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from post secret
Jun. 22nd, 2008 | 11:58 am
"When I was three, my mom would tell my brother and me that we could make the stoplight turn green if we blew the red one out like a birthday candle.
Once, my grandfather was in the car and we got to a red light, and my brother and I started blowing at the red light. He thought we were having asthma attacks, and my mom explained everything. At the next light he did it with us.
He died a few months later, and this is the only memory I have of him. I'm 18 now, and I still mentally try to blow out stoplights."
Once, my grandfather was in the car and we got to a red light, and my brother and I started blowing at the red light. He thought we were having asthma attacks, and my mom explained everything. At the next light he did it with us.
He died a few months later, and this is the only memory I have of him. I'm 18 now, and I still mentally try to blow out stoplights."
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excerpts from the rig veda
Jun. 17th, 2008 | 10:59 pm
1. THEN was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it.
What covered in, and where? and what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water?
2 Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal: no sign was there, the day's and night's divider.
That One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever.
3 Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness this All was indiscriminated chaos.
All that existed then was void and form less: by the great power of Warmth was born that Unit.
4 Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning, Desire, the primal seed and germ of Spirit.
Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the existent's kinship in the non-existent.
5 Transversely was their severing line extended: what was above it then, and what below it?
There were begetters, there were mighty forces, free action here and energy up yonder
6 Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes this creation?
The Gods are later than this world's production. Who knows then whence it first came into being?
7 He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it,
Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not.
"Dawn drives away her Sister's gloom, and, through her excellence, makes her retrace her path."
What covered in, and where? and what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water?
2 Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal: no sign was there, the day's and night's divider.
That One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever.
3 Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness this All was indiscriminated chaos.
All that existed then was void and form less: by the great power of Warmth was born that Unit.
4 Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning, Desire, the primal seed and germ of Spirit.
Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the existent's kinship in the non-existent.
5 Transversely was their severing line extended: what was above it then, and what below it?
There were begetters, there were mighty forces, free action here and energy up yonder
6 Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes this creation?
The Gods are later than this world's production. Who knows then whence it first came into being?
7 He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it,
Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not.
"Dawn drives away her Sister's gloom, and, through her excellence, makes her retrace her path."
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jack kerouac, an excerpt from wikipedia
Jun. 17th, 2008 | 10:57 pm
Among the writings he set down specifically about his Spontaneous Prose method, the most concise would be Belief and Technique for Modern Prose, a list of thirty "essentials."
- Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
- Submissive to everything, open, listening
- Try never get drunk outside your own house
- Be in love with your life
- Something that you feel will find its own form
- Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
- Blow as deep as you want to blow
- Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
- The unspeakable visions of the individual
- No time for poetry but exactly what is
- Visionary tics shivering in the chest
- In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
- Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
- Like Proust be an old teahead of time
- Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
- The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
- Write in recollection and amazement for yrself
- Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
- Accept loss forever
- Believe in the holy contour of life
- Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
- Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better
- Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
- No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
- Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
- Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
- In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
- Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
- You're a Genius all the time
- Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven
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an almost made-up poem
Jun. 17th, 2008 | 10:52 pm
viva la charles bukowski:
I see you drinking at a fountain with tiny
blue hands, no, your hands are not tiny
they are small, and the fountain is in France
where you wrote me that last letter and
I answered and never heard from you again.
you used to write insane poems about
ANGELS AND GOD, all in upper case, and you
knew famous artists and most of them
were your lovers, and I wrote back, it' all right,
go ahead, enter their lives, I' not jealous
because we' never met. we got close once in
New Orleans, one half block, but never met, never
touched. so you went with the famous and wrote
about the famous, and, of course, what you found out
is that the famous are worried about
their fame –– not the beautiful young girl in bed
with them, who gives them that, and then awakens
in the morning to write upper case poems about
ANGELS AND GOD. we know God is dead, they've told
us, but listening to you I wasn't sure. maybe
it was the upper case. you were one of the
best female poets and I told the publishers,
editors, " her, print her, she's mad but she's
magic. there's no lie in her fire." I loved you
like a man loves a woman he never touches, only
writes to, keeps little photographs of. I would have
loved you more if I had sat in a small room rolling a
cigarette and listened to you piss in the bathroom,
but that didn' happen. your letters got sadder.
your lovers betrayed you. kid, I wrote back, all
lovers betray. it didn' help. you said
you had a crying bench and it was by a bridge and
the bridge was over a river and you sat on the crying
bench every night and wept for the lovers who had
hurt and forgotten you. I wrote back but never
heard again. a friend wrote me of your suicide
3 or 4 months after it happened. if I had met you
I would probably have been unfair to you or you
to me. it was best like this.
