“A cold winter night. I’m warm enough, yet I’m alone. And I realize that I’ll have to get used to existing quite naturally within this solitude, functioning there, working there, accompanied by, fastened to the ‘presence of absence.'”
Roland Barthes
more infosource: entry dated November 28, 1977, in Mourning Diary, translated by Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 2010), 69.
buy on Amazon
view on Google Books
category: absence, alone, grief, loneliness, mourning, nothing, solitude
medium: diary
notes: On index cards, Roland Barthes starting keeping a mourning diary the day after his mother died in October 1977.
“For some reason, the idea of absence, of leaving things out, has been very important in my work.”
John Baldessari
more infosource: “No More Boring Art: John Baldessari’s Crusade,” by Calvin Tomkins, The New Yorker, October 18, 2010, 42–49.
category: absence, art, creative process, nothing
medium: magazine profile
“Yes, I will go. I would rather grieve over your absence than over you.”
Antonio Porchia
more info
absence