THE QUARTERLY
[ CONVERSATION ]
A slow correspondence on seeing
By the Dam (202o) by Stephen Lambeth.
Echoes
In physics, an echo is the repetition of a sound returned by reflection: the original call meeting a surface and returning, changed and delayed, carrying the shape of the distance it has travelled. And like any good Australian, I know that 'Coo-ee' is what you call out when you are lost in the bush, sending your voice into the trees and waiting to hear what the landscape sends back.
But an echo is also something else. A remnant. A vestige. The trace of something that has passed, still present in the air after the original sound has gone.
That is the sense I mean here.
Between issues of THE QUARTERLY CONVERSATION, the thinking does not stop. Ideas surface that do not quite fit the main essay. A book arrives that belongs in the conversation. An image catches the light in a way that returns me to something already written. A reader's question reshapes what I thought I knew.
These are the Echoes: shorter, lighter, less formal than the quarterly issues but part of the same correspondence. A fragment from the margins of the current issue. A work by another artist whose seeing feels related. An observation made while walking, or waiting, or looking at something ordinary long enough for it to become otherwise.
They are not summaries or supplements. They are what remains after the main conversation has settled, still resonating, still finding its way back.
One or two will arrive between each issue. They will not demand much of your time. They ask only the same thing the Quarterly itself asks: that you slow down long enough to let something land.
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Winter Echoes to Come...
From a 100 Day Challenge in 2024 - Something pretty and layered to think on till the first Echoes rebounds in
Watch this space...