martin gayford | what you need is a project

"Throughout the six or so decades of his career, he has been carried forward by recurrent gusts of enthusiasm. He likes to quote his erstwhile assistant Richard Schmidt, who used to say, 'What you need, David, is a project!' I know the feeling; I am a little aimless myself without a book to write and a subject to delve deeper into. I seem to need to be learning or doing something fresh; I suspect Hockney is the same."

from Spring Cannot be Cancelled: David Hockney in Normandy

by Martin Gayford

anthony lane | dishing out prizes for movies

"Dishing out prizes for movies -- for making them and performing in them -- is a nonsense, and the effort to pretend otherwise becomes a little harder every year."

Anthony Lane

The New Yorker, Feb 14 & 21, 2022

arthur krystal | what america is about

They discuss it while a small TV overlooking the bar plays a live feed of a youngish Barack Obama delivering his election victory speech. When he gets to the part about America being one country, one community—out of many, one—Pitt’s character scoffs, “It’s a myth created by Thomas Jefferson . . . a rich wine snob who was sick of paying taxes to the Brits.” Pitt’s hard-bitten cynicism caps the film. “Don’t make me laugh,” he says. “I’m living in America, and, in America, you’re on your own. America’s not a country. It’s just a business. Now fucking pay me.”

He had never given much thought to what America was about. It was above his pay grade. Once, it had been about the old versus the young, about supporting the war in Vietnam or opposing it, but, with the televised killing of George Floyd, America had become a misfire, a moral mare’s nest. We’d found the secret portrait recording our sins: slavery, Jim Crow, our treatment of Chinese workers, Native Americans, unions, women. But it was still America, right? Give me liberty or give me death. Four score and seven years ago. Ask not what your country can do for you. “When the values go up up up / And the prices go down down down / Robert Hall this season / Will show you the reason / Low overheads.” Compared to murdering fucking Nazis and crazed, robotic Japanese soldiers, we were goddam saints. Anyway, what was he supposed to do about it? His skin puckered on the inside of his elbows, hair grew in his ears, dark spots mottled the backs of his hands—what do you call them? Liver spots, sun spots, age spots? Too many to know which were recent and which had been around a while. He should have taken pictures of them and dated each photo, so he could track their number and location, a chronological map that led to oblivion. In the meantime, noise. People wanting to wrap the country in a shroud and bury it—tearing down statues, renaming buildings and holidays, cancelling this person and that one, stopping the publication of a book because its author was accused of rape. Where was Kate Smith when you needed her? And what happens? Thousands of malevolent idiots storm the Capitol because a reckless lowlife narcissist pays them a little attention, making them feel they’re still protagonists in the nation’s history. Is this what America is about? A reign of error countered by a reign of terror? And everything playing out against a plague killing millions around the world. What did it all amount to? Maybe just numbers. Generations come and generations go, but space and dark matter abideth forever.

from What's the Deal, Hummingbird? by Arthur Krystal

The New Yorker, January 24, 2022

photo from Killing Them Softly

throwing the rulebook out the window

"Throwing the rulebook out the window is a slippery slope and it opens the door on a potential Pandora's box of sticky situations."

Yahoo! Sports

quoted in The New Yorker, March 12, 2012

photo | dan williams | osoyoos, march

not john cleese | uk raises alert level

The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent terrorist threats and have therefore raised their security level from “Miffed” to “Peeved.”

Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to “Irritated” or even “A Bit Cross.” The English have not been “A Bit Cross” since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies nearly ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from “Tiresome” to “A Bloody Nuisance.” The last time the British issued a “Bloody Nuisance” warning level was in 1588, when threatened by the Spanish Armada.

The Scots have raised their threat level from “Pissed Off” to “Let’s get the Bastards.” They don’t have any other levels. This is the reason they have been used on the front line of the British army for the last 300 years.

The French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from “Run” to “Hide.” The only two higher levels in France are “Collaborate” and “Surrender.” The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France’s white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the country’s military capability.

Italy has increased the alert level from “Shout Loudly and Excitedly” to “Elaborate Military Posturing.” Two more levels remain: “Ineffective Combat Operations” and “Change Sides.”

The Germans have increased their alert state from “Disdainful Arrogance” to “Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs.” They also have two higher levels: “Invade a Neighbor” and “Lose.”

Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual; the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels.

The Spanish are all excited to see their new submarines ready to deploy. These beautifully designed subs have glass bottoms so the new Spanish navy can get a really good look at the old Spanish navy.

Australia, meanwhile, has raised its security level from “No worries” to “She’ll be right, mate”. Three more escalation levels remain: “Crikey!’, “I think we’ll need to cancel the barbie this weekend” and “The barbie is cancelled”. So far no situation has ever warranted use of the final escalation level. 

sheenah pugh | sometimes

Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel

faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail,

sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;

elect an honest man, decide they care

enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.

Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go

amiss, sometimes we do as we meant to.

The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow

that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.

how the world began | solastalgia

 

Vesper Flights, by Helen Macdonald

pg 192

photo | grad, 1970

 

jim + nena (right)