I see you drinking at a fountain with tiny
blue hands, no, your hands are not tiny
they are small, and the fountain is in France
where you wrote me that last letter and
I answered and never heard from you again.
you used to write insane poems about
ANGELS AND GOD, all in upper case, and you
knew famous artists and most of them
were your lovers, and I wrote back, it' all right,
go ahead, enter their lives, I' not jealous
because we' never met. we got close once in
New Orleans, one half block, but never met, never
touched. so you went with the famous and wrote
about the famous, and, of course, what you found out
is that the famous are worried about
their fame –– not the beautiful young girl in bed
with them, who gives them that, and then awakens
in the morning to write upper case poems about
ANGELS AND GOD. we know God is dead, they've told
us, but listening to you I wasn't sure. maybe
it was the upper case. you were one of the
best female poets and I told the publishers,
editors, " her, print her, she's mad but she's
magic. there's no lie in her fire." I loved you
like a man loves a woman he never touches, only
writes to, keeps little photographs of. I would have
loved you more if I had sat in a small room rolling a
cigarette and listened to you piss in the bathroom,
but that didn' happen. your letters got sadder.
your lovers betrayed you. kid, I wrote back, all
lovers betray. it didn' help. you said
you had a crying bench and it was by a bridge and
the bridge was over a river and you sat on the crying
bench every night and wept for the lovers who had
hurt and forgotten you. I wrote back but never
heard again. a friend wrote me of your suicide
3 or 4 months after it happened. if I had met you
I would probably have been unfair to you or you
to me. it was best like this.
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i just might love you, joey comeau
Jun. 17th, 2008 | 10:51 pm
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international stalker day
Jun. 17th, 2008 | 10:47 pm
http://www.asofterworld.com/oq-display.p
or, for those who are lazy, c&p:
[the premise of overqualified is to send fake applications to various companies. it's run by joey comeau of a softer world dot com.]
To: Human resources, Hallmark Cards
Re: Only sixteen shopping days left
Thank you for taking the time to review my resume. I haven't got any experience with greeting cards or with graphic design. But this morning it occurred to me that you need a new holiday. Mother's day is fine, but some of us have lost our mothers. Not everyone has someone share their life with, Hallmark. But we all have one thing in common. We all have strangers on the edges of our lives.
We can all be secret admirers. Look around the next time you're at the mall. Or look online. Social networking sites. The Internet is full of people to secretly admire. There's a girl who makes detailed maps of her neighbourhood and she knows a boy who hates Allen Ginsberg - except for one line that he thinks is perfect. He has crooked eyes and takes all these pictures of balls bouncing. That is his obsession, bouncing rubber balls. He knows a girl who, in every picture, is pulling her shirt up to show off her belly. She's all like, "What's up? A camera? Yeah yeah. Let me get my belly out." She looks so happy just to be here. She knows a trashy girl in a tank top, wearing a little too much makeup, out drinking with her sorority friends in every picture. She has bleached blonde hair and only one interest. Carnival of Souls (1962).
What ever happened to secret admirers? Are they just stalkers now? If you notice someone, if you pay too much attention, that's weird. All of a sudden you're that guy who sits on the bench in the mall, right in front of the store where she works and stares inside all day. Or, worse, you're the guy who keeps going in. The guy with the Orange Julius who keeps saying, "I'm just browsing."
But I love writing notes to strangers.
"You have the best laugh I have ever heard. The only thing I know about you is that you work with maps and you always take the second straw from the dispenser - I do that too!"
And I don't think I'm alone, Hallmark.
International Stalker Day. I have to go decorate my room.
Joey Comeau
or, for those who are lazy, c&p:
[the premise of overqualified is to send fake applications to various companies. it's run by joey comeau of a softer world dot com.]
To: Human resources, Hallmark Cards
Re: Only sixteen shopping days left
Thank you for taking the time to review my resume. I haven't got any experience with greeting cards or with graphic design. But this morning it occurred to me that you need a new holiday. Mother's day is fine, but some of us have lost our mothers. Not everyone has someone share their life with, Hallmark. But we all have one thing in common. We all have strangers on the edges of our lives.
