A Letdown Squid

“Kanye understandably prouder of his new album than his human...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 01:14:10 -0400

“Kanye understandably prouder of his new album than his human baby.” — Rob Delaney

rottinghaus: The Wolf of Wall Street trailer remember how we...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 04:34:36 -0400

The Wolf of Wall Street trailer

remember how we used to get it up for Scorsese films and then everything since Bringing Out the Dead happened? well: this should be great (or could be Scorsese’s Gatsby).

Currently Reading...

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 06:10:56 -0400

The Round House by Louise Erdrich

Likely to be dubbed the Native American To Kill a Mockingbird, Louise Erdrich’s moving, complex, and surprisingly uplifting new novel tells of a boy’s coming of age in the wake of a brutal, racist attack on his mother. Drawn from real-life statistics about racially inspired attacks on our country’s reservations, this tale is forceful but never preachy, thanks in large part to Erdrich’s understated but glorious prose and her apparent belief in the redemptive power of storytelling. —Sara Nelson

“Strategies are often used in whore Korea…”...

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 11:31:15 -0400

“Strategies are often used in whore Korea…” Did dictations today and this was a common mistake made by students. Maybe I need to work on my pronunciation. #corrections

"By speaking, by thinking, we undertake to clarify things, and that forces us to exacerbate them,..."

Sun, 02 Jun 2013 03:09:15 -0400

“By speaking, by thinking, we undertake to clarify things, and that forces us to exacerbate them, dislocate them, schematize them. Every concept is in itself an exaggeration.”

- Jose Ortega y Gasset (via kindlingtheflame)

“While the rules of grammar continually evolve the rules of story do not. They’re fixed because they...

Fri, 31 May 2013 03:45:43 -0400

“While the rules of grammar continually evolve the rules of story do not. They’re fixed because they stem from the way our brain has evolved. They are hardwired into the architecture of our very humanness.”

Lisa Cron (from Wired for Story)

7 General Tendencies Covering All Modern Works:

Thu, 23 May 2013 11:55:45 -0400

Dehumanize Art
Avoid Living Forms
See to it that the Work of Art is Nothing but a Work of Art
Consider Art as Play and Nothing Else
Be Essentially Ironical
Beware of Sham and Hence to Aspire to Scrupulous Realization
Regard Art as a Thing of No Transcending Consequence

(The Dehumanization of Art, translated by Willard R. Task, p.13)

offlinesamizdat: { *** }

Thu, 23 May 2013 11:55:12 -0400

offlinesamizdat:

{ *** }

Anais:

Tue, 21 May 2013 07:23:33 -0400

“…I only thought I loved you before; it was nothing like this certainty that’s in me now. Was all this so wonderful only because it was brief and stolen? Were we acting for each other, to each other? Was I less I, or more I, and you less or more you? Is it madness to believe that this could go on? When and where would the drab moments begin? I study you so much to discover the possible flaws, the weak points, the danger zones. I don’t find them—not any. That means I am in love, blind, blind. To be blind forever! (Now they’re singing “Heaven and Ocean” from La Gioconda.)

I picture you playing the records over and over—Hugo’s records. “Parlez moi d amour.” The double life, double taste, double joy and misery. How you must be furrowed and ploughed by it. I know all that, but I can’t do anything to prevent it. I wish indeed it were me who had to endure it. I know now your eyes are wide open. Certain things you will never believe anymore, certain gestures you will never repeat, certain sorrows, misgivings, you will never again experience. A kind of white criminal fervor in your tenderness and cruelty. Neither remorse nor vengeance, neither sorrow nor guilt. A living it out, with nothing to save you from the abysm but a high hope, a faith, a joy that you tasted, that you can repeat when you will.

All morning I was at my notes, ferreting through my life records, wondering where to begin, how to make a start, seeing not just another book before me but a life of books. But I don’t begin. The walls are completely bare—I had taken everything down before going to meet you. It is as though I had made ready to leave for good. The spots on the walls stand out—where our heads rested. While it thunders and lightnings I lie on the bed and go through wild dreams. We’re in Seville and then in Fez and then in Capri and then in Havana. We’re journeying constantly, but there is always a machine and books, and your body is always close to me and the look in your eyes never changes. People are saying we will be miserable, we will regret, but we are happy, we are laughing always, we are singing. We are talking Spanish and French and Arabic and Turkish. We are admitted everywhere and they strew our path with flowers.

