Wednesday, November 20, 2024

Watching

ARMAGUEDON
Alain Jessua
France, 1977

Matthew 25:40

Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Seen in Milwaukie - 11/18/2024

Playing

DINASTIA BORGIA
CHIESA E POTERE NEL RINASCIMENTO

Jordi Savall
Montserrat Figueras, Pascal Bertin, Lluís Vilamajó, Marc Mauillon, Furio Zanasi, Daniele Carnovich
Hespèrion XXI
La Capella Reial De Catalunya


ANAÏS NIN
The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 4: 1944-1947

The important task of literature is to free man, not to censor him, and that is why Puritanism was the most destructive and evil force which ever oppressed people and their literature: it created hypocrisy, perversion, fears, sterility.


Daily Painting

Guwa Shete
PANDIT WITH MOBILE [HOLYMEN SERIES] (1999)


Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Watching

RAZZENNEST
Johannes Grenzfurthner
Austria, 2021

Playing

Blondie
GHOSTS OF DOWNLOAD


JAMES BALDWIN
The Fire Next Time

A civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.



Daily Painting

Arnab Basu
HORSE IN THE WILD (2020)

Monday, November 18, 2024

Watching

FIVE DEDICATED TO YASUJIRŌ OZU
Abbas Kiarostami
Iran, 2003


Watching

THE THIRD LOVER
[L'OEIL DU MALIN]

Claude Chabrol
France, 1962

4B.

Playing

The Raconteurs
HELP US STRANGER


SAMUEL BECKETT
Molloy

And having heard, or more probably read somewhere, in the days when I thought I would be well advised to educate myself, or amuse myself, or stupefy myself, or kill time, that when a man in a forest thinks he is going forward in a straight line, in reality he is going in a circle, I did my best to go in a circle, hoping in this way to go in a straight line.



Daily Painting

William Merrett Chase
PORTRAIT OF JAMES MCNEIL WHISTLER (1885)

Sunday, November 17, 2024

Watching

PEDRO PÁRAMO
Rodrigo Prieto
Mexico, 2024


Playing

Depeche Mode
A BROKEN FRAME


GEORGE ORWELL
1984

Sometimes they threaten you with something - something you can't stand up to, can't even think about. And then you say, "Don't do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to So-and-so." And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn't mean it. But that isn't true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there's no other way of saving yourself, and you're quite ready to save yourself that way. You WANT it to happen to the other person. You don't give a damn what they suffer. All you care is yourself.



Daily Painting

Kent Williams
BLONDE NATALIA IN STUDIO ARRANGEMENT (2010)

Daily Painting

Addie Shevlin
WHY BLUE (2008)

Saturday, November 16, 2024

Watching

THE END OF THE CENTURY
[FIN DE SIGLO]

Lucio Castro
Argentina/Spain, 2019

Playing

CLUB MOD on allclassical.org

Hosted by Andrea Murray

Let's go, Darwin.

To EVERY Trump-sucking MAGAt, third-party voter, "protest" voter, and the 100+ million who refused to vote:

NOT. ONE. FUCKING. WORD.

Not now. Not ever.

This is exactly what you wanted.

This is exactly the future you actively chose for your children and for America.

Playing

Fontaines D.C.
ROMANCE


RAY BRADBURY
The Martian Chronicles

They began by controlling books of cartoons and then detective books and, of course, films, one way or another, one group or another, political bias, religious prejudice, union pressure; there was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves.



Daily Painting

Norman Rockwell
BARBERSHOP QUARTET (1936)

Friday, November 15, 2024

Watching

PETROV'S FLU
[Петровы в гриппе]
Kirill Serebrennikov
Russia, 2021




"I only hire the best people."
Playing

Franz Schubert
OCTET IN F MAJOR FOR STRINGS, CLARINET, BASSOON, AND HORN, D 803

Melos Ensemble

Daily Painting(s)

Egon Schiele
SELF-PORTRAIT (1910)

Egon Schiele
SELF-PORTRAIT (1910)



