Mistah Kurtz -- he dead.
A penny for the Old Guy
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
detachment – there is a sense of distance, and a desire to remain far away
· I should find a way to remove my viewers from my photographs. Things should not be seen directly, they should not be instantly recognizable in any way.
· Another way of looking at detachment in disconnection, perhaps playing with either physical cropping or the cropping / combination of photographs
· Shooting in a place of emptiness, impersonality, purgatory
emptiness- the men lack meaning, there heads are filled with straw. They exist in a godless purgatory, they are not violent instead they are hollow.
· Be careful not to make anything too much of a subject. A subject has inherent meaning and value.
· Consider the amount of space, perhaps consider photographing negative space primarily, positive space secondarily
apathy- the men in the poem are not in any state of fear, longing, anger, or violence. They exist indifferently.
· A setting that is cold and indifferent will help here, also pay attention to themes of detachment
fragmentation- many segments are only parts of a whole, such as the fragmented “For Thine Is”
· Ways in which I can fragment the picture plane, distort “reality”, use a mirror as a tool for abstraction
· Perhaps further fragmentation on the computer
· Emphasize subjectivity and ambiguity, odd compositions.
Solemn- seriousness, questioning of existence,
· Dark lighting situations
· Muted color palate
· Perversion of ideal, childhood
