How dare I speak?

Raggèd rocks, weathered like the skin of my belovèd wrestling with himself,

rough and grooved and sharp with linear agonies borne over time

and no conclusion

Abiding like an outrage of completely opaque mirrors,

too shocked by the truth to reflect it, hiding

The rocks reveal the inner tissues of our bullet-riddled souls,

the marrow’s holes, where marrow sits now only as a polka of shadows,

cast by an aghast sun

How dare I speak for or against those who attack, those who defend,

when I don’t know the difference between those words, those actions?

When I’ve so much violence within myself?

Nor, if you kill me, will you rid yourself

or the world

of the virus

One way only can subdue it embrace it in yourself, bind it, befriend it,

show mercy to the beast that inhabits inhabits inhabits

wrestle befriend show your self unknown compassion

unknown compassion unknown

It takes practice more quiet

eventually it comes

Listen to no one,

cry

Thus I teach, reach

even myself

– Silke Heiss

All photos by the author. Graffitti on rock captured 18th October 2023

Depth and integrity of feeling: Spontaneous interview with Dinosaur Dust Co-Creator Riccardo Smid-Magnanini

Friday afternoon was fun, yet again working with Riccardo in the valley below Tor Doone, at a tiny waterfall I'd not visited before. In this clip he says a few things about what is important to him in the moving images he creates.

It's so interesting to me, who recalls the cynicism 30 years back towards 'happy stories and movies'; a cynicism that was due to the shallowness, indeed, hypocrisy, that seemed unfortunately often to be present, tainting natural happiness - a situation satirised by ... mmm ...

... I believe it might have been Rainer Werner Fassbinder in a science fiction movie - was it World on a Wire? No amount of searching has yielded information regarding in which movie exactly the weather forecaster smiles statically day after day: "Nur Sonne, immer nur Sonne" (Only sun, only ever sun).

At any rate, the big things are surely depth and integrity of feeling, accurately reflecting the complexity of lived moments of experience. This clip by Riccardo, and others, which I've seen, some of which I've had the pleasure of participating in, reflect a shared, ongoing quest for the shimmers of truth as they flicker, moment by moment.

Laura Marling's track, Devil's Spoke, is exquisitely chosen, too.