2023/09/05

that which can only be sung

Note prompted by the Guardian Tate review of the Rossettis -- https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/apr/04/rossettis-review-tate-dante-gabriel-christina

My goodness, Mr. Jones, so what did you really think?

It was this silly "O the sexy" attitude toward DGRossetti that moved me to write my first novel. Beyond the general ignorance that he was painting icons, a whole world of history, an ever-expanding cosmos of other-Christian mysticism, and the present-day obsession with his Muse, it's the "omnipresent nameless girl" who haunts the artist’s (dgr) work...feeding "upon her face by day and night” as Jones writes, quoting Christina. My novel is about this "girl": who she really, truly, deeply is.

Sometimes, spirit has to be made flesh. Or words on paper. Who has seen the wind? Christina asks; this invisible movement that creates matter, time, space. Her brother saw it. He threw a coat of paint on it. Voila.

As Philo said, it's that which can only be sung.

2022/08/08

2022/03/05

2022/02/14

Phantom Pain

remembering my dad


Phantom Pain

Phantom Pain won the 1997 National Mature Media Silver Award for magazine feature writing. 


by Deborah Conner
THE DAY could not have been more beautiful. I stood with my mother and the deacon beside the long black limo and watched the attendant open the back door of the hearse. I saw them approach—the honor guard, walking slowly, rhythmically. They were coming to claim my father.

His entire life had been bound up in the image of the soldier. It stood next to him, remembering, in everything he did, even though he was only briefly in uniform.

We grew up in the ever-expanding shadow of Washington's Capitol. Always involved in some form of public service, he was the recipient of many awards and held in high esteem. At home, however, he was a different man: angry and remote, unable to connect to a family he clearly loved, but couldn't allow to love him back.

I see now that part of him was lost. The whole of my childhood was spent walking around the gaps of his missing pieces.

2021/12/27

Holy Smoke

From 2001

Keep breathing...
 A dialogue: HOLY SMOKE


Anand said:
<<Saw Holy Smoke, Deb. I enjoyed it, but my friends couldn't relate to it. Unconventional (and disturbing— perhaps more so for a male, you think?) movie. In fact, offhand I can't think of any man I know who would like the movie. Interesting how the tables were turned, unexpectedly but very plausibly. [The bitchy "I won! Admit it, I won!" Kick the guy's balls when he's down! After he objectified her initially.] >>
from Deborah:
Hi Anand.

2019/03/25

Worry Stones Or Shared Memories

The Troubled Man: A Kurt Wallander Mystery
by Henning Mankell (Author), Laurie Thompson (Translator)June 12, 2016

I could feel it there, reading, just as Wallander senses that we often know more than we realize: Henning Mankell, sensing his own early end.

I think of Wallander winding down, sleeping out beneath the sky. Using a stone as a pillow. And his pilgrimage to his childhood, searching out and finding his carved initials left on a hidden stone, the energy that drives life, making it's "mark"...

Worry stones or shared memories, do we really know each other, even our closest friends?

Do we only know each other in memory, that fleeting effervescence that we truly are?