When I won my first travelling fellowship, three and a half years ago, in my acceptance speech I said I wanted to travel to learn to understand the world in order to love it better, and I meant it. The timeless search continues…
Back then I studied sinking cities in Europe, relating them back to good old New Orleans. So much came from that stunt of wandering…a summer of exploration without a plan…golden surprise and magnificience!
London, Venice, Hamburg, Brugge, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Amherst and so many more in betweens…
I went to interview Frank Welch today, and hearing him talk about his time in Paris reminded me of my own. I am often haunted by the places I go…
The Paris pictures will need to be dug out, but in the meanwhile- here’s a snippet of the whole from an article we ran in CONTEXTURE (LSU School of Architecture newspaper). The large photograph is Amsterdam. More thrilling in full-color, I’ll dig soon.
The title here of course is the marvellous Edna St.Vincent Millay…how I love her.
Somehow it seems to fit-
LOVE IS NOT ALL
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.
I am meant to do this forever- and hell or high water, I will.
wanderings + wonderings 