[Pause. Do.]

Thoreau's Journal, August 20th, 1851

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 23:11:44 -0800

“The Rhexia Virginica is a showy flower at present.

How copious and precise the botanical language to describe the leaves, as well as the other parts of a plant! Botany is worth studying if only for the precision of its terms,—to learn the value of words and of system. It is wonderful how much pains has been taken to describe a flower’s leaf, compared for instance with the care that is taken in describing a pscyhological fact. Suppose as much ingenuity (perhaps it would be needless) in making a language to express the sentiments! We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf in the field, or at least to distinguish it from each other, but not to describe a human character.”

(Image from here)

I have been rereading bits of Laszlo Krasznahorkai’s War & War, mainly the ending...

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 01:49:19 -0800

I have been rereading bits of Laszlo Krasznahorkai’s War & War, mainly the ending passages, but I have also been flipping through the rest, with the intent of excerpting some of the fervidly marked bits (“…we are not obliged to do anything except to comprehend that the appropriateness of the one great universal process of thinking is not predicated on it being correct, for there was nothing to compare it with, nothing but its own beauty, and it was its beauty that gave us confidence in its truth”) with enough context (which that quote entirely lacks, as the tense issues should reveal) for them to make the same sense here as they do in the book. But I cannot seem to do that.

invisiblestories: “What we need to question is bricks, concrete, glass, our table manners, our...

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 01:30:01 -0800

invisiblestories:

“What we need to question is bricks, concrete, glass, our table manners, our utensils, our tools, the way we spend our time, our rhythms. To question that which seems to have ceased forever to astonish us. We live, true, we breathe, true; we walk, we go downstairs, we sit at a table in order to eat, we lie down on a bed on order to sleep. How? Where? When? Why?

Describe your street. Describe another. Compare.”

- Georges Perec

"Our unhappiness is by no means something that we have been talked into, like our happiness, which we..."

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 22:40:00 -0800

“Our unhappiness is by no means something that we have been talked into, like our happiness, which we daily talk ourselves into in order merely to [summon up] the courage to get up and wash ourselves, to get dressed, to take that first sip, swallow that first bite.”

- Thomas Bernhard, from “Montaigne” tr. Douglas Robertson (via hypocrite-lecteur)

Drake's Diary: Sixteen Stylish Maxims for the New Year

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 13:21:43 -0800

Drake's Diary: Sixteen Stylish Maxims for the New Year:

drakes-london:

Sixteen Stylish Maxims for the New Year

Style and taste are a particular sort of intelligence, and vice versa.

Aesthetic judgments rarely transcend the culture of the judge.

The style of studied nonchalance is the psychological triumph of grace over order.

Style is a simple way of saying complicated things. Which is why Fashion is shallow, but taste is deep.

There’s no right or wrong about style. Like a poem, it simply is what it is.

Real luxury is understanding quality, and having the time to enjoy it.

In the end, aesthetic judgments are perhaps merely enthusiasms.

In matters of taste, if you can see the trees well enough, you don’t have to see the forest.

To consciously avoid fashion is in itself a fashion.

Today tradition is commercially merely another commodity. As is History.

In a world of plentiful choices, taste is the hallmark of restraint.

Luxury may be, as Balzac says, less expensive than elegance. But both are less expensive than fashion.

Uniforms both include and exclude.

Taste is one of those human concerns in which a lack of experience is no hindrance to opinion.

Precision in dress is the neurotic refuge of the perpetually insecure.

Deliberate nonchalance is intended to imply a strength held in reserve.

bookshelfporn: There organizing bookshelves keep track of which...

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 18:13:15 -0800

bookshelfporn:

There organizing bookshelves keep track of which books you’ve read and which ones you haven’t. Perfect for New Year Resolutions these could be that extra push you need to get through those books you’ve been meaning to read. (via 9bytz)

I just want the “Will be read…” part, really…

Tuning the Sleeping machine -David Sherman (13 mins.) (Watch in...

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 18:06:17 -0800

Tuning the Sleeping machine

-David Sherman

(13 mins.)

(Watch in the dark, with headphones.)

exploration-exposition: see this. Wow.

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 13:49:30 -0800

exploration-exposition:

see this.

Wow.

Interesting and flamboyant are two different things. If this gentlemen was not posing for maximum exposure, I highly doubt that his "partly undone working cuffs, and polka dots" would be all that noticeable. Also, dull and interesting are relative terms that are subject to the evaluator's perspective - if you were to compare this man with to typical CBD (conservative business dress), then yes, he is flamboyant. But let's be real... Andre 3000 is trending #menswear (#3), this is an improvement.

