Today, in a nutshell:
1. Finally found a travel magazine I like.
2. Remembered I should be traveling. Always.
3. Figured that not having any close friends in Philly anymore, coupled with not being close to my family=being able to go wherever/whenever I want.
4. New plan=save $, say my good-byes, and go.
(to be cont’d)
Talking Heads, “Girlfriend is Better”
I … Who took the money?
Who took the money away?
I … It’s always showtime
Here at the edge of the stage
I, I, I, wake up and wonder
What was the place, what was the name?
We wanna wait, but here we go again…
I … takes over slowly
But doesn’t last very long
I … no need to worry
Evr’ything’s under control
O - U - T But no hard feelings
What do you know? Take you away
We’re being taken for a ride again
I got a girlfriend that’s better than that
She has the smoke in her eyes
She’s moving up, going right through my house
She’s ginna give me surprise
Better than this, know that It’s right
I think you can if you like
I git a girlfriend with bows in her hair
And nothing is better than that
Down, down in the basement
We hear the sound of machines
I, I, I’m driving in circles
Come to my senses sometimes
Why, why, why, why start it over?
Nothing was lost, everthing’s free
I don’t care how impossible it seems
Somebody calls you but you cannot hear
Get closer to be far away
Only one look and that’s all that we need
Maybe that’s all that it takes
All that it takes, all that it takes
All that it takes, all that it takes
I got a girlfriend that’s betther than that
And she goes wherever she likes. (there she goes…)
I got a girlfriend that’s better than that
Now everyone’s getting involved
She’s moving up going right through my heart
We might not ever get caught
Going right through (try to stay cool) going through, staying cool
I got a girlfriend that’s better than that
And nothing is better than you
I got a girlfriend thats better that this
And you don’t remember at all
As we get older and stop making sense
You won’t find her waiting long
Stop making sense, stop making sense…stop making sense, making sense
I got a girlfriend that’s better than that
And nothing is better that this
( is it? )
I saw this when I was about 13 years old.
New Order, “Ceremony”
What a beauty.
Fela Kuti & Egypt 80, Bonn-“Beasts of No Nation” (1/2)
I keep finding that people ask me, “If you could listen to/identify with one [musical] artist, who would it be?” And I like to say that it always changes and I think that that’s true for me. However, it could be Fela Kuti. If I was trapped on a desert island, maybe I’d listen to Fela Kuti if I had to choose one. I think I’m okay with that answer.
It’s hard to remember how much I love afro-beat, world-music stuffs nearly best out of any genre. It’s because I don’t have any friends who really listen to that stuff. So it’s not part of my everyday vocabulary. And no one really wants to go to an Afro-beat show. Fools. This stuff kills.
(I just listened to this lovely story. Blown-away. Where has Mr. Loory been all my life? So excited about this guy. Can’t wait to read his stuff.)
“A duck fell in love with a rock. It was a large rock, about the size of a duck actually, that was situated off the bank of the river, a little past the old elm.
Every day after lunch, the duck would saunter off to admire the rock for a while.
“Where are you going?” said the other ducks.
“Nowhere,” said the duck. “Just around.”
But the other ducks knew exactly where he was going. And they all laughed at him behind his back.
“Stupid duck is in love with a rock,” they snickered. “Wonder what kind of ducklings they will have.”
But there was one duck, a girl duck, who did not laugh. She had known the strange duck for a long time and had always found him to be a good and decent bird. She felt sorry for him. It was hard luck to fall in love with a rock. She wanted to help, but what could she do?
She trailed after the duck and watched him woo the rock from behind a tree.
“I love you,” the duck was saying. “I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you more than the stars in the sky. I love you more than the fish in the river. I love you more than, more than—” And there he stopped for he could think of nothing else that existed.
“Life itself?” said the girl duck from behind the tree. She hadn’t meant to pipe up. The words just sort of leapt out of her.
The duck spun around to look at her. He was terrified.
“It’s OK,” said the girl duck, waddling out from behind the tree. “I know you’re in love with the rock. In fact, everyone knows.”
“They do?” said the duck.
“Yes,” said the girl duck. “Yes, they do.”
