Tuesday, May 31, 2011

"I don't think nostalgia has to be negative."

-Van Morrison


"Because here's something else that's weird but true:

in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it JC or Allah, bet it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness."

From an amazing graduation speech David Foster Wallace gave at Kenyon, found here.

Sunday, May 29, 2011

“The only people for me are the mad ones,

the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!”

Wayward Gent. For example, Kerouac.

"Either you think, or else others have to think for you

and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you."

I like what you like. Here, namely Fitzgerald.

"I promise to make you so alive that the fall of dust on furniture will deafen you."

But really, I do.

(From the poem "Ordeal" by Nina Cassian)

“Love of beauty is Taste. The creation of beauty is Art.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson


Nuit Blanche from Spy Films on Vimeo.

“Traveling is a brutality.

It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.”

That's from Cesare Pavese. I was reminded of it today at the beach when I was sitting in the sand, feeling all the grit that comes with it, and watching the waves roll in one after another before they receded and did it again. The sky was perfectly blue and empty. The water was freezing.