Arts and Letters – Desultory Notes

Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins – Interview Magazine

HOPKINS: I’ve been dreaming of elephants. I don’t know why. There was a film I saw, when I was a child, called Elephant Boy. The elephant would take Sabu, the main character, through the jungle, and I remember sitting there with my grandfather watching it. My impression is that I sat on this big beast, whatever it is—life. At some point, I made an unconscious choice to sit on this beautiful, powerful thing. And I just go where it takes me. I think that what happens to people like you and myself. We don’t even know why. Maybe it’s a desire to escape from something. But what I believe now is that we can’t take credit or blame.

Interview Magazine

“We work in the dark—we do what we can—we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.” Henry James quote

“The Middle Years” is a short story by Henry James, first published in Scribner’s Magazine in 1893. It may be the most affecting and profound of James’s stories about writers. The novelist in the tale speculates that he has spent his whole life learning how to write, so a second life would make sense, “to apply the lesson.” Second lives aren’t usually available, so the novelist says of himself and his fellow artists: “We work in the dark—we do what we can—we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.”

Wikipedia

Building, quotes on

We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us.
Winston Churchill

We require from buildings, as from men, two kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it; which last is itself another form of duty.
John Ruskin

To be a man is to be responsible: to be ashamed of miseries you did not cause; to be proud of your comrades’ victories; to be aware, when setting one stone, that you are building a world.
Antoine de Saint Exupéry

wikiquote

Loving the Alien – David Bowie

“When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.” – ShowerThought, reddit

When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up. from Showerthoughts

10 Books from the 2010s – Desultory Notes Notable Books

Note – selections mine, descriptions taken from Amazon.

Rat Girl, Kristin Hersh
In 1985, Kristin Hersh was just starting to find her place in the world. After leaving home at the age of fifteen, the precocious child of unconventional hippies had enrolled in college while her band, Throwing Muses, was getting off the ground amid rumors of a major label deal. Then everything changed: she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and found herself in an emotional tailspin; she started medication, but then discovered she was pregnant. An intensely personal and moving account of that pivotal year, Rat Girl is sure to be greeted eagerly by Hersh’s many fans.

Talk Show, Dick Cavett
For years, Dick Cavett played host to the nation’s most famous personalities on his late-night talk show. In this humorous and evocative book, we get to hear Cavett’s best tales, as he recounts great moments with the legendary entertainers who crossed his path and offers his own trenchant commentary on contemporary American culture and politics.

Pym, Mat Johnson
Recently canned professor of American literature Chris Jaynes is obsessed with The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, Edgar Allan Poe’s strange and only novel. When he discovers the manuscript of a crude slave narrative that seems to confirm the reality of Poe’s fiction, he resolves to seek out Tsalal, the remote island of pure and utter blackness that Poe describes with horror. Jaynes imagines it to be the last untouched bastion of the African Diaspora and the key to his personal salvation.

How Music Works, David Byrne
How Music Works is David Byrne’s incisive and enthusiastic look at the musical art form, from its very inceptions to the influences that shape it, whether acoustical, economic, social or technological. Utilizing his incomparable career and inspired collaborations with Talking Heads, Brian Eno, and many others, Byrne taps deeply into his lifetime of knowledge to explore the panoptic elements of music, how it shapes the human experience, and reveals the impetus behind how we create, consume, distribute, and enjoy the songs, symphonies, and rhythms that provide the backbeat of life. Byrne’s magnum opus uncovers ever-new and thrilling realizations about the redemptive liberation that music brings us all.

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, Jonathan Haidt
Why can’t our political leaders work together as threats loom and problems mount? Why do people so readily assume the worst about the motives of their fellow citizens? In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of our divisions and points the way forward to mutual understanding.

Mo Meta Blues, Ahmir Questlove Thompson
Mo’ Meta Blues is a punch-drunk memoir in which Everyone’s Favorite Questlove tells his own story while tackling some of the lates, the greats, the fakes, the philosophers, the heavyweights, and the true originals of the music world. He digs deep into the album cuts of his life and unearths some pivotal moments in black art, hip hop, and pop culture.

Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World That Made Him, David Henry and Joe Henry
Richard Pryor was arguably the single most influential performer of the second half of the twentieth century, and certainly he was the most successful black actor/comedian ever. Controversial and somewhat enigmatic during his life, Pryor’s performances opened up a whole new world of possibilities, merging fantasy with angry reality in a way that wasn’t just new–it was theretofore unthinkable. Now, this groundbreaking and revelatory work brings him to life again both as a man and as an artist, providing an in-depth appreciation of his talent and his lasting influence, as well as an insightful examination of the world he lived in and the myriad influences that shaped both his persona and his art.

What We See When We Read, Peter Mendelsund
A gorgeously unique, fully illustrated exploration into the phenomenology of reading—how we visualize images from reading works of literature, from one of our very best book jacket designers, himself a passionate reader.

The Courage to Be Disliked: The Japanese Phenomenon That Shows You How to Change Your Life and Achieve Real Happiness, Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga
Is happiness something you choose for yourself? The Courage to Be Disliked presents a simple and straightforward answer. Using the theories of Alfred Adler, one of the three giants of nineteenth-century psychology alongside Freud and Jung, this book follows an illuminating dialogue between a philosopher and a young man. Over the course of five conversations, the philosopher helps his student to understand how each of us is able to determine the direction of our own life, free from the shackles of past traumas and the expectations of others.

How to Get Successful by F*cking Up Your Life: Essays on Addiction and Recovery, Anna David
Anna David was, in every way, groomed for success. She grew up in an affluent community and came from a family that prioritized SAT scores, Harvard attendance and high-paying jobs. The problem was, she had low SAT scores, was rejected by Harvard and spent her early life feeling like the family’s great disappointment.Concluding that success was not for her, Anna focused her energies on an area where she excelled: drugs, alcohol and general mayhem. Washing ashore on the beaches of recovery at the age of 30, she begrudgingly entered a world of sobriety. That’s when she discovered that there were all sorts of ways to define success—and what’s more, that it was never too late to find it.The stories in this collection document her journey from self-indulgent party girl to sober and only semi-indulgent woman.

The 10 Most Influential Films of the Decade (and 20 Other Favorites) – The New York Times

‘The Avengers’ (2012)

Sequels weren’t new and neither were long, crowded, noisy superhero spectacles when this juggernaut landed. But “The Avengers,” released after Disney’s acquisition of Marvel Studios, was nonetheless a big industry bang: It heralded the dominance of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where we all now live whether we like it or not.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/24/movies/best-movies-2010s-decade.html

. . . we would assume that what it was we meant would have been listed in some book set down beyond the sky’s far reaches, if at all there was a purpose here. But now I think the purpose lives in us and that we fall into an error if we do not keep our own true notebook of the way we came, how the sleet stung, or how a wandering bird cried at the window. . . – LOREN EISELEY

Epigraph from True Notebooks: A Writer’s Year at Juvenile Hall, Mark Salzman

Do It Again – The Kinks

Standing in the middle of nowhere
Wondering how to begin
Lost between tomorrow and yesterday
Between now and then
And now we’re back where we started
Here we go round again
Day after day I get up and I say
I better do it again
Where are all the people going
Round and round till we reach the end
One day leading to another
Get up go out do it again
Then it’s back where you started
Here we go round again
Back where you started
Come on do it again
And you think today is going to be better
Change the world and do it again
Give it all up and start all over
You say you will but you don’t know when
Then it’s back where you started
Here we go round again
Day after day I get up and I say
Come on better do it again
The days go by and you wish you were a different guy
Different friends and a new set of clothes
You make alterations and (a fact in you knows)
A new house a new car a new job a new nose
But it’s superficial and it’s only skin deep
Cause the voices in your head keep shouting in your sleep
Get back, get back
Back where you started, here we go round again
Back where you started, come on do it again
Back where you started, here we go round again
Day after day I get up and I say, do it again
Do it again
Day after day I get up and I say, do it again

Philosopher’s portraits

Philosophy For Beginners
by Richard Osborne (Author), Ralph Edney (Illustrator)

Good book. I thought it was fun to read, and enlightening. The pictures make for great mnemonic devices to remember the concepts.

