practice for readers

"But the problem with readers, the idea we're given of reading is that the model of a reader is the person watching a film, or watching television. So the greatest principle is, "I should sit here and I should be entertained." And the more classical model, which has been completely taken away, is the idea of a reader as an amateur musician. An amateur musician who sits at the piano, has a piece of music, which is the work, made by somebody they don't know, who they probably couldn't comprehend entirely, and they have to use their skills to play this piece of music. The greater the skill, the greater the gift that you give the artist and that the artist gives you. That's the incredibly unfashionable idea of reading. And yet when you practice reading, and you work at a text, it can only give you what you put into it. It's an old moral, but it's completely true." Zadie Smith (Bookworm Interview)

Monet in Autochrome

I adore these autochromes of Monet in his garden. I like how noisy they are (or it might be the resolution of the scans!) and how Mr Monet looks all beard and no face. When I visited the Musee D'Orsay, I spent a large part of my time sprawled in front of this painting. I was astonished and grateful that the painting was so enormous, stretching from floor to ceiling. It reminded me of  the Doni Tondo by Michelangelo and how I'd convinced myself it was the size of a dinner plate. I turned up to see it and was really confused to find it was the size of a satellite dish rather than a piece of crockery. You always have a vague idea of how big a painting is by the dimension information but nothing really prepares you for it in real life.

What I don't like so much is being disappointed when things are smaller than in my imagination. I went to Stonehenge and was so unimpressed by its size that I left in disgust and ate a bacon sandwich in the carpark, with my back to it. Take that, Stonehenge. You should have been bigger.

P.S. I'm a bit obsessed with Monet.

♥ Click on each picture for its source ♥

anthropomorphism

This used to be an air force base. In 1948, it looked like this. Now, everything is crumbling, and rusting, and the wharves have holes as big as a coffin, and the curtains in the windows are the smiles of old women with crooked teeth. At night, when nobody is around and nobody is looking, I imagine it moaning and creaking and rustling with the wind. With a slow, slow crack, like velcro unzipping, these houses haul themselves up off the ground, like an elderly person getting up from a soft sofa, and they stand, looking out for a while over the sea.

♥ Photos by Rob D on a Canon EOS 5D, Nikon 35mm f/1.4 ♥

♥ Cardigan from Country Road ♥ Top from Cotton On ♥ Skirt from Temt ♥ Belt from Portmans ♥ Shoes are thrifted from Trademe ♥ Locket from Bling ♥ Bag is thrifted from Rebound Clothing ♥ ♥ Backgrounds from Vintage Printables ♥

♥ We're at the old Shelly Bay Air Force Base on Shelly Bay Road ♥

last letters

UPDATE 12/10/10: After a long break 6,768 Miles Apart with Diana is now up. Visit Diana at Our City Lights or click on the collage below to be redirected to our photographic collaboration and its pocket history.

"It's almost unbearable to read all the human emotions it covers. It feels like looking into the sun as it's dying." Carol Ann Duffy comments on Ted Hughes' "Last Letters"

Ted Hughes was inscrutable for a number of years after the death of Sylvia Plath. I imagine that his silence played a large part in his vilification. Grief, and perhaps remorse, has steadily become a spectator sport. Images of a silent black hearse trailed by equally silent black-suited men and women, a road lined with crowds that stand twenty-deep, places blanketed by bouquets, letters, and candles. And of course, the anguished tears. Judges on the bench comment about the lack of remorse seemingly displayed by a criminal and it makes me wonder why silence is so often mistaken for indifference. Sometimes, grief, regret, and remorse, can curl up tight inside you, cementing itself between your bones, and sometimes, it feels like every breath rattles with the effort of what you hold in. No wonder you're silent. Perhaps for fear of what would happen, should you ever start to speak.

♥ Flowers for you ♥

passages from a lagoon

The geography of this island can describe the situation for the locals. Home is a placid lagoon which, when the sun is right, the sea, sand, and reefs combine to make a spectacular shimmering blanket of blue, white and tan. It is paradise, in all its cliched, tropical glory. Home is enclosed by a coral reef sheltering a lagoon, much of which has been protected as a marine reserve.

The Cook Islands is a foundling economy heavily reliant on aid, tourism, and remittances. An entire generation is absent, driven unwillingly out of the country to find jobs and a better future. Despite this, they smile, place tropical flowers in their hair, and cheerfully serve and share their home with the thousands of strangers who come to visit all year round. I watched the waves break every day and night on those reefs, crashing and churning. The waves never stopped coming and they never stopped pounding. And yet, try as they might, they never caused more than a mere ripple in the lagoon.

