Andy Marshall's Genius Loci Digest: 18 Oct 2024
The light is a blessing today, John - the magnificent and ruinous east end is rising above the rooftops.
This digest revels in the in-between, the transitional, the presence of absence. My camera with its dials and knobs and sharp focus has taken me into the blur of things. It has taught me that because things can't be measured it doesn't mean that it isn't there. The spirit of things, the essence of our places is as real as my shutter button.
The light is a blessing today, John - the magnificent and ruinous east end is rising above the rooftops.
It’s remarkable how, when we take the time to look closely, we can sense the spirit or zeitgeist behind an object. For me, it feels like time travel—an opening into the mind of the artist who crafted it.
This is not a place to rush through or tick off a bucket list. It is a place that rewards patience, a place to linger when others hurry past. To be here is to step into a world where time folds in on itself, where the genius loci appears to those willing to invest their time.
Relief washes over me—something new to explore, a welcome distraction from the mental clutter of the morning’s news.
And there are rumours that the synchronicity that sprang from the Roman temple inspired the medieval scholar Alcuin to build the Alma Sophia (Holy Wisdom) here.
Even though we have the darker nights, this is the time of year when sunrise and sunset bless our waking hours. As the day dissipates into the ether, the atmosphere is often charged with motion
We are birds today. With our hive minds, we are tethered in murmuration - a beautiful synthesis of thought and action.
At Hopwood, where Byron’s feet had trod, lumpy clods of plaster had fallen, making their presence known beneath my soles - prickly protestations at the status quo.
I’m feeling very low. It’s the perfect storm—a toxic cocktail of intersecting events that hits deep into my self-esteem.