02 August 2012

Book du jour - The Blue Distance

This came together quickly, and took only a few hours to do the handwriting. When there's only one layer you can read it, once you figure out where to start -
 But when the second layer goes on (it gets written on the back), it becomes mysterious and even "distant". (that splodge is something inside the camera) -
Having a little light behind the book might be a good way to show its blueness. 

Due to the grain of the paper, the cover curls round - this might not happen if I use a sheet from a large pad. Also, I'd like the blue ink to be more muted - perhaps the way it's over-written will make a difference. 

You could go on and on doing different little things, and never get anything finished!

Here it is, getting bluer with the layers of writing and layers of paper -
 The light shining through gives it a glow -
The writing comes from a chapter in "Field guide to getting lost" called "The blue of distance" - on looking in the table of contents of the book, I realised there are four chapters called The Blue of Distance! This seems to be a sign to make more books - with different quotes. Here's the next one:

"That life is a journey is a given in these [blues] songs, whose background after all is the urbanization of rural whites and northern migration of southern blacks, but the intense love of place frames this journey not as an enlightenment narrative of discovery of the unknown but an insular tale of loss of the formative terra cognita that exists in the song only as memory, a map written in the darkness of your guts, readable in a cross section of your autopsied heart. Nobody gets over anything; time doesn't heal any wounds; if he stopped loving her today, as one of George Jones's most famous songs has it, it's because he's dead. The landscape in which identity is supposed to be grounded is not solid stuff; it's made out of memory and desire, rather than rock and soil, as are the songs."

Each book will have as its "cover" an envelope with the book's real title, taken from the quote used, possibly from the last sentence in the quote. The new one will be called "Landscape of Memory and Desire", and the one already finished is called "Something is always getting lost". 

5 comments:

Cate Rose said...

Splodge, another great word!

jeanne hewell-chambers said...

I love this project. Love. It.

Missouri Bend Paper Works said...

Beautiful!!! I love writing on writing, which obscures the actual words, but somehow reveals their essence. The blue is both glowing and pulsing....magical! Thanks for sharing! --Patti

Felicity said...

this is luminously beautiful - and fascinating!

india flint said...

just echoing what everyone else said...