Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Non-Stop (1958) by Brian Aldiss

"The teaching warned him that his mind was a foul place. The holy trinity, Freud, Yung, and Bassit, had gone alone through the terrible barriers of sleep, death's brother; there they found - not nothing, as man had formerly believed - but grottoes and subterranean labyrinths full of ghouls and evil treasure, leeches, and the lusts that burn like acid. Man stood revealed to himself: a creature of infinite complexity and horror."

...too scathing for a Tuesday morning?

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

"After experiencing drastic changes in my environment, I looked for other experiences that might profoundly affect my perception of the self. So I devised another experiment where everyday I took a different drug and drew myself under the influence."

-Bryan Lewis Saunders, Artist


And the results are pretty incredible.

Right now I'm at the hotel's restaurant waiting on pizza surrounded by little kids and their parents getting drunk while I'm not getting drunk waiting on pizza. I can see people skiing outside which would be really cool right now. My little brother is also driving me nuts and this medication is so not helping, mom. I shouldn't have to leave a fucking hockey game to cry in a bathroom stall for no reason.

Okay I'm done.

not photos: paintings. nbd.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Friday, January 14, 2011

The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock

[...]

There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands,
That list and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions
Before the taking of toast and tea.

[...]

TSE


Thursday, January 13, 2011

Bobby Malone Moves Home

"Memory's so treacherous, one moment you're lost in a carnival of delights, with poignant childhood aromas, the flashing neon of puberty, all that sentimental candyfloss... the next, it leads you somewhere you don't want to go... somewhere dark and cold, filled with the damp, ambiguous shapes of things you'd hoped were forgotten..." --- Joker, The Killing Joke
I was born in a rainstorm. And again.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Look at these. Really. NY Museum of Art and Design had an exhibition open in Oct 2009 dedicated to novel (pun intended) uses of paper as a medium in and of itself. Neat.

Excerpt from The Albums

I just drank in this cheap room, a young man
totally misplaced in the world.
I hardly ate anything, the wine was my
substance
and the classical records.

I lived like a god damned fly, or maybe like a
confused
rat.
Where I scrounged my few funds, I no longer
remember.

But I do remember the record store
where you could exchange 3 used albums for
2.

By buying an occasional album and by continuous
trading
I gradually listened to almost all the
albums
in that store.

But most of the time I was broke so I had to
listen to very very many of the 2 albums
on hand
over and over and
over.

I drank and listened again and
again.
each note became embedded in
me
and then
re-embedded.

now
decades later
I still sometimes hear
one of those old albums on the
radio--same conductor, same
orchestra--
and I immediately
shut the radio off.

Yet remember that time with a
melancholy
fondness.

Saturday, January 8, 2011

Young Shields

there's a shield around us
we are heady we are groundless
& we burn our friends & kill their names
build insecure & petty fames
& tattoo things that we believe
stars & skulls & hearts in half-sleeves

there's a shield around us
tell me how is it you've found us
cause we hide our tracks & watch the ground
our footfalls they don't make a sound
we've cursed the names of our hometowns
we're compassless & nowhere bound

Currently Reading

Local Natives - Wide Eyes (Teen Daze Remix)

Friday:

"...I get up. I move through this pale light. I see it change beneath my hands and on the sleeves of my coat: I cannot describe how much it disgusts me. I yawn. I light the lamp on the table: perhaps its light will be able to combat the light of day. But no: the lamp makes nothing more than a pitiful pond around its base. I turn it out; I get up. There is a white hole in the wall, a mirror. It is a trap. I know I am going to let myself be caught in it. I have. The grey thing appears in the mirror. I go over and look at it, I can no longer get away.

It is the reflection of my face. Often in these lost days I study it. I can understand nothing of this face. The faces of others have some sense, some direction. Not mine. I cannot even decide whether it is handsome or ugly. I think it is ugly because I have been told so. But it doesn't strike me. At heart, I am even shocked that anyone can attribute qualities of this kind to it, as if you called a clod of earth or a block of stone beautiful or ugly.

Still, there is one thing which is pleasing to see, above the flabby cheeks, above the forehead; it is the beautiful red flame which crowns my head, it is my hair. That is pleasant to see. Anyhow, it is a definite colour: I am glad I have red hair. There it is in the mirror, it makes itself seen, it shines. I am still lucky: if my forehead was surmounted by one of those neutral heads of hair which are neither chestnut nor blond, my face would get lost in vagueness, it would make me dizzy."