David Jones, artist and poet (1895-1974) begins his PREFACE TO THE ANATHEMATA :

'I have made a heap of all that I could find.' (1) So wrote Nennius, or whoever composed the introductory matter to Historia Brittonum. He speaks of an 'inward wound' which was caused by the fear that certain things dear to him 'should be like smoke dissipated'. Further, he says, 'not trusting my own learning, which is none at all, but partly from writings and monuments of the ancient inhabitants of Britain, partly from the annals of the Romans and the chronicles of the sacred fathers, Isidore, Hieronymous, Prosper, Eusebius and from the histories of the Scots and Saxons although our enemies . . . I have lispingly put together this . . . about past transactions, that [this material] might not be trodden under foot'. (2)

(1) The actual words are coacervavi omne quod inveni, and occur in Prologue 2 to the Historia.
(2) Quoted from the translation of Prologue 1. See The Works of Gildas and Nennius, J.A.Giles, London 1841.


25 October 2015

Questionable IdeoLOGOS/HA HA


A Red Question Mark for Australia?

We acquired our copy of Neville Cayley's "What Bird is That?" in the early 1960s. With it's mighty red question mark on the dust jacket, that well-worn edition remains our favourite.



Do we see too much through the filter of Big History when we imagine that red question mark and its jackass branch secretary morphing out of the red hammer and sickle? Cayley was born in 1886 and first published this work in 1931, so he had lived through the rise of Communism and the new consciousness of that strong red signage.



Thoughts too of Yeats' The Second Coming (1919), beginning with a trained bird of prey sickle-arcing beyond the falconer's call and concluding with a question, What Rough Beast is That?
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. 
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
       
History Plays 

 1979 : Return of the Laughing Inspectorate

 1997 : The Cover of Rolling Stone


       
After listening to the interview with Artist As Family, it was time for the annual Hepburn Springs Festa Street March down to the Mineral Springs. The Daylesford Community Brass Band, the local school kids dressed and masked as animals and clowns, and anyone else who feels so inlined. This year we sent our cartoonist along to represent the local office of bLOGOS/HA HA 
           
Lisa Gervasoni did but see them passing by : that's lovely Andrea and our bloke, cartoonish, with a model of the Yello Ideo, sign of all this interconnectedness. Those who don't march line the way to observe.
      
At the Springs Clare Gervasoni was about to record our rep when ... ah, here comes an actor now :

 2015 : Theatre of the Passers-By 


click images to enlarge  
 detail
 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
 someone looks at something...

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