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I can say what I like, but I shall never know
why people write and how it is people don’t write. In life, there comes
a time, and I think it is total, that we cannot escape, where we doubt
everything: that doubt is writing.
- Marguerite Duras
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August 31, 2012
August 30, 2012
Enrique Vila-Matas quote
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In those days I had no idea that, as Gide said, the great secret of works with style – the great secret of Stendhal for example – consists of writing on the spot. Gide says of Stendhal that his style, what we might call the malice of his style, consists in his stirring thought being so alive, so freshly colored, like a newly hatched butterfly (the collector is surprised to see it emerge from the chrysalis.) From this comes Stendhal’s vivid, spontaneous, unconventional touch, sudden and naked, that captivates us again and again.
– Enrique Vila-Matas, Never Any End To Paris
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In those days I had no idea that, as Gide said, the great secret of works with style – the great secret of Stendhal for example – consists of writing on the spot. Gide says of Stendhal that his style, what we might call the malice of his style, consists in his stirring thought being so alive, so freshly colored, like a newly hatched butterfly (the collector is surprised to see it emerge from the chrysalis.) From this comes Stendhal’s vivid, spontaneous, unconventional touch, sudden and naked, that captivates us again and again.
– Enrique Vila-Matas, Never Any End To Paris
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August 18, 2012
Marcia Tucker quote
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As a novice academician, I was assigned to the introductory classes, but I felt that I had leeway to be inventive, since the department head wasn’t paying much attention to the basic courses. My favorite was art appreciation, the class no one really wanted to teach because, unlike, say, “Sixteenth-Century Folio Editions in the Flemish Lowlands,” it did little for a résumé. I threw everything I knew, and much I didn’t, into the mix, hoping my students – many of them only a few years younger than I was – could understand that art was important. I wanted them to experience what it was like to make something that wasn’t “useful,” and to come to respect it. Many were from rural and working-class families where art was considered extraneous, a put-on, a waste of time. I didn’t ask them to actually make artworks because it was an art appreciation course, not a studio class. Instead, I used games and exercises to try to help them discover their potential to live a creative life.
One exercise I gave required that the students do something they had never done before – something that seriously scared and challenged them and that would take an entire semester to accomplish. A student who had never cooked a single thing in her entire life produced a soup. Another of my students, an older man, taught himself to tap dance, and he demonstrated for us – he wasn’t very good at it, but it was just beautiful. One of my students taught herself to ride a motorcycle, and she got her license the day of our final class. Another taught herself to fix her car. On the last day of class, she dragged in a car engine and proceeded to take it apart and put it back together in front of us. Our jaws were on the ground. Some projects were very personal: one man explained that he had been estranged from his father his whole life and spent the semester reconnecting with him.
- Marcia Tucker, A Short Life of Trouble
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As a novice academician, I was assigned to the introductory classes, but I felt that I had leeway to be inventive, since the department head wasn’t paying much attention to the basic courses. My favorite was art appreciation, the class no one really wanted to teach because, unlike, say, “Sixteenth-Century Folio Editions in the Flemish Lowlands,” it did little for a résumé. I threw everything I knew, and much I didn’t, into the mix, hoping my students – many of them only a few years younger than I was – could understand that art was important. I wanted them to experience what it was like to make something that wasn’t “useful,” and to come to respect it. Many were from rural and working-class families where art was considered extraneous, a put-on, a waste of time. I didn’t ask them to actually make artworks because it was an art appreciation course, not a studio class. Instead, I used games and exercises to try to help them discover their potential to live a creative life.
One exercise I gave required that the students do something they had never done before – something that seriously scared and challenged them and that would take an entire semester to accomplish. A student who had never cooked a single thing in her entire life produced a soup. Another of my students, an older man, taught himself to tap dance, and he demonstrated for us – he wasn’t very good at it, but it was just beautiful. One of my students taught herself to ride a motorcycle, and she got her license the day of our final class. Another taught herself to fix her car. On the last day of class, she dragged in a car engine and proceeded to take it apart and put it back together in front of us. Our jaws were on the ground. Some projects were very personal: one man explained that he had been estranged from his father his whole life and spent the semester reconnecting with him.
- Marcia Tucker, A Short Life of Trouble
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August 12, 2012
Shestov / Thacker quotes
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When a person is young he writes because it seems to him he has discovered a new almighty truth which he must make haste to impart to forlorn humankind. Later, becoming more modest, he begins to doubt his truths: and then he tries to convince himself. A few more years go by, and he knows he was mistaken all round, so there is no need to convince himself. Nevertheless he continues to write, because he is not fit for any other work, and to be accounted a superfluous person is so horrible.
- Shestov, The Apotheosis of Groundlessness
The above citation is also the concluding paragraph of the essay Cosmic Pessimism by Eugene Thacker. What follows are two more quotes from Cosmic Pessimism:
No one ever needs pessimism, in the way that one needs optimism to inspire one to great heights and to pick oneself up, in the way one needs constructive criticism, advice and feedback, inspirational books or a pat on the back. No one needs pessimism, though I like to imagine the idea of a pessimist activism. No one needs pessimism, and yet everyone—without exception—has, at some point in their lives, had to confront pessimism, if not as a philosophy then as a grievance—against one’s self or others, against one’s surroundings or one’s life, against the state of things or the world in general.
Perhaps this is why the true optimists are the most severe pessimists—they are optimists that have run out of options. They are almost ecstatically inundated by the worst. Such an optimism is the only possible outcome of a prolonged period of suffering, physical or metaphysical, intellectual or spiritual. But does this not also describe all the trials and tribulations of each day—in short, of “life?” It seems that sooner or later we are all doomed to become optimists of this sort (the most depressing of thoughts...)
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When a person is young he writes because it seems to him he has discovered a new almighty truth which