The loss of home, some would regret, but I cannot. I cannot because there’s only more loss to be found in such a regret. When one loses one’s sense of home, it is rare to be reclaimed, because not a home was lost. The home is still there, it still stands among others. The home of the childhood, it can still be found. Its bricks are there, its back yard green as it was. The room that is filled with memories is now empty or filled with another child’s life.

This loss however in essence is a loss of the heart. It is the ability to feel at home that one is no longer capable of. It is the heart that has been drenched in the world and lost a home. It is the stream that dissolved in the ocean. Now, if I embrace a man, I embrace a body not a life. I hold in my arms the stone contours of the flesh. I feel not the compassion that puts me in his shoes, I do not see the world through his eyes, I do not undergo the immediate replacement of fates that a man with a home suffers if his neighbor is struck by tragedy. Nor is my own pain a tragedy, nor are you a fellow of man to me.

Do I shed tears for this solitude? Is this loss a sad occurrence like you, man with a home, believe it is? I cannot answer this, because you are not truely asking me nor yourself this question. For you know, you have no doubt, for you know not my loss. And thus I cannot cry. A man who is lost has nothing to cry over, nothing to fear. My tears would be dry instances of the past, of memories that belong to the past. The walls are still there, I have no shelter, I am here. My tears are sweet sugar cubes of the present that fall on the world’s wet ground. Now, how can I cry when this soil is sweet and wide? Is the soil of your home sweet and wide with tears of loss? So where are your tears then for not possessing such a beautiful loss? Where is the sadness that is enclosed by the plastered whiteness of your home, because you are there, in your home? Hear I breathe. I regret no loss because I have no home.

And you wonder about my wandering. Don’t I miss, do I lack out of necessity, the tallness, the firmness by which your roots entangle in the earth of your garden? But I say that ground is dirt to me. The absence of a radius draws the contours of my space, there beauty has taken the place of home. Beauty lies in the absence. It invites to be filled with a greater passion, with greater fear, with greater joy, with greater sadness, that is not. And you find relief in your home and cuddle for warmth in a chilling night.

Swimming With Famous Dead Sharks, New York Times, October 1, 2006

Background story on one of Damien Hirst’s well known conceptual works: The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991)

Introduction
In 1992, the Dutch government and other European governments signed the Treaty of Maastricht, which concluded the transfer of many policy responsibilities from the national European governments to the centralized institutions of the European Union. There was a minority of intellectual skepticism against this centralization of national autonomy but a much broader popular sentiment feared the loss of national cultural identity. Fifteen years later in 2007, this popular sentiment culminated in the rejection of the European Constitution in a referendum by the Dutch voters. But we can also conclude that although the Treaty of Maastricht did weaken national governments, it strengthened the popular awareness of regional identity at the cost of national identities that have been promoted especially in the nineteenth century. At the same time, a more abstract European identity also emerged, and this is paradoxically used against new cultural influences from recent Muslim immigration. In the Netherlands, these anti-Muslim sentiments are vocalized by the flamboyant neo-right politician Geert Wilders. Wilders was born and raised in Limburg, the most southern province in the Netherlands, and it is his political heartland. Wilders’ party the PVV won twice as many votes in Limburg as the national average, 11% versus 5.8%. What are the underlying historic roots beneath this Limburgic phenomenon? (more…)

the infidel peal of love
that twists around our heart
and sings of bitter tears
to squeeze the last drop of happiness
out of our beloved

Lemon, the symbol of fidelity in love, associated with the Mother Mary, sketch for a part of The Nonaptych of Life.

Nick Knight is a photographer and director that explores the fields of vision within and outside of fashion.

Men in Tights, Nick Knight

Antony, Anthony and the Johnsons
Pagan Poetry, Bjork

Additional verse loop or bridge for Chaos in Eternity (2)

Dug up from their grave, the Amsterdam Debut of Blockbuster, it must have been 1996, but I am not absolutely sure. I couldn’t convert part 1, but rest assure, it still exists.

Blockbuster - Amsterdam Debut - 1996 - Part 1
MISSING

Blockbuster - Amsterdam Debut - 1996 - Part 2

Blockbuster - Amsterdam Debut - 1996 - Part 3

Blockbuster - Amsterdam Debut - 1996 - Part 4

Blockbuster - Amsterdam Debut - 1996 - Part 5