80

It was photography which could act as a substitute for possession. "It was fate" writes Andre Bay, "that made him erect this barrier - photography - between the unattainable young lady and his desire to possess her. He could take her through his camera."

Brassai p198 from Lewis Carroll

Photos and Letters to his Child Friends - Franco Maria Ruici 1975 ed by Almansi

11.7.76

Art like light needs distance, and anyone who attempts to render sexual experience directly must face the fact that the writhings which comprise it are ludicrous without their subjective context... that there is no major art that works close in.

William Gass - On Being Blue - Godine 1976

11.7.76

"It was so quiet you could literally hear a rat pissing on cotton"

Trummy Young quoted p92 Billie's Blues - Chilton

81

"...I was, and still am, endlessly interested in the outward appearance of people - their facial expressions, their gestures, their walk, their nervous tricks, their infinitely various ways of eating a sausage, opening a paper parcel, lighting a cigarette. The cinema puts people under a microscope: you can stare at them, you can examine them as though they were insects. True, the behavior you see on the screen isn't natural behavior, it is acting, and often very bad acting, too. But the acting, has always a certain relation to ordinary life; and, after a short while, to an habitué like myself, it is as little of an annoyance as Elizabethan handwriting is to the expert in odd documents. Viewed from this standpoint, the stupidest film may be full of astonishing revelations about the tempo and dynamics of everyday life: you see how actions look in relation to each other; how much space they occupy and how much time. Just as it is easier to remember a face if you imagine its two-dimensional reflection in a mirror; so if you are a novelist and want to watch your scene taking place visibly before you, it is