Good Old Charlie

Simic Says:

Don’t forget sausages sautéed with potatoes and onions! It’s also highly advisable to have a philosopher or two on hand. A few pages of Plato while working on a baked ham. Wittgenstein’s Tractatus over a bowl of spaghetti with littleneck clams. We think best when we bring opposites together, when we realize that all these realities, one inside the other, are somehow connected. That’s how the wonder and amazement that are so necessary to both poetry and philosophy come about. A “truth” detached and purified of pleasures of ordinary life is not worth a damn in my view. Every grand theory and noble sentiment ought to be first tested in the kitchen—and then in bed, of course.

--Paris Review interview, spring 2005

two new old ones

Here are two painters I've recently discovered. The first is Joseph Solman, who only recently died, and was part of the school that came up around Jackson Pollack et all (though he was much less well known), and the second is Elliott Daingerfeild, who worked in the late nineteenth, early twentieth century. The first two pieces are called "Studio Interior," and "Easel and Mirror." The Daingefeild is called "Moon Rising over Fog Clouds."

a song for me?

you shouldn't have

Viva

here's a portrait by Diane Arbus of Warhol factory star Viva, who was a writer/film star/personality of the seventies, and was actually totally crazy. She lives in Florida now, painting landscapes, I guess, but this picture is still awesome.

wow

choices

More than two dozen vandals
who hosted a party inside Robert Frost's former home were
ordered to take a class on his poetry, taught by Frost's
biographer. "This is where Frost is relevant," Jay Parini
said to the class, speaking about Frost's poem "The Road
Not Taken." "You come to a path in the woods where you can
say, 'Shall I go to this party and get drunk out of my
mind?' Everything in life is choices."
--Harper's

wow

Tropic of Cancer was great but this is a-ma-zing

It's Like That

Albert (E.) says: Dancers are the athletes of God.

zines are weird

here is an odd web-zine I came across recently. I have no idea what, exactly, it is about, but it seems to focus on doodling and primitivism....eclectic

www.socialfiction.org

leggo my eggleston

Snooping around at my new place of work, came across some stuff by photographer William Eggleston. I really like his work. Also, um, I have found my doppleganger...see the last picture. Freaky, right?

this is just to say

i hope i am not sullying the content of this blog in posting this video, but this is too good not to. I feel that it is, in some way, wrong to say "I want to be this," and yet...

battle of the fishes

Andre Masson was an artist in the early 20th century, whose work was of the surrealist school, and marked by the use of automatic drawing. The top one, my fave, is called battle of the fishes, and evokes an undersea environment through vague doodling, without any actual representational forms. The colors are great, and it reminds me of embroidery. I like it a lot.

My Kind of Man

I wish I had a time machine, so that I could go to this concert. Neil Young is grunge with soul.

I Love Libraries

So I've recently decided that part of my life's work will be to tour the world's most beautiful libraries. This one, La Biblioteca de la Real Academia de la Lengua, in Madrid, would be a good place to start. Here is a url for more awesome libraries, from a great travel blog called Curious Expeditions: http://curiousexpeditions.org/?p=78

Kiss Me Kees

Thought the blog was looking a little drab, so naturally I turned to my friends, the Fauves. I actually don't really like most fauvist art, but Kees van Dongen made some wonderful portraits. Kees was a dutch painter who began exhibiting in Paris in the early 20th century. I put two of my faves above; you can tell he's a sartorialist at heart.

Oh No

Researchers in Virginia found that due to
pollution the scent of flowers, which could travel up to
4,000 feet during the nineteenth century, now travels not
even a quarter of that distance

pretty surreal

Here is a short film by a Czech surrealist filmmaker named Jan Švankmajer. He works a lot with claymation and puppetry, though this one (probably my favorite) features niether...I guess you would call this stop-motion demolition animation, or something. The short is called "Johann Sebastian Bach: Fantasy in G minor," and was released in 1965...think of it as a sort of updated Fantasia. Watch this through to the end, it's totally worth it.

A Glove!

Here's a couple of images from a series of etchings done by a Belgian symbolist artist named Max Klinger. The series, published in 1881, is called "Ein Handusch" (or: A Glove), and is all about losing and finding a glove. Cool.

All I Want is a Silver Plated Tortoise

For more, see Huysmans' "Against Nature"

yard of blonde girls, micah p hinson covering jeff buckley

the animation is a little odd but this is one of the most beautiful songs i have ever heard.