We can all be secret admirers. Look around the next time you're at the mall. Or look online. Social networking sites. The Internet is full of people to secretly admire. There's a girl who makes detailed maps of her neighbourhood and she knows a boy who hates Allen Ginsberg - except for one line that he thinks is perfect. He has crooked eyes and takes all these pictures of balls bouncing. That is his obsession, bouncing rubber balls. He knows a girl who, in every picture, is pulling her shirt up to show off her belly. She's all like, "What's up? A camera? Yeah yeah. Let me get my belly out." She looks so happy just to be here. She knows a trashy girl in a tank top, wearing a little too much makeup, out drinking with her sorority friends in every picture. She has bleached blonde hair and only one interest. Carnival of Souls (1962).
What ever happened to secret admirers? Are they just stalkers now? If you notice someone, if you pay too much attention, that's weird. All of a sudden you're that guy who sits on the bench in the mall, right in front of the store where she works and stares inside all day. Or, worse, you're the guy who keeps going in. The guy with the Orange Julius who keeps saying, "I'm just browsing."
But I love writing notes to strangers.
"You have the best laugh I have ever heard. The only thing I know about you is that you work with maps and you always take the second straw from the dispenser - I do that too!"
And I don't think I'm alone, Hallmark.
International Stalker Day. I have to go decorate my room.
Joey Comeau
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leigh stein
Jun. 17th, 2008 | 10:45 pm
from here
Civil War
I apologize for getting off on danger, but
I can't tell you any more
about my transitory fantasies involving the two of us
being consumed by prairie fire, because remember
last time? when I said I wanted to take the bones
of your hands and make them into a heart shaped brooch
for my new tweed jacket?
You totally freaked out
and I was just being romantic.
And I'm sorry that
I spent most of last night trying
to crawl inside the spine of my atlas and
I'm also sorry for eskimo kissing the hell out of
the Mason-Dixon line, but globes make
impossible pillows. Pillows make
impossible pillows. I don't know what to do any more
but ask you to sever and mail me a limb while
I work on memorizing the topography of too far away.
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gravity
Jun. 17th, 2008 | 10:42 pm
By Maura O' Connor from The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry.
Today I am fragile
pale
twitching
insane and full of purpose.
I'm thinking of my lover:
my soft hips pressing his coarse belly,
my tongue on a salmon nipple,
his hand buried in my thick orange hair
the telephone ringing.
I'm thinking we tend our illnesses
as if they are our children:
fevered
screaming
demanding attention and twenty dollar bills,
hours we could have spent
making love with the television on.
Faith is a series of calculations
made by an idiot savant.
I'm in love.
I'm alone
in this city of painted boxes
stacked like alphabet blocks
spelling nothing.
There are things I know:
trees don't sing
birds don't sprout leaves
the sky never turns to wine
roses bloom because that's what roses do,
whether we write poems for them
or not.
I concentrate on small things:
ivy threaded through a chain link,
giveaway kittens huddled in a soggy cardboard box,
a fat man blowing harmonica
through a beard of rusty wires
brown birds chattering furiously on power lines.
I try not to think about
lung cancer, AIDS,
the chemicals in the rain;
things I can't imagine any more than
a color I've never seen
My heart is graffiti on the side of a subway train,
a shadow on the wall made by a child.
Nothing has been fair since my first skinned knee
I believe death
must be.
I cling to love as if it were an answer.
I go on buying eggs and bread,
boots and corsets,
knowing I'll burn out before the sun.
I'm thinking of
the days I tried to stay awake
while the billboards and T.V. ads
for condoms, microwave brownies, and dietetic jello
lulled me to sleep.
A brown-eyed girl once told me a secret
that should have blown this city
into a mass of unconnected atoms
Our sewage is piped to the sea.
Beggars in the street
are hated for having the nerve
to die in public.
Charity requires paperwork,
Relief requires medication
as if we were the afterthoughts of institutions
greater than our rage.
Gravity chains us to the asphalt with such grace
we think it is kind.
We all go on buying lottery tickets
Diet Coke and toothpaste
as if the sky over our heads
were the roof of a gilded cage.
We provide evidence that we were here:
initials cut into cracked vinyl bus seats,
into trees growing from squares
in concrete,
a name left on a stone, an office building,
a flower, a disease, a museum
a child.
Tonight the stars glitter like rhinestones
on a black suede glove.
In the coffin my room has become,
I talk to God
about the infrequency of rain
about people who can't see the current of gentleness
running under the pale crust of my skin.
