A Moment in Time and Space

[tealin]

When reading Sara Wheeler's biography of Cherry, there was a passage that made me feel as though a complete moment was teleported through history and plopped in my head.

... a single shaft of light from the midnight sun cut above the mound of snow piled against the window and fell on the jar of paint brushes on Bill's small table, casting distorted shadows on the far wall. At the end of the evening Bill liked to stand there next to the table in his pyjamas, listening to Clara Butt singing "Abide With Me" on the gramophone.

Seeing as it's their last week in the hut before leaving for the south, I thought it was a good time to reconstruct this moment. The image is of Wilson's desk as it appears today, so the details are gone and it's a lot less cozy, but I'm pretty sure it's the same desk; here's Bill at it in May of 1911.

With any luck, a capsule from a distant age:

My materials:
- A digital image captured on the computer from a DVD of a television program that aired in a country on the other side of the world, and sent to me via jet airplane
- A video of a gramophone record being played, publicly available through a digital video sharing website

What a fascinating modern age we live in.

Huge thanks to VanDee who did a lot of the legwork to make this post possible!