We stand on a mountain pass in the midst of whirling snow and blinding mist…

“We stand on a mountain pass in the midst of whirling snow and blinding mist, through which we get glimpses now and then of paths which may be deceptive. If we stand still we shall be frozen to death. If we take the wrong road we shall be dashed to pieces. We do not certainly know whether there is any right one. What must we do? ‘Be strong and of a good courage.’ Act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes.… If death ends all, we cannot meet death better.”

Fitz James Stephen, quoted in The Will to Believe, William James.

Benny Andersson’s Dansband

Andersson, 72, sees his group, which goes by BAO (pronounced “bah-oh”), as part of the tradition of the hardworking “dansbands” that entertained Swedes for generations. Dansbands, whose popularity peaked in the 1970s and 1980s, would roam the country and play mainly pop, rock, disco and the cheesy easy-listening known as schlager with one goal in mind: Get people to dance. Many wore fantastically garish matching costumes.

BAO’s sets are puzzlingly diverse, as if someone had grafted together the playlists of 20 genres on Spotify. Attending four tour stops last week, I took in 16 hours of music — like Wagner’s “Ring” cycle, only more upbeat — and heard waltzes, big-band jazz, pop tunes, polkas, boogie, chansons, rockabilly, glam-rock stomps and traditional folk tunes. The band basically went through all the styles Abba smoothly integrated into its signature hits.

“They capture the Swedishness of the music,” Jan Ryden, 55, said of BAO, at the end of the show in Eskilstuna, 90 minutes west of Stockholm.

Elisabeth Vincentelli, A Bus Journey to a Time Before Abba

Interview with Pete Townshend – NY Times

I have spent 55 years working in rock. I remain in familiar territory. I’ve always regarded the rock-star phenomenon with immense disdain. I’ve had my moments, which have been gloriously recorded and exalted — but brief — when I’ve felt: I’m going to try and do this job. I’m going to try to be a proper rock star. Then I would do it, and it wouldn’t work. I was counterfeit. There are very few people truly authentic to the cause: David Byrne. Mick Jagger. Neil Young. Joni Mitchell. Deborah Harry.

NYTIMES

Learning to Live on Your Own

the night’s drawing in on the city,
the manager picks up his phone,
everything seems such a pity,
learning to live on your own,
news travels fast down the wire,
breaks up before it hits home,
throw a rock n’ roll song on the fire,
learning to live on your own
in the half light of dawn,
you’ll wave (leave) this world of ours goodbye (behind),
please accept this message of my tears…
things that take minutes last for hours,
a plane crashes on its way home,
the company still feeds on our (your) power,
learning to live on your own
in the half light of dawn,
you’ll wave (leave) this world of ours goodbye (behind),
i can’t see a new star in the heavens,
i won’t (don’t) hear the tributes that they own,
throw a rock n’ roll song on the fire,
learning to live on your own

The Mekons, Rock and Roll

You Row, God Steers

I ask simply that throughout the day God place in me the best understanding of His will that I can have for that day, and that I be given the grace by which I may carry it out. As the day goes on, I can pause when facing situations that must be met and decisions that must be made, and renew the simple request: “Thy will, not mine, be done.”

I must always keep in mind that in every situation I am responsible for the effort and God is responsible for the outcome. I can “Let Go and Let God” by humbly repeating: “Thy will, not mine, be done.” Patience and persistence in seeking His will for me will free me from the pain of selfish expectations.

daily reflection

How to — Literally — Sound More Confident and Persuasive – The New York Times

“Every time we interact with someone, we’re trying to figure out how much they know about what they’re saying, how knowledgeable they are, how confident they seem,” said Jonah Berger, an associate professor of marketing at Wharton and a co-author of the study. “We found that these cues in particular” — the ones related to speaking volume — “made speakers seem more confident, which made them more persuasive overall.”

NY Times

Category: Arts and Letters