via National Museums Liverpool on flickr

Please try to ignore my almost fetishistic love for abstract and/or metaphoric titles. This post is about a lovely little art exhibition at the Walker art gallery, Liverpool. I’m talking about The Living and the Dead, an exhibition of some of  visual artist John Kirby’s paintings and sculptures, which is on until the 15th April 2012 (admission free, see official Liverpool museums webpage). The Walker gallery in Liverpool is worth seeing for a thousand separate reasons which I’m not going to list here, as it would take me an eternity. But Kirby’s exhibition was a pleasant little surprise. Now, I’m not going to pretend I know the first thing about visual art, as I probably don’t. But I am an enthusiast of visual art and I enjoy seeing original and challenging exhibitions every once in a while.

via re-title.com

Kirby’s works strive to represent a variety of complex themes – sexuality versus gender, family, life versus death, race, marriage, religion – and, I would say, manages to represent them without becoming overreaching and overbearing. His figures are clean-cut and their aspect is always neatly neutral. They way I see them, they ask no heavy questions and require no reluctant answers, but they do trigger a sense of melancholy and reflection.

via Artodyssey

I really enjoyed the exhibition a lot, and only regret the fact that I didn’t have more time at my disposal to be able to linger more than thirty seconds in front of each of his paintings or sculptures. From my art fancier/ amateur point of view, Kirby’s was interesting and non-pretentious enough for me to want to go back and see it a second and a third time. So if you live in or around Liverpool, or if you just happen to find yourself there for whichever reason, I strongly recommend that you pay The Living and the Dead a visit. (Shall I stress again that the exhibition is admission free? )

via Culture24

Just another thing that I wrote in-between having self-doubts and doing so-called “real work”.  For me, poetry remains a way of getting rid of all worries.

Someone very dear to me said that this particular poem was “very ugly”. In fact, that is so true that I’d love to use it as a sort of epigraph. (Of course,the poem itself is provisionally titled, in my “traditional” vein, “Shadows”. The creepy-cute collage is also the result of my self-motivational campaign.)

Shadows

I.

What are we if not shadows of the clouds
Twisting on the pavement,
Reaching towards one another
Like blind creatures in the dark?
We don’t care too much for anything
But we’re scared of always wandering alone
We’re scared of how rain blurs away
Our minds and how wind  comes to scatter
All the gravel and the dust our forms have leant upon.

II.

I know the periphery of a word
(From you)
Should make me content
But as things stand
It only makes me crave for more,
Poor beggar corvid that I am.
Laughing now
(Are you?)
But there’s no point in looking back
Over a stranger’s shoulder.
The sky is closed behind
I have to forage once again
For shattered pieces of security.

III.

Our doubts are closing in on us.
‘It ‘s like a riddle that you have to solve’
Someone said once.
But I’m tired of riddles.
On towards the skyline, then!
But only after.

A road that leads to nowhere…

A moon that only shyly peeks out from the clouds…

A place of farewells…

And tonight’s huge and very pagan moon…

Another year has gone by. I salute you all.

Well, anyway, I’ll take this opportunity to share some more photos of the city and some of those liminal spaces with the world. Please excuse the poor quality, they are all little frankenphotos taken with my mobile camera.

Here, I would have added a fabulous quotation about liminal spaces and cities, but I find myself too tired, for once, to look it up. Maybe some other time.

The lights of the city...

… reread passages from books that I’ve loved…

She had that cajoling voice, the voice of temptation that all women have at certain moments, a voice like a crystal glass ringing in an ever-widening, swirling nimbus of sound in which the man is caught up, yields and lets himself go.

~ Georges Rodenbach, Bruges-la-Morte

… and then write poems based on the shape and feel of words levitating in my foggy brain…

The Voice of Temptation. The Attic
by me, of course

The voice of temptation,
Caught listening at the door,
Is now hung in the attic
But it doesn’t mind:
The view is nice
And you can hear
All the rattling bones
From up there.
You can even see
All the houses of the city
Lined in broken rows
And filled to the brim with people -
They all look thin and black
From up there -
You can almost taste
The melt and decay
Riding high on the midnight breeze,
Feel the sun burning the moon
Little by little.

“I’m not even locked up here”,
Thinks the voice of temptation,
“And not reaching the floor
With the soles of my feet
Is almost, though not exactly like,
Flying”, it murmurs to itself.
“I’ll give this place a chance”,
It decides, but just then
The house of cards collapses,
Crushing the voice of temptation
Under a heap of spades.

… and then maybe doodle a little (no, I’m not going to show you those, sorry) and finally decide that it’s close to dawn so I’d better go to sleep. It’s a tiring and frustrating habit. But then again, maybe that’s just my way of celebrating. What’s yours?

