Under the Volcano

Ah, guilt and sorrow had dogged Juan’s footsteps too, for he was not a Catholic who could rise refreshed from the cold bath of confession.

Mexican Miracle Paintings, Wellcome Collection, Euston, Camden, NW1

Yet the banality stood: that the past was irrevocably past. And conscience had been given man to regret it only in so far as that might change the future.

Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano (1947)

For man, every man, Juan seemed to be telling him, even as Mexico, must ceaselessly struggle upward. What was life but a warfare and a stranger’s sojourn?

Mexican Miracle Paintings, Wellcome Collection, Euston, Camden, NW1

From Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano (1947)

Darkness

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.

John Martin's Apocalypse, Tate Britain, Pimilco, Westminster, SW1P

The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,

Glendalough, County Wicklow, Ireland

Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;

Mike Leigh's Naked (1993)

Morn came and went–and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread

Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood (1952)

Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill’d into a selfish prayer for light…

Bill Callahan's Apocalypse (2011)

From Lord Byron’s Darkness (1816)

Rodinsky’s Room

This was an unrequired story. My feeling now is that the routines I listened to were the ones I solicited.

19 Princelet Street, Spitalfields, Tower Hamlets, E1

I was looking for confirmations and extensions of what I already knew.

Brick Lane, Spitalfields, Tower Hamlets, E1

Rodinsky was an empty space, a lacuna; that which was not to be uncovered something sealed and forgotten.

19 Princelet Street, Spitalfields, Tower Hamlets, E1

This was the period, the seventies between his disappearance and the breaking open the attic room. He wasn’t visible or invisible. He had neither presence nor absence.

Brick Lane, Spitalfields, Tower Hamlets, E1

His story hadn’t been formulated.

Rachel Lichtenstein and Iain Sinclair's Rodinsky's Room (1999)

From Rachel Lichtenstein and Iain Sinclair’s Rodinsky’s Room (1999)