Bookish, curious, critical. I also curate a manuscript blog.
She liked only what was most elegant, and if she couldn’t have the best she would do without the second best, because second best meant nothing to her. Yes, she was capable of doing without, her mother was right about that, and doing without had an element of the undemanding; but when, exceptionally, it came to really wanting something, that something always had to be quite out of the ordinary. And in this she was demanding.
— Theodor Fontane, Effi Briest (1894)
“Tale of Tales,” Russian animation classic by Yuriy Norshteyn
And with which of them was Alyosha to sympathise? And what was he to wish for each of them? He loved them both, but what could he desire for each in the midst of these conflicting interests? He might go quite astray in this maze, and Alyosha’s heart could not endure uncertainty, because his love was always of an active character.
He was incapable of passive love. If he loved anyone, he set to work at once to help him. And to do so he must know what he was aiming at; he must know for certain what was best for each, and having ascertained this it was natural for him to help them both. But instead of a definite aim, he found nothing but uncertainty and perplexity on all sides.
—Fyodor Dostoevsky, from The Brothers Karamazov, 1880 (trans. Constance Garnett)
Hallelujah!
It works.
We blew the shit out of them.
We blew the shit right back up their own ass
And out their fucking ears.
It works.
We blew the shit out of them.
They suffocated in their own shit!
Hallelujah.
Praise the Lord for all good things.
We blew them into fucking shit.
They are eating it.
Praise the Lord for all good things.
We blew their balls into shards of dust,
Into shards of fucking dust.
We did it.
Now I want you to come over here and kiss me on the mouth.
—Harold Pinter
Source: soundcloud.com
Imagine the darks from the skull
In a night without sleep, vibration comes
First suit I had in months without feet
Spouting hymns and all’s in them
And forever target, when it ain’t so kind
Other Lives, “For 12”
(It turns out that the lead singer of Other Lives was the guitar teacher of one of my coworkers.)
Source: SoundCloud / Other Lives
Alexander Pushkin monument in St. Petersburg, Russia, taken by Mark Nelson
“City Night” by Georgia O’Keefe, 1926
New York City, day three.
Delia Derbyshire — “Love Without Sound”
Delia Derbyshire is one of the pioneers of early electronic music, now most known for her work with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and role in creating the Dr. Who theme. This is from her 1969 White Nose - Electric Storm LP.
This (courtesy of a friend and fellow Russophile) is Hedgehog in the Fog (Ёжик в тумане, Yozhik v tumane), a classic of Russian animation directed by Yuriy Norshteyn and produced by the Soyuzmult film studio in Moscow. Surreal, poignant, beautiful.
Why do you come here, when you know I’ve got troubles enough?
Why do you call me, when you know I can’t answer the phone?
And make me lie when I don’t want to,
And make someone else some kind of an unknowing fool?
Make me stay when I should not?
Joan Armatrading — “The Weakness in Me”
(Happy sixty-first birthday, Joan.)
Source: SoundCloud / shvaew
I am, of all who were ever born, the most inclined to love persons. Whenever I behold someone who possesses any talent or displays any dexterity of mind, who can do or say something more appropriately than the rest of the world, I am compelled to fall in love with him, and then I give myself away to him so entirely that I am no longer my own property, but wholly his.
— Michelangelo, quote found in Theodore Zeldin’s An Intimate History of Humanity