John Leech, "Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come" (1843)

I would like to start by assuring anyone who cares enough about the topic at hand that the following – rather random – blog update doesn’t count as procrastination, it counts as inspiration. In fact, has it never happened to any of you to become so obsessed with linger so much on one subject that you just have to do something completely different to simply regain your creative energy? Hopefully, then, this little “breathing pause” that I created for myself will help me get back on track with what might be called “real work”. I give you, therefore, yet another one of my written-on-the-spur-of-the-moment, self-reinvigorating-though-monstrously-bleak poems. (Also: yes, of course I am aware that the “Christmas Carol” illustration has absolutely nothing to do with anything.  It just so happened that I had a copy of that illustration in front of me for the whole time that I was writing the poem, so it just seemed appropriate to insert it in here, as well.)

Overheard in a Drawer

You don’t know me -
Except for the scrawny name
Scrawled in black on that
Lonesome scrap of unrecycled paper;
You don’t see me -
Except for those times when
We both go to hell and accidentally
Share an anecdote or two
About our limpid lives;
You forget my face -
And that’s in spite
Of all my efforts to slip under
Your office door unsigned
Passport photos of me from time
To time…
So what am I to you?
Am I a speck of dust in your eye
That you don’t even feel?
Am I that shadow by your desk
At night that’s barely even real?
Am I the least annoying problem
That yet lingers in a corner of your mind?
Am I the first stray breeze
That ever crossed your path
And you don’t know what
To begin with when I’m there?
And who are you to me?
Sure, I’ve played games with other players
But you seem to know my hand
Before my turn and so I throw
Away my cards, I never look
Over my shoulder;
But who are you to me?
Wrapped tightly in your silences,
Protected by the heavy ghosts
Of lovers from your fairground
Far away – who are you?

Nothing
by yours truly

Behind a maze of smiles
Our selves, cryptically, bleedingly
Intertwined – though farther apart
Than ever.
Smiles are nothing.
What does it matter that we pave
Bridges with shining teeth
And searching tongues?
Cities collapse under those bridges
Our minds collapse.
There’s nothing you and I
Will sacrifice for the sake
Of a frail and wishful approach.
Our smiles mean nothing.
Your smile is nothing.
Bridges are nothing but holes.

The look of it – the silhouette fading into the white background, the black frame – made me ask myself whether this particular photo-postcard wasn’t made to commemorate a relative that had passed away. Of course, this might or might not be the case, but the sheer surrealism of the whole montage indicates a sort of artificiality, a little something put together after the right time of putting things together had already passed. I would certainly like to take this to someone who actually knows the first thing about old photos, to get a more informed opinion. It is an “udivided back” type photo-postcard, which started being produced in the early 1900′s, meaning the whole back was left blank with only the typed prompt: “the address to be written on this side”. So normally, for “undivided back” postcards, the message would be written on the front, over and under and surrounding the central image.

Now this, the image of the old man in the forest, as I like to think of it, is just plain odd. It’s a “divided back” type photo-postcard, which makes it of a slightly later date than the previous one. On the back, there is a violet ink stamp saying: “J. WILLIAMS, 5, Round Hill Crescent, BRIGHTON. PHOTOGRAPHER”. Which only goes to show that someone actually took the pains of commissioning a professional photographer to take a picture of this old man in this old forest. Why? Who was the old man? Why was he so important? And why in the forest? Was it his forest?

Apart from that, I have also followed my passion of looking up these ghostly addresses on Google Maps. Well, once more I have been successful, managing to track down the abode of this photographer from the past. Here’s a screen capture of the actual house at No 5 as shown on Google Street View:

The following one I just love. It’s quite as simple as that:

Another “undivided back” type photo-postcard. This young dandy simply fascinates me. I could stare at his photo for hours on end. Not only is he particularly attractive, but his elegant style, the way he confidently looks at the camera, half-smiling, his cultivated air – all of this just makes me wish I’d met him.

This one is another “divided back”. It was most obviously printed at the photographers’, as well, as their professional handle is subtly incoroporated into the postcard layout: “Starr & Rignall, Photographers, Cambridge & Ely.” At a quick Google search of their firm, interestingly enough, you can find them mentioned on quite a few vintage photography websites. They are mentioned here, here, here and here (where you can also find some more photos taken by their studio), as well as on some other webpages (well, just Google them and you’ll see). Also, by the range of different prices jotted in pencil on the back of the photo-postcard, you can tell it’s been sold and bought at least twice before though probably more times than that. Once more, it makes me sad to think how these old memories are thrust into the world…

Now, the appearance of the man in the photo is slightly awkward: he looks like he might have had an unusually large and long head, as well as unusually large hands. This made me wonder whether he could have been suffering of some sort of disorder, such as the Sotos syndrome or Macrocephaly. I guess this is where I should ask a doctor’s opinion.

These three girls (probably sisters?) seem distinctly unhappy. Maybe they found it especially tedious to be interrupted in their play only to pose in prim white frocks holding ridiculous flower baskets. Again, a “divided back” photo-postcard; it looks much more recent than most of the other photos. Ironically, it is imprinted on a photo sheet of poorer quality and the portrait is, itself, not as well preserved. Just goes to show that other things were already beginning to preside over quality, I suppose?

And this I’m just going to post again, because it’s so lovely that I even decided to make it the new emblem of my blog:

The small boy in the sailor suit, looking quite amused. And the way he holds his little lordly cane in imitation of those funny adults is simply precious. He’s the king of the castle!