The duck sighed and sat down on the ground. If he had had hands, he would have buried his head in them.
“What am I going to do?” he said. “What am I going to do?”
“Do?” the girl duck said.
“How can it go on like this?” Said the duck. “I love a thing that can not speak, can not move, can not— I don’t even know how it feels about me.”
The girl duck looked at the rock. She didn’t know what to say.
“I know,” said the duck, “you think I’m crazy. You think it’s just a rock. But it isn’t just a rock. It’s different. It’s very different.” He looked at the rock.
“But something has to happen,” he said, “and soon. Because my heart will break if this goes on much longer.”
That night, the girl duck had a hard time sleeping. She kept paddling around in circles, thinking about the rock, and the duck, and his heart that might break.
She thought long and hard. And before morning, she had an idea. She went and woke up the strange duck.
“Things happen when they must,” she said, as if it were an extremely meaningful statement.
“So?” said the duck.
“So I have a plan,” said the girl duck, “and I think that it will work.”
“Well, what is it?” said the duck, nearly bursting with excitement.
“We will need help,” said the girl duck. “And it will take some time. And also, we will need a cliff.”
Two days later they set out. It took four ducks to carry the rock. They worked in teams and traded off every 15 minutes.
Everyone joined in, even though they laughed, for ducks are all brothers when it comes right down to it.
“The cliff is over that hill and then quite a ways to the south,” said the most elderly duck. “I remember flying over it when I was fledgling. It looked like the edge of the world.”
The ducks trudged on under their rocky weight for hours. For hours, and then for days.
At night, they camped under hedges and strange trees, and ate beetles and frogs.
“Do you think it will be much farther?” said one of the ducks.
“Maybe,” said the old duck. “My memory is not so good anymore.”
On the sixth day, the ducks began to tire.
“I don’t believe there is a cliff,” said one of them.
“Me neither,” said another. “I think the old duck is crazy.”
“My back hurts,” said a third duck. “I want to go home.”
“Me too,” said a fourth. “In fact, I’m going to.”
And then, all the ducks began to turn for home. The rock fell to the forest floor and lay there. The strange duck looked imploringly at the girl duck.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t leave you.”
They watched all the other ducks flee homeward. And then they hoisted the rock onto their backs and trudged on.
“What do you think will happen when we throw it off the cliff?” said the duck.
“I don’t know,” said the girl duck. “I just know it will be something.”
Finally, they came to the edge of the cliff. The drop-off was so great they couldn’t see the ground. Just great white clouds spread out before them, like an endless, rolling cotton blanket.
“It looks so soft,” said the duck.
“Yes, it does,” said the girl duck. “Are you ready?”
The duck looked at the rock.
“This is it, my love,” he said, “the moment of truth. And whatever happens, please remember, always remember, I love you.”
And the two ducks hurled the rock off the cliff together.
At first the rock simply fell “like a rock,” one might say. “Like a stone.” But then something began to happen.
It began to slow. It began to grow. It began to change. It narrowed. It elongated. And it also spread sideways.
“It’s becoming a bird,” the girl duck said.
And it was. It was becoming a beautiful gray bird, really not that unlike a duck. Its wings began to move slowly up and down, up and down. And it dove down, and then coasted up. It looked back over its shoulder at the two ducks on the cliff, and it called out just once, “Good bye.”
And then it was going, going, getting smaller and smaller, flying off over the blanket across the sky.
When they reached the pond, the other ducks gathered around and clamored to hear what had happened. The duck and the girl duck glanced at each other.
“Nothing,” said the girl duck. “It fell.”
In the days that followed, the duck stayed to himself. The girl duck went and swan around in circles. She thought about that rocky bird flying off into the sky. She saw it over and over in her mind.
And then one day, not too many days later, she looked and saw the duck come swimming up. He was carrying a small salamander in his bill.
“For me?” the girl duck said.
And the duck smiled.”
John Maus, “Hey Moon”
This is so beautiful.
“They wandered toward the south, idly, listelessly. The days were a gorgeous, golden processional, good and warm with sunshine, and languorous. There were ten, twelve, twenty such days when the earth, sky, wind and water, light and color and sun, and men’s souls and their senses and the odor and breath of animals mingled and melted into the harmony of a joyful existence.
