lil OftenBen I was born to do the damn thing etc. No shoutouts shoutouts are annoying #followthetag
“I pray you, in your letters,
When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice. Then must you speak
Of one that loved not wisely but too well….” “Love casts out fear; but conversely fear casts out love. And not only love. Fear also casts out intelligence, casts out goodness, casts out all thought of beauty and truth. What remains in the dumb or studiedly jocular desperation of one who is aware of the obscene Presence in the corner of the room and knows that the door is locked, that there aren’t any windows. And now the thing bears down on him. He feels a hand on his sleeve, smells a stinking breath, as the executioner’s assistant leans almost amorously toward him. “Your turn next, brother. Kindly step this way.” And in an instant his quiet terror is transmuted into a frenzy as violent as it is futile. There is no longer a man among his fellow men, no longer a rational being speaking articulately to other rational beings; there is only a lacerated animal, screaming and struggling in the trap. For in the end fear casts out even a man’s humanity. And fear, my good friends, fear is the very basis and foundation of modern life. Fear of the much touted technology which, while it raises our standard of living, increases the probability of our violently dying. Fear of the science which takes away the one hand even more than what it so profusely gives with the other. Fear of the demonstrably fatal institutions for while, in our suicidal loyalty, we are ready to kill and die. Fear of the Great Men whom we have raised, and by popular acclaim, to a power which they use, inevitably, to murder and enslave us. Fear of the war we don’t want yet do everything we can to bring about.” Ape and Essence (1948) - Aldus Huxley
Yay! Quotes Porn! I was reading the obituary of the legendary flute player, Paul Horn. Inside the Taj Mahal was the album for meditation or yoga poses back in the day. Paul Horn's story is fascinating, but the lines that stood out were his comments about Miles Davis: “He doesn’t make notes unless he has something to say. Then he speaks true, and he sings out.”
Those lines spoke to me. I wish human speech could be like Miles Davis jazz. After listening to Paul Horn, I think I'll find me some Miles Davis.
*There's some controversy as to whether or not Ladinsky's work can even be called "translation" - he claims to capture the essence of Hafiz's poetry, but in doing so, often abandons the literal meanings of Hafiz's words. Even After All this time The sun never says to the earth, "You owe Me." Look What happens With a love like that, It lights the Whole
- Hafiz (as interpreted by Daniel Ladinsky*), The Gift Sky.
-Excerpt from "The Kingfisher," by Mary Oliver. It's in an anthology of poetry curated by Czeslaw Milosz, A Book Of Luminous Things. Well worth checking out if you can. "...I think this is
The prettiest world--so long as you don't mind
a little dying, how could there be a day in your whole life
that doesn't have its little splash of happiness?"
Neat thing about that passage, which is not even my favorite from the play but is certainly beautiful (esp. in person) -- is that I actually cut it off mid-paragraph, and it's not a soliloquy even though it reads like one. Both somewhat odd choices I think. And it's from a5s2, which has itself a famous soliloquy earlier ... "So sweet was ne'er so fatal" EDIT: what I mean by 'reads like one' is that if you replaced a couple of words it could easily come off as a plea to the audience or to god not to judge him overharshly.
-Kurt Vonnegut's "Mother Night" Another snippet of Vonnegut as I work my way through all of his work :p“There are plenty of good reasons for fighting...but no good reason to ever hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It's that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive....it's that part of an imbecile that punishes and vilifies and makes war gladly.”
- Chris Harman, A People's History of the WorldThe emergence of civilisation is usually thought of as one of the great steps forward in human history – indeed, as the step that separates history from prehistory. But it was accompanied wherever it happened by other, negative changes: by the development for the first time of class divisions, with a privileged minority living off the labour of everyone else, and by the setting up of bodies of armed men, of soldiers and secret police – in other words, a state machine – so as to enforce this minority’s rule on the rest of society.
Bit late on this one, considering the next thread should be posted today if it's on schedule, but here goes: ― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five “Trout, incidentally, had written a book about a money tree. It had twenty-dollar bills for leaves. Its flowers were government bonds. Its fruit was diamonds. It attracted human beings who killed each other around the roots and made very good fertilizer.”
"That's dumber than tits on a man." The Undead Pool by Kim Harrison My new favorite snark.
- Bill Pullman (Independence Day) - Will Smith (Independence Day) Good morning. In less than an hour, aircraft from here will join others from around the world. And you will be launching the largest aerial battle in the history of mankind. "Mankind." That word should have new meaning for all of us today. We can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests. Perhaps it's fate that today is the Fourth of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom... Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution... but from annihilation. We are fighting for our right to live. To exist. And should we win the day, the Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day the world declared in one voice: "We will not go quietly into the night!" We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We're going to survive! Today we celebrate our Independence Day!
THAT'S RIGHT! THAT'S RIGHT! That's what you get! Look at you, ship all banged up! Who's the man? Huh? Who's the man? Wait till I get another plane! I'm-a line all your friends up right beside you!
Eighteen minutes in, venue management flipped on the houselights. Six minutes later they cut the power. Later that night, an Ace Tone disappeared from the band's gear. Excerpt from big day coming: Yo La Tengo and the Rise of Indie Rock."It was the most beautiful, quiet fuck-you you ever heard," Garner remembered. "They don't cotton to being taken advantage of by anyone, and it's part of their wisdom to take it out musically. They're fierce when they get screwed over. They do not put up with that nonsense. I love that about them."
They were at a show in Seattle in '95 and "the club were just dicks to us, all night long, fighting us every step of the way...". When they got off for their between their main set and encore, security and the club was ready to call it a night but the band and fans weren't. They ended up going on stage for an encore performance of the song Speeding Motorcycle and played it and kept playing it because they were pissed off.
Yep. There's nothing brilliant or extraordinary about it, and it won't be profound to most people but I took a lot out of that passage and the book as a whole. It's changed how I look at music and especially how I look at the music I want to write, review, and take in.