The Pearl Fisher

I see phantoms in the motes, everything I read seems pertinent to my current research. Recently, in fact while I was traveling back from Brighton, I was skimming through the pages of the latest 'Cabinet'. I was interested mainly in an article on the dust of the universe that is deposited daily in the Antarctic. My previous adventures have left with me a fascination for such subjects though they bare little relation to my life now. The magazine contained many other interesting snippets. There was a quote I liked by Bataille who writes about Dust in his Encyclopaedia Acephalica as follows:

"...as if it were a matter of making ready attics and old rooms for the imminent occupation of obsessions, phantoms and spectres that the decayed odour of old dust nourishes and intoxicates."

he also describes:

"injurious phantoms that cleanliness and logic abhor"

When Dracula is (temporarily) slain he is often rendered into dust. This dust (in subsequent films) is also often collected and revivified with blood. A bit like Angel Delight. Dracula's castle is full of dust and piles of rotting, decayed, unregarded, unloved things. I am reminded that dust is mostly human skin. My companion's lodgings are also full of dust and many many objects piled across every surface.

There is also an article on magic and dust which I don't remember well (and the magazine is lost to me now). I think of pixie dust, a sleeping spell and a Midsummer Night's Dream. My magical studies have not progressed one jot. I have a plan for the reproduction of the illusion of "Pepper's Ghost" but have got no further than repeatedly redrawing it in my sketchbook.

In Brighton I saw a show of three films by Mark Lewis. I enjoyed the strange battle between the camera and its mundane subject matter of broken down landscapes and young love. In one piece an epic crane shot zoomed slowly in on a group of boys playing in a warehouse and rested finally on a spinning top set off by one of them. But the boy seemed too old, in fact more of a young man, an actor creating a moment of delicious disappointment. Another film showed a couple skating in the snow in front of a back projection perhaps of central park or some-such place. I have to admit I did not spot this until I read about it in the accompanying text. On a second viewing it reminded me of the end of "The Big Sleep", Bogart and Bacall driving - falling in love in an alien way, a mismatched cinema presentation of the immediate past playing out behind them.

But now my thoughts fly to the future. My inestimable companion contacted the caller Jerry Bown today. When she first telephoned she was informed he was "calling out" and would not be free for another ten minutes. To my immense surprise she was not put off by this, a disappointment which would have set me back a week. But instead, she happily called back after the allotted time and proceeded to charm him into agreement. So now our plans are in motion. In January we shall return to Whitstable, to the Bingo hall, to film the charismatic man calling out again.