Let There Be Light

It’s all been about seeing the light this weekend even though there has been very little of it.

When I woke up on Sunday morning, it was dark with the gathering of heavy grey clouds above me. The raindrops pattered softly against my window plane. My gas heater hummed ever so softly in unison with it. The reverberations of the first trains deep down in the underground below started to vibrate through my building block. At 5 minute intervals my room started to vibrate a little, but I am use to it. My hair was still a bit damp from a late night wash and I brushed it away from my shoulders over my ears and turned to my side to stare out the window. I lay like this for a long time, listening, breathing slowly and trying to recall the dream I had last night. I turned over once to take my phone but there were no professions of everlasting love on it so I took this picture instead.

In my dream, I am driving into the twilight. It is snowing lightly. It is autumn. I can’t be sure that it is because the roads are covered in snow, but I get a sense that it is, strange that autumn snow may seem. I am not sure what type of car it is, but it seems like a big car, an MPV of some sort but with luxurious beige leather coverings. It is firm but comfortable and I like sitting on it while driving. There is someone beside me. I am not sure who, but I get a sense of it as well. Periodically, he puts his hand on my knee and gives it a bit of a squeeze as if to reassure me. Couch is playing on my player. I am not sure which song but it could be Gegen Alles Bereit. I think I have been listening to too much Couch in my another life out of the dream. But it is still the perfect type of song to listen to while out on a drive. In actual fact, I don’t drive but in this dream I was driving. Not the type of driving we see in sitcoms where the actors pretend to bob up and down with a digitalized back drop behind. In my dream, I was really driving. I was holding the wheel, changing gears and feeling at home doing it. In the dream it all came so naturally. Again, it must be too much real time lunch conversations about learning to drive. The window of the car is ever so slightly down and I can hear the whoosh of cars as they whiz pass us. Everything around us is covered in soft cotton balls of snow. I am driving quite fast, but the snow flakes seem to be falling in slow motion on my windscreen disaffected by the speed of life. The sky has my favourite evening hues. Dark blue on top gradating into pinkish orange hues below. I haven’t seen these hues very often since autumn crept in on us. At 4pm it gets dark, like some one is gradually turning the dimmer down and then everything turns dark by 4.30pm. The whole twilight process is skipped. I’ve been missing the twilights. The road ahead is long and I can’t see any end ahead, only the twilight drifting downwards, like a falling veil in the wind. I just keep driving and driving.


On Saturday night, I rushed down to catch the candle light concert in St Martins-in-the-fields. The New London Soloist Orchestra was playing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons together with some other pieces including my all time favourite, Bach’s ‘Air’ from Orchestral Suite No.3. I did not have very good seats. I had a seat hugging a column and lots of people in front of me. My head was lop sided in the direction of the column till my neck was strained and my tongue and saliva were drifting south with my lop side. It’s the type of look my dog has when he doesn’t understand me. The rest of the time, I just looked up at the chandeliers or closed my eyes and listened to the orchestra play. Still, it was cathartic. Soothing strings under candle light in a historic church.

This evening I managed to catch a Housing Exhibition, ‘On the Threshold: The Changing Face of Housing and a photographic exhibition,’Twilight: Photography in the Magic Hour’ at V+A.


It was interesting to see MVRDV’s Berlin Voids model at the exhibition. It’s the type of thing you see in your books while you were still in archi school and you give it a second take because it gives you a vaguely familiar feeling.


‘Twilight’ was good albeit a bit small scale. But it was something I simply couldn’t resist. Hand fetish aside. Twilights count high on my list as well. My favourite work was by Bill Henson. It was of an image of a girl. Only her face and part of her open shirt and breasts were illuminated by the evening lights. I liked the colour of the evening bouncing off her skin giving it a ghoulish green tint, but what struck me most was the single tear streaming down her face. It glistered brightly in the dim light and looked so three dimensional I almost wanted to wipe it away. Next favourite was Philip-Lorca diCorcia's works. It is a difficult task to capture evening or night images which is why I have recently been fixated with learning about the Fuji Natura Classica camera. I want to capture that evening light. Every time I take an image of the twilight, it never comes out as I had seen it or as I want to remember it. I want to get it right.

The Volume light/sound installation in the V+A courtyard by Massive Attack Producer Neil Davidge and band member Robert Del Naja was closed because of the rain. I will head down again soon to catch it.

There was another exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery that I wanted to catch called ’In the darkest hour, there may be light’ but I wasn’t in the mood for art. Sometimes I am not in the mood for it and sometimes I don’t understand it. A super size plastic replication of a half peeled potato could also be art.

My bets for the rest of the month are:
The Photographic Portrait Prize at The National Portrait Gallery
The Turner Prize at Tate Britain
In the Face of History: European Photographers in the 20th Century at The Barbican Centre

The house was so silent tonight. I could have walked around in my CKs but of course that would have been a silly idea. I would freeze my A$$ off.

Instead, I flipped through ex-house guest’s copy of Murakami’s Norwegian Wood sitting on my shelf and came across this.

There was light.

Pardon my language.

Nagasawa said to Toru, ‘Don’t feel sorry for yourselves, only Ar$eholes do that.’

I am driving up the road. I am in control, just me and my somebody and we are driving ahead into the twilight.


Summer, June 2006_Evening light from my bedroom window