Well, I suppose I should just let the dead lie now… More importantly, today has been a good flea market day. I’ve managed to rescue as many as 14 abandoned memories from the local market and I would like, as always, to share them with the whole wide world. This time round I’ve scanned rather than rephotographed them, so, hopefully, they should be of a slightly increased quality.

Please, consider this a preview of sorts, as I intend to comment on at least some of the pictures in the near future. There will be an extended photo-postcards post. But I am currently quite tired (as well as, oddly enough, fidgety), so you’ll just have to make do with this hurried update for the moment.

As a side note, if we were to take today, the 2nd of December, as the new and improved birthday of  Encyclopaedia Vanitatum, then my beloved blog would be, after the equivocal Western tradition, a Saggitarius, ” idealistic in vision but tactless in expression”, according to the Mother Goddess Wikipedia. Sounds quite true to me! Happy New Birthday, Encyclopaedia Vanitatum!

Oh, and also:Follow my blog with Bloglovin

I didn’t get to read it until recently, but when I did start the book, I did so with a lot of enthusiasm. From the first chapter, however, I was sorely disappointed. Whenever I start reading a “ghost story”, whether it be a classic or a modern one, I expect for it to do one main thing: create atmosphere. By “atmosphere” I don’t mean “purple prose”, just a fair amount of description, whether internal or external, that creates a sense of mystery and draws the reader into the story, making it feel as if he/she were living it, as if he/she were the one who met the ghost and had to find out its secret, its motives. In many ways, I believe, ghost stories resemble crime fiction: there should be mystery, some red herrings (but not an exggerated amount of red herrings), and everyone should hold a secret. Well, to cut a long story short, Susan Hill failed to do precisely that: to create an atmosphere. I am aware that a lot of people prefer stories to be told in a straightforward manner, but the way I see it, ghost stories must not be told too straightforwardly, or the mystery, the excitement, the thrills – they are all lost. I read a ghost story for the excitement, the goosebumps – well, with The Small Hand, they didn’t happen. I could have read this book at any time of night and I would have been quite as calm as ever. From chapter one, all Susan Hill does is use a conversational tone, fit for chicklit, but not for horror/ terror. The amount of time that she uses adverbs such as “clearly”, or syntagmas such as “for some reason” shows how she chose the easy way out, instead of using a smart narrative device to pull the reader in and establish a sense of unknown and uncanny. Such easy ways out serve only to make the story plain rather than interesting.

In short, it took me about seven chapters until I became somewhat drawn to the story (and the novella only numbers twenty-two short chapters). To get there, I had to survive cringeworthy dialogue (e.g. when asked why he wanted to revisit the derelict and supposedly haunted villa that is the centre of the story, the main character replies, embarrassingly: ‘Oh – you know how some old places have a strange attractiveness. And I might want to retire to the country some day.’) and paragraphs that contribute to demote the frail sense of atmosphere: He helped himself to more salad. The room had filled. I looked at the walls, which were lined with an extraordinary assortment of pictures, oils and watercolours, five deep in places – none of them was of major importance but every single one had merit and charm. The collection enhanced the pleasant room considerably. (Here, the adverb “consideringly” being another easy way out. At this point, I was shouting at the book ‘how?? how does it “enhance the pleasant room”??? what is “considerably”???’ ) Finally, at the beginning of chapter eight, there was an improvement: the main character’s dream was refrenshingly uncanny and creates some sense of expectancy, of uncertainty. Then, the story goes on, mostly in a predictable manner, until the very end in chapter twenty-two, about which, quite honestly, I have mixed feelings. I am tempted to label it as “good, but not good enough”: it is not as predictable as the rest of the plot, but it falls right flat and leaves the reader with no after-taste. That’s right, nothing.

Again, the plot itself was unoriginal and lacked any kind of depth (be it stylistic, moral, philosophical or psychological), the pace was too fast and, really not much happened in-between the start and the end of the book. Mostly, the plot (and I don’t have any sort of qualms about spoiling it for you – there is not much to spoil) goes like this: man (who is also an antiquarian/book dealer) stumbles upon derelict house and has some sort of encounter with a child’s ghost – ghost starts haunting man – man goes back to the derelict house to face his own fears – man meets queer old lady (who might or might not be a ghost) – man faints and is retrieved by friendly acquaintances – man discovers he is suddenly (!) relieved of the ghost’s presence and is sure the ghost will never haunt him again. That’s it, for the most part. And I will stop here with my review, otherwise I may take this novella paragraph by paragraph and start pointing out all the various little things that made it such a disappointing reading experience. All in all, I must say that, having read The Small Hand, I am unlikely to read anything else by Susan Hill. It was utterly unconvincing. I also feel like it received a lot of undeserved praise based on the author’s former success rather than the actual quality of the book itself.

I would not recommend Susan Hill’s novella to other enthusiasts of the modern gothic and ghost stories: it has very little, if anything at all, to offer. If I were to rate it, I would probably gve it 2/5 points.