An article in yesterday’s New York Times caught my eye and was illustrated with this stencil.
Fernando Pessoa on a wall of a building in the Bica neighborhood of Lisbon.
“Pessoa was raised in South Africa, trilingual, he wrote in English and French as well as in Portuguese, and in person (“pessoa” means simply person in Portuguese) affected the reserve of an English gentleman, inventing in his writing heteronyms, or imaginary characters, through which to make himself, as it were, disappear…Pessoa’s like a shadow, an invisible man…He wrote about being the center of a center where there was nothing.”
I think its fitting that “the invisible man” is depicted in such a impermanent medium. And this image brought to mind a line I read recently. “I see you before hieroglyphs of a strange land” from ‘Streets of Music’ by Martin Edmond.
In other news, New Zealand graffiti crew TMD (The Most Dedicated), triumphed at the World’s Largest Graffiti competition at Splash Festival in Germany. From Streetarse “TMD placed first in the concept wall and well-respected Grey Lynn artist Deus is now officially the best tagger in the world – his family are very proud.” (which is pretty damn funny).
And it is official – there is no more room in hell
Lastly here’s a great idea when you’ve run out of material for your blog:
“Jake Bronstein recently bought a toy vending machine off the Internet. He filled the toy capsules with ideas of fun things to do and started placing the machine in various spots around New York. For 50 cents you get the original toy, an idea, and a map to guide you to the location for your idea. Each capsule also contains a quarter, refunding half of your purchase price (the machine wouldn’t let him charge less than 50 cents.)”
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[…] the literary talk prompted me to have a hunt for Fernado Pessoa books in Dunedin’s excellent 2nd hand book shops (reuse!). I had a great conversation with […]