Sunday 12 February 2017

Lists for journeys

Another list for journeys. From Patti Smith (M Train) as she gets ready to visit Frieda Kahlo's house in Mexico.

'I packed swiftly.... Everything on my list: passport black jacket dungarees underwear 4 tee shirts 6 pairs of bee socks Polaroid film packs Land 250 Camera black watch cap tin of arnica graph paper Moleskine Ethiopian cross. I took my tarot deck out of its worn chamois pouch and drew a card, a little habit before traveling. It was the card of destiny. I sat and sleepily stared at the great revolving wheel. Okay, I thought, that will do."

More lists in Joan Didion and - a thousand years earlier - The Pillow Book.

And on the top of her suitcase she throws The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Mirokami  which I've never heard of before (but just bought on Kindle).

One very striking thing about Patti Smith - she NEVER mentions her phone. Real liberation.

Reading and watching

  • Foot by Foot to Santiago de Compostela/Judy Foot
  • The Testament of Mary with Fiona Shaw at the Barbican
  • The Testament of Mary/Colm Toibin
  • Schwanengesang/Schubert - Tony Spence
  • Journals/Robert Falcon Scott
  • Fugitive Pieces/Ann Michaels
  • Unless/Carol Shields
  • Faust/Royal Opera House
  • The Art of Travel/Alain de Botton
  • Mad Men Series 6
  • A Week at The Airport/Alain de Botton
  • The Railway Man/Eric Lomax
  • Bright Lights, Big City/Jay McInerney
  • Stones of Venice/John Ruskin
  • The Sea, the Sea/Iris Murdoch
  • Childe Harold/Lord Byron
  • All The Pretty Horses/Cormac McCarthy
  • Extreme Rambling/Mark Thomas
  • Story of my Life/Jay McInerney
  • Venice Observed/Mary McCarthy