♥ For more of my Rarotonga pictures (digital, Fuji instax, Lomo underwater 35 mm, and Polaroid), visit my Flickr set 33 Kilometres in Rarotonga ♥

where i'm not afraid to use words like "utopia" & "dystopia"

Let the golden age begin/ Let the window down/ Feel the moonlight on your skin/ Let the desert wind/ Cool your aching head/ Let the weight of the world/ Drift away instead - Beck

Andrea du Chatenier's installation at The New Dowse is variously described as a "futuristic vision of a Golden age", "an era where ideals of real and fake are in disarray and copies sit merrily alongside originals...where the feminine ideal is a disorderly tangle of art history, mother nature and 'America's Next Top Model', and "a feeling of mournfulness with the seemingly glamorous figures made, not in precious metals, but low-cost, highly disposable polystyrene."

It would have been easy to skim the surface of this installation. There were a lot of pretty things to look at. Horses with white manes, butterflies liberated from their glassed-in, pinned existences, delicate flowers travelling over a bumpy surface. Yet, humming below the surface, I had to swallow a gulp. With all these gorgeous things lying about (an unmarked J'Adore Dior bottle, a pair of covetable fake black Louboutins, and a dusting of gold glitter) why did I feel as if du Chatenier was acting as a harbinger of doom?

Quoted text from Andrea du Chatenier's Goldenage exhibition at the New Dowse now until 29 August 2010.

♥ Photos by Rob and me ♥

l'amoureuse

♥Dress by Dotti ♥ Bangle from Newtown Fair ♥ Backgrounds from Antique Images ♥

thunder

You will hear thunder and remember me,
And think: she wanted storms. The rim
Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson,
And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.

Excerpt from Thunder by Anna Akhmatova. Translation by D.M. Thomas

♥ Red Coat from Paris, France ♥ Dress and Shoes from Glassons ♥

one city of love travelled alone

While waiting for the overnight train from Venice to Paris, I met a Korean exchange student who was on her way to Slovakia. She was 21, living in Paris, and talked wistfully of the boyfriend she had left in Seoul. She told me that in all her time in Paris, she had tried to avoid taking an accidental glance at the Eiffel Tower. She had yet to visit it up close. I asked why. She simply said it was something she wanted to see with somebody she loved.

One night later, I wandered through the Place Vendome, stumbling accidentally into a side entrance into the Jardin des Tuileries. The sun was setting purple in the sky. The Eiffel tower glimmered in the distance. A golden carousel glowed amidst the dark branches of the bare trees and the blankets of snow. An enormous ferris wheel glittering icy light revolved in the air. It was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen in my life. In that moment, I understand that girl and her refusal to see the Eiffel Tower alone. After two weeks of travelling by myself, I felt bereft. There seemed little point in seeing something so breathtaking without being able to share it with somebody else. Others are there to remind you that the sight you see and the things you feel are real. Beautiful things are meant to be shared. Without others, what you saw could almost have been just a dream.

♥ The Eiffel Tower from the Jardin des Tuileries ♥ Grande Pyramide, Louvre Museum ♥ Rue de Castiglione ♥

♥ Fontainebleau Chateau and Gardens ♥

♥ Art in the Musee D'Orsay and Musee Rodin ♥ The River Seine ♥

...and three more Italian cities

It is my second time in Venice. The first was in springtime. I remember the sun setting while I watched on the Rialto Bridge. The water turned amber and the cameras whirred like crazy. This time, Venice was aqua alta. The high tide was lapping against the foundations of the city, seeping into St Mark’s square. A lot of the buildings were shut tight, either abandoned or closed until the high season. Venice in winter is enchantingly spooky. In the drizzle, the grand old houses at the edges of the canals look like they are crumbling into the water, their paintwork peeling, the brickwork showing through. Piazzas are slick with rain and empty of people. It is Venice without its mask. Winter shows it for it really is - a city, slowly sinking, aging with undisputed grace but sad resignation. Its grandeur is faded, like Miss Haversham in her mansion, wrapped in a slightly tattered lace shawl. It felt like time was leaving Venice behind.

Treviso is called “Little Venice” by the locals due to the striking similarity of its canals, bridges and houses to Venice itself, only twenty minutes away by train. Indeed, a pocket of the city feels like Venice if it were newer, cleaner, and not so prone to sinking into the canal mud. If Venice is a winged lion then Treviso is a pampered Siamese house cat.

The patron saint of Padua, Italy is St. Anthony. He is also the saint you pray to when you’re missing something as he will help you find it. I need St Anthony. I am prodigious at losing essential things like keys, wallets, and phones. While I sat in a cramped Italian café, perched on a stool, drinking strong Italian coffee, the snow started to fall outside. The city was empty. Everyone was huddled inside. I realised I’d never seen snow fall till that moment.

NEXT STOP: France! See you there. Arrivederci, Italia.