bill evans | my creed for art in general

"My creed for art in general is that it should enrich the soul; it should teach spirituality by showing a person a portion of himself that he would not discover otherwise. The artist has to find something within himself that's universal and which can be put into terms that are communicable to other people. The magic of it is that art can communicate this to a person without his realizing it. Enrichment, that's the function of music".

Bill Evans, interview with Don DeMicheal (1969) 

rainer maria rilke | no measuring

“In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn’t matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!” 

from Letters to a Young Poet

aug 8 1969 | mal evans diary entry

 

"Doc did a lot of good in his time..."

But let’s be fair. Doc did a lot of good in his time. He thinned out the werewolves in northern California, established a Brontosaurus preserve at the center of the earth and prevented an evil maharajah from hypnotizing the entire world.

Back To The Gore of Yore

Time Magazine, July 5, 1971

rudi krause | finding myself

I find myself looking out my back door

At the mustard plants that have taken over

Seedlings everywhere

I find myself on my hands and knees

Looking for a coin that must have rolled

Under this dresser

I find myself lying beside the road

Aching and bleeding and watching

People pass by on the other side

I find myself looking out over my wheat field

But really seeing only

The weeds

I find myself working in my father's field

Thinking of my younger brother

Having a grand old time in a faraway city

I find myself caught in a thicket of brambles

Afraid to move, afraid to bleat

Straining to hear the shepherd's footsteps

I find myself digging a hole in my backyard

To bury what my money-hungry master wants me to invest

I shall not participate

I find myself panicking as the flame gutters and dies

Realizing that the flask of oil is empty

And all the stores are closed

I find myself eyeing the slop in the trough

While the growling of my stomach

Grows ever louder

I find myself on the broad shoulders of the shepherd

Leaning against his neck, hearing his breath

On our way home

czeslaw milosz | readings

 

You asked me what is the good of reading the Gospels in Greek.

I answer that it is proper that we move our finger

Along letters more enduring than those carved in stone,

And that, slowly pronouncing each syllable,

We discover the true dignity of speech.

Compelled to be attentive we shall think of that epoch

No more distant than yesterday, though the heads of caesars

On coins are different today. Yet it is still the same eon.

Fear and desire are the same, oil and wine

And bread mean the same. So does the fickleness of the throng

Avid for miracles as in the past. Even mores,

Wedding festivities, drugs, laments for the dead

Only seem to differ. Then, too, for example,

There were plenty of persons whom the text calls

Daimonizomenoi, that is, the demonized

Or if you prefer, the bedeviled (as for "the possessed"

It's no more than the whim of a dictionary).

Convulsions, foam at the mouth, the gnashing of teeth

Were not considered signs of talent.

The demonized had no access to print and screens,

Rarely engaging in arts and literature.

But the Gospel parable remains in force:

That the spirit mastering them may enter swine,

Which, exasperated by such a sudden clash

Between two natures, theirs and the Luciferic,

Jump into water and drown (which occurs repeatedly).

And thus on every page a persistent reader

Sees twenty centuries as twenty days

In a world which one day will come to its end.

Czeslaw Milosz was a Polish poet who lived and wrote under the Nazi occupation in World War 2, but eventually fled his homeland when an equally repressive Communist regime took power. In 1980 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, saying he "voices man's condition in a world of severe conflicts." 

angels in the architecture | wings of desire + hawaii, oslo

Wings of Desire

Hawaii, Oslo

steve mcqueen | blitz / occupied city / 'i just do stuff'

Jul 1, 2024

Blitz 

upcoming Steve McQueen film, Nov?

Wartime London

Saoirse Ronan

Occupied City

recent doc, Amsterdam under the Nazis

from a book by his wife, Bianca Stigter

“I just do stuff. I don’t ‘transition.’ 

You can think about it all fucking day. 

Thinking gets you to the edge of the diving board. 

Then you have to fucking do it.”

photo | stageworthy

from the stageworthy website

photo | nancy caldwell | financial district

 

photos | dina livotsky | where the amish go on vacation

 

the new yorker | apr 17, 2018

st basil of caesarea | easter hymn

Today hell groans and cries aloud:

"My power has been destroyed.

I accepted a mortal man as one of the dead;

yet I cannot keep Him prisoner,

and with Him I shall lose all those whom I ruled.

I held in my power the dead from all ages;

but see, He has raised them all."

Glory to your Cross, O Lord,

and to Your Resurrection.

icon by ivanka demchuk

christian dahlberg | vancouver neon | cinemas

 

website

the closing of twu theatre | green hall

photo | michael pasche | carts

 

ides of march pencil holder

 

the indescribable essence of vinyl

 

"Is there anything under the sun that does not have an indestructible essence?" LS

tom waits | radio

When I listen to old field recordings, maybe you’ll hear a dog barking way off in the background. You realize the house it was recorded in is torn down, the dog is dead, the tape recorder is broken, the guy who made the recording died in Texas, the car out front has four flat tires, even the dirt that the house sat on is gone—probably a parking lot—but we still have this song. Takes me out when I listen to those old recordings. I put on my stuff in the house, which is always those old Alan Lomax recordings.

When I was first trying to decide what I wanted to do, I listened to Bob Dylan and James Brown. Those were my heroes. I listened to Wolfman Jack every night. The mighty ten-ninety. Fifty thousand watts of soul power. My dad was a radio technician during the war, and when he left the family when I was about eleven, I had this whole radio fascination. And he used to keep catalogues, and I used to build my own crystal set, and put the aerial up on the roof. And I remember making a radio on my first crystal set, and the first station I got on these little two-dollar headphones was Wolfman. And I thought I had discovered something that no one else had. I thought it was comin' in from Kansas City or Omaha, that nobody was getting this station, and nobody knew who this guy was, and nobody knew who these records were. I'd tapped into some bunker, or he was broadcasting from some rest stop on a highway thousands of miles from here, and it's only for me. He was actually broadcasting from San Ysidro near the border. What I really wanted to figure out is how do you come out of the radio yourself.

Photos for MAGNET by Christian Lantry

twyla tharp | on generosity

Generosity is luck going in the opposite direction, away from you. 

If you're generous to someone, if you do something to help them out, 

you are in effect making them lucky.

This is important. It's like inviting yourself into a community of good fortune.

photo | ray h. mercado

 

ray h. mercado

edward hopper | compartment c car - 1938

 

angeline teay | empire of the son

 

@angelineteay

'that thirst for homicide which habitual bicycling so commonly produces' | new york times

 

new york times, 1894

aug 8 | the feast of the holy crossing

 

end cards

Citizen Kane / Joker

shirley jackson | response to a disappointed reader

 

gary nay | vancouver paintings

sunday services

the beach store

border town

beach grove store

morning motel

my night at the nat

real real gone

reflections

on the drive

it's just lunch

all paintings by gary nay

available at his website 

ishiuchi miyako : postwar shadows