“What I Have Lived For
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.
I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy – ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness—that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what—at last—I have found.With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.
Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.
This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.”
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Visboek (FishBook), 1560 (Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 78 E 54)
reblogging erikkwakkel:
“These wonderful, and sometimes fantastic, images of marine animals come from Adriaen Coenen’s Visboek (FishBook), which he published in 1560 (Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 78 E 54). A fisherman, Coenen gathered all information he could find on the sea and its coasts, coastal waters, fishing grounds and marine animals, which he described in more than 800 pages.”
“Gimme Danger” by Iggy and the Stooges (1972)
“To the best of my recollection it was done in a day. I don’t think it was two days. On a very, very old board, I mean this board was old! An Elvis type of board, old-tech, low-tech, in a poorly lit, cheap old studio with very little time. To David’s credit, he listened with his ear to each thing and talked it out with me, I gave him what I thought it should have, he put that in its perspective, added some touches. He’s always liked the most recent technology, so there was something called a Time Cube you could feed a signal into — it looked like a bong, a big plastic tube with a couple of bends in it — and when the sound came out the other end, it sort of shot at you like an echo effect. He used that on the guitar in “Gimme Danger”, a beautiful guitar echo overload that’s absolutely beautiful; and on the drums in “Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell”. His concept was, “You’re so primitive, your drummer should sound like he’s beating a log!” It’s not a bad job that he did…I’m very proud of the eccentric, odd little record that came out.”
— Iggy Pop
“…the most absurd situation I encountered when I was recording was the first time I worked with Iggy Pop. He wanted me to mix Raw Power, so he brought the 24-track tape in, and he put it up. He had the band on one track, lead guitar on another and him on a third. Out of 24 tracks there were just three tracks that were used. He said ‘see what you can do with this’. I said, ‘Jim, there’s nothing to mix’. So we just pushed the vocal up and down a lot. On at least four or five songs that was the situation, including “Search and Destroy.” That’s got such a peculiar sound because all we did was occasionally bring the lead guitar up and take it out.”
On support and attribution..
“Yes. Please, please support the artists who make the songs and stories and pictures and dance and theatre that move you. If you appreciate their art, and you can afford to do so, please *buy* that art. But even if you can’t afford to buy their work, then talk about it, share it, celebrate it in some fashion that respects and values the artist as well as the art. Give them credit. Say their names.”
I Need My Pain
This Kirk talk was reminded to me from a previous post.
There is a definite theme here. Possibly against some of the perceived nullifying effects of old school psychotherapy?
For some reason, though, in my head it happened in TOS and Kirk was pretty much talking to himself, resisting effects of a creature that had come onboard and was removing all psychological trauma of the crew. Kirk was the last. It was one of those episode where Spock turns into a hippy.
Can anyone confirm this?
“Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is” by Rose Royce (1976)
Week Off Ramblings
I just ended a week off, coinciding with the half term break. I assembled a basketball hoop, learnt some more Max and generally took it easy.
I took a lot of pictures and made a few image sequences which I posted on G+, they only work on there so I can’t embed.
(One day there’ll be Vine for Android then I can take over the world.)
I have also made some progress on the very slow burning stereoscopic project I’ve been working on for too long.
Rise of the Continents hits BBC2 next weekend, so I might have to put something on here about that.
I just started Remains of the Day, the phrase “mistaking the superficialities for the essence” really stuck with me.
Thoughts on Doodling
“…keep drawing, make A LOT of drawings, and don’t worry about making bad drawings.”
Brian Eno on Art, Confidence, and How Attention Creates Value
“Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences. (Roy Ascott’s phrase.) That solves a lot of problems: we don’t have to argue whether photographs are art, or whether performances are art, or whether Carl Andre’s bricks or Andrew Serranos’s piss or Little Richard’s ‘Long Tall Sally’ are art, because we say, ‘Art is something that happens, a process, not a quality, and all sorts of things can make it happen.’ … [W]hat makes a work of art ‘good’ for you is not something that is already ‘inside’ it, but something that happens inside you — so the value of the work lies in the degree to which it can help you have the kind of experience that you call art.”
Paul Greer 