SAMUEL BECKETT
The Unnamable

I'm all these words, all these strangers, this dust of words, with no ground for their settling, no sky for their dispersing, coming together to say, fleeing one another to say, that I am they, all of them, those that merge, those that part, those that never meet, and nothing else, yes, something else, that I'm something quite different, a quite different thing, a wordless thing in an empty place, a hard shut dry cold black place, where nothing stirs, nothing speaks, and that I listen, and that I seek, like a caged beast born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born in a cage and dead in a cage, born and then dead, born in a cage and then dead in a cage, in a word like a beast, in one of their words, like such a beast, and that I seek, like such a beast, with my little strength, such a beast, with nothing of its species left but fear and fury, no, the fury is past, nothing but fear, nothing of all its due but fear centupled, fear of its shadow, no, blind from birth, of sound then, if you like, we'll have that, one must have something, it's a pity, but there it is, fear of sound, fear of sounds, the sounds of beasts, the sounds of men, sounds in the daytime and sounds at night, that's enough, fear of sounds all sounds, more or less, more or less fear, all sounds, there's only one, continuous, day and night, what is it, it's steps coming and going, it's voices speaking for a moment, it's bodies groping their way, it's the air, it's things, it's the air among the things, that's enough, that I seek, like it, no, not like it, like me, in my own way, what am I saying, after my fashion, that I seek, what do I seek now, what it is, it must be that, it can only be that, what it is, what it can be, what what can be, what I seek, no, what I hear, I hear them, now it comes back to me, they say I seek what it is I hear, I hear them, now it comes back to me, what it can possibly be, and where it can possibly come from, since all is silent here, and the walls thick, and how I manage, without feeling an ear on me, or a head, or a body, or a soul, how I manage, to do what, how I manage, it's not clear, dear dear, you say it's not clear, something is wanting to make it clear, I'll seek, what is wanting, to make everything clear, I'm always seeking something, it's tiring in the end, and it's only the beginning.


Thursday, November 14, 2024

Watching

POISON FOR THE FAIRIES
[VENENO PARA LAS HADAS]

Carlos Enrique Taboada
Mexico, 1986




Reading

Margaret Atwood
PAPER BOAT
New and Selected Poems 1961-2023

Playing

Caroline Shaw
ORANGE

Caroline Shaw
Attacca Quartet


KAMAND KOJOURI
["They Want Us To Be Afraid"]

They want us to be afraid.
They want us to be afraid of leaving our homes.
They want us to barricade our doors
and hide our children.
Their aim is to make us fear life itself!
They want us to hate.
They want us to hate 'the other'.
They want us to practice aggression
and perfect antagonism.
Their aim is to divide us all!
They want us to be inhuman.
They want us to throw out our kindness.
They want us to bury our love
and burn our hope.
Their aim is to take all our light!
They think their bricked walls
will separate us.
They think their damned bombs
will defeat us.
They are so ignorant they don’t understand
that my soul and your soul are old friends.
They are so ignorant they don’t understand
that when they cut you I bleed.
They are so ignorant they don’t understand
that we will never be afraid,
we will never hate
and we will never be silent
for life is ours!



Daily Painting

Bedřich Dlouhý
NEJEDLÝ MINE (late 1950s)

Wednesday, November 13, 2024

Watching

RAPIÑA
Carlos Enrique Taboada
Mexico, 1975




Playing

MGMT
LOSS OF LIFE


ANNE SEXTON
“The Poet of Ignorance”

Perhaps the earth is floating,
I do not know.
Perhaps the stars are little paper cutups
made by some giant scissors,
I do not know.
Perhaps the moon is a frozen tear,
I do not know.
Perhaps God is only a deep voice,
heard by the deaf,
I do not know.

Perhaps I am no one.
True, I have a body
and I cannot escape from it.
I would like to fly out of my head,
but that is out of the question.
It is written on the tablet of destiny
that I am stuck here in this human form.
That being the case
I would like to call attention to my problem.

There is an animal inside me,
clutching fast to my heart,
a huge crab.
The doctors of Boston
have thrown up their hands.
They have tried scalpels,
needles, poison gasses and the like.
The crab remains.
It is a great weight.
I try to forget it, go about my business,
cook the broccoli, open and shut books,
brush my teeth and tie my shoes.
I have tried prayer
but as I pray the crab grips harder
and the pain enlarges.

I had a dream once,
perhaps it was a dream,
that the crab was my ignorance of God.
But who am I to believe in dreams?


Daily Painting

Winslow Homer
SONG OF THE LARK (1876)

Tuesday, November 12, 2024

Watching

DARKER THAN NIGHT
[MÁS NEGRO QUE LA NOCHA]

Carlos Enrique Taboada
Mexico, 1975



Playing

Bully
LUCKY FOR YOU


ELSA LANCHESTER

I held a baby once. It felt like a bag of hot snakes.



Daily Painting

Simon Mathurin Lantara
LE COUP DE TONNERRE [THE THUNDERCLAP] (1776)

Monday, November 11, 2024

Watching

RIPLEY
Steven Zaillian
USA, 2024

Playing

Roomful of Teeth
ROOMFUL OF TEETH


AUDRE LORDE
“A Litany for Survival”

For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children's mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours:

For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother's milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.

And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid

So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.


Daily Painting

Sphephelo Mnguni
ROYAL HIGHNESS (2022)

Sunday, November 10, 2024

Watching

RIPLEY
Steven Zaillian
USA, 2024

Reading

Margaret Atwood
SURFACING

Playing

Christine and the Queens
PARANOÏA, ANGELS, TRUE LOVE