Claire Fuller: Our Endless Numbered Days

Cethegrande – The Whale*

Pottering about among her old Middle English textbooks, in vacant and in pensive mood, Gert came across a favourite from the days when she was much more vacant and much less pensive.

Haibun: St Thibery

Advice for writers: J.G. Ballard

Per Petterson : I Refuse

When Jonsen, Tommy Berggren’s neighbour and the man who takes him in, is dying, he looks at Tommy and says,

‘You can’t refuse to die, my friend.’

And Tommy replies,

‘Goddammit, of course you can refuse.’

Colours of evening

Melbourne International Film Festival 2

          

 

Here are Gert 2’s films:

Roo Borson: Short Journey Upriver Toward Oishida

Simply messing around in films: the Melbourne International Film Festival

The Gerts have spent the last fortnight wallowing in the Melbourne International Film Festival, and now scramble out shaking the water off their fur and carrying a few  tidbits in their teeth. Here are Gert 1’s films; we’ll post Gert 2’s on Wednesday.

Van Gogh

               

No one did colour more blatantly and more unexpectedly than Van Gogh. Its blatancy gives his pictures their roaring charm.  Colour, he seems to be saying: you haven’t seen colour before, look at this deep blue, this yellow, this black; watch me put them screechingly side by side. Colour for Van Gogh was a  kind of noise.

Julian Barnes in the LRB vol 37 no 15, 30 July 2015 p.7