The Rock Blogger

Ivan Shishkin.

The First Snow. 1875.

“Ordinarily we speak of letting be whenever, for example, we forgo some enterprise that has been planned. “We let something be” means we do not touch it again, we have nothing more to do with it. To let something be has here the negative sense of letting it alone, of renouncing it, of indifference and even neglect. However, the phrase required now — to let beings be — does not refer to neglect and indifference but rather the opposite. To let be is to engage oneself with beings. On the other hand, to be sure, this is not to be understood only as the mere management, preservation, tending, and planning of the beings in each case encountered or sought out. To let be — that is, to let beings be as the beings which they are — means to engage oneself with the open region and its openness into which every being comes to stand, bringing that openness, as it were, along with itself”.

-Martin Heidegger. On the Essence of Truth

Having just seen Lars von Trier’s "Anti-Christ", I was compelled to research one of its supposed influences. "Haxan " (1922) was an elaborate silent film from Sweden that depicts scenes of demons, witchcraft and occult rituals. This video takes some visually stunning scenes from Haxan and sets them to songs from Coil’s Horse Rotorvator , easily one of the most disturbing industrial albums I’ve heard.

Francis Bacon (1909-1992). Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion . 1944.

Below is a fascinating documentary about one of the most influential figurative/surrealist painters of the 20th Century. His work contains overwhelming dread, transmogrification, and decay. He once described his paintings as the residue of life, like the slime behind a snail.

Three dollar anarchist poetry
Reminds me of the leaf-strewn paths
And lonely quarters
where I used to rest

The spark was found there
And the fire, the godly warmth, the godly risk
Around my hands
The ecstasies of fear and joy, so wonderful, so necessary
For everything that’s bright and rare.

So much of that mysterious place…
The greatest parts, didn’t look so great on paper
Wind carries off the brutal word
Smug and exhausted signs cannot bear
A swift and lifting gesture

To the Fates

Grant me just one summer, powerful ones,
And just one autumn for ripe songs,
That my heart, filled with that sweet
Music, may more willingly die within me.

The soul, denied its divine heritage in life,
Won’t find rest down in Hades either.
But if what is holy to me, the poem
That rests in my heart, succeeds —

Then welcome, silent world of shadows!
I’ll be content, even though it’s not my own lyre
That leads me downwards. Once I’ll have
Lived like the gods, and more isn’t necessary.

Friedrich Hölderlin

photos by Sorina Dragusanu