melancholia

I was having a conversation with someone recently about melancholy and we had both had experiences close to that time that caused reflection on the beauty and value of melancholy. My intrigue with melancholy probably goes back to first seeing Dürer's "Anatomy of melancholy." Now, this morning I get to catalog Grey hope: the persistence of melancholy (Atopia Projects, 2006) for Parsons. A wonderful little book, but of course tinged with sadness or aloneness. (Avvaiyar has always given me more credit than is due for nascent hermitness.)

The Atopia Project website says:
"Atopia Projects is an arts organization that initiates curatorial and publishing projects. Co-founded and directed by Gavin Morrison (Scottish writer/curator, based in Provence, France) and Fraser Stables (Scottish Artist, based in Northampton, MA, USA), past projects include exhibitions, panel discussions, interventions, and multi-disciplinary publications investigating such ideas as placelessness [my emphasis] and physical versus psychological space. Atopia Projects is interested in generating projects that reorient the integrity, limitations, and potential of existing systems of cultural production."
http://www.atopiaprojects.org/
It intrigues me that there is no place or tangible address given on the Atopia website other than the bases of the founders.

... and, then, an hour later, I get a message from my brother with a sig-file quote from Mark Twain:

It is understandable that when I speak from the grave it is not a spirit that is speaking; it is a nothing; it is an emptiness; it is a vacancy; it is a something that has neither feeling nor consciousness. It does not know what it is saying. It is not aware that it is saying anything at all, therefore it can speak frankly and freely, since it cannot know that it is inflicting pain, discomfort, or offense of any kind. -- Mark Twain