Volcanoes inside and outside: unpredictable, and the price we pay for being living things in a living world.

It’d be interesting to do some sort of study of ‘vulnerability’ in artists’ books via this metaphor: the conflicts or syntheses between what’s inside and wants to get out (and its corresponding exposure), and the forces or norms that keep things hidden. I think of an undersea volcano, and the shapes that lava takes when extruded under pressure of sea water. Whatever we come to look at, it has been extruded by a greater force still.

I think also of geodes, those blobs of chemistry, that pressure filters down to a shape, sorting and enclosing their contents and sealing them in a shell so that they are hidden and dark until broken apart.

To bring this back to the romantics, there’s a kind of geode called a ‘Bristol Diamond’, popular when Bristol was a spa town (or more particularly Hotwells) peaking at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Connoting something sparkling but worthless. The same earth that brings us these trifles also makes true diamonds.