pupa-families

between the lines is a growing collection of texts in the format of a blog. A blog that gathers stories and scenes which resonate with me, make me think and muse, describe perceptions I find stimulating. Over the last couple of months these texts have become kind of a 'cathedral of sanity' to me. between the line will be part of Dolls - Pupa, an exhibition of text-based work, 23 March to 4 May 2019 at L'atelier de mélusine in La Trimouille, France.

At the heart of the blog is a text by Max Frisch (Swiss writer 1911 - 1991), which vividly describes how the substance of a text lies in the space between words and lines:

"On writing" - an excerpt, translated from the German original
What is important is what cannot be said, the white space between the words. The words themselves always express the incidentals, which is not what we really mean. What we are really concerned with can only, at best, be written about, and that means, quite literally, we write around it. We encompass it. […] the true, the inexpressible experience emerges at best as the tension between the statements.
[…] language is like a chisel, which pares away all that is not a mystery, and everything said implies a taking away. […] Like the sculptor plying his chisel, language works by bringing the area of blankness in the things that can be said as close as possible to the central mystery, the living element. [...]  
Max Frisch, Sketchbook 1946 - 1949, p 25, (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich)
translated by Geoffrey Skelton   

Words - texts - lines, they become storyline and thread of the story. Yet, as Frisch puts it, what is essential cannot be said - it lies as an immaterial unspoken, yet living, substance between the lines. The words are just pointers, so to say. Thus, I liken Frisch's 'central mystery' to the 'pupa' that is enveloped and hidden between the lines - the threads and webbing of the cocoon. It is the reader's mind, our thoughts and feelings, that brings the inexpressible, the area surrounding the words, to life and transforms the 'pupa' so it becomes 'imago'.

The format of the blog allows the reader to choose focus - keywords or themes - and in this sense it works as a bot. The string of stories/texts that come up depending on such a focus build a new kind of 'pupa-family', whose members interact. For instance, you may find Werner Herzog as a child in a group with Matthiessen's son and Naoki Higashida a young, autistic writer from Japan.

Dolls - Pupa

Happy that between the lines will be part of this group exhibition at L'atelier de melusine in La Trimouille, France.

Sculptural aspects of language

Two texts from Between the Lines that depict language and writing as something that is tangible, akin to a sculptural process:

On writing, by Max Frisch, (one of my favourite writers) describes vividly that the substance of a text lies between the words and lines. "[...] language is like a chisel, which pares away all that is not a mystery, and everything said implies a taking away." The art is to come as close as possible to the surface of this mystery, to reveal it without scratching its surface, a surface that has no substance "[...] it exists only in the mind and not in Nature, where there is also no dividing line between mountain and sky."
From: Sketchbook 1946 - 1949

Thoughts on words, by Naoki Higashida, compares spoken language to a blue sea in which you can swim, dive and resurface.
From: Fall down 7 times get up 8, a young man's voice from the silence of autism

"...it's kind of like being there"

I like the quietness of her work:

'Vija Celmins is an acclaimed Latvian-American artist whose work is famous for its astonishing patience. She can take a year or more to make a woodcut that portrays in minute detail the surface of the sea. A postcard of her work now sits above my desk, a reminder of the power of slow thinking.' 
From: The New York Review of Books Disarming the Weapons of Mass Distraction by Madeleine Bunting



Vija Celmins:
“I have been painting this image for maybe three years, on and off. So, you know, tedious for some, for me it's kind of like being there. [...]
I've always liked the scientific image because it is sort of anonymous. [...]
I still really like a lot of solitude - it's impossible to do anything without it. [...]”

New blog:

between the lines is a growing archive of texts - texts that accompany me and I keep returning to, lines that make me muse and think.

Humber Dreams [booklet]

Humber Dreams* - A Panorama of 101 Dreams wraps up the texts gathered in the Dream Book on display at Hull Central Library during the literature festival. This booklet is now on-line for you to view and share.

Thank you to all who took the time to think and write. - Some dreams did come true - read on in the booklet...

Click the links below to view or download the pdf files.

