"...the splitting itself I do not apologize for. It is a tactic-a necessity-born from the horrors of the times. And better by far a splitting-an admission of the 'political' and the 'aesthetic' as at present the torn halves of a totality...than the alternative currently on offer in so much of the left academy. Which is to say, a constant cursory hauling of visual (and verbal) images before the court of political judgment"
"I was a writer about painting, and therefore inevitably looking for an incident, an interruption in the visual fabric, on which words could fasten and begin."
"I approve of luminous concreteness. Something in me flinches from the glamor of always probing deeper as looker...One part of me goes to paintings precisely for their self sufficiency, their removal from the world of wishes. "
"astonishing things happen if one gives oneself over to the process of seeing again and again...and slowly the question arises: What is it, fundamentally, I am returning to in this particular case? What is it I want to see again?"
"Can it be that there are certain kinds of visual configuration, or incident, or play of analogy, that simply cannot be retained in the memory, or fully integrated into a disposable narrative of interpretation; so that only the physical, literal, dumb act of receiving the array on the retina will satisfy the mind?"
"Don't we go back to it because we sense that in it is re-enacted a death or terror we would all like to experience again in this harmless, ordered, palliative mode?"
"I want the whole record of reptition-compulsion"
"one kind of corrective to dogma is looking itself, pursued long enough."
"Aren't there plenty of moments in life that, whether they last or not, have enough permanence about them to stand for things as they are, things as the mind conceives them-and not just to stand for them notionally?"
"How does a momentary stopping of an action, or state of the weather-come to speak to structure or persistence? What features of the momentary can be frozen without forcing?"
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Friday, June 11, 2010
Hitch 22
The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews,
Not to be born is the best for man;
The second-best is a formal order,
The dance's pattern; dance while you can.
Dance, dancefor the figure is easy,
The tune is catching and will not stop;
Dance till the stars come down from the rafters;
Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
-Auden
We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of the Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.
-Richard Dawkins Unweaving the Rainbow
"Until you have done something for humanity, you should be ashamed to die." Well, how is one to stand that test?
nothing reminds one of impending extinction more than the growth of ones own children, for whom room must be made, and who are in fact one's only hint of even a tincture of a hope of immortality.
I personally want to 'do' death in the active and not the passive, and to be there to look it in the eye and be doing something when it comes for me.
the fear of death distresses me- and I would not trust anyone who had not felt something like it
...if you felt strong enough about somebody and learned to take their desires, too, into account, the resulting mutuality and reciprocity would be much more than merely worthwhile.
alcohol for me has been an aspect of my optimisn
"Finally, brethren, whasoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think of these things."
if you have to try to persuade yourself of something, you are probably already very much inclined to doubt or distrust it.
Not to be born is the best for man;
The second-best is a formal order,
The dance's pattern; dance while you can.
Dance, dancefor the figure is easy,
The tune is catching and will not stop;
Dance till the stars come down from the rafters;
Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
-Auden
We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of the Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.
-Richard Dawkins Unweaving the Rainbow
"Until you have done something for humanity, you should be ashamed to die." Well, how is one to stand that test?
nothing reminds one of impending extinction more than the growth of ones own children, for whom room must be made, and who are in fact one's only hint of even a tincture of a hope of immortality.
I personally want to 'do' death in the active and not the passive, and to be there to look it in the eye and be doing something when it comes for me.
the fear of death distresses me- and I would not trust anyone who had not felt something like it
...if you felt strong enough about somebody and learned to take their desires, too, into account, the resulting mutuality and reciprocity would be much more than merely worthwhile.
alcohol for me has been an aspect of my optimisn
"Finally, brethren, whasoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think of these things."
if you have to try to persuade yourself of something, you are probably already very much inclined to doubt or distrust it.
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