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other destinations

I got on the wrong bus yesterday rather than wait for the right one which didn't matter so much and stayed on to the end of the line a village a few miles out of town, deciding to make my way back on foot so as to take a look around. To the west of the village was a construction site, with earthworks that immediately reminded me of the sort of subject I was photographing maybe 15 years ago. A new road. Unexpectedly, in the process of passing by and taking a few pictures, three people separately came up to converse. Topics raised were council corruption (alleged), considerations on impending surgery, and coming off recreational drugs (in reply to that I mentioned how back in the day I'd gone from having six spoons of sugar in my tea   to none  all in one go ). It was well over an hour before I eventually passed this dust-blown piece of road. It's early October but I got a sunburned face standing around.

Carl Koudelka: at the Court Theatre, Altenburg,

Found when looking on eBay for a copy of Josef Koudelka's diaries and just searching with his surname.

Amanda Marchand: Touch, the Arithmetics of Distance

Amanda Marchand: This Earthen Door, “Flowers–Well–if anybody”

sea and stars

Thomas Ruff: jpegs, ny @ David Zwirner

Loring Knoblach review on collectordaily

lunch

2 octave analog keyboard

Alfred Wallis (1855-1942)

Retired fisherman and labourer Alfred Wallis took up painting at the age of 67 'for company' after his wife had died, using household paint on scraps of cardboard. His naive style was recognised by modernist Brit artists Ben Nicholson and Christopher wood, who were on a day out to St. Ives and had looked in an open doorway to see walls full of paintings. Not only did they purchase some but they (and their contemporaries) were influenced by them. Britain's modernist artists would go on to form a home at St. Ives. Despite their acclaim Wallis made next to nothing from his art and spent the last year of his life destitute in a workhouse. St. Ives Harbour, Cornwall, (undated).

physical memories

Yesterday I sent a list to a local vinyl records store of the 80s albums and 12" singles I had dug out of storage and they said bring them in.  It's the usual indie stuff; Velvet Underground, Joy Division, New Order, Associates etc.  Either I didn't sleep all that well last night because of a late cup of tea or it was an ache at the thought of handing these records over.  Hm. A few of the disks required a gentle soft wash today, and I let them dry on the dishes rack.  Just handling them and poring over the faded sleeves put those days on the turntable of memory and carefully lowered the stylus; the people, situations, feelings, and rooms from back then, springing clearly to life once more without the records even being played.  

Ethan Embry in House

For months I've slowly been working through seasons of medical drama House , a few eps per week, and am currently well into season 6. The producers ran out of ideas a long way back and the writing increasingly dabbles with increasingly misanthropic behaviour by Greg House, that are supposed to be amusing but are quite horrible, alongisde the weary formula of the differential struggle to a genius diagnosis. But I keep watching. As I sometimes falter on abandoning the show there usually comes along an episode that delivers a moment of drama that haunts one for days afterwards. The Down Low: Season 6, Episode 11 The entire plot is of little consequence. The guest appearance patient is by actor Ethan Embry, as an undercover cop admitted after fainting, and unexpectedly ends with one of the rare failure to save a life denouements. The last minutes show his path to death and Embry gives a highly convincing intensity to a performance that has been flat to this point; through a face expres...