Log: Inspiration

When the world appears to be pregnant with possibility, I take it as an invitation to embark upon a journey. Or, when I embark on a new journey, the world often appears to suddenly be pregnant with possibility, such as after some recent day trips to Paris. But even after returning to the rolling muddy hills of the Yonne, I continued to be restless, yearning to visit and revisit as I have done at the Palais-Royal, the courtyard of the Louvre, the narrow roads from Opera to Châtelet and the Centre Pompidou.

Wandering up and down the streets of a beloved city brings me a quiet but intense joy, akin to the feelings evoked by my favorite books, films, images, music. And so, I decided to embark on another journey, but this time through my memory, the internet, and some ink.

It resulted in maps and constellations of those special works of art that move me and renew my gaze. Perhaps these are the transcendental feelings that others find in religion, ritual, and/or mind-altering substances. I guess this could be a creative ritual of sorts, but I find the language around ritual and transcendence to have become so tired lately.

So, a brief reflection and inventory on my eclectic mental re-collection of sights and sounds.

Éstos son: la indiferencia de la niebla, el rencor de la arena, el abrazo de una pieza estrecha, el grito del mar, la copulación de una bomba atómica, el asesinato de la nieve, un canto moribundo, los escombros del esqueleto, los besos fríos de la tempestad, el rostro ansioso de una calle, un dolor que baila

Books

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Le Diable au corps by Raymond Radiguet
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
La muerte de Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes
Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo
Faithful and Virtuous Night by Louise Glück

Music

"The Wuthering Heights" by Sakamoto Ryuichi
"Amore" and "Solitude" by Sakamoto Ryuichi
"The Girl - Theme" by Trevor Duncan
"Yumeji's Theme" by Umebayashi Shigeru
"Romeo and Juliet" by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
"Overture" and "Metempsychosis" by Zhao Jiping
"Blackstar" and "Station to Station" by David Bowie

Film

Les Quatre Cents Coups by François Truffaut
Raise the Red Lantern by Zhang Yimou
Russian Ark by Aleksandr Sokurov
2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrik
La jetée by Chris Marker
In The Mood for Love by Wong Kar Wai
L'Ascenseur pour l'échafaud by Louis Malle
Hiroshima mon amour by Alain Resnais
La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc by Carl Theodor Dreyer
The Seventh Seal by Ingmar Bergman

And More

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes by Simon Flesser & Simongo

- Andrea

« [...] nous nous sommes avisés à nouveau de la douceur et de la chaleur, que nous avons pour un temps oubliées, propres à cette substance qui a nom 'papier' [...] » – Tanizaki Jun'ichirō, Éloge de l'ombre (p. 24)

After the first half of December, I have not sat down to write again. This is a lie, of course. I write all the time—for work, in my journal, agenda, out of obligation, obligations that I have engaged in voluntarily (as a form of self-torture). There is also a cloud of ideas and texts yet to be written that every so often haunts me. This entry, for instance, which I have been imagining for some time now.

And still, since December I have not sat down to write—

that which I want to write the most. Those texts that are like a pond or the rain, beautiful and completely lacking in any mission or argument (which is not to say disengaged, but that is a topic for another entry).

For much of last year, I have tweaked, re-written, and enlongated pieces of flash fiction, satire, the possible first chapter of a longer story. I have reworked the same texts over and over, and I have gone back to old writing that I had given up on, only to re-discover its potential. And of the new writing that I did do, most came from ideas long present in my mind. Perhaps this was the result of having thought so long about writing without actually doing any writing (of this kind).

In any case, there came a moment in which I felt the urge to sit down and begin to write again. Really write. And while a part of me was excited to jump back in and take a look at last year's writing with fresh eyes, I also felt like starting off the year with something new. So I opened up my journal and my agenda (I have fresh pages in both) and I sat down to think about what to write about.

Nothing came to mind.

The white winter light glowed on the vaguely yellow textured paper. My mind felt as blank as the page, and I discovered that I liked that feeling. This was no writer's block. There was no anxiety, fear or frustration. Instead, I felt as illuminated as the blank page by the windowpane, which seemed to promise so much in all its emptiness. As if anything could happen now.

- Andrea