A Lego letter to parents from 1974.

Tragedy wants more : the catharsis of the soul. Admittedly, even Aristotle does not make clear to us just what this catharsis is. This much is certain : it is an experience that touches the innermost being of each man. It makes him more deeply receptive to reality, not merely as a spectator, but as a man who is personally involved. It makes truth a part of us by cleansing us of all that in our everyday experience is petty, bewildering, and trivial – all that narrows us and makes us blind.

- Karl Jaspers, Tragedy is Not Enough

Paw Grabowski, Silent Figure with Landscape (The Worship), 2020

The Chicopee, a fine one, she were. Clean-built and trig-looking! None more fleet in ‘64 than she. We were on the breaks, a mutiny it were. Why, ask you? Why? What’s the terrible part of a sailor’s life, ask you, lad? Tis when the work stops when your twixt wind and water. Doldrums. Doldrums. Eviler than the Devil. Boredom makes men to villains, and the water goes quick, lad. Vanished. The only medicine is drink. Keeps them sailors happy, keeps them agreeable, keeps them calm, keeps them…

Isabelle Adjani

Drukqs

Johan van der Keuken, Paris, 1963

Now it's serious. At last it's becoming serious. So I've grown older. Was I the only one who wasn't serious? Is it our times that are not serious? I was never lonely neither when I was alone, nor with others. But I would have liked to be alone at last. Loneliness means I'm finally whole. Now I can say it as tonight, I'm at last alone. I must put an end to coincidence. The new moon of decision. I don't know if there's destiny but there's a decision. Decide! We are now the times. Not only the whole town - the whole world is taking part in our decision. We two are now more than us two. We incarnate something. We're representing the people now. And the whole place is full of those who are dreaming the same dream. We are deciding everyone's game. I am ready. Now it's your turn. You hold the game in your hand. Now or never. You need me. You will need me. There's no greater story than ours, that of man and woman. It will be a story of giants... invisible... transposable... a story of new ancestors. Look. My eyes. They are the picture of necessity, of the future of everyone in the place. Last night I dreamt of a stranger... of my man. Only with him could I be alone, open up to him, wholly open, wholly for him. Welcome him wholly into me. Surround him with the labyrinth of shared happiness. I know... it's you.

Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology.

- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Untitled (Hotel Rooms), Nobuyoshi Araki, 1993-1994

Nobuyoshi Araki

Lancaster angel, East Sheen Cemetery, Jeane Trend-Hill