silencio

I’m ashamed to admit that I love The Silentists.

Better Things

This film is about lives in which nothing happens.
Nothing happens because the characters live in small rural towns in which nothing happens and they have too little money or knowledge or confidence to make anything happen.
Several of them smoke or inject heroin. We see them doing this repeatedly.
Others are old. One is agoraphobic. Again, because [...]

Tarkovsky and boredom

I’ve met a few people who think that the films of Andrei Tarkovsky[1] are boring. I understand. These films are slow.[2] Most don’t have much of a story. There’s not much sex or violence or snappy dialogue. I was bored myself the first few times I watched Tarkovsky films. I loved the beautiful, enigmatic imagery, [...]

Atmospherics

On Friday, when Channel 4 News was over and there was nothing else to watch before we went to bed, as usual, early and sober, L decided to burn some incense, something she does more for entertainment than for smell or ambience. First she lit a disc of charcoal from the all-faith religious supplies shop [...]

Public transport

Last night I dreamt that a bus route ran through my kitchen. It’s amazing what narrow spaces a double-decker can get through. Between the breakfast bar (it was a dream, remember) and the wall units without a scratch.
I have been back in London for three weeks.
On a bus travelling through the City I was struck [...]

Nothing more than feelings

Tom Lubbock says that Rothko’s paintings are like power ballads:
Rothko made a real discovery when he found that, by using a very restricted language, a few bars and panes and rectangular frames of strong colour, blurry-edged and set in simple arrangements, he could stir in the viewer a powerful empathetic and emotional response. I’m not [...]

Black, Lynch and Rothko

When I was at primary school a teacher told my class that there was no such thing as black paint or ink or dye: anything that was called black would, if you looked hard at it, turn out to be dark brown or blue or some other colour. Because black is not a colour, it [...]

Spiritual Voices

Episode 1
How did contemporaries describe the composer whose music we are about to hear?
“Small and fussy, with a slightly stupid look in his eyes. All in all, an unprepossessing figure. Plumpish, just over five feet tall, always on the move, with a large head, a fleshy nose, and pock-marked skin – not very attractive to [...]