I've decided to start a blog - mostly for my own benefit because I want to hold onto my memories of time at Cambridge, and sadly I think I'm more likely to write online than a diary. Before I start properly however, I really wanted to explain the name - Fold and Unfold - because I did pick it for a reason.
The phrase comes from a small piece of writing that my wonderful grandmother sent me from hospital before she died and that I have on my wall in my room. It is a description of T. S. Eliot in Peter Ackroyd's biography:
"Even marriage could not cure him of all his anxieties, and it is salutory to remember that in some situations, he was as frightened of other people as they were of him: he often seemed shy and hesitant in conversation still... Robert Craft recorded that 'he is a quiet man, slow in formulating his remarks, which trail off in diminuendo... His long fidgety fingers fold and unfold, too, or touch tip to tip.' And yet underneath this diffident and subdued exterior, there was a passionate temperament which he was generally at pains to control. Although at times he appeared fumbling and awkward he could respond fiercely and eloquently." 1958 Eliot was 70 years old.
That's the main reason for the name. I think it fits my thinking too however - I love paper, I collect scraps and clippings and postcards and photos, and my mind works a lot like origami. I love that feeling (is it inspiration?) when ideas branch off each other and fold outwards from a point or an observation. Alan Macfarlane (my social anthropology lecturer) said that 70% of our information comes from our eyes and I love to just watch things and learn from reading and store visual information, and I find that even music I interpret visually, as it is the images that it inspires that are most fascinating. As well as this, I want to use my ideas to extend thought - if I can tell someone something or draw something that causes them to have their own ideas then that's great, that's unfolding. But for them to think on it too is interesting, and for them to store it in their own minds, that's folding. But not folding like in a card game - I don't want people to give up!
Check out Robert J Lang on my links.
The butterflies - maybe a bit girly... but the word for butterfly in Greek is PSYCHE (ΨΥΧΗ) which also means mind or soul. I thought that was cool, even if it's a little pretentious. I used it in a piece of GCSE art on identity.
The phrase comes from a small piece of writing that my wonderful grandmother sent me from hospital before she died and that I have on my wall in my room. It is a description of T. S. Eliot in Peter Ackroyd's biography:
"Even marriage could not cure him of all his anxieties, and it is salutory to remember that in some situations, he was as frightened of other people as they were of him: he often seemed shy and hesitant in conversation still... Robert Craft recorded that 'he is a quiet man, slow in formulating his remarks, which trail off in diminuendo... His long fidgety fingers fold and unfold, too, or touch tip to tip.' And yet underneath this diffident and subdued exterior, there was a passionate temperament which he was generally at pains to control. Although at times he appeared fumbling and awkward he could respond fiercely and eloquently." 1958 Eliot was 70 years old.
That's the main reason for the name. I think it fits my thinking too however - I love paper, I collect scraps and clippings and postcards and photos, and my mind works a lot like origami. I love that feeling (is it inspiration?) when ideas branch off each other and fold outwards from a point or an observation. Alan Macfarlane (my social anthropology lecturer) said that 70% of our information comes from our eyes and I love to just watch things and learn from reading and store visual information, and I find that even music I interpret visually, as it is the images that it inspires that are most fascinating. As well as this, I want to use my ideas to extend thought - if I can tell someone something or draw something that causes them to have their own ideas then that's great, that's unfolding. But for them to think on it too is interesting, and for them to store it in their own minds, that's folding. But not folding like in a card game - I don't want people to give up!
Check out Robert J Lang on my links.
The butterflies - maybe a bit girly... but the word for butterfly in Greek is PSYCHE (ΨΥΧΗ) which also means mind or soul. I thought that was cool, even if it's a little pretentious. I used it in a piece of GCSE art on identity.
1 comment:
i was intending to ask you to copy that bit about TSE - glad you put it up.
happy writing & hope there'll be pictures pictures pictures :)
b.
xx
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