Tag: art

june whimsies

Are we seeing off May already? My favorite month starting today.

And look, it’s beginning to rain.

Long overdue whimsies:

READ

Books-

This month I finished/am reading:

Things-

  • “Rap Quotes” posted in their real-life locations on twitter.
  • NPR on Nostalgia:

For an individual, nostalgia is a function of memory. But for a culture, nostalgia is a kind of travel. It is about somewhere else, somewhere different but vaguely recognizable, another place to look at the sunset. If we were really looking for a time when things felt easier, after all, we wouldn’t love times of war and social upheaval; we’d be making shows about the dot-com boom. But we don’t, because it isn’t different enough yet. It has to be elsewhere; it cannot be here, because we cannot be here, not always, not every day.

What’s eternal about nostalgia is the same thing that’s eternal about travel: It will always happen, not because what’s out there is so special that it will pull us out through the windows, but because what’s in here is, at least some of the time, so difficult that it will push us out through the door.

LISTEN

  • I enjoyed this reddit thread on Bach/Beethoven/Mozart:

    “Beethoven tells you what it’s like to be Beethoven. Mozart tells you what it’s like to be human. Bach tells you what it’s like to be the universe.” (Douglas Adams)

    Here is the super super super short version
    Bach = The Rules
    Mozart = The Rules In-practice
    Beethoven = The Rule Breaker

    I heard someone once use the allegory of Bach as the Father, Mozart as the Son, and Beethoven as the Holy Spirit of music. Seems to work well even if you disagree with the Christian correlation. Another phrase I found which sums it up well: “Bach gave us God’s Word. Mozart gave us God’s laughter. Beethoven gave us God’s fire.”

COVET

VISIT

Japanese architectural firm Kengo Kuma and a team of students at UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design created ‘Nest We Grow’, an elaborate timber community food hub recently constructed on the island of Hokkaido.The structure’s timber frame actually mimics the vertical spatial experience of a Japanese larch forest. The team added plenty of beams for hanging fish and produce and a central tea platform with a sunken fireplace. The building is supposed to bring people in the community together to store, prepare and enjoy local foods.

EAT

If I may be cheesy today, Korean artist Puuung creates images rooted in what “real love” looks like.

We’re all so used to the grandiose tales of love in the movies — running through a crowded airport, sending love letters every single day for ten years, leaving one’s entire life behind — that anything less than trial by combat just seems lazy.

But Korean artist “Puuung” is intent on changing that narrative. “Love is something that everybody can relate to. And Love comes in ways that we can easily overlook in our daily lives. So, I try to find the meaning of love in our daily lives and make it into artwork,” she writes.

With her beautifully-drawn illustrations, Puuung reminds us that when it comes to love, it’s the little things that matter.

shopping

crying

dancing

2015/01/img_3223.jpg

flowers, from the other night.
reaching upward, still alive.
the better way to be, rather than cut and de-thorned and no longer growing while encased in a glass container.
if you know what i mean.

it’s snowing again outside my window. the magnified whiteness of flat sunlight and the criss-cross of wind-driven snowflakes accompany me this morning. i burn the back of my throat in my haste to swallow hot tea. it’s a jolting reminder to take things a little more slowly.

Mary Szybist, interviewed by The Paris Review:

I turn to poems to find spaces that might enlarge, rather than distill, experience.

I think that a good deal of poetry and art gives us some sense of access to another’s voice, perception, texture of thought, imagination. Sometimes it gives us better access to the strangeness in ourselves.

I am both attracted to and resistant to the idea that poetry and art can be replacements for religion.