I want to grow peonies.
“Much of Letinsky’s work alludes to human presence, without including any actual figures. For example, in the Morning and Melancholia (c. 1997-2001), and the I Did Not Remember I Had Forgotten (c. 2002-2004) series, Letinsky seems to document the aftermath of a sumptuous gathering or dinner party. Faded flower petals intermingle with empty glasses and crumbs of food on partially cleared tables, often covered with a white linen that bears the mark of spilled wine.
As alluded in the title Morning and Melancholia these scenes are often filled with a fresh, clear light, as though one is viewing from the perspective of the morning after, what the host failed to clean up the evening before. However, the title of the series itself is a reference to an essay by Freud, Mourning and Melancholia, which discusses the human response to loss.
The title I Did Not Remember I Had Forgotten also has a literary source; it refers to a line by St. Augustine, commenting on memory, ‘One would never say I did not remember I had forgotten.’ Letinsky responded:
‘I was thinking, No, that’s not right! Actually, I felt I had just come to this moment where I did not remember that I had forgotten, and it had to do with music. I’d gone for three years without listening to music. I would drive in the car and I would want silence, or I would listen to talk shows. Then for some reason I began listening to the radio, and some of the CDs I had around, and it was almost like drinking water after being really thirsty. I took such pleasure in it. Somehow, I did not remember that I’d forgotten to turn on the music.’”
Artist’s statement:
“The world seems to me increasingly incomprehensible, and there are times when I feel there isn’t anything that I know for certain. For me, making photographs (or painting, or whatever) is necessary to translate the unintelligible reality of being into a more coherent form. Or at least to illustrate my best guesses. There is vastly more nothing in the universe than something, and I try to create images that recognize the grace by which anything at all exists.”
After all, the best thing one can do when it is raining is let it rain.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (via likeafieldmouse)
(Source: likeafieldmouse)
6/30
Could I have a little slice of that sunlight coming through your skylight, falling across your doorway like a lady in a slinky dress? I haven’t had any breakfast yet, and it looks like it tastes like lemon meringue pie.
5/30
The day spent naked for more than an hour unbrushed hair
the day made the carpet bluer
coffee tremors through palms of hands
the day oystered the night with the dream
of nights and days of cabinets and passageways
of trying to find Brussels when the city does
not match the map you’ve got
the dream pooled in your head, only the oil slick of sleep on top,
the day unlearned, unhad
the day, how to know it, not touching the sunshine.
4/30
If there is a reason for a newspaper
other than to name that the color of this gray day,
If Philadelphia weren’t a place I skirted from west to east,
the day’s gone silver before it’s begun.
This is what new things look like in the city.
(Source: likeafieldmouse)
3/30
Make a white dish bloom across the floor.
Find that recipe for a winning meatloaf and don’t make it—carry it with you on the subway every morning, where you and the same people who go to work at 8:30 shuffle yourselves around until you start to recognize white knit hats and faces in the same way the kings get acquainted with the queens in a deck of cards.
Dismiss the red earth.
Live at least 3 stories above the ground.
Sit on your roof.
Hold beefsteak tomatoes with your two hands. Bergamot will begin to follow you. Aspire to a dozen cups of tea a day.
But still, in the morning, (don’t make your own coffee), wait for the subway to come above ground at Spring Garden, look for the spring light like lace upon the water front, regret that your stop is next,
