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Author Archives: Julie McElhone
About Julie McElhone
Portrait of a Lady’s commonplace blog
Hello my old WordPress blog (which I will return to from time to time),
Over here, I’m blogging my Doctor of Arts research in my third year. Come on over if you’re interested in arts research, performative research, working with manuscripts, practice-led research, research through writing/reading.
Looking forward to hearing from other arts researchers thinking and working through manuscripts and other old texts, object-oriented research, writing the self or commonplace books in general.
J.
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#artsresearch #performativeresearch #commonplacebooks #LadyMaryWortleyMontagu #USyd #DoctorofArts
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Jan 10
panorama from my bed at night
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there is a laureate who hears everything as stardust
unable to block enough out and so blows her own mind
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adds effect to bring lyric to life where life is / in breath, in
warm body parts, in / mixing tonic with whoever she can be
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a badge worn like a space invader baby
electrified dreams of flammable hot feminines
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everything is moonshine . incrementally speaking .
& severs a right hand man in the morning
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Jan 6
Today was a lost day . I got a Maeve card > rhythms and cycles . honour your body . I’m down . I think I’m down / not dawning / in the old ways / & byways situated in play / of words (like this) / a studied void, if that’s what you see / or low spirits full to the brim / I begin with a skirty timorousness / designed to trouble / a book end like a factory wall / . an image echo . inverted destinations . outer is inner / and this is my verso .
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Jan 5
daeg > Tiw . second to moon’s. a balloon. a gossipy tunesday. crickets a trrrr-trrr-trrr-ing with a car’s low throaty hum and tripping chrrrrups pchrr-pchrr-pchrr. nyeow-chi’-chi’ dot the air thick with moisture . if you find yourself under water in the mouth of a shark . breathe . I roll my fingers like a fan, bones in my little pinky catch and the back of my neck pops. then again, when I turn my head. my cheeks and the nape of my neck are sticky and I can feel sweat above my top lip . I know the layout of the city .
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Jan 4
Fetch me a photo of a moment gone . is gone
but you knew that . your own photo blown up . speaking
of blow up . in it . innit. intuit it . enclosed en close
d by something else . some things else . INKlings . paper . tiny
coloured ink dots . papered . carried in interest
from dowries . did you know that? I didn’t . mine
was the use of a station wagon for a week . inhered
to vertical blinds bars fence ferns a suggestion of a satellite
antenna roof slant trees & bad feelings because the neighbour
partied for hours and hours and hours on xmas eve and then
had a slap down drunken lover’s argument said things
they should regret but probably won’t remember
as I do—I was feral today in my car being told to back up
on a narrow lane, MY narrow lane by a—fck plightness—
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Jan 3
& there is always a tweet a radio host I think from his profile the shape of commons by looks defending a position
& to be clear I’m alone but the main thing is to begin from the sink hole as the poet sayid ‘a new language is a temptation’* taken. The choice mine.
Shakers and bibbity saxes make my shoulder dance a pulse languid pulse / in a cool woven lace blue dressing gown for dressing up in lockdown on brand a Sunday plan and for the rest of the month I should say since—anyway the radio host made this beautifully ridiculous line against a graphic of a tampon: ‘curved string, needlessly provocative’ (‘for no good reason’)—I meant to start this two days ago / at the start / now I have two sets of memories, one real one fabricated but someone else said that / I spent those days serving no master but my own ambition / but someone else said that too / binge-watching days, this is a tough of days, a pact of days, a shake of days / ingrained & a hollow of repetition petition tition tion ion on on on n n /
so
this is a provocation / a curve of fabric / this memory is fresh / a cotton gown as I look down needlessly folded the way it lands on my lap / I think I can see the floor through my legs
* Bernadette Mayer, Memory, 2020
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PARVENU 