The video and stills were shot during Paraorchestra: Drone Refractions at the Southbank Centre, London, Friday January 26th 2024
Friday January 26th 1990
The last thing you expect. Actor Gordon Kaye brained by a piece of hoarding flying into his windscreen.1
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I must move to where the unbroken egg spills its yolk.
The ache is the ache of the intellect desperately trying to do a job it can never do, never achieve. It cannot satisfy the hunger
If you are hungry you eat bread, you cannot eat words.
The ache is the ache of the intellect trying to control, summarise, encapsulate, define something which it lives with as an equal faculty, its twin, its doppelgänger.
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St Mark 8.22–24
22 And he cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto him, and besought him to touch him.
23 And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw ought.
24 And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees, walking.
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Cras ingens iteabimus aequor. [Horace Odes 1.7.32]
Tomorrow we set out once more upon the boundless sea.
Mitte sectari, rosa quo locorum
Sera moretur [Odes 1.28.3]
Cease your efforts to find where the last rose lingers
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A farmer on radio this morning defending chemical farming ‘…if people don’t take care of the land they’re soon brought down to earth….’
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Dum loquimur, fugerit invida
Aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credulo postero. [Odes 1.11]
Even while we speak, Time, the churl, will have been running
Snatch the sleeve of today and trust as little as you may tomorrow
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Ground Old English Grund
The bottom, the last part or downward limit.
To run aground.
Ground-ways – the large blocks and thick planks which support the cradle on which a ship is launched.
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Sidney Webb Sent Beatrice a full length photo of himself. Beatrice sent it back, asking for another of his head, ‘since it’s your brain I’m marrying.’
Sunday January 26th 1992
First sense of Spring
Skyline brightening, not sun but something in the winter sky that feels like Spring.
Snow melting in the leaves of snowdrops, over primroses.
Muddy, slippy, soft turf. Doors left open. A traipse of damp footprints
They’re playing Abba songs. A day off school.
Sense of leaving something behind, an illness, winter, the last year, Christmas.
Coming out of the woods. Feeling better for the first time after flu.
Clearing up at Epiphany, the hallway swept clean. No pine needles.
All the cards tidied away.
No sense of loss, but adventure,.
All the tackle and trappings cleared away, now you can see where you’re going, feel the wind of Spring.
Trees drop their final leaves just after Christmas.
Then surprise, surprise, each branch is studded with buds.
Wednesday January 26th 2000
We saw Matthew in hospital on Sunday – he seemed reasonably cheerful – laughing especially about what it was like having hallucinations (caused by the septicaemia – he believed he had been abducted by aliens and was inside a 12 seater alien minibus when he was in fact on the upstairs loo, which was once painted apple green. But he couldn’t get out unless he had something in his hand from planet earth – so he asked Gill for a knife – not likely, said Gill, so she gave him a six inch plastic ruler and then he could open the door and come out. Not long after that he was taken into hospital. It turns out he has an infection of the smooth interior lining of the heart – endocarditis – a life threatening condition. They may have to operate to repair/replace damaged valves – this is obviously a worrying time for Gill (and us all) but hopefully he’ll get better.
Talking to Matthew, Rosy said that her mother had plastic surgery but no one noticed…
Friday January 26th 2008
…this hollow place, the ship…
From The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African by former slave Olaudah Equiano first published in 1789.
I had often seen my master and Dick employed in reading; and I had a great curiosity to talk to the books, as I thought they did; and so to learn how all things had a beginning. For that purpose I have often taken up a book, and talked to it, and then put my ears to it, when alone, in hopes it would answer me; and I have been very much concerned when I found it remained silent.
‘Kaye suffered serious life-threatening head injuries in a car accident during the Burns Day storm in London on 25 January 1990… Although he could not remember any details of the incident, he retained a scar on his forehead from a piece of wooden advertising hoarding that had smashed through the car windscreen.’ With acknowledgements to Wikipedia.
