... Let kids just throw rocks at him.
31 August 2022
Daring.
Howe, Bow Wave, 1940
Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Happy Birthday, Montessori
Maria Montessori was born on this day in 1870.
We wish the old things because we cannot understand the new, and we are always seeking after that gorgeousness which belongs to things already on the decline, without recognising in the humble simplicity of new ideas the germ which shall develop in the future.
Maria Montessori, from The Montessori Method
28 August 2022
Vividly.
It is important not to be caught short. It is my private opinion that many of our failures in politics, art, and domestic life come from our failure to eat vividly.
Jim Harrison, from "Sporting Food"
Great Album Art: A Series
It'll be fun to explore, but it's all downhill from here, folks.
We begin with the most beautiful album cover ever produced ...
Thanks to Execupundit for the idea.
Covenant.
Jense-Klint, Grundtvig's Church, 1926
If I am right, then enjoying music involves a kind of outward-going sympathetic movement. In music, as in sex and architecture, the relation between subjects can be uprooted and replaced by an arrangement of objects. And in a hundred ways the result of this is a culture of idolatry, in which freedom and personality are obliterated by intrusive images, clamoring for an addictive response. There is every reason to see this result as a “fall,” and the great story told in Genesis reaches forward to incorporate these new and troubling facts. The Fall did not occur at a particular moment in time; it is a permanent feature of the human condition. We stand poised between freedom and mechanism, subject and object, end and means, beauty and ugliness, sanctity and desecration. And all those distinctions derive from the same ultimate fact, which is that we can live in openness to others, accounting for our actions and demanding an account from them, or alternatively close ourselves off from others, learn to look on them as objects, so as to retreat from the order of the covenant to the order of nature.
Sir Roger Scruton, from The Soul of the World
Excellent.
An excellent book, illustrated by N.C. Wyeth ...
I had four blak arrows under my belt,
Four for the greefs that I have felt,
Four for the number of ill menne
That have oppressid me now and then.
One is gone; one is wele sped;
Old Apulyaird is dead.
One is for Maister Bennet Hatch,
That burned Grimstone, walls and thatch.
One for Sir Oliver Oates,
That cut Sir Harry Shelton’s throat.
Sir Daniel, ye shull have the fourt;
We shall think it fair sport.
Ye shull each have your own part,
A blak arrow in each blak heart.
Get ye to your knees for to pray;
Ye are ded theeves, by yea and nay!
Jon Amend-all of the Green Wood and his Jolly Fellaweship
Happy Birthday, Goethe
POET
Speak not to me of yonder motley masses,
Whom but to see, puts out the fire of Song!
Hide from my view the surging crowd that passes,
And in its whirlpool forces us along!
No, lead me where some heavenly silence glasses
The purer joys that round the Poet throng,—
Where Love and Friendship still divinely fashion
The bonds that bless, the wreaths that crown his passion!
Ah, every utterance from the depths of feeling
The timid lips have stammeringly expressed,—
Now failing, now, perchance, success revealing,—
Gulps the wild Moment in its greedy breast;
Or oft, reluctant years its warrant sealing,
Its perfect stature stands at last confessed!
What dazzles, for the Moment spends its spirit:
What's genuine, shall Posterity inherit.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, born on this day in 1749, from Faust
25 August 2022
22 August 2022
Wisdom.
Doisneau, The School Clock, Paris, 1956
The hours of folly are measured by the clock; but of wisdom, no clock can measure.
William Blake
School starts today.
21 August 2022
Happy Birthday, Strummer
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The way you get a better world is you don't put up with substandard anything.
Joe Strummer, born on this day in 1952
With The Mescaleros at the Roseland Ballroom in 1999 (don't miss the opening "Safe European Home") ...
Lifts.
Weekes, Memorial to Shelley, 1854
[Poetry] awakens and enlarges the mind itself by rendering it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought. Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar; it reproduces all that it represents, and the impersonations clothed in its Elysian light stand thenceforward in the minds of those who have once contemplated them as memorials of that gentle and exalted content which extends itself over all thoughts and actions with which it coexists. The great secret of morals is love; or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, from "A Defence of Poetry"
Unknown.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Differ.
The Brain—is wider than the Sky—
For—put them side by side—
The one the other will contain
With ease—and you—beside—
The Brain is deeper than the sea—
For—hold them—Blue to Blue—
The one the other will absorb—
As sponges—Buckets—do—
The Brain is just the weight of God—
For—Heft them—Pound for Pound—
And they will differ—if they do—
As Syllable from Sound—
Emily Dickinson
20 August 2022
Inscribed.
Wherever anything lives, there is, open somewhere, a register in which time is being inscribed.
Henri Bergson
17 August 2022
Released.
Miles Davis released Kind of Blue on this day in 1959.
Miles Davis Kind of Blue: Celebrating a Masterpiece ...
15 August 2022
High-Toned.
Rolling Stone on The Cars' 1980 high-toned dalliance with art theory ...
