Category: Arts and Letters

Eye Color in Literature, Significance of, Semiotic Meaning

I feel sorry for novelists when they have to mention women’s eyes, there’s so little choice . . .
Her eyes are blue: innocence and honesty.
Her eyes are black: passion and depth.
Her eyes are green: wildness and jealousy.
Her eyes are brown: reliability and common sense.
Her eyes are violet: the novel is by Raymond Chandler.

Flaubert’s Parrot
Julian Barnes

Quote found in book:
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.

Desultory Kierkegaard Quotes

No one teaches joy better than one who is joyful oneself.

Indeterminableness is the basis of dizziness … Therefore the remedy for dizziness is limitation; and in the spiritual sense all discipline is limitation.

The Omniscient One does not find out anything about the person confessing, but instead the person confessing finds out something about himself.

It is a slow death to let oneself be trampled to death by geese, and to let oneself be worn to death by envy is also a slow way of dying.

To pray is also to breathe, and possibility is for the self what oxygen is for breathing.

The Quotable Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard

Rolling Stones Setlist – Milan, June 21, 2022

Via @RollingStones on twitter. They do this for most shows I think. Ronnie Wood does the art.

Deeper cuts I had to look up (notes via Wikipedia):
Out of Time

“Out of Time” is a song by the Rolling Stones, first released on their 1966 album Aftermath (UK version). The most commercially successful version of the song was by Chris Farlowe, an English solo artist. Farlowe’s single, produced by Mick Jagger, peaked at number one in the UK Singles Chart on 28 July 1966 and stayed at the top for one week.[1] A shorter alternative mix of the Rolling Stones’ recording was released in the US in 1967 on the album Flowers. A third version featuring Jagger’s lead vocal and the orchestration and backing vocals from Farlowe’s cover version (plus a new female backing vocal) was released on the 1975 rarities album Metamorphosis and as a single.

The song was never performed live by the Stones until June 2022.[2]

Ghost Town

“Living in a Ghost Town” is a song by English rock band the Rolling Stones. The song was recorded during sessions of the Rolling Stones in 2019, ultimately being finished the following year. The track is reggae-influenced and features lyrics and a music video that reference the COVID-19 pandemic. It was released as a digital download and streaming single on 23 April 2020, through Polydor Records. The song was the Rolling Stones’ first single in four years and the first original material from the band since “Doom and Gloom” and “One More Shot” in 2012. It received generally positive reviews from music critics and was a commercial success, appearing on over a dozen sales and streaming charts.

Connection

“Connection” is a song by the English rock and roll band the Rolling Stones, featured on their 1967 album Between the Buttons. It was written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards (but mostly Richards), features vocals by both and is said to be about the long hours the band spent in airports. The lyrics contain much rhyming based on the word connection. The lyrics also reflect the pressures the band was under by 1967:

My bags they get a very close inspection, I wonder why it is that they suspect ’em, They’re dying to add me to their collection, And I don’t know, If they’ll let me go

Work Related Dreams, Hypnagogia, Tetris Effect, Example of

Most of the commercials we produced were thirty- and sixty-second spots for products like Maxwell House Coffee, Vicks Vaporub, Ajax (bum-bum, the foaming cleanser), Colgate Dental Cream, and other household products. Technically speaking, these early ads were the simplest work imaginable. There’s a dancing coffee pot or some such thing with a jingle about Maxwell House exploding flavor buds; cut to a man tasting a steaming cup of coffee while his lovely, crisp wife looks on expectantly; cut to the best take of his reaction (“Hmm, that’s delicious!”); cut to the sign-off; and you’re through. But nothing is ever that simple in the advertising business.
…
This kind of work was all right for a week or two. It had its curiosities. But after a few months at Tempo, I was morose and close to broken, for I knew I was using almost none of the skills that had landed me the job in the first place. At night bad dreams about exploding flavor buds and foaming cleansers with catchy jingles and forced smiles began to bother me. In the one nightmare I still recall, I was stuffed into a Maxwell House jar and exploded into ten thousand pieces when they poured the boiling water on me.

When The Shooting Stops … The Cutting Begins 
Ralph Rosenblum, Robert Karen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia

Hippie Roommate – Louis Katz

I don’t know why there’s still hippies, anywheres. It’s like the only group that’s still around. Right? You never run to a beatnik. Right? Never see a fucking flapper Charlestoning down the street. Right? When was the last time you saw a raver? Huh? You never see em anymore. You see one you got to hit him with a blow dart, trap him, force him to breed. They’re rare, like pandas. Yet for some reason, still hippies. I had this hippie roommate for a while. Her name was Juggle Sticks…

Fake it Till You Make it – Psychiatric Advice

Toward the end of his terrific new philosophical investigation, “Keep It Fake: Inventing an Authentic Life,” Eric G. Wilson admits that, as with many of us, learning how to be a good dad was something he had a tough time figuring out. On the cusp of fatherhood he was working too much, and drinking too much — sound familiar? — and battling depression. But he had the good sense and good luck to find an excellent psychiatrist.

“Dr. S. maintained — no, bellowed, for he was a crazy man, not afraid to go to the floor and scream to make a point — that I would never be able to be a good father or husband, or indeed person in general, and never be able to find a jot of joy until I stopped treating my depression as a tyrant determining all my moves. I needed a new narrative.

“ ‘Go home, Eric,’ Dr. S. urged. ‘You’re an English major guy and so should enjoy this; construct a new book of life, a novel in which you as protagonist have power and grace.’ ”

NYTIMES

Review of:
Keep It Fake: Inventing an Authentic Life
Eric G. Wilson

See also:
Act Your Way into Right Thinking – The Gospel of relaxation

Rita Hayworth – Anecdote

I visited publicist Tom Miller in Mexico on the set of “The Wrath of God,” Rita Hayworth’s last completed movie, I assume the one on which Mr. Langella had the brief affair with her (not his only affair on the film). One evening we had a nightcap with Rita. (Rita’s idea of a nightcap was a vodka and tonic to which she kept adding vodka to keep the glass filled and flavored. Tom decided thought she was drinking to give herself an excuse for not remembering, for already, as he saw in retrospect, there were signs of encroaching Alzheimer’s.)

Tom staged some of the last glamor shots taken of her , but they were never used because MGM threw the film away. (It wasn’t all that great, but what Ralph Nelson film ever was? But it wasn’t all that bad either. And what with her and Mitchum in their latter years and Frank Langella playing Rita’s son (!), it really deserves a decent video release.)

One night in Mexico City Tom dined out with Rita, and when they got back to her hotel,they discovered the Mexican equivalent of the Oscars being presented in one of the meeting halls. Rita was tuned on. “Let’s go!” Rita said. Tom replied, “Rita, we don’t have an invitation!” She looked at him and said, “But I am Rita Hayworth!” Tom said, “So you are.” He spoke to an attendant at the door, who ran up the MC, who announced to the crowd the presence of a surprise guest. She went up on the stage to a standing ovation. I wish someone would discover footage of that moment.

Theater Talkback: Frank Langella Telling Tales
BY CHARLES ISHERWOOD

From the comments section.