‘The Lathe of Heaven’ as a reflection on writing; the writer breaking down and remaking the world, maintaining the familiar but balancing it with the novel… fading memories of the real world as you dive into the book. George Orr is the point of contact between different worlds – is he author or reader? Author, because he takes an old world and makes the new from it. Haber as reader, demanding utopias which never quite meet his needs. The neccesity of conflict for drama; utopia implies a lack of conflict, impossible in a dramatic form. Thomas More’s ‘Utopia’ is a description, not a narrative.
Video ergo sum
Description used to be a rarity; now it’s universal. Foucault – ‘Power produces; it produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth. The individual and the knowledge that may be gained of him belong to this production’. Forms of control have always involved precise description, defining the terms of control, that controlled.
The information revolution means that everything can be described, categorised, held; tags on the side of the page. Your purchases tracked. But that description is democratised – I describe, with my camera, impose my own little world. Am I a collaborator with, a participant in or a prisoner of description? All three, at one time or another…
Magic hour
I’ve got myself a new phone, and the new phone has a new camera in it, so I’ve been riding round London taking lots of photos and putting them up on Flickr.
I’ve realised that I’m fascinated by light. I’m out and about first thing in the morning, early evening; the magic hour, when sunlight runs across the world not down onto it.
And what surprises me is how blue the light always is.