• Humber Dreams [16 pages]

• Humber Dreams [booklet]

A version that can be printed as a booklet:
Print double-sided on A4 (short-edge binding);
then fold and assemble to a booklet.

Enjoy - your comments are welcome.

__________________________________ 

Humber Dreams

 * Humber Dreams is a text-based installation commissioned by Humber Mouth Literature Festival 2013. In response to the festival's theme "I Have  A Dream..." people were asked to write up the dreams they have for their life, for Hull, the region or the state of the world.

The small print: Most dreams have been sent anonymously. When names have been submitted I used the initials. Some longer texts have been shortened, trying to reveal the core.

'arborescent forms'

No. 40

I read about William Armstong's experiments with electrical discharges in his book 'Electric movement in air and water', see last post.

No. 41

While he recorded many of these experiments directly onto photographic plates and created beautiful photos all along, he had to find a different way to capture experiments that produced very bright sparks.

Images No. 40 and 41 are made on plates with a very thin layer of wax and dust. What he captures this way is describes like this [p. 50]:

Inverse image of a wintry tree

"I have already spoken of electricity as organised motion, and we have here an example of it carried apparently to the verge of life. (No. 38)
[...]in the succeeding figure (No. 40) we see arborescent forms, showing trees and undergrowth, in which stems, branches, and leaves find their approximate representatives. Lastly, in the one remaining figure to be shown (No. 41), even the root is indicated lying at the foot of the stem.”

And later on he concludes [p. 52]:
“Examples have been presented of the remarkable correspondence between some electric figures and living organised forms.”


It brings back the photos of the trees I took last winter and Drawings in the sky.

Brains

Recently I came across these pics on a  BBC Science & Environment page:

"The brain's wiring diagram is not [...] fixed. It is thought that changes occur after each experience, and so each person's brain map is different - an ever changing record of who we are and what we have done." 

This echoes the words of Daniel Tammet cited in an earlier post:

"Every thought, every daydream, every emotion alters the brain's fantastically intricate structure in subtle but definite ways."

"Our minds are miracles - immensely intricate webs of gossamer light inside our heads that shape our very sense of self and our understanding of the world around us. Moment by moment throughout our lifetime, our brains hum with the work of making meaning: weaving together many thousands of threads of information into all manner of thoughts, feelings, memories, and ideas."

Blue sky

Having completed - and displayed - the threaded Fr-Agile Screens I read Daniel Tammet's 'Embracing the Wide Sky'. What struck me was that again the words 'threads' and 'weaving' appear when he's thinking about the mind.
Quotes from the book can be read when the mouse hovers over the left (first chapter) and right (last chapter) side of the image.

Sounding and Fathoms

'Sounding fathoms out the height of the space'. It is the human scale that interests me in this vast space (Midsummer place).
Both bands will be one Fathom wide and composed of 36 ribbons. So, each ribbon will occupy half a 'Handbreadth' or two inches.

Image: Vitruvian Man by Da Vinci (source)

A Fathom is a unit of length used to measure the depth of water or the length of a nautical rope or cable, equal to 6 ft (1.8288 m)

Verb
1. to measure the depth of; sound
2. to get to the bottom of; understand thoroughly

Etymology
ME fadme fæthm (akin to OFris fethm, OS pl. fathmōs), the two arms outstretched (to embrace, measure), akin to German faden, thread
From: www.yourdictionary.com

Books about Spurn

• Spurn Lifeboat Station, the first hundred years: the history of Spurn Lifeboat Station from 1810 to May 1911 / Benfell, Roy
• Memories of Spurn in the 1880's / Jarratt, George
• The people along the sand: the Spurn Peninsula and Kilnsea, a history 1800-2000 / Crowther, Jan
• Sailing the rails: a new history of Spurn and its military railway Frost, Howard M.
• A history of the Spurn lighthouses De Boer, G.
• Spurn Head postal history / Ward, Ronald
• Growing up on Spurn Head / Kendall, Ronald
• The Spurn Head Railway: the history of a unique military line 3rd ed. Hartley, Kenneth E.
• An historical atlas of East Yorkshire / Neave, Susan

Present Spurn

The present peninsula started to form around 1600. In 1849 a storm breached Spurn (see strip12 on the map below) and "the peninsula became a string of islands" at high tide.
From the 1850’s onwards sea defences kept Spurn artificially in the same position. During the World wars it became a military stronghold - a reason to further upgrade the sea defences.
In 1961 the Ministry of Defence sold Spurn to the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust. The trust now runs the area as a nature reserve. The sea defences are left to deteriorate and the natural process can take over again. - Today erosion continues to eat into Spurn. At spring tide wash-overs of the neck occur from time to time.

