Visual Diary #35
“What is the wind, what is it.”
A scene from Sound of Falling (d. Mascha Schilinski 2025). I was trying to describe this film to a friend today and stumbling. It’s about a house, and about how the house carries trauma across four generations of women. It’s non-linear, and dreamlike with scenes that feel like myth. It’s very sad and very long and very beautiful. I went into it knowing nothing, and I think this has become my preferred way to see films.
This is an old horse-trailer that I spied through a gap in someone’s fence on a drizzly walk around my neighbourhood. Other things I might have painted from that walk. Big brown wet leaves. Woman at the dog park going ‘Shoo, shoo’ to my dog who was just being friendly. Vandalized stop sign that reads STOP reading the Herald-Sun.
The sun came out today and so a walk around the Abbotsford Convent. Last time I walked there you couldn’t get through because of flooding but they have built a new zig-zaggy bridge that felt invigorating to traverse.
Current read: Deborah Levy’s My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein. This is Gertrude, Alice B. Toklas and their poodle, Basket. I just love Deborah Levy’s books. I want her life of eating and roaming around Père Lachaise in the rain. This is a very short book that makes me want to read Gertrude Stein, and Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast.
You can read Tender Buttons on Project Gutenberg (“What is the wind, what is it.”)
I could seriously spend a slant-sunny afternoon trying to decipher the different expressions on the chilled faces of Gertrude, Alice and Basket. Your art is enjoyably expressive and suggestive.
"I went into it knowing nothing, and I think this has become my preferred way to see films." With you on that one, Simmone. Also my preferred way of traveling. (Maybe even living a lot of the time...) I'd really like to read Deborah Levy's Real Estate. Have you?