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 19:07:09 -0800

That… was my point? Whether something is dull or interesting is indeed relative and subjective, but even within #mesnwear, though this fit isn’t Andre 3000, it also isn’t tame. But my point was that outside of menswear, this is pretty flamboyant. It is self-consciously, conspicuously au courant, working button cuffs aside. A flashy, trending color, color-matched across two conspicuous, three total items? Peak lapels? However much I admire the outfit, if I saw this guy walking down the street, my first thought wouldn’t be “that guy’s well-dressed”; it would be “that guy reads #menswear,” and then it would be “Nice job doing #menswear.”

I admit phrasing might have been a bit catty, but I meant no disrespect; your blog’s first-rate. I was just offering a view from someone on the street, and San Francisco’s streets have their own fair share of flamboyance.

exploration-exposition: Maya Deren - A Study in Choreography...

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 21:26:33 -0800

exploration-exposition:

Maya Deren - A Study in Choreography for Camera

bespokenn: An excellent shot by Scott “The Sartorialist”...

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 21:20:11 -0800

bespokenn:

An excellent shot by Scott “The Sartorialist” Schuman showcasing all the colours that a man really needs, and proving that one can look interesting without being flamboyant.

Only in the internet is an outfit consisting of pinrolled pants, an airforce blue, peak-lapel sport coat with what looks like partly undone working cuffs, and polka dots on your shirt and socks that match your coat, not considered flamboyant. You say so much that is right, Bespokenn, but… really?

"Verily I am the creature of circumstances. Here I have swallowed an indispensable tooth, and so am..."

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 06:30:25 -0800

“Verily I am the creature of circumstances. Here I have swallowed an indispensable tooth, and so am no whole man, but a lame and halting piece of manhood. I am conscious of no gap in my soul, but it would seem that, now the entrance to the oracle has been enlarged, the more rare and commonplace the responses that issue from it. I have felt cheap, and hardly dared hold up my head among men, ever since this accident happened. Nothing can I do as well and freely as before; nothing do I undertake but I am hindered and balked by this circumstance. Virtue and Truth go undefended, and Falsehood and Affectation are thrown in my teeth,—though I am toothless. But let the lame man shake his leg, and match himself with the fleetest in the race. So shall he do what is in him to do. But let him who has lost a tooth open his mouth wide and gabble, lisp and sputter never so resolutely.”

- H. D. Thoreau, aged 20, Journals, Aug. 27, 1838 (from the NYRB Searls edition)

A Dissertation on Alchemy (1937)

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 03:01:55 -0800

When you search the indexes of art books for the name “Kadish, Reuben,” they usually point you to quotes from interviews with him. The Archives of American Art has two long interviews, one from 1964 and one from 1992, just before his death. They focus on his involvement in the art scenes of the era, mostly in San Francisco, but also briefly in New York, Los Angeles, Mexico, and elsewhere. The quotes you find aren’t about himself or his art, though. They’re about people he knew, like Pollock. Even the journal articles which feature him are usually about a few murals painted with an artist name Phillip Goldstein. The two worked on a mural in LA that the police destroyed. David Siquieros invited them to Mexico to paint one there. Another one still exists at a tuberculosis hospital in Duarte, CA. Then Phillip Goldstein changed his name to Philip Guston, moved to New York, became an abstract expressionist, and for a very long time denied having had much to do with any of those murals. Around the time he made the unexpected, what-you-know-him-for-now return to “figurative” works, he began to acknowledge them again. The KKK hoods, ubiquitous in his later work—and in the commentary on it—appear in the Mexico mural, too.

Kadish stayed in San Francisco, directing the local Murals project for the WPA. One of the murals he himself painted during that time is “A Dissertation on Alchemy,” in what was then the Chemistry wing of the California Teacher’s College. It’s a bizarre blend of de Chirico-esque surrealism and WPA-style bombast. While he painted it, “he was forced to post a written explanation of what he was doing for the benefit of the professors.”

It was finished in 1937, in a building that is now part of an unused UC Campus. Redevelopment of the site is in the planning stages, and the buliding may or may not be torn down soon, but it has been abandoned for several years and, like most abandoned building in San Francisco, thoroughly squatted and tagged. Outside, a large, rotating mural wraps around the corner of the wall attached to it, at the Haight and Laguna intersection. Inside, chalkboards are ripped from walls, doors are broken off, a few rooms have trash, clothes, discarded needles, and other detritus, and tags are scribbled up and down the hallways, across lockers, and on windows. Except for Kadish’s mural. Apart from the one pockmark over the alchemist’s shoulder, it remains untouched.

(Pictures from The Living New Deal Project.)

Art + Menswear. It should never be this good. Way to dress like...

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 22:16:34 -0700

Art + Menswear. It should never be this good.