I tell him under
the jackhammer crack, the diesel truck rumble,
even the clicking sound traffic lights make
switching from yellow to red,
there is a silence
swallowing
every song,
conversation,
every whisper made beside graves
or in the twisted white sheets of love.
I tell him I can't fill it
with dark wine, blue pills,
a pink candle lit at the altar
the lover
touching my hair.
God doesn't answer.
God doesn't know our names.
He's only the architect
designing the places we occupy
like high rise offices or ant hills
I know this
the way I know
sunrise and sunset
are caused by the endless turning
of the Earth.
Today I am fragile
pale
twitching
insane and full of purpose.
I'm thinking of my lover:
my soft hips pressing his coarse belly,
my tongue on a salmon nipple,
his hand buried in my thick orange hair
the telephone ringing.
I'm thinking we tend our illnesses
as if they are our children:
fevered
screaming
demanding attention and twenty dollar bills,
hours we could have spent
making love with the television on.
Faith is a series of calculations
made by an idiot savant.
I'm in love.
I'm alone
in this city of painted boxes
stacked like alphabet blocks
spelling nothing.
There are things I know:
trees don't sing
birds don't sprout leaves
the sky never turns to wine
roses bloom because that's what roses do,
whether we write poems for them
or not.
I concentrate on small things:
ivy threaded through a chain link,
giveaway kittens huddled in a soggy cardboard box,
a fat man blowing harmonica
through a beard of rusty wires
brown birds chattering furiously on power lines.
I try not to think about
lung cancer, AIDS,
the chemicals in the rain;
things I can't imagine any more than
a color I've never seen
My heart is graffiti on the side of a subway train,
a shadow on the wall made by a child.
Nothing has been fair since my first skinned knee
I believe death
must be.
I cling to love as if it were an answer.
I go on buying eggs and bread,
boots and corsets,
knowing I'll burn out before the sun.
I'm thinking of
the days I tried to stay awake
while the billboards and T.V. ads
for condoms, microwave brownies, and dietetic jello
lulled me to sleep.
A brown-eyed girl once told me a secret
that should have blown this city
into a mass of unconnected atoms
Our sewage is piped to the sea.
Beggars in the street
are hated for having the nerve
to die in public.
Charity requires paperwork,
Relief requires medication
as if we were the afterthoughts of institutions
greater than our rage.
Gravity chains us to the asphalt with such grace
we think it is kind.
We all go on buying lottery tickets
Diet Coke and toothpaste
as if the sky over our heads
were the roof of a gilded cage.
We provide evidence that we were here:
initials cut into cracked vinyl bus seats,
into trees growing from squares
in concrete,
a name left on a stone, an office building,
a flower, a disease, a museum
a child.
Tonight the stars glitter like rhinestones
on a black suede glove.
In the coffin my room has become,
I talk to God
about the infrequency of rain
about people who can't see the current of gentleness
running under the pale crust of my skin.
I tell him under
the jackhammer crack, the diesel truck rumble,
even the clicking sound traffic lights make
switching from yellow to red,
there is a silence
swallowing
every song,
conversation,
every whisper made beside graves
or in the twisted white sheets of love.
I tell him I can't fill it
with dark wine, blue pills,
a pink candle lit at the altar
the lover
touching my hair.
God doesn't answer.
God doesn't know our names.
He's only the architect
designing the places we occupy
like high rise offices or ant hills
I know this
the way I know
sunrise and sunset
are caused by the endless turning
of the Earth.
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excerpts from bob dylan's chronicles, volume one
Jun. 17th, 2008 | 10:37 pm
Read sometime in January of this year.
"I had already landed in a parallel universe, anyway, with more archaic principles and values; one where actions and virtues were old style and judgmental things came falling out on their heads. A culture with outlaw women, super thugs, demon lovers and gospel truths . . . streets and valleys, rich peaty swamps, with landowners and oilmen, Stagger Lees, Pretty Pollys and John Henrys - an invisible world that towered overhead with walls of gleaming corridors. It was all there and it was clear - ideal and God-fearing - but you had to go find it. It didn't come served on a paper plate. Folk music was a reality of a more brilliant dimension. It exceeded all human understanding, and if it called out to you, you could disappear and be sucked into it. I felt right at home in this mythical realm made up not with individuals so much as archetypes, vividly drawn archetypes of humanity, metaphysical in shape, each rugged soul filled with natural knowing and inner wisdom. Each demanding a degree of respect. I could believe in the full spectrum of it and sing about it. It was so real, so more true to life than life itself. It was life magnified. Folk music was all I needed to exist. Trouble was, there wasn't enough of it. It was out of date, had no proper connection to the actualities, the trends of the time. It was a huge story but hard to come across. Once I'd slipped in beyond the fringes it was like my six-string guitar became a crystal magic wand and I could move things like never before. I had no other cares or interests besides folk music. I scheduled my life around it. I had little in common with anyone not like-minded."
