universe is made of atoms and of stories. And of stuff we don't even know about.
Are stories quanta? Can a small set of core stories build all the others? And if we know what a story's about, can we know where it's going?