They wandered toward the south; the two vagabonds and the boy. He felt as if he had been transplanted into another sphere, into a native element from which he had all along been excluded. The sight of the country was beautiful to him and his whole being expanded in the space and splendor of it. He liked the scent of the earth and the dry, rotting leaves, the sound of snapping twigs and branches, and the shrill songs of birds. He liked the feel of the soft, springy turf beneath his feet when he walked, or of the rolling pebbles when he mounted a stony hillside.
”
“The comfortable rhythm of this life had already cast its spell over him; he was soon enticed by the ease, the mild splendor, of his program. Indeed, what a place to be in, when the usual allurement of living in watering places on southern shores was coupled with the immediate nearness of the most wonderful of all cities! Aschenbach was not a lover of pleasure. Whenever there was some call for him to take a holiday, to indulge himself, to have a good time–and this was especially true at an earlier age–relentlessness and repugnance soon drove him back to his rigorous toil, the faithful sober efforts of his daily routine. Except that this place was bewitching him, relaxing his will, making him happy. In the mornings, under the shelter of his bathing house, letting his eyes roam dreamily in the blue of the southern sea; or on warm night as he lay back against the cushions of the gondola carrying him under the broad starry sky home to the Lido from the Piazza di San Marco after long hours of idleness–and the brilliant lights, the melting notes of the serenade were being left behind–he often recalled his place in the mountains, the scene of his battles in the summer, where the clouds blew low across his garden, and terrifying storms put out his lamps at night, and the crows which he fed were swinging in the tops of the pine trees. Then everything seemed just right to him, as though he were lifted into the Elysian fields, on the borders of the earth, where man enjoys the easiest life, where there is no snow or winter, nor storms and pouring rains, but where Oceanus continually sends forth gentle cooling breezes, and the days pass by in a blessed inactivity, without work, without effort, devoted wholly to the sun and to the feast days of the sun.”
from www.johnsingersargent.org
John Singer-Sargent Val d’Aosta
The first painting I knew by John Singer-Sargent was El Jaleo and I loved it. Sometimes I forget about him as I remember my favorite painters. That’s foolish and needs to stop.
Without sounding too pretentious, I just want to mention that his lighting kills. I always feel a warm glow from his work like I’m basking in a pool of sunlit skies and impressionistic goodness. That’s a good place to be.
“The experiences of a man who lives alone and in silence are both vaguer and more penetrating than those of people in society; his thoughts are heavier, more odd, and touched always with melancholy. Images and observations which could easily be disposed of by a glance, a smile, an exchange of opinion, will occupy him unbearably, sink deeply into the silence, become full of meaning, become life, adventure, emotion. Loneliness ripens the eccentric, the daringly and estrangingly beautiful, the poetic. But loneliness also ripens the perverse, the disproportionate, the absurd, and the illicit.”
This stuff is beautiful!!
View more beautiful imagesby Gabriel Dawe
Title: Georg Christoph Lichtenber
“Even as it applies to the individual, art is a heightened mode of existence. It gives deeper pleasures, it consumes more quickly. It carves into its servants’ faces the marks of imaginary and spiritual adventures and though their external activities may be as quiet as a cloister, it produces a lasting voluptuousness, over-refinement, fatigue, and curiosity of the nerves such as can barely result from a life filled with illicit passions and enjoyments.”
“Looking into this fictional world, one saw: a delicate self-mastery by which any inner deterioration, any biological decay was kept concealed from the eyes of the world; a crude, vicious sensuality capable of fanning its rising passions into pure flame, yes even of mounting to dominance in the realm of beauty; a pallid weakness which draws from the glowing depths of the soul the strength to bow whole arrogant peoples before the foot of the cross, or before the feet of weakness itself; a charming manner maintained in his cold, strict service to form; a false, precarious mode of living, and the keenly enervating melancholy and artifice of the born deceiver–to observe such trials as this was enough to make one question whether there really was any heroism other than weakness.”
John Singer-Sargent, “The Chess Game”
Beautiful.
