I COULDN'T SLEEP AT ALL LAST NIGHT 2

Finally in Tuxedo after several hours' scary driving in a skiddy car, the house is nicely whispering heat.

All the way here thinking about the Arthur Batut (father of aerial photography) picture in first position, which I originally saw covering the Penguin paperback edition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde.  This was the first “good” book I persuaded Jane to read and I’m so glad I did.  

Dr. Jekyll is beautifully written, profound, and deeply moving, as well as (in parts) gasp-out-loud shocking.  I monitored Jane’s progress through the book several summers ago and actually heard the sharp breath intakes.  A great ride for her.

The young man’s portrait above, like the two Batut female portraits below, are pioneering, expressive examples of intentional  double-exposure.

I don’t need to expound on the mystery expressed by being implied in these images, but on this lonely, lonely cold evening I recall one of my favorite pasttimes – asking Jane to look at pictures and describing to me what she sees.

The game started when I annoyed her by persistently looking at "rock stars of my youth" pictures in magazines, ignoring her.  

Jane’s answers were always perceptive, visually acute, and imaginative. That being said, she frequently used the one-word description “hobo,” especially when viewing Bob Dylan and "All Things Must Pass"-period George Harrison images.

 Bobby Lewis -- Tossing and Turning (Link)

SERMON: DESTRUCTION & QUIESCENCE

One evening Morton Feldman said that when he composed he was dead; this recalls to me the statement of my father, an inventor, who says he does his best work when he is sound asleep. The two suggest the "deep sleep" of Indian mental practice. The ego no longer blocks action. A fluency obtains which is characteristic of nature. The seasons make the round of spring, summer, fall, and winter, interpreted in Indian thought as creation, preservation, destruction, and quiescence. Deep sleep is comparable to quiescence. Each spring brings no matter what eventuality. The performer then will act in any way. Whether he does so in an organized way or in any one of the not consciously organized ways cannot be answered until his action is a reality. The nature of the composition and the knowledge of the composer's own view of his action suggest, indeed, that the performer act sometimes consciously, sometimes not consciously and from the Ground of Meister Eckhart, identifying there with no matter what eventuality.

 

From:  "Indeterminacy" in "Silence: Lectures and Writings by John Cage" (Wesleyan University Press, 1961)

 

 * * *

* * *

Bobby Lewis: Tossin' and Turnin' (Link)

Illustrations:  John Buckland Wright, 1919, wood engravings from Le Sphinx (Iwan Gilkin)