A mellow Christmas with Cathy & James, some good red wine, great food and various gifts, including a biography of Ithell Colquohoun, occultist & surrealist painter.
As an assemblage of information about this mysterious woman, it's very interesting although it doesn't work so well as a narrative. Ithell's struggles in the internal battles of British surrealism are documented, and there's some coverage of the occult sub-culture in the UK in the 1950s. She wrote a biography of Golden Dawn founder McGregor Mathers, a figure who has always intrigued me.
I acquired Ken Edward's Songbook. Ken is a verbal tonmeister of the postmod loonytune weltkunstschaft and has written an especially good evocation of the suburban railway mysteries plus praise songs for Coltrane and a tribute to Bill Griffiths.
I've also read the final draft of Arlene De Winter's terrific fantasy novel the Golden Stair. Watch the skies and spaces for this one...
Sounds - Sun Ra's Antique Blacks. Those squalling saxes and Mister Ra's saturnine synth always take me to the bridge on Jupiter. I took a deep breath, got out the alto for the first time in weeks and blew a muffled homage.
Film: Half of 81/2 , disrupted by social duties but still one of my isolation ward movies plus Kenneth Anger's Lucifer Rising which keys into a re-reading of Crowley's Vision & the Voice and the enigma of the Enochian invocations.
Resolution: to complete the Great Work...
