Monday, 18 July 2011

Proposed Texts


Deborah

From What the baker women saw
                                               ... you are
            your own new child.  Phoenix and fire
            feeding on air and the transforming power
            of pain ...

                                ... you and your child, out
            lost in the woods. Soon you will climb together
            into the long hot oven of tomorrow.





From Crossing Map

                        my tools sent me messages of warmth

                        friendship

                        I felt myself grow large inside


            I will not want   I thought

            I will be what I am

            I will follow the path of energy

                        where there is no having
 

Dorcas

Superstition is the poetry of life. It is inherent in man's nature; and when we think it is wholly eradicated, it takes refuge in the strangest holes and corners, where it peeps out all at once, as soon as it can do with safety.        Goethe



Leona

August – extract, short story Bruno Schulz

In July my father went to take the waters and left me, with my mother and elder brother, a prey to the blinding white heat of the summer days. Dizzy with light, we dipped into that enormous book of holidays, its pages blazing with sunshine and scented with the sweet melting pulp of golden pears.

   On those luminous mornings Adela returned from the market, like Pomona emerging from the flames of day, spilling from her basket the colourful beauty of the sun - the shiny pink cherries full of juice under their transparent skins, the mysterious black morellos that smelled so much better than they tasted, apricots in whose golden pulp lay the core of long afternoons. And next to the pure poetry of fruit, she unloaded sides of meat with their keyboard of ribs swollen with energy and strength, and seaweeds of vegetables like dead octopuses and squids - the raw material of meals with a yet undefined taste, the vegetative and terrestrial ingredients of dinner, exuding a wild and rustic smell...

   ...After tidying up, Adela would plunge the rooms into semi-darkness by drawing down the linen blinds. All colours immediately fell an octave lower, the room filled with shadows, as if it had sunk to the bottom of the sea and the light was reflected in mirrors of green water - and the heat of the day began to breathe on the blinds as they stirred slightly in their daydreams.


Ulysses  - extract       James Joyce

Sllt.  The nethermost deck of the first machine jogged forwards its flyboard with sllt the first batch of quire-folded papers.  Sllt.  Almost human the way it sllt to call attention.  Doing its level best to speak.  That door too sllt creaking, asking to be shut.  Everything speaks in its own way.  Sllt.


Blade Runner       Batty’s final speech       Rutger Hauer and David Peoples

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain... Time to die. 


Angela


Long Years apart — can make no
Breach a second cannot fill —
The absence of the Witch does not
Invalidate the spell —

The embers of a Thousand Years
Uncovered by the Hand
That fondled them when they were Fire
Will stir and understand —


My favourite bit from this is “the absence of the witch does not invalidate the spell” and would suggest this line in particular as the text. Its another Emily Dickinson poem (surprise, surprise!).


Also one other suggestion which popped into my head. There is an amazing documentary about the American Civil War by Ken Burns. In it they mention Acoustic Shadows - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_shadow It was a strange phenomenon where people near the battle could not hear it, yet people far away could hear all the gunshots, etc. 


“Persons nearby would see the smoke and flashes of light but not the corresponding roar of battle, while those in more distant locations would hear the sounds distinctly.” 

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