Whilst looking back at the pages I have done in my altered art book, I became aware that some of these pages were going backwards! In order to rectify this, I have now put these in order, with the narrative I have chosen from the book. This makes the story flow better . The red text are words I have added, either to join sentences together or just to bridge a gap! I will add to this page as I go along.
Each page LINKS back to WHY, HOW and some artist rearch that I felt may be of some relevence to the page. There are reasons for these images and stories of the journeys that took me there.
The book is called ‘The Five Gates of Hell’ by Rupert Thomson (I have never read the original book)
“A mirror image of silver. The jets seared through a membrane of the sky. The air turned to sound. There was nothing left to breathe and in his ears the stammer of machine guns as the bullets scuffed the dust around their feet, raised rows of ghostly plants that grew, one after the other in the day ground, hung in the air, then crumbled, then their hands were pulled apart, and they skittered screaming, limbs of water screech like saw attacking wood.”
” Everything was white and pale blue. Curtains decorated with anchors and mermaids, the steering wheels of ships. The skull of a seagull above the bed, a silver coin winking where the right eye used to be. A heap of shells unsorted on the rug, the shells he’d found only the days before. He was in the wrong house”
- p1-to-2-
He muttered ‘Jesus’ under his breath, a new word, and just about strong enough for what he felt, and, heaving a sigh, began to retrace his steps. He wished he could just leave her behind, it wasn’t far to the house now, another five minutes, but he’d promised, Dad had made him promise, and what if something happened? There were people called strangers, and you talked to them and then something happened. He didn’t know what that something was. It was too bad to even talk about.”
“He reached Georgia and stood looking down”
JEORSUS,GEORGIA,GEORGUS,GEORSUS,JEORSUS
- p3
- p4-
Page 4
“Your mother is dead’ she told him, and he cried because the word had such a dull empty sound. She tried to explain. “When someone dies,” she said, “they go away”
“When do they come back?”
“They don’t” she said “They don’t come back”
ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THAT?
I said “ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THAT?”
HELLO? IS THERE ANYBODY THERE?”
page-3 and 4-and-extra map-
Legend says that the
Special fish brooch?
They’re the guardians of the soul
-
-
p5
SO
Take the plunge
Black swimsuit, dry and brown
p6
p5-and 6-
Page 7
Dad says it’s in my blood
- p7-
Page 8
Lots of white and blue balls……
- page8-
- page7-and 8-
A kind of reminder
Pushed into sand
p-9-
Booby trapped
Talk in a whisper green grass…
page-10-
and more details
They walked through their childhood
- page-11-
He hid his own fears and wishes and only took them out in private under the eye of the moon
page-12
page-11-and-12-
He listened to his father breathing
And made plans for that loneliness…
page-13-
Helsinki
And they’d duck and flinch
page-14
pages 13 and 14
Someone was God and she was always flirting with him
In her Empire of Junk
page15-
They’d shoot at the wooden crosses
The door would shake, then the windows
Then the door again.
He became a regular at the empire of junk
More than a hundred radios….
page-16-
pages15-16-
page 17 and details
‘And’
The streets smelt of simmering reen vegetables and gas leaks
stained green sofa
didn’t realise it was for sale
‘Everything is for sale’
inside the room was such a concentration of junk as he’d never seen begore’
page17
Page 18
‘He stared down at the machine’
the machine began to revolve
A gritty roaring sound like the ocean dragging pebbles
soaked up by a piece of blotting paper….
page18
pages17-18
