Part 12 Scrying ‘Meditation upon death does not teach one how to die’, wrote Marguerite Yourcenar in Memoirs of Hadrian, ‘it does not make the departure more easy, but ease is not what I seek.’ I think of this often. The room was hazy yellow with dreary sunlight. Rays of summer drifted lazily through the air. I’d been contemplating the window through which this light came through … Continue reading Presence, or Polaroid Ghosts (Part 13)
If asked to choose a particular sound that defined London in cinema, it would not be the bustling noise of traffic or an iconic piece of soundtrack music. It would, in fact, be the very simple but endlessly mysterious sound of the wind rustling through the trees in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup (1966). Having visited all of the locations of the film last summer for the British Film … Continue reading The Breeze in the Trees
There exist volumes of academic research and work surrounding the role of repetition in religious and cultural practices. Repeated actions of any type, creating an easily recognisable mimesis, seems almost an aesthetic by-word for a normalised analytical framework of cultural activities, especially musically. From prayer to mantra, the idea of repetition is stretched to form (or conform) belief patterns, as if deliberately signposting theological culture … Continue reading Repetition And Occultism Of Invocation Of My Demon Brother (1969) – Kenneth Anger.
Celluloid Wicker Man 