It is sweeter to wander with the wretched and outcasts than to sit crowned with roses at the banquets of the rich
Elisee Reclus

Friday, December 02, 2005

Simplicity and Silence...Welcome to Happy Hour at Homelesshome...

'Is simplicity simple or Dada?
I consider myself rather likeable'
Tristan Tzara, How I Became Charming Likeable and Delightful (1922)

'Dada is applicable to eveything, and yet it is nothing, it is the point where yes and no meet, not solemnly in the castles of human philosophers, but quite simply on streets corners like dogs and grasshoppers'.
Tristan Tzara (1917)

'We want to give back to humanity the ability to understand that a unique fraternity comes into existence at the intense moment when beauty and life itself, brought into a high tension on a wire, ascends towards a flash-point; the blue tremor linked to the ground by out magnetised gaze which covers the peak with snow. The miracle!'
Tristan Tzara, Note on Art (1917)

Note:The above picture features an unopened can labelled 'EMERGENCY DRINKING WATER'. I found it on The Thames foreshore a few years ago.

I crave simplicity in life, away from all the machines and complications in this colony of humans. The fact of existence seems simple in itself to me. Difficultly simple though - sheer love and pain, as they face each other off. The above quoted writing seems to resonate with me, each snippet another battering on the Exodus door. Either in mine or your simplicity or in the understanding that choice, yes/no is not a real choice. Power/Opposition? All the greys between Black and White, like a London autumn sky as seen from my tower. We (or maybe it's just I) like to walk away from things. To not face them head on but no simply walk away. To walk around. To walk behind.

The intense moment where beauty meets life is neither yes or no but all and nothing. It is Exodus. It is Miracle.
This is my introduction to Happy Hour at Homelesshome. Next up, my hand, your photo, our end points.

Dada-Falluhja, Dada-Walworth
This, that, the irresistable...
London - city of confidence/s,
Fox in the grass,
The world turned upside down.
The Ruinist, Blue notebook (November 2005)


'She keeps me a few minutes more to tell me what it is about me that touches her - it is in the way I think, speak, in my whole manner, apprarently: and this is one of the compliments which has most moved me in my whole life, my simplicity'.
Andre Breton, in 'Nadja'(1928)

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