wytchcroft

one of the side-joys of scribbling is that synchronicity feeling of walking a path already covered in helpful breadcrumbs, the moving finger not so much writing as joining up the dots.

so, for example; i had just finished a piece of my 'tunnel' story, a section set in 1943 aboard a train with some German solders on it...

...sitting back, i cast what Sherlock Holmes always refers to as 'a long arm' and did some fic-related but non-pressure googling - in this case of Arseny Tarkovsky*, the poet father of Russian film director Andrei.
the very first hit was a brand new translation of a poem set on a train with some German soldiers aboard in 1943.
holy wow.

pausing only to grab my hat and cigarettes (really, that's all a wytch needs) i legged it to the nearest bookshop to see if they had the magazine with the poem in.
but aha! as soon as i came through the door my eyes zoomed in on a postcard (turned out to be from Boston Museum of Fine Art).
the postcard was a slightly queasy looking image of giant cogs in a bare landscape - exactly the sort of thing i'd been thinking of in connection with the story.
so i turn over the card and discover that the painting is Prelude by Agnes Pelton, Germany, 1943.

Bingo!

i am now busy gleefully rediscovering (and stealing from!) the work of the Transcendentalist Art Movement, a group (of two!) that i sort of forgot about, post-art school.

of course, i am not so jung anymore and i know there are very sound neurological reasons for such things - but the fun, the surprise and the odd deja vu feeling that comes from hunting one breadcrumb after another - well, that really is the magic part.

*of whom more later