Daily Painting

Peter Tom-Petersen
FLOWER MARKET AT HØJBRO PLADS (1908)

Watching

GALAXY OF TERROR
Bruce Clark
USA, 1981

Playing

Warsaw Village Band
SUN CELEBRATION

IAIN PEARS
The Dream of Scipio

When all this is over, people will try to blame the Germans alone, and the Germans will try to blame the Nazis alone, and the Nazis will try to blame Hitler alone. They will make him bear the sins of the world. But it's not true. You suspected what was happening, and so did I. It was already too late over a year ago. I caused a reporter to lose his job because you told me to. He was deported. The day I did that I made my little contribution to civilization, the only one that matters.

Daily Painting

Maynard Dixon
NO PLACE TO GO (1935)

Artist: Jesse Duquette.

Playing

Tyler, The Creator
SCUM FUCK FLOWER BOY

ELLA WHEELER WILCOX

"Ghosts"

     There are ghosts in the room.

As I sit here alone, from the dark corners there

They come out of the gloom,

And they stand at my side and they lean on my chair

     There’s a ghost of a Hope

That lighted my days with a fanciful glow,

In her hand is the rope

That strangled her life out. Hope was slain long ago.

     But her ghost comes to-night

With its skeleton face and expressionless eyes,

And it stands in the light,

And mocks me, and jeers me with sobs and with sighs.

     There’s the ghost of a Joy,

A frail, fragile thing, and I prized it too much,

And the hands that destroy

Clasped its close, and it died at the withering touch.

     There’s the ghost of a Love,

Born with joy, reared with hope, died in pain and unrest,

But he towers above

All the others—this ghost; yet a ghost at the best,

     I am weary, and fain

Would forget all these dead: but the gibbering host

Make my struggle in vain—

In each shadowy corner there lurketh a ghost.

Daily Painting

Joseph Ndandarika
BUSHMEN RUNNING FROM THE RAIN (1962)

Playing

CLUB MOD on allclassical.org

Hosted by Andrea Murray

Behold the MAGA God King.

Playing

The Four Fours
THE COMPLETE SINGLES 1963-1966

BLAISE PASCAL
Pensées

I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.

Daily Painting

Karel Appel
CHILD WITH A SCOOTER (1964)

Watching

THE BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW
[Originally, briefly aka SATAN'S SKIN]
Piers Haggard
UK, 1971

Playing

The Fifth Dimension
THE COMPLETE SOUL CITY/BELL SINGLES 1966-1975

EDWARD M. WOLFE
Hell on Ice

Most folks don't have but a few days to a week's worth of food in their houses at any given time. When they run out, they'll have to forage. Only the fools will forage in town. The smart ones will look on the outskirts.

Daily Painting
Woodblock Print Edition

Shima Tamami
UNTITLED (1963)

Playing

Rolf Lislevand Ensemble
LA MASQUERADE

EMILY DICKINSON
"As if some little Arctic flower"

As if some little Arctic flower,
Upon the polar hem,
Went wandering down the latitudes,
Until it puzzled came
To continents of summer,
To firmaments of sun,
To strange, bright crowds of flowers,
And birds of foreign tongue!
I say, as if this little flower
To Eden wandered in —
What then? Why, nothing, only,
Your inference therefrom!

Daily Painting

Richard Gessner
PARIS AT NIGHT (1928)

Playing

Ravi Shankar
THE LIVING ROOM SESSIONS - PART 2

LUCY GREALY
"Ward 10"

Nothing melodramatic, it’s just when the sunlight
came in through the wired windows and laid itself
down on the green floor, it was nice, we liked it
there, then, playing our games. And like kids
anywhere, we were bad, always sneaking off
to buy chocolate in the lobby, over to Maternity
to make faces at babies, and one morning,
after a previous evening of hushed, excited planning
based on an overheard conversation,
we took the elevator all the way down to the lower basement
to wind our way through the deserted tunnels linking buildings,
nervous, fearless explorers among the bare floodlights
and echoes, looking for signs pointing
toward the animal labs. The night before
we’d lain in our beds unable to sleep with the image
of what we must have thought would be
some sort of petting zoo. We got giggly lost three times
before the stink of sheep’s pee found us,
and then we found them, bleating in their concrete
strawless pens, raw geometries shaved
in their sides. In the next room were cages
and cages of cats, most of them silent, some
with electrodes sewn in their heads.
We could hear monkeys nearby, but instead chose
to finally read the signs we’d laughed at minutes before:
we were unauthorized personnel, we weren’t
supposed to be there. We went back to the ward
to find the nurses laughing, scolding.
They thought we’d somehow found out
the hated technician who took blood
was coming that morning, and that we’d sneaked off
to buy Hershey bars in the gift sbop instead.
Always loving, they applauded our ingenuity:
“How did you know?” We hadn’t, but
played along anyway.
“Guess,” we told them.