Way to dress like it’s 2011, Egon. Pretty sure I need to steal this look. Or at least submit it nerd boyfriend.

daaramlikes:

Egon Schiele-Photography by Johannes Fischer-1918

Retouched, reframed and edited by myself

Olivier Daaram Jollant-08/2011

A House and Its Head by Ivy Compton-Burnett

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 18:34:34 -0800

“Well, Nance, you have condescended to join us?”

“If that is the word you use, Father. I felt simply that I was joining you.” Nance embraced her mother and went to her seat, obeying the unrecognized family law, that the father should not receive a morning salute. “I have never taken my place before such a pile of gifts. Do I fall upon them, or wait for those who delay longer than I?”

“Have we waited for you?”

“I observed you had, Father, was indeed struck by it. But was the process congenial enough to be emulated?”

"In Japan the fear of being led astray by an untrustworthy spirit-fox is so pervasive that a set of..."

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 16:35:44 -0800

“In Japan the fear of being led astray by an untrustworthy spirit-fox is so pervasive that a set of social conventions has arisen by which people can assure one another of their humanness. In telephone conversations such assurances are especially important, since the two parties cannot see each other and have to rely entirely on verbal codes. One convention has it that foxes cannot pronounce certain sounds in human speech, such as the phrase ‘moshi moshi,’ which has come to be the standard telephone greeting and has no real meaning beyond demonstrating that the speaker can make non-vulpine sounds. In effect, then, the greeting means ‘rest assured that you are not speaking to a spirit-fox who might trick you.’”

- (via somethingchanged)

seedy: Samuel Beckett BBC Radio Plays

Fri, 26 Nov 2010 11:09:33 -0800

seedy: Samuel Beckett BBC Radio Plays:

c-d:

Download

1. A Piece of Monologue (UK, 1986)
BBC Radio Cast: Ronald Pickup

2. Cascando (UK, 1964)
BBC Radio Directed by: Donald McWhinnie Cast: Denys Hawthorne, Patrick Magee Music composed by Marcel Mihalovici

3. Cascando (Ireland, 1991)
RTE Radio Directed by: William Styles Cast: Bosco…

The Infinite Conversation: As You Begin to Lose Your Characteristics One by One

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 15:17:07 -0800

The Infinite Conversation: As You Begin to Lose Your Characteristics One by One:

theinfiniteconversation:

What was once before you - an exciting, mysterious future - is now behind you. Lived; understood; disappointing. You realize you are not special. You have struggled into existence, and are now slipping silently out of it. This is everyone’s experience. Every single one. The specifics hardly…

A paragraph from William H. Gass's 'Emerson and the Essay'

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 22:06:32 -0700

Nature, indeed, is prodigal to the point of embarrassment, filling the air, the deepest reaches of the sea, the whole earth, with seed. Both men and nature select by means of increase and cancel. We take many snaps and hope for a good shot. Burton and Bunyan go on and on in search of virtue and a fine line. The rice we toss at the bride of course resembles the teeming hurray of sperm the groom will soon send after it. We replace the precision of the bow with the spray of the machine gun. We rain down bombs and hope something will die. The vey word ‘nature’ becomes protean, accepting every meaning like a vase’s indifferently yawning mouth. A possibility seems barely conceived and it is realized somewhere, in some tub or plot or community; for what wave has not been ordered out of the sea by now, and the beach felt its special fall; what thought, what untidy passion, what inane or selfless desire, what quik, what constancy, has not been bitterly or beautifully expressed by this time in the long ranom life of the world? and Emerson’s comfort could have come from that, and sometimes did so (“Man feels the blood of thousands in his body and his heart pumps the sap of all this forest of vegetation through his arteries…”); but the method is also wasteful and reckless and chancy and insecure, like America itself, once the Great Experiment and now just a child’s play (“it runs to leaves, to suckers, to tendrils, to miscellany”); and what personal satisfaction can be derived from being a genius when that only means you were a lucky pull on the lsots, a brief shower of change? so in one mood Emerson is ready to set himself against Nature, making himself up like a poem (all artifice and calculation), while in another he would grow tall with the implacable instinct of the oak; yet “our moods do not believe in each other,” our moods merely watercolor the world; they will wash out.

from Walden

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 17:12:57 -0700

“Not long since I was present at the auction of a deacon’s effects, for his life had not been ineffectual: —

‘The evil that mean do lives after them.’

As usual, a great proportion was trumpery which had begun to accumulate in his father’s day. Among the rest was a dried tapeworm. And now, after lying half a century in his garret and other dust holes, these things were not burned; instead of a bonfire, or purifying destruction of them, there was an auction, or increasing of them. The neighbors eagerly collected to view them, bought them all, and carefully transported them to their garrets and dust holes, to lie there till their estates are settled, when they will start again. When a man dies he kicks the dust.”