Playing

CLUB MOD on allclassical.org

Hosted by Andrea Murray

STANISŁAW LEM
Solaris

What am I then? A dream?

Playing

CLUB MOD on allclassical.org

Hosted by Andrea Murray

STANISŁAW LEM
Solaris

We take off into the cosmos, ready for anything: for solitude, for hardship, for exhaustion, death. Modesty forbids us to say so, but there are times when we think pretty well of ourselves. And yet, if we examine it more closely, our enthusiasm turns out to be all sham. We don't want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos….

We are humanitarian and chivalrous; we don't want to enslave other races, we simply want to bequeath them our values and take over their heritage in exchange. We think of ourselves as the Knights of the Holy Contact. This is another lie. We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors.

A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is. We are searching for an ideal image of our own world: we go in quest of a planet, a civilization superior to our own but developed on the basis of a prototype of our primeval past.

HANIF KUREISHI
Intimacy

At the same time, you have to find the right distance between people. Too close, and they overwhelm you, too far and they abandon you. How to hold them in the right relation?

Playing

Tan Dun
GHOST OPERA

Kronos Quartet
Wu Man

STANISŁAW LEM
Solaris

We all know that we are material creatures, subject to the laws of physiology and physics, and not even the power of all our feelings combined can defeat those laws. All we can do is detest them. The age-old faith of lovers and poets in the power of love, stronger than death, that finis vitae sed non amoris, is a lie, useless and not even funny.

So must one be resigned to being a clock that measures the passage of time, now out of order, now repaired, and whose mechanism generates despair and love as soon as its maker sets it going? Are we to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient torments, which are all the more profound because they grow comic with repetition? That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox...

Daily Painting

Bernard Buffet
HIBOU OU LE GRAND DUC (1958)

Playing

CLUB MOD on allclassical.org

Hosted by Andrea Murray

Daily Painting

Ryszard Kaja
DACHSHUND (2017)

Playing

Jeff Beal
THE PAPER LINED SHACK

Leonard Slatkin

Hila Plitmann
The Eastman Philharmonia
The New Hollywood String Quartet

Daily Painting

Oskar Bergman
SNOWFALL OVER SKÄRGÅRD (1962)

Playing

The Velvet Underground
SQUEEZE

Daily Painting

Laurence Stephen Lowry
BLITZED SITE (1942)

Playing

The Cars
SHAKE IT UP

STANISŁAW LEM
Solaris

The fate of a single man can be rich with significance, but the history of thousands and millions of men does not mean anything at all, in any adequate sense of the word.

Daily Painting

Ivan Pylypenko
WINTER (2017) 

Daily Painting

Carl August Johansson
WINTER LANDSCAPE WITH FISHERMEN (1891)

Playing

Craig Ogden
CRAIG OGDEN IN CONCERT

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK

Our thesis eleven today should be:

"Critical leftists have hitherto only dirtied with dust the balls of those in power – the point is to cut them off."

Daily Painting

Svend Rasmussen Svendsen
FOOTPRINTS IN SNOW AND BIRCH TREES (1920)

Playing

Warsaw Village Band
MAZOVIA ROOTS REACTION

Daily Painting

Carl Blechen
MOUNTAIN GORGE IN WINTER (1825)

Playing

CLUB MOD on allclassical.org

Hosted by Andrea Murray

Playing

Frédéric Chopin
BALLETS

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Les Sylphides
Robert Irving, Philharmonia Orchestra

A Month in the Country
John Lanchbury, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

STANISŁAW LEM
Solaris

A human being, appearances to the contrary, doesn’t create his own purposes. These are imposed by the time he’s born into; he may serve them, he may rebel against them, but the object of his service or rebellion comes from the outside. To experience complete freedom in seeking his purposes he would have to be alone, and that’s impossible, since a person who isn’t brought up among people cannot become a person.

Daily Painting

Jeanie Tomanek
DEMETER'S SEARCH (2013) 

Playing

John Cale
MERCY

Daily Painting

Everett Shinn
AFTER THE REHEARSAL (1912)

Playing

Various Artists
Putumayo Presents - NORTH AFRICAN GROOVE

STANISŁAW LEM
Solaris

If man had more of a sense of humor, things might have turned out differently.

JOHN WRAY

Only a blind man could have lived through these last years without seeing what was bearing down upon us; so I made myself blind as I could manage. I wanted to believe the worst was behind me, and I found an easy way to make it so. I simply turned my back on what was coming.

Daily Painting

Domenico Gnoli
WINTER (1967)