art and audience

"Art is not a means to an end; it contains its own ends. It is one of the principal means, in our view, by which human beings gain their bearings in the world. It has an objective, truthful content. Profound artistic images reflect the world, in their own manner, just as accurately as scientific axioms. Art grasps the world in the form of images. The present-day postmodernist or left academic dismisses this objective, 'universal' element in favor of a cheap, flabby relativism." David Walsh

* * *

"And it is to be noted that it is the fact that Art is this intense form of Individualism that makes the public try to exercise over it an authority that is as immoral as it is ridiculous, and as corrupting as it is contemptible. It is not quite their fault. The public have always, and in every age, been badly brought up. They are continually asking Art to be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd vanity, to tell them what they have been told before, to show them what they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy after eating too much, and to distract their thoughts when they are wearied of their own stupidity. Now Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic." Oscar Wilde

happy thanksgiving

I lay in bed trying to read. My sister, completely nude and jogging in slow-motion, enters: "When am I going to do your dumplings?"
"When you put some f***ing clothes on!"
She laughs her beastly laugh and jogs out to shower.

Five minutes later, F returns home and enters my room. I look at him and say, "Your woman is disgusting."
"Was she exercising in front of you in the nude?"
"How did you know that?"
"She did the same thing to Judy earlier this morning."

I'm ready to go home now.

drinking black tea and excreting a frightful falafel green. how was your day?

Waking up intentionally displaced - a cup of Trix contradicts childhood memories - disappointment in a skip - five hour drive - a quarter of a pumpkin pie a la freezer a la Judy - I feel sick - more time in car - the bickering in lieu of music - notification of probation - the onset of bad television hardly covered by a coat or the need for a haircut.

While bonding (or not rather):

Use Your Illusions - Slavoj Žižek

"The paradigmatic cynic tells you confidentially: ‘But don’t you see that it is all really about money/power/sex, that professions of principle or value are just empty phrases which count for nothing?’ What the cynics don’t see is their own naivety, the naivety of their cynical wisdom which ignores the power of illusions."

A rare 1978 interview with 16 year old Antoine Monnier about his experiences making Robert Bresson's 'The Devil Probably' (1977)

"Death and suffering can be terrible when they are the only way of expressing the strong feelings you have. Bresson does not show all the blood and everything, he tried to reveal beauty. So the death is very pure." Monnier on The Devil, Probably

Kroot orbits Planet Kuchar

Back to Bazin Parts 1, 2, 3

And to make myself thoroughly sick, if not amused, before bed:
80 Optical Illusions & Visual Phenomena

it is done.

Work can resume now.
Goodies are set to arrive on Tuesday.
In the meantime, I am re-learning how to read.

I miss my cafe.

* * *

"In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners,
it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners. " AC

sifting

"People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have. For example, the freedom of thought. Instead they demand freedom of speech as a compensation." SK

potential and apprehension

"A pawn on the political chessboard, his value is in his position; with fair effort, we may soon change him for knight, bishop, or queen, and sweep the board. This position he owes to no merit of his own, but to lives that have roused the nation's conscience, and deeds that have ploughed deep into its heart. Our childish eyes gazed with wonder at Maelzel's chess-player, and the pulse almost stopped when, with the pulling of wires and creaking of wheels, he moved a pawn, and said, 'Check!' Our wiser fathers saw a man in the box." Wendell Phillips

Who will we let that "man in the box" be?

hiatus

No more blogging and stuff until I finish a specific task, which could take few more weeks.