'Crimson'

There is a man in the suburbs
Whose heart keeps leaking.

Crimson creeping
     up into the cotton
of all his best shirts.
County police,
International doctors and scientists
investigate
with fascination.

Confused,
they concede to take him to the Undertakers
for sugar.

Tonight, while he sleeps
Mummified tightly in gauze,
his wife grips
his hand, and whispers a confession.

I have begun to regret your injuries less.

Squeezing the hand harder,
she smiles softly at the crimson
spreading across the surface,
infecting
one fibre at a time.

Photography: Anna

The Proms and John Adams

What an evening.

The Proms.

How to describe watching John Adams conduct his own music?

Like relief from an unknown hunger?
Like a cure for a disease I didn't realise I was plagued with?
I suppose I didn't realise my spirit was so malnourished, until John Adams revealed what I was missing.
Thank you John Adams, you have enlightened my existence.

Art is necesary. I knew that. But until tonight I only understood a sliver of the necessary. 1 - 7. He has opened 8 - infinity.
And 8 - infinity is necessary. As necessary as breath.

I have unpicked my brains for this.
I, so lost and small in this unforgiving place;
at times terribly alone with only my sometimes inflexible and intolerant personalities for company.
I have glided along the thoroughfares of spiritual banality,
the cobblestone alleys of indifference,
and arrived awake and beaming,
Here.

O John Adams,
Pure and unassuming man,
you allow me to fathom a life without limits.

And yet, that said, there is no way to justly articulate the experience I had tonight.
Not without limiting it. Not without cheapening it. Not without killing it completely.
Best leave it unsaid. Let it exist in another world, the world of memory, the effemeral...

This art, this music, this super food.
Yes. John Adams is the QUINOA of music.
Worship him.

Wound Dresser:
http://www.earbox.com/W-wounddresser.html

Filming 1408

The scene is actually completely improvised, as is much of the movie, but was terrifying because you're thinking "Not only do I have to be in the presence of John CUSACK, but I also have to try to be unassuming, um, good and on top of everything else I have to MAKE UP THE LINES?!!".

So I was trying to seem very nonchlant and all, and my cool skills utterly failed me.
Utterly.

Example:
John Cusack: So.... have you made a lot of films?

Al: Um, well, no, this is my first film. My only other professional
job was in musical theatre.

John Cusack: are you serious? what musical? one in the west end?

Al: um yeah, the woman in white, the andrew lloyd webber thing?
i played the [bad self deprecating hand gestures that MAY have
included the quotation thing people do with their fingers]
"damsel in distress."

John Cusack: Right. That's great. Anyway, your first film.
well you are doing great, you really seem like you've
been doing this forever.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH...

[this is where i just don't know what to say. I SCRAMBLE for coolness, for nonchalance, for anything other than total akward silence... and it doesn't come. So out flies the lamest thing I've ever said.. and it is falling out in slow motion...]

Al: Thanks... YOOOOOOOU TOOOOOOOOOOO.

[WHAT?!!! really awkward pause. I AM AN ASSHOLE.]

John Cusack: Well... you know... I have....

[I know this. I saw him in The Journey of Naddy Gan. I AM AN ASSHOLE!!!]

Al: ... I know. I was... you know. it was supposed to
sort of be a joke...

John Cusack: uh huh...

Lonely today...

"And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea."

from The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot, 1917