With the new album, the rift between the Cars and their critics has widened—though for different reasons. Panorama avoids most of the methodical mannerisms that befell Candy-O, but what it opts for instead is technopop: rigid, electronic rock & roll that favors machine-like exactness over heartfelt expression, and avant-garde minimalism over pop-based tunefulness.So far, the reviews have been mostly unflattering, with Rolling Stone describing it as “an out-and-out drag.” The unkindest cut, though, came in the Cars’ own backyard. Writing in the Boston Phoenix, an alternative weekly that was one of the first publications in the country to tout the group, Deborah Frost declared: “Certainly, some of their fans will think they’re really putting their necks on the line this time. Bullshit. If they are, it’s not because the music or ideas behind it are so brainy, but because this is a slapdash job.” Elsewhere, Frost concluded, “This year’s model is a lemon….”Yet, there’s a counterside to this wrangle. The Cars’ new music may not have the rock verve of Elvis Costello or Tom Petty, nor the experimental range of Talking Heads or Public Image Ltd., but it does, I think, represent a genuine advance for the group. On several tracks, Ocasek and crew have removed the melodic and harmonic core, paring the songs down to monorhythmic pulses and monochromatic arrangements. On cuts like “Panorama” and “Misfit Kid,” the end result can be grating and jerky, but in “You Wear Those Eyes” and “Touch and Go,” it proves tense, mordant and chilling.The question, though, is whether any of this constitutes a bona fide incursion of avant-garde music into the mainstream, or whether it’s just an artsy exploitation of other people’s innovations. In other words, is the Cars’ music merely a high-toned dalliance with art theory or a genuine revolution in rock aesthetics?
14 August 2022
Pleasure.
Cezanne, Houses in the Greenery, 1881
I have to keep working, not to arrive at finish, which arouses the admiration of fools. I must seek completion only for the pleasure of being truer and more knowing.
Paul Cezanne
Happy Birthday, Fidrych
Mark "The Bird Fidrych" was born in this day in 1954.
MLB Network's The Bird ...
Reason.
Hopper, Sailing, 1911
If you could say it in words, there'd be no reason to paint.
Edward Hopper
Lucky.
The craft of stonemason James Preston ...
Stonemasons like to grumble about their industry. They cite the poor pay, the long drives, the contrast between the harried contractors and the unhurried in-house cathedral masons, of whom there are still a few groups. Despite his job’s shortcomings, though, Preston counts himself as privileged. On cathedral roofs, he sees grotesques put there for God’s amusement and nobody else’s; and seeing him climbing up spires like some sort of action figure delights and thrills his five-year-old son, Blake. "I think we’re lucky," he says. "I really do."
Thanks, Kurt.
13 August 2022
Released.
James Taylor released October Road on this day in 2002.
"September Grass"
Well, the sun's not so hot in the sky todayAnd you know I can see summertime slipping on away.A few more geese are gone, a few more leaves turning red,But the grass is as soft as a feather in a feather bed ...
Happy Birthday, Fogelberg
Dan Fogelberg, the original Mr.-Sensitive-with-a-Ponytail, was born on this day in 1951.
"The Reach" ...
12 August 2022
Evolved.
The interactive tool enables users to home in on a specific location and visualize how it has evolved between the Cryogenian Period and the present ..
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Thrive.
The many great gardens of the world, of literature and poetry, of painting and music, of religion and architecture, all make the point as clear as possible: The soul cannot thrive in the absence of a garden. If you don't want paradise, you are not human; and if you are not human, you don't have a soul.
Sir Thomas More
Happy Birthday, Biber
Seel, Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber, 1681
Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber was born on this day in 1644.
Xavier Díaz Latorre plays the Passacaglia ...
Happy Birthday, Metheny
Pat Metheny was born on this day in 1954.
"(Cross The) Heartland / Airstream" with the Pat Metheny Group ...
11 August 2022
Hang.
"Hang care!" exclaimed he. "This is a delicious evening; the wine has a finer relish here than in the house, and the song is more exciting and melodious under the tranquil sky than in the close room, where the sound is stifled. Come, let us have a bacchanalian chant—let us, with old Sir Toby, make the welkin dance and rouse the night-owl with a catch! I am right merry. Pass the bottle, and tune your voices—a catch, a catch! The lights will be here anon."
Charles Ollier, from "The Haunted Manor-House of Paddington"
For best results, listen to this ... The Police, "When The World Is Running Down, You Make The Best Of What's Still Around" ...
The euphony transformed me and inundated my soul in a roguish countenance, the likes of which I had know well in younger days. Such impishness soon drove out the complaints of the day.
Umberto Limongiello
Illegitimate.
From Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, Act V, Scene VII ...
Enter MARGARELON.Margarelon: Turn, slave, and fight.Thersites: What art thou?Margarelon: A bastard son of Priam’s.Thersites: I am a bastard too; I love bastards: I am a bastard begot, bastard instructed, bastard in mind, bastard in valour, in every thing illegitimate. One bear will not bite another, and wherefore should one bastard? Take heed, the quarrel’s most ominous to us: if the son of a whore fight for a whore, he tempts judgment. Farewell, bastard. [Exit.Margarelon: The devil take thee, coward! [Exit.
Sean Bean's pronunciation ...
Mozart, Exsultate, jubilate, K. 165
Catherine Trottmann performs with the Orchestre du Palais Royal, under the direction of Jean Philippe Sarcos ...
Knowledge.
Jáuregui (attrib.), Cervantes, 1600
The knowledge of yourself will preserve you from vanity.
Miguel de Cervantes
Be.
Reynolds, Self-Portrait, 1780
Sir Joshua Reynolds