(amended 21 July)

The map shows coastal changes around Spurn over the last 150 years. It combines 1st edition OS maps (1851/52) with recent aerial photographs (c Getmapping 2000).
Source: www.hull.ac.uk/erosion

I found this info in the following files:
Development of Spurn Peninsula
The Holderness Coastline - The Management of Coastal Erosion
SPURN HEAD by V.J. May

update 2019: all the original links as above (in small print) are no more active, but please see:
https://www.urbanrim.org.uk/cache/Pye&Blott_Holderness_Erosion.pdf

Spurn cycles

Earlier on I mentioned that I’m looking into the phases of the moon and the rhythm of the tides at Spurn. Now I found out that not only the moon is waxing and waning but that Spurn is cyclic as well: "[Spurn] is a fluid feature, it is thought to undergo a life cycle of some 250 years, during which it gets destroyed, is reborn some metres further westward, stabilises, and then is destroyed again."

The story in more detail: Spurn is built by the sands and gravels eroded from the Holderness cliffs. These cliffs north of the peninsula recede about 2 meters per year. The eroded material is transported south by longshore drift. It forms a spit in lee with the coast line.
Later, when the north easterly waves eat further into the coast, Spurn itself becomes exposed and prone to erosion. It seems that the peninsula has been washed away in a cycle of about 250 years. It then reformed west of its former position to keep pace with the erosion of the cliffs.

Another more recent theory by the Institute of Estuarine and Coastal Studies suggests that only the link to the Holderness coast has changed. The tip of Spurn Point is anchored to glacial moraines dumped after the last ice age. So, it should be stable.*

Who knows? Probably Spurn will keep some of its secrets.
(amended 21 July)

*From: 'Sailing the Rails' by H. M. Frost

Cotidal lines in the North Sea

Also in April I read a book about how lunar cycles influence living organisms: "Moon Rhythms in Nature" by K-P Endres & W Schad. There I found this map which shows how tidal waves in the North Sea move counterclockwise in circles. High tide runs along the east coast from Edinburgh to Bridlington. An hour later it arrives on Spurn to then turn eastwards to another continent - to the shores of Holland, Germany and Denmark - da capo al fine.

It's rainy

April provided excellent weather to stay inside and read. For instance some articles about climatic change in a German scientific journal (Forschung & Lehre 2/07). The texts are written in a sober style which I found good to read. I remember hearing some of this some twenty years ago in a physics lecture. One writer compares the task ahead of us with tiding the Augean Stables or rather that the Augean Stables are a perfume shop compared with what lies ahead of us.
I think there is a social aspect in all of this as well. It has something to do with the rapid technological development over the past 100 to 150 years and that humans - morally and emotionally - are barely able to keep pace. "The problem is not the atom bomb, but the heart of the people" Einstein said.

In a dialogue with F Mennekes Beuys states:
"[…] The only thing that is worth elevating is the human soul. I now mean “soul” in the extensive way[...] not only emotional life, but also the powers of realization, the capability of thought, intuition, inspiration, I-consciousness, and the power of the will. All these are phenomena which have been seriously damaged in our day.* They must be saved. Consequently, everything else is saved anyway. Without these very thoughts it makes no sense so to say, to try and grow better potatoes."
Beuys on Christ. A Position in Dialogue / Friedhelm Mennekes - Joseph Beuys (1984)

*Ralph Turner calls it "anaesthetised society" when writing about Julie Cook's work.

Lifeboat

Just read some articles about the Spurn lifeboat crew:
Watching, waiting, washing up... (Guardian, 5 April 2008)

Another article by the Yorkshire Post, 22 March 2008
Family life at the point of no return