Sunday Sunshine, blue skied 'n' clear

'Form your eyes by closing them.
Let the dreams you have forgotten equal the value of what you do not know.'

- Andre Breton

Did you know that we harbor more memory cells in the heart than in the head. Perhaps that is why you feel a pull deep in your chest when something moves you. Scientists discovered that people who have had heart transplants have adopted facets of the previous carriers personality traits. So all of the heart shaped symbolism and all of the cliche's found in romantic poetry have come from a place of science and physics. Chinese medicine teaches that each organ in the body is connected to a particular sense, for example the spleen and the lips, the heart and the eyes. In Chinese medicine the heart is home to a life force energy that contains the conscious and subconscious mind, and also a connection with the collective consciousness (an energy akin to thought that connects everyone and everything in the universe on a psychic plane). When you stare into the eyes of another, perhaps you are both partaking in a kind of subliminal hypnosis, perhaps you are communicating and understanding one another above and beyond a normal state of consciousness. So if you really want to understand someone, look into their eyes - they'll speak volumes.

I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited.'

- Sylvia Plath

'The poet ranks below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in the representation of invisible things'
- Da Vinci

I wonder what it is about music that makes it so otherworldly. Especially when you hear it throb and hum around you so close that you can feel the vibrations pulsating into your bone marrow. There is a theory that in our next stage of evolution we will all become consciousnesses; body-less, transparent spirits. And that instead of using language to communicate and attaching infinite meanings to our otherwise meaningless words, we will simply feel one another (like psychic communication). I think that right now, music is as close to this next stage of evolution that we can get. It seems to me to be the only medium that favors feeling over a more logical form of communication. When you feel something from a song, it's like you can finally understand that feeling in it's completeness, like it is clear and pure for the first time. I wish I could explain this more comprehensibly but a part of me is glad that I can't because it is far too delicate for words. But you have felt it. You know. Music is like magic, something that transcends our comprehension. It is a phenomenon that opens us up to a higher state of consciousness. Like tears rising to the eyes, it moistens the windows to the soul.

For a moment she wished she could be the reflection instead. She knew that this side of the glass was hers and yet she would never belong to it. In that moment she felt a brief reprieve from the banality of it all and felt both insignificant and sovereign at once, equally heavy and light. Like a body that has sunk to the bottom of the ocean and then suddenly its lungs are filled with air and it floats to the surface, she knew that for this fleeting moment everything was buoyant, suspended. She had found that middle point in gravity, the point when you discover that even though it can hold planets in orbit, it is still the weakest force of nature known to physics, and this was perhaps it's advantage. The advantage being that because of it's weakness it is not entirely bound to the earth.
For a moment, she was not bound to the earth.

Don't prepare the words you cry out.
Speak according to the madness that has seduced you.
When they ask to see the inside of your hand, show them the veiled planets in the sky.
To expose the nakedness of the woman you love, look at her hands. She has lowered her face.
Separate the chalk from the coal, the poppies from the blood.
Do me the favor of entering and leaving on tip-toe.
Perform miracles as to deny them.
sketch the disinterested games of your boredom in the dust.
Don't seize the time to begin again.
Write the imperishable in the sand.
Don't forget to say to the revolver: Delighted but it seems to me I've met you somewhere before.
The outside butterflies are trying to rejoin the inside butterflies. Don't replace, in yourself, a single pane of the street lamp if it should happen to get broken.
Damn what is pure - purity is damned in you.
Observe the light in the mirrors of the blind.
Do you want to own the smallest and the most alarming book in the world? Have the stamps on your love letters bound and then weep - you have good reason to, in spite of it all.

- Extracts from The Original Judgment, a poem by Andre Breton

blackmarketbutter studio, to see more ideas and art go here.
Publication coming soon

'What is the meaning of life? That was all - a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark, here was one'
- Virginia Woolf

I got to work the other day and my friend told me that she read a quote that reminded her of me that said 'in heaven all the interesting people are missing.' Amen, I thought, with the right kind of eye, heaven can be found on earth. You may not see the illustrious golden gates, but instead there will be little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark.

A friend was explaining to me that the doctors told him that his heartburn was caused by indigestion. Indigestion of the world around him? Or perhaps indigestion of the world inside of him? that infinite world which is constantly trying to make sense of all the dense layers that make up our reality. Humans are simultaneously experiencing 5 different senses at once. Imagine your sitting down opposite someone. You can see the soft creases in their skin, brush your hand over it and feel the follicles rise and fall in waves, smell the perfume they always wear, taste them, hear the hum of their voice – a familiar song. Now place this sensory experience in the context of the world around you - the passing traffic, the wind, the labyrinth of streets surrounding you, the jigsaw pattern the streets create on a map of the city, the city amongst thousands of other cities, cities like bulbs lighting up the earth, the earth hanging amongst the constellations, the constellations rolling out across the galaxy, the galaxy folding and creasing into other dimensions just like the soft creases that you first noticed on the skin of the person sitting opposite you. My body quivers at the thought of how beautifully dense our reality is. So if ever your heart burns, don’t fret, relax and enjoy the physical effects of digesting the world around you.

‘That is the secret of poetry, we burn in the landscape that moves us.' - Milan Kundera

I love seeing the inside of someone’s room for the first time. The objects that people surround themselves with are so indicative of them as a person. It’s like meeting their parents but more intimate because there are secrets inside of a room that even the people who birthed you will never be exposed to. Walking into someone’s room for the first time is a heightened sensory experience. The fabric that their sheets are made of, the tone of their lamp, the scent in their oil burner, their record collection (or lack there of) could amount to a novel sized biography. Then there are all of the minor details that require further enquiry - like where that photo was taken, or what song is it that your jewellery box plays when you open it, or who that quote is written by or what country that brass crucifix came from. You want to be able to feel them seeping though the walls like condensation on the bathroom mirror when you have a really hot shower, and you want to come out feeling that condensation on your own skin. That is the moment when you truly know them.

Joyeux anniversaire !

Vigilantism

'Oh! to live a corrosive life, smooth as sandpaper'
- Jessica Bloom

Why does everything feel so much better when you know you shouldn't be doing it? I was sitting in a cafe the other day next to a french couple who were discussing the role of chaos in our lives. The woman was accusing the man of enjoying chaos, she was half yelling at him, 'you like chaos, you love pain, because it makes you feel alive!' 'because it makes you feel alive!' she repeated these last words in a soft but direct whisper. This animated exchange was like listening to the rhetorical conversation that had been going on inside of my own head that same morning. To see it brought to life, reenacted with the fullness and execution of a french woman's accent was something else. I wish I had had a voice recorder with me so that every time things are feeling slightly chaotic or painful I can play it back like some sort of life affirmation, with the violence and reassurance that is evoked from the string section in Beethoven's symphony number 9, 'because it makes you feel alive!'