I say this is a wild dream—but it is this dream I want to realize. Life and literature combined, love the dynamo, you with your chameleon’s soul giving me a thousand loves, being anchored always in no matter what storm, home wherever we are. In the mornings, continuing where we left off. Resurrection after resurrection. You asserting yourself, getting the rich varied life you desire; and the more you assert yourself the more you want me, need me. Your voice getting hoarser, deeper, your eyes blacker, your blood thicker, your body fuller. A voluptuous servility and tyrannical necessity. More cruel now than before—consciously, wilfully cruel. The insatiable delight of experience.”

Henry Miller (August 14, 1932)

(from A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller, 1932-1953.

Owen Embraces a New Perspective on ‘Blues to Black’...

Sat, 18 May 2013 10:32:24 -0400

Owen Embraces a New Perspective on ‘Blues to Black’ – Song Premiere @ Rolling Stone

it’s a heavier, more orchestrated, OWEN. L’Ami du Peuple will be released on July 2nd and I am really looking for to it.

"It all seems so very arbitrary… But no matter how you get there, or where you end up, human..."

Sat, 18 May 2013 01:17:00 -0400

“It all seems so very arbitrary… But no matter how you get there, or where you end up, human beings have this miraculous gift to make that place home. Let’s do this.”

- Creed Bratton (The Office: Finale)

Currently Reading...

Thu, 16 May 2013 04:03:31 -0400

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

The year is 1799, the place Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor, the Japanese Empire’s single port and sole window onto the world, designed to keep the West at bay. To this place of devious merchants, deceitful interpreters, and costly courtesans comes Jacob de Zoet, a devout young clerk who has five years in the East to earn a fortune of sufficient size to win the hand of his wealthy fiancée back in Holland. But Jacob’s original intentions are eclipsed after a chance encounter with Orito Aibagawa, the disfigured midwife to the city’s powerful magistrate. The borders between propriety, profit, and pleasure blur until Jacob finds his vision clouded, one rash promise made and then fatefully broken—the consequences of which will extend beyond Jacob’s worst imaginings.

“Compared to What” Les McCann and Eddie Harris...

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:39:17 -0400

“Compared to What”

Les McCann and Eddie Harris (from Swiss Movement)

What It's Like When A Label Won't Release Your Album

Tue, 14 May 2013 01:10:04 -0400

What It's Like When A Label Won't Release Your Album:

“Sometimes, it’s not that an artist doesn’t want to release music, it’s that they can’t.”

I saw this on Kfan’s blog. I found this article very interesting, and many of the deals trapping these artists are applicable to the publishing industry as well. Also, I loved Jojo’s The High Road. I had been wondering where she went.

Currently Reading...

Mon, 13 May 2013 09:04:00 -0400

The Quiet American by Graham Greene

“I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused,” Graham Greene’s narrator Fowler remarks of Alden Pyle, the eponymous “Quiet American” of what is perhaps the most controversial novel of his career. Pyle is the brash young idealist sent out by Washington on a mysterious mission to Saigon, where the French Army struggles against the Vietminh guerrillas. As young Pyle’s well-intentioned policies blunder into bloodshed, Fowler, a seasoned and cynical British reporter, finds it impossible to stand safely aside as an observer. But Fowler’s motives for intervening are suspect, both to the police and himself, for Pyle has stolen Fowler’s beautiful Vietnamese mistress.

The Independence (Reunification) Palace in Ho Chi Minh City (at...

Mon, 06 May 2013 06:49:23 -0400

The Independence (Reunification) Palace in Ho Chi Minh City (at The independence palace)

Wrote a piece about Bangkok for Numero Cinq’s What...

Fri, 03 May 2013 11:23:25 -0400

Wrote a piece about Bangkok for Numero Cinq’s What It’s Like Living Here series. Check it out.

Artist Kathy MacLeod drew this for me last night.

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 09:50:08 -0400

Artist Kathy MacLeod drew this for me last night.

This Saturday, April 27 (9pm), I am reading at Bombyx Stories as...

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 00:31:21 -0400

This Saturday, April 27 (9pm), I am reading at Bombyx Stories as part of WTF Bar & Gallery’s “What the festival.” If you’re in Bangkok you should come.

www.wtfbangkok.com

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where..."

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 07:08:06 -0400

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

- Theodore Roosevelt (The Man in the Arena, from “Citizenship In A Republic)