*

Before I knew high school I knew words
like vincristine, cytotoxin, sarcoma, failing.
I understood the basic theory of radiation,
the vacuum principle of hypodermics,
that it would be a long time
before I would say out loud
the names of my friends again.

Listen, Michael, Tina: I’m the one who made it.
I don’t know the reason for this.

Daily Painting

Viktor Zaretskyi
EYES OF AUTUMN (1985) 

Playing

Ravi Shankar
THE LIVING ROOM SESSIONS - PART 1

ABE KÕBÕ
The Woman in the Dunes

There wasn't a single item of importance [in the newspaper]. A tower of illusion, all of it, made of illusory bricks and full of holes. If life were made up only of important things, it really would be a dangerous house of glass, scarcely to be handled carelessly. But everyday life was exactly like the headlines. And so everybody, knowing the meaninglessness of existence, sets the center of his compass at his own home.

Daily Painting

Karl Völker
BAHNHOF (1926)

Happy "Go Fuck Yourself, Kim Davis" Day to all those who celebrate.

May her fourth divorce and fifth sanctified-by-God marriage be as joyous as those that came before.

Playing

Goat
COMMUNE

RAY BRADBURY
Fahrenheit 451

You can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. It can't last.

Daily Painting

René Magritte
LE BANQUET (1955) 

Playing

Mieczysław Weinberg
STRING TRIO, OP. 48

Krzysztof Penderecki
STRING TRIO

Alfred Schnittke
STRING TRIO

Trio Lirico

 

EUGENE O'NEILL
Long Day's Journey Into Night

It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a seagull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must be a little in love with death!

Daily Painting

Terry Frost
LEMON AND WHITE, SPRING '63 (1963)

Playing

CLUB MOD on allclassical.org

Hosted by Andrea Murray

Playing

John Zorn
TRACTATUS MUSICO-PHILOSOPICUS:
PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS FROM THE INVISIBLE THEATRE

WENDELL BERRY
Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community

No settled family or community has ever called its home place an “environment.” None has ever called its feeling for its home place “biocentric” or “anthropocentric.” None has ever thought of its connection to its home place as “ecological,” deep or shallow. The concepts and insights of the ecologists are of great usefulness in our predicament, and we can hardly escape the need to speak of “ecology” and “ecosystems.” But the terms themselves are culturally sterile. They come from the juiceless, abstract intellectuality of the universities which was invented to disconnect, displace, and disembody the mind. The real names of the environment are the names of rivers and river valleys; creeks, ridges, and mountains; towns and cities; lakes, woodlands, lanes roads, creatures, and people.

And the real name of our connection to this everywhere different and differently named earth is “work.” We are connected by work even to the places where we don’t work, for all places are connected; it is clear by now that we cannot exempt one place from our ruin of another. The name of our proper connection to the earth is “good work,” for good work involves much giving of honor. It honors the source of its materials; it honors the place where it is done; it honors the art by which it is done; it honors the thing that it makes and the user of the made thing. Good work is always modestly scaled, for it cannot ignore either the nature of individual places or the differences between places, and it always involves a sort of religious humility, for not everything is known. Good work can be defined only in particularity, for it must be defined a little differently for every one of the places and every one of the workers on the earth.

The name of our present society’s connection to the earth is “bad work” – work that is only generally and crudely defined, that enacts a dependence that is ill understood, that enacts no affection and gives no honor. Every one of us is to some extent guilty of this bad work. This guilt does not mean that we must indulge in a lot of breast-beating and confession; it means only that there is much good work to be done by every one of us and that we must begin to do it.

Daily Painting

Nathan Oliveira
FIGURE WITH BLUE EYES (1986)

Playing

Magnifico
MAGNIFICATION

ISAAC ASIMOV
Roving Mind

Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly.

Daily Painting

Lee Krasner
UNTITLED NO. 3 (1951)

Playing

Pink Floyd
ANIMALS

MAURICE SENDAK

Why my needle is stuck in childhood I don’t know. I guess that’s where my heart is.

Daily Painting

Vasily Kandinsky
GREEN ACCENT (1935)

Reading

László Krasznahorkai
HERSCHT 07769

ANONYMOUS
"An Open Letter to Every Trump Voter on the One-year Anniversary of his Reelection"

Not ONE FUCKING WORD from ANY Trump voter for the duration of your life. Not about ANY fucking problems, ANY suffering brought on by this dictator or by his corrupt and incompetent cabinet.

You refused to acknowledge the truth and lacked the ability think critically. And then you FUCKING did it again.

