“I want my life to have a rhythm more than anything else on earth.” ~Denton Welch, A Voice in a Cloud
(via)
Denton Welch (1915-1948) scribbled these words while recuperating from a horrible bicycle accident that would ultimately claim his life at the age of 33. Bedridden for months in a nursing home in the English countryside, he fantasized about his former life as the world continued on around him. Acutely sensitive, it was the little things he missed most, those ordinary commonplace sights and rituals that we so often take for granted but which he felt gave our lives shape and meaning.
“Sometimes anything will make you want to cry. Why do people feel so sad when they see beautiful things? That is always being mentioned; it must be quite common.”
(Pantry, Los Angeles, 2013.)
(Flowers at dusk, 2011.)
(London café, 2014.)
“One of the nurses would wash me in the very early morning…then I would
lie on my back, cross my arms and float away to an old brick house set in damp
green fields in the depths of the country.”
(House spotted on a country walk, English countryside, 2012.)
“As a child I had delighted to look in at windows…they were a sort of giant dolls’ house to me.”
(Dining room at dusk, 2014.)
(Scotland, 2010.)
No memory of Denton's was too ordinary to merit a little bit of joy.
“The humdrum scene...held its own unexplained poignancy for me. The dog yapped, the tea poured, the human beings smiled without ceasing. It was as if they were all enchanted.”
(Scotland, 2007.)
“The room seemed
like a brown casserole, a baked dish, warm and comforting and heavy.”
(Antwerp, 2013.)
“The scene...was candle-lit and fire-lit, but outside it was always day.”
(Antwerp, 2013.)
“I would sit down in front of this meal and begin to eat slowly,
savoring each morsel, sometimes reading a line from the book I had been
reading.”
(Dinner chez friends, 2013.)
“I was utterly content to lie there and dream.”
(Scotland, 2007.)
*All photos unless otherwise noted by Lisa Borgnes Giramonti.
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