Melancholia

Sometimes it can be really hard to just do the the obvious unfinished work in front of you. A fairly unproductive week put me to mind of this famous engraving by the artist Albrecht Dürer, and what was written about it by Sir Kenneth Clark:

“In the Middle Ages melancholia meant a simple combination of sloth, boredom and despondency that must have been common in illiterate society. But Dürer’s application is far from simple. This figure is humanity at its most evolved, with wings to carry her upwards. She sits in the attitude of Rodin’s Penseur, and still holds in her hands the compasses, symbols of measurement by which science will conquer the world. Around her are all the emblems of constructive action: a saw, a plane, pincers, scales, a hammer, a melting pot, and two elements in solid geometry, a polyhedron and sphere. Yet all these aids to construction are discarded and she sits there brooding on the futility of human effort.” 




In my case, this condition has approximately the gravitas of Alan Partridge getting bored and dismantling the Corby trouser press in his hotel room, and walking to the gas station to stock up on windshield washer fluid:





So, yeah. More soon.