"I had already landed in a parallel universe, anyway, with more archaic principles and values; one where actions and virtues were old style and judgmental things came falling out on their heads. A culture with outlaw women, super thugs, demon lovers and gospel truths . . . streets and valleys, rich peaty swamps, with landowners and oilmen, Stagger Lees, Pretty Pollys and John Henrys - an invisible world that towered overhead with walls of gleaming corridors. It was all there and it was clear - ideal and God-fearing - but you had to go find it. It didn't come served on a paper plate. Folk music was a reality of a more brilliant dimension. It exceeded all human understanding, and if it called out to you, you could disappear and be sucked into it. I felt right at home in this mythical realm made up not with individuals so much as archetypes, vividly drawn archetypes of humanity, metaphysical in shape, each rugged soul filled with natural knowing and inner wisdom. Each demanding a degree of respect. I could believe in the full spectrum of it and sing about it. It was so real, so more true to life than life itself. It was life magnified. Folk music was all I needed to exist. Trouble was, there wasn't enough of it. It was out of date, had no proper connection to the actualities, the trends of the time. It was a huge story but hard to come across. Once I'd slipped in beyond the fringes it was like my six-string guitar became a crystal magic wand and I could move things like never before. I had no other cares or interests besides folk music. I scheduled my life around it. I had little in common with anyone not like-minded."
( Read more... )
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a review written in january
Jun. 17th, 2008 | 10:36 pm
the squid & the whale is an interesting movie that i just watched by noah baumbach. it explores sexuality and the comedy of intellectual snobbishness very matter-of-factly. it has a lot of controversial issues, i suppose, that you don't find in most films, like masturbation, drinking, the father's affair with a much younger girl, couple separation issues, etc. the way the film ended led you to question the director's intentions, because it was very open, simply ending with the film's namesake (a namesake that you will learn more about if you watch the film). nothing was necessarily resolved except for one boy's childish fears finally faced and the symbolic implications of the face-off; yet, in a way, this was a resolution in itself, because it showed the maturation brought upon by adolescence and the grinding stone of the adverse circumstances created by a parent's divorce. the soundtrack was phenomenal, consisting of lou reed, pink floyd, and some folkish indie music that I didn't recognize, surprisingly enough. i suppose i'll have to look those numbers up. i recommend this film to everyone; i suppose you could call it an independent film, but i hate to use that label because it designates a sort of pretension that isn't present in this film. in fact, if anything, this movie is a satire of that kind of pretension, with the father and mother's artistic struggles - especially the father's snobbishness - being the launching point by which this kind of dark, analytical humor is achieved. the unrecognizable (okay, at least to me) casting made it seem more realistic, as it is my opinion that easy-to-spot stars detract from the novelty of a truly moving film, although this isn't always the case. i thought the situations in this movie were extremely possible, nothing particularly impossible except for maybe some dramatic (not in the hollywood sense, in a more plausible sense) bits at the end. the issues that the sons go through are issues which i'm sure a lot of people face upon their parent's divorce.
so go see this film, hooligans.
so go see this film, hooligans.
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an excerpt from nabokov's lolita, afterword
Jun. 17th, 2008 | 10:33 pm
"Their [the publisher's] refusal to buy the book was based not on my treatment of the theme but on the theme itself, for there are at least three themes which are utterly taboo as far as most American publishers are concerned. The two others are: a Negro-White marriage which is a complete and glorious success resulting in lots of children and grandchildren; and the total atheist who lives a happy and useful life, and dies in his sleep at the age of 106."
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i don't weep, do you?
Jun. 17th, 2008 | 10:31 pm
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?
- C. Bukowski
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?
- C. Bukowski
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georgia o'keefe
Jun. 17th, 2008 | 10:28 pm
Above: My favorite O'Keeffe painting, Summer Days.
Excerpts from Georgia O'Keeffe: A Life by Roxana Robinson. I haven't read the book myself (though it sounds interesting), and these excerpts are pulled from a wonderful poet's blog (her name is Leigh Stein and she's delightful and you can find her blog here).
