Posts

Showing posts from September, 2013

Visiting Battersea Power Station

Image
Battersea Power Station  This weekend was London Open House , and one of the buildings open to the public was Battersea Power Station. Love it or hate it, it is an iconic building. Pink Floyd used it as cover art, and recently it appeared in a Sherlock episode.. I am using these two examples because they interest me personally, but of course it featured in other films - Hitchcock's Sabotage , for example.  BPS, as I like to affectionately call it, is seemingly a magnet for all types of artists. Personally, I painted it for one of my graded art pieces in college. It pops up in the painting of an artist friend of mine.   Michael Collins takes some exciting pictures of it.. There is something for everyone. Being busy all day yesterday, I only had today left to go. As I got ready this morning, I was told there was a five hour queue - I nearly gave up on the idea. Finally I did set off, and it all turned out pretty well. The queue went through Battersea Park, so we were sand

An Olfactory Memory Opens New Thoughts

Image
Stormy skies in Alabama Autumn is in the air - I can smell it. Olfactory memories are probably the sharpest ones I experience. A certain smell will whisk me away from the present moment, and I'll land, confusingly, at a crossroads of intermingled thoughts. Often, it is not a distinctive memory I have; rather, a feeling - or the memory of a feeling. Now and then a memory will be locatable in time with varying precision. And then, the more confusing part: an olfactory memory of an olfactory memory. Two places in time, interwoven, tangled. Our minds are such complex places! This morning I was partly here and partly somewhere in 2010, by the Thames - sometime later I was projected to a different country and more than a decade back in time. A memory I had not accessed previously through smell. It was all so new, so different - I feel different. This time in my life is strange and exciting, and new, all so new - it is as if I am on a bridge between my teen years and my future - I