by Sophie Ioannou | Dec 3, 2020
The moors pulse with it. A syrupy silence humming through the landscape. Pouring over nubs of lichen-covered rock, singing through the low-slung, flowering gorse, veering over the bended torsos of hawthorn trees. And then on, to mesh with the ghostly mist that rolls...
by Sophie Ioannou | May 10, 2019
The who without the where becomes unimaginable. Thompson’s Cut is where we became borderless. In October, the temperatures were high and hot so the leaves took a longer time than usual to turn on the mountains. This disappointed you because if I had come later, and...
by Sophie Ioannou | Nov 11, 2016
The last time I saw Leonard Cohen perform live was in the square outside the Santa Croce church in Florence, Italy. It’s a small square, no more than 1000 people sitting on rickety white plastic chairs over cobbled stones. When you looked up, through the fairy...
by Sophie Ioannou | Oct 19, 2016
Monachopsis n. the subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place, as maladapted to your surroundings as a seal on a beach – lumbering, clumsy, easily distracted, huddled in the company of other misfits, unable to recognise the ambient roar of your intended...
by Sophie Ioannou | Oct 13, 2016
“Here the youth of yesterday, today and tomorrow may come for inspiration. Here they may find food for mind and soul” – The Builder Up in a lost corner of Glendale lies the sweeping hills of Forest Lawn. Lost is perhaps the wrong word to describe...
by Sophie Ioannou | Oct 11, 2016
Tuesday 28th October, on the grass outside the Church of the Recessional, Forest Lawn, Glendale. I just read over the last few pages of my notebook from New York and couldn’t quite remember the person writing it. It feels like yesterday and years ago. After four...
by Sophie Ioannou | Oct 3, 2016
Lachesism – n. The desire to be struck by disaster—to survive a plane crash, to lose everything in a fire, to plunge over a waterfall—which would put a kink in the smooth arc of your life, and forge it into something hardened and flexible and sharp, not just a...
by Sophie Ioannou | Sep 30, 2016
“It comes from a place that no one commands and no one conquers…” Leonard Cohen is addressing the Spanish audience at the Prince of Asturias Awards. He is explaining, in his deeply charming and humble manner, how he finds his inspiration. “In other words”, he...
by Sophie Ioannou | Sep 21, 2016
onism – n. the frustration of being stuck in just one body, that inhabits only one place at a time. As described in The Dictionary Of Obscure Sorrows. It’s the warm coloured stone of Greek churches. It’s the restful aureate light that everything here...
by Sophie Ioannou | Aug 17, 2016
As I write this, I am balancing on a rock at the edge of a Montana forest. It’s around 2pm. The sun is strong here at this time of day. To avoid it, I have nestled into a formation of rocks which faces a large valley of trees, most of which are perished and dry...
by Sophie Ioannou | Aug 9, 2016
Originally featured in The Saatchi Gallery’s Art & Music Magazine My mother taught me very early on that a life full of books equals a well insured soul, so I never have the slightest hesitation in recommending reading to friends who are in need of hopeful...
by Sophie Ioannou | Jul 19, 2016
Excerpt from ‘Amtrak: Adventures through the South’ available from Pioneers...