Georgia was not by nature a rebel; she did not define herself through opposition. The rules on the O'Keeffe farm were strict but few, and they were founded on realities. Dangerous or insolent behavior was forbidden, but very little else was. When Georgia behaved eccentrically--she had very definite ideas about her clothes, for example--her conduct was tolerated as a facet of character. Though strong-willed, Georgia was sensible and did not need to challenge rules simply for the sake of challenge. Throughout her life she would ignore regulations that she found pointless and would take a certain glee in shocking small minds, but for her the act of confrontation was a means to an end, not an end in itself. Her goals were larger and more practical. (31)
Elizabeth Mae Willis was both principal and art teacher at Chatham. Georgia's energy and talent appealed to her, and she encouraged the girl's interest in art. Georgia was given her own table in the big, white-plastered studio, and she had permission to go there in the evening and work by herself after dinner. When the other students complained, Mrs. Willis rejoined, "When the spirit moves Georgia, she can do more in a day than you can do in a week." (45)
Georgia taught her students [in Amarillo] an approach that embraced their personal lives too....'Filling a space in a beautiful way. That's what art means to me.' This philosophy meant that all physical choices were aesthetic ones. 'I liked to convey to them the idea that art is important in everyday life. I wanted them to learn the principle that when you
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from the gospel of matthew
Jun. 17th, 2008 | 10:27 pm
"i will open my mouth in parables. i will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world."
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from bound for glory by woody guthrie
Jun. 17th, 2008 | 10:21 pm
I read this a while ago, but this has always been one of my favorite quotes. Don't mind the caps (or lack thereof). I'm an indiekid & rule the streets with trendy ee cummings style language and ampersands.
"i know you people i see here on the skid. the hats pulled down over the faces i can't see. you know my name and you call me a guitar busker, a joint hopper, tip canary, kittybox man.
movie people, hoss wranglers, dead enders, stew bums; stealers, derlers sidewalk spielers; con men, sly flies, flat foots, reefer riders; dopers, smokers, boil stokers; sailors, whalers, bar flies, brass railers; spittoon tuners, fruit-tree pruners; cobbers, spiders, three-way riders; honest people, fakes, vamps and bleeders; saviors, saved and side-street singers; whore-house hunters, door-bell ringers; footloosers, rod riders, caboosers, outsiders; honky tonk and whiskey setters, tight-wads, spendthrifts, race-horse betters; blackmailers, gin soaks, comers, goers; good girls, bad girls, teasers, whores; buskers, corn huskers, dust bowlers, dust panners; waddlers, toddlers, dose packers, syph carriers; money men, honey men, sad men, funny men; ramblers, gamblers, highway anklers; cowards, brave guys, stools and snitches; nice people, bastards, sonsabitches; fair, square, and honest folks; low, sneaking greedy people; and somewhere, in amongst all of these skid row skidders - cisco and me sung for our chips."
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poor edward
Jun. 15th, 2008 | 07:01 pm
From Wikipedia
Edward Mordrake (sometimes written Edward Mordake) is claimed to be a 19th Century heir to one of the peerages in England who had a female face on the back of his head. According to the story, the extra face could neither eat nor speak, but it could laugh and cry. Edward begged doctors to have his 'devil twin' removed, because, supposedly, it whispered horrible things to him at night. but no doctor would attempt it. He committed suicide at the age of 23.
they should have buried him with two tombstones.
Edward Mordrake (sometimes written Edward Mordake) is claimed to be a 19th Century heir to one of the peerages in England who had a female face on the back of his head. According to the story, the extra face could neither eat nor speak, but it could laugh and cry. Edward begged doctors to have his 'devil twin' removed, because, supposedly, it whispered horrible things to him at night. but no doctor would attempt it. He committed suicide at the age of 23.
they should have buried him with two tombstones.
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from beryl markham's memoir, west with the night
Jun. 12th, 2008 | 11:05 pm
excerpts
"There are all kinds of silences and each of them means a different thing. There is the silence that comes with morning in a forest, and this is different from the silence of a sleeping city. There is silence after a rainstorm, and before a rainstorm, and these are not the same. There is the silence of emptiness, the silence of fear, the silence of doubt. There is a certain silence that can emanate from a lifeless object as from a chair lately used, or from a piano with old dust upon its keys, or from anything that has answered to the need of a man, for pleasure or for work. This kind of silence can speak. Its voice may be melancholy, but it is not always so; for the chair may have been left by a laughing child or the last notes of the piano may have been raucous and gay. Whatever the mood or the circumstance, the essence of its quality may linger in the silence that follows. It is a soundless echo."
