More of the awesome (if you're into floral badassery).

Painted Roses













Thank you Sergio Lopez for the pastoral loveliness. Not bad for a debut exhibition, not bad at all.

Oh, you want more from him? Well okay then http://themainloop.com/

Verbs do it.

So I've always believed that to fuck with language, you must first know the rules before you can break 'em.

This belief also fostered my interest in Stream of Consciousness writing and the feminist perspective that language is seen as a male dominated space, so to enter into it as a woman you must fuck with the structure and grammar in order to rebel against the patriarchal, structured, rational rule of the 'father'.

I however shave my armpits and would cry if someone burnt my bra (that shit's expensive)! So gingerly tip-toeing away from 'feminist' literature for now (I still love you Kristeva and Woolf), I came across this... Another French academic pushing language boundaries. But a MAN nonetheless.

Michel Thaler, pen name for Michel Dansel has written a 233 page novel WITHOUT ANY VERBS. I'm dying to know how this reads and am currently searching for an English translation, if there even is one (and alas, if there is one that is true to the original). So until I get my hands on a copy, I can only wonder what a verbless novel is like. Verbs are doing words (my Grade 4 teacher's voice still rings true). 'Action' words make sentences, well, fluid. Alive.

So are we talking about dead sentences? Shrivelled sentences with the pulp sucked out of them? Zombie sentences? The dead undead? 

I read Thaler-Dansel had an actual funeral for the Verb in Paris, with black-clothed mourners and everything. Will it walk again and eat his brains at a later stage?

I'm a fan of verbs. I like to play with unsuspecting nouns and force them into verbs. Holidaying, Fridaying, Sandtoning. Adding 'ing' to nouns is quite thrilling if you’re a dork like me. So yeah, a verbless novel gets my attention.

How does one construct a story without any ‘action’? It's kind of mind-blowing that he pulled it off (at least I think he did). Boundary-pushing awesomeness aside, could it be just another pompous French intellectual being *gasp* 'controversial'? Oooh.

Or he's bored.

Or he's bitter.

The man really hates verbs. Like really really. Like a verb molested him as a child then stole his lunch money (molest/stole: doing words). He says about the verb: "invader, dictator, usurper of our literature" and "The verb is like a weed in a field of flowers. You have to get rid of it to allow the flowers to grow and flourish. Take away the verbs and the language speaks for itself".

Constrained Writing at its best I guess.

Anyway, if you care, if you dare, check it out:



English translation: The Train from Nowhere

It might be foreshadowing with the subtext: "I told you so, sucker!"
Or it could change your life, literary.

Or if verbs are your thing, Thaler has horribly offended you and you HATE that damn letter 'e', pompous little schmuck, try these:

       

Hell hath no fury like a letter scorned.

If you in fact find all of this interesting, and you want to find out more about this type of language movement (or lack thereof), why not rely on our favourite, friendly neighbourhood non-academic source. It has a bit to say on 'Oulipo' - for people who get off on Constrained Writing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulipo

Blog, over.
[see what I did there?]

I heart this so very much.




































Thanks Vogue Italy. Thank you Mr Photographer Man (Steve Meisel).

It's called literature, dude.

I studied the arrogant, intertextual ball-sling that is The Wasteland in English 3^rd Year, yes Eliot throw some Latin at us, but thanks for being so damn brilliant! And recently found an adaption of Eliot's The Hollow Men by Chris Marker.

literature + art meet.

literature as art.

literature is art.

literature = art.

Good stuff methinks.

                                                  Owls at Noon Prelude: The Hollow Men

I wish you could see more of his installation but this wee clip will have to suffice until I can find something better...

And then of course, the original, the inspiration...

The Hollow Men - T.S. Eliot

Mistah Kurtz—he dead.

      A penny for the Old Guy

      I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

      II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

      III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

      IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

      V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
                                Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

 

soap box with a smoke machine

Testing...1 2...

H... i?

*feedback*

Hello?

*echo*

So this marks my entry into the digital world, bumpy but for reals y’all!

This is really just a soap box with a smoke machine. Maybe throw a disco ball in every now and then.

So I get that I shouldn’t be precious.

The point of this is for me to just write again, for myself, separate (and more indulgent) from what I do for a living. I'll use flowery language if I want dammit; don't wilt the English out of me! And also because sharing is caring*. I bestow on you the only-child mantra.

There'll be pictures too. I heart pictures. And I'll move in with ideas.

I'm a bit of an analogue girl (not in a cool, hipster-laden-with-irony way, more in like a what-does-this-button-do?-EXPLOSION way) so bear with me while I navigate and blunder through this. Is ‘blog’ a word from the future? I can’t say it with a straight face. Blogerific? I’ll stop now and wash my mouth out.

L

*repeat in mom-voice