Before every trip, we should pack our dreams – fold them up in tidy squares, arrange them in neat piles and place them with care in the suitcases of our minds. We may, like socks, have inadvertently paired up a couple of unmatching fantasies or forgotten in our haste one or two fancies. But we should at least lay in our cases the bare necessities of our imagination so we may present them as offerings to those we meet on our way.
Through border control, we smuggle the golden sands of Toulouse-Lautrec’s holy lands, and wisps of swallows ready to be freed. We carry in our bags Turner’s white suns and blonde sails which, unfurled, rise in mists of phosphorescent clouds and swim over large imperious waves in liquid-flowing crowds. And when it is time to board, we find our seats in the moonlit craters of Debussy’s music and the cavities of his oceans of sound.
For we wish to be wanderers: watchers of the skies, explorers of the boundless blue – mindful of the music of the waves and the rustle of the stars, the migrant birds of summer and the falling leaves of autumn – and remind ourselves that we too are vagrants of the world, who every day search our way, before it is time to go.
François Holmey
London, 30 August 2014
Our selection of poems, music and images for all five weeks of this theme is available by clicking on the tabs above or through the links below:
I. Week One
II. Week Two
III. Week Three
IV. Week Four
V. Week Five