"Competitors in conquest have overlooked the vital soul of Africa herself, which emanates the true resistance to conquest. The soul is not dead, but silent, the wisdom not lacking, but of such simplicity as to be counted non-existent in the tinker's mind of modern civilization. Africa is of an ancient age and the blood of many of her peoples is as venerable and as chase as truth. What upstart race, sprung from some recent, callow century to arm itself with steel and boastfulness, can match in purity the blood of a single Masai Murani whose heritage may have stemmed not far from Eden? It is not the weed that is corrupt; roots of the weed sucked first life from the genesis of earth and hold the essence of it still. Always the weed returns; the cultured plant retreats before it. Racial purity, true aristocracy, devolve not from edict, nor from rote, but from the preservation of kinship with the elemental forces and purposes of life whose understanding is not far beyond the mind of a Native shepherd than beyond the cultured fumblings of a mortar-bound intelligence.
Whatever happens, armies will continue to rumble, colonies may change masters, and in the face of it all Africa lies, and will lie, like a great, wisely somnolent giant unmolested by the noisy drum-rolling of bickering empires. It is not only a land; it is an entity born of one man's hope and another man's fancy.
So there are many Africas."
"There are all kinds of silences and each of them means a different thing. There is the silence that comes with morning in a forest, and this is different from the silence of a sleeping city. There is silence after a rainstorm, and before a rainstorm, and these are not the same. There is the silence of emptiness, the silence of fear, the silence of doubt. There is a certain silence that can emanate from a lifeless object as from a chair lately used, or from a piano with old dust upon its keys, or from anything that has answered to the need of a man, for pleasure or for work. This kind of silence can speak. Its voice may be melancholy, but it is not always so; for the chair may have been left by a laughing child or the last notes of the piano may have been raucous and gay. Whatever the mood or the circumstance, the essence of its quality may linger in the silence that follows. It is a soundless echo."
"Competitors in conquest have overlooked the vital soul of Africa herself, which emanates the true resistance to conquest. The soul is not dead, but silent, the wisdom not lacking, but of such simplicity as to be counted non-existent in the tinker's mind of modern civilization. Africa is of an ancient age and the blood of many of her peoples is as venerable and as chase as truth. What upstart race, sprung from some recent, callow century to arm itself with steel and boastfulness, can match in purity the blood of a single Masai Murani whose heritage may have stemmed not far from Eden? It is not the weed that is corrupt; roots of the weed sucked first life from the genesis of earth and hold the essence of it still. Always the weed returns; the cultured plant retreats before it. Racial purity, true aristocracy, devolve not from edict, nor from rote, but from the preservation of kinship with the elemental forces and purposes of life whose understanding is not far beyond the mind of a Native shepherd than beyond the cultured fumblings of a mortar-bound intelligence.
Whatever happens, armies will continue to rumble, colonies may change masters, and in the face of it all Africa lies, and will lie, like a great, wisely somnolent giant unmolested by the noisy drum-rolling of bickering empires. It is not only a land; it is an entity born of one man's hope and another man's fancy.
So there are many Africas."
( Read more... )
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excerpt from an offhand album review
Jun. 12th, 2008 | 12:20 pm
"he is not afraid of space"
Wow.
Wow.
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leonard cohen
Jun. 11th, 2008 | 09:30 pm
SONG OF PATIENCE
For a lovely instant I thought she would grow mad
and end the reason's fever.
but in her hand she held Christ's splinter,
so I could only laugh and press a warm coin
across her seasoned breasts:
but I remembered clearly then your insane letters
and how you wove initials in my throat.
My friends warn me
that you have read the ocean's old skeleton;
they say you stitch the water sounds
in different mouths, in other monuments.
'Journey with a silver bullet,' they caution.
'Conceal a stake inside your pocket.'
And I must smile as they misconstrue your insane letters
and my embroidered throat.
O I will tell him to love you carefully;
to honour you with shells and coloured bottles;
to keep from your face the falling sand
and from your human arm the time-charred beetle;
to teach you new stories about lightning
and let you run sometimes barefoot on the shore.
And when the needle grins bloodlessly in his cheek
he will come to know how beautiful it is
to be loved by a madwoman.