So, STFU. Stuff it. Swallow it. Choke on it. You got exactly what you voted for. You owned the libs. It was funny. You knew what would happen and didn't FUCKING care. You sold your soul.

You got laid off because your company was forced to downsize or go bankrupt?
Stuff it.

You got fired because the government decided your job was abuse, fraud, and waste?
Stuff it.

You lost your seventh-generation family farm?
Stuff it.

You lost your third-generation construction company?
Stuff it.

You lost your health care? Your local health clinic closed?
Stuff it.

Your child got sick with e-coli? You got the measles? You can't afford your insulin or your inhaler?
Stuff it.

Your bank ripped you off and you lost your house?
Stuff it.

The air and water you breathe is filthy now?
Stuff it.

Your plane had a crash landing?
Stuff it.

They sold off public lands for logging near your home?
Stuff it!

FEMA isn't there to help you after the hurricane? The wildfire? The tornado? The earthquake? The epidemic?
Stuff it.

Your daughter died of sepsis because she couldn't get an abortion?
Stuff it.

Your wife bled to death because an emergency room was too afraid to treat her after a miscarriage?
Stuff it.

Your dad got disappeared by ICE and will never be seen again?
Stuff it.

He said China was going to pay the tariffs? He said Mexico was going to pay the tariffs? He said Canada was going to pay the tariffs?
Stuff it.

You can't afford groceries and the food banks are closed?
Too fucking bad. Go hungry. Pray harder. Stuff it.

Just keep your fucking mouth shut.

You knew in 2016 he was a wannabe tyrant, a liar, a charlatan, a grifter., a mobster, a sexual criminal. A monster. A soulless ghoul. And then you claimed Jesus chose him, chose this.

You knowingly voted for every ounce of this. And then you did it again. You spit on and dishonored every person who served our country and the family members of those who sacrificed for our freedoms. And then you did that again, too. You sold your soul.

And now YOU fucking OWN IT until your dying breath.

Stuff it.

Swallow it.

Choke on it.

STFU.

You're getting exactly what you voted for. We all are getting exactly what you voted for.

And YOU fucking OWN IT .

-

PS - How's that cut-by-50-percent-on-Day-One electric bill treating you?

Playing

Fretwork
BIRDS ON FIRE
Jewish Music for Viols from the Tudor Court 

JAMES BROUGHTON

“I may be infecting the whole body,” said the head, “But they’ll never amputate me.”

Daily Painting

Goya
THREE SALMON STEAKS (1812)

Live a life so that when you die...

Playing

Bright Eyes
CASSADAGA

GJERTRUD SCHNACKENBERG
“Signs”

Threading the palm, a web of little lines
Spells out the lost money, the heart, the head,
The wagging tongues, the sudden deaths, in signs
We would smooth out, like imprints on a bed,

In signs that can’t be helped, geese heading south,
In signs read anxiously, like breath that clouds
A mirror held to a barely open mouth,
Like telegrams, the gathering of crowds—

The plane’s X in the sky, spelling disaster:
Before the whistle and hit, a tracer flare;
Before rubble, a hairline crack in plaster
And a housefly’s panicked scribbling on the air.

Daily Painting

William Scott
MINING LANDSCAPE, SOMMERSET (1952)

Playing

Benny Goodman
CLASSIC COLUMBIA & OKEH ORCHESTRA SESSIONS (1939-1958)

SAMUEL BECKETT
"The Calmative"

How tell what remains. But it’s the end. Or have I been dreaming, am I dreaming? No no, none of that, for dream is nothing, a joke, and significant what is worse.

Daily Painting

Arthur Lismer
STREAMSIDE BROOK (1916)

Playing

Béla Bartók
VIOLIN CONCERTO NO 2
CONCERTO FOR ORCHESTRA

Tedi Papavrami
Emmanuel Krivine
Orchestra Philharmonique du Luxembourg

WILFRED OWEN
"I Saw His Round Mouth's Crimson"

I saw his round mouth's crimson deepen as it fell,
Like a Sun, in his last deep hour;
Watched the magnificent recession of farewell,
Clouding, half gleam, half glower,
And a last splendour burn the heavens of his cheek.
And in his eyes
The cold stars lighting, very old and bleak,
In different skies.

Daily Painting

Helen Frankenthaler
CROSS (1978)

Playing

CLUB MOD on allclassical.org

Hosted by Andrea Murray

Playing

Arvo Pärt
THE DEER'S CRY

Vox Clemantis

TOMAS TRANSTRÖMER
“November”

When the hangman’s bored he turns dangerous.
The burning sky rolls up.

Tapping sounds can be heard from cell to cell
and space streams up from the ground-frost.

A few stones shine like full moons.

Daily Painting

Yoshida Kenji
LIFE[ 命] (ND)