And I do not gladly wait the years
for the ocean to discover and rust your face
as it has all of history's beacons
that have turned their gold and stone to water's onslaught,
for then your letters too rot with ocean's logic
and my fingernails are long enough
to tear the stitches from my throat.
(from Let Us Compare Mythologies, pp. 30-31)
For a lovely instant I thought she would grow mad
and end the reason's fever.
but in her hand she held Christ's splinter,
so I could only laugh and press a warm coin
across her seasoned breasts:
but I remembered clearly then your insane letters
and how you wove initials in my throat.
My friends warn me
that you have read the ocean's old skeleton;
they say you stitch the water sounds
in different mouths, in other monuments.
'Journey with a silver bullet,' they caution.
'Conceal a stake inside your pocket.'
And I must smile as they misconstrue your insane letters
and my embroidered throat.
O I will tell him to love you carefully;
to honour you with shells and coloured bottles;
to keep from your face the falling sand
and from your human arm the time-charred beetle;
to teach you new stories about lightning
and let you run sometimes barefoot on the shore.
And when the needle grins bloodlessly in his cheek
he will come to know how beautiful it is
to be loved by a madwoman.
And I do not gladly wait the years
for the ocean to discover and rust your face
as it has all of history's beacons
that have turned their gold and stone to water's onslaught,
for then your letters too rot with ocean's logic
and my fingernails are long enough
to tear the stitches from my throat.
(from Let Us Compare Mythologies, pp. 30-31)
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francesca woodman
Jun. 11th, 2008 | 05:53 pm
i think if father time drew back the bow of years & one could see francesca woodman again, she would smell like cypress trees and redskinned indian lakes. and shadows and light. the kind of things her photographs are made of.
woodman is a shadowy character, a kind of a delicate figure whose body has somehow been shoved into the hulk of the world & told to push. i think she would be the type of person to have perfect teeth or horrible teeth but no middle ground. perfect handwriting or awful handwriting.
her photographs are beautiful & one of my best purchases is a book of her photography in new york city at the museum of modern art. it was $100 but it was worth every cent & my mom (who gave me the money) was relieved that i didn't waste it. i think that says a lot about her family. "oh, an art book! i'm glad you got something important!" hah.
but, regardless, i've yet to read the journal section of the book & i really need to do that this summer. i've skimmed through it & they are quite rambling and intherabbithole type soliloquies. a little like her photographs, works of geometry & mathematics, hurriedness and worried sentiment, evaluating space & time in some kind of frenzied physical sphere.
one journal entry i have always particularly liked is as follows:
this isn't any shallow sentiment. it's no hallmark greeting card. to paraphrase dylan, she's 'not talking from a head full of booze'. this is real, this is cowboy art, but it's softer than that. it's the area in which billy the kid has to retreat to every sunday right before breakfast. it has a very human aspect but it's surrealism.
but enough of that. here are some of my favorites of her photos (tho it's hard to pick a favorite & i suggest looking her up to find some good online galleries or purchasing this book).
woodman is a shadowy character, a kind of a delicate figure whose body has somehow been shoved into the hulk of the world & told to push. i think she would be the type of person to have perfect teeth or horrible teeth but no middle ground. perfect handwriting or awful handwriting.
her photographs are beautiful & one of my best purchases is a book of her photography in new york city at the museum of modern art. it was $100 but it was worth every cent & my mom (who gave me the money) was relieved that i didn't waste it. i think that says a lot about her family. "oh, an art book! i'm glad you got something important!" hah.
but, regardless, i've yet to read the journal section of the book & i really need to do that this summer. i've skimmed through it & they are quite rambling and intherabbithole type soliloquies. a little like her photographs, works of geometry & mathematics, hurriedness and worried sentiment, evaluating space & time in some kind of frenzied physical sphere.
one journal entry i have always particularly liked is as follows:
"i am apprehensive. it is like when i played the piano. first i learned to read music and then at one point i no longer needed to translate the notes: they went directly to my hands. After a while i stopped playing and when i started again i found i could not play. i could not play by instinct and i had forgotten how to read music."
this isn't any shallow sentiment. it's no hallmark greeting card. to paraphrase dylan, she's 'not talking from a head full of booze'. this is real, this is cowboy art, but it's softer than that. it's the area in which billy the kid has to retreat to every sunday right before breakfast. it has a very human aspect but it's surrealism.
but enough of that. here are some of my favorites of her photos (tho it's hard to pick a favorite & i suggest looking her up to find some good online galleries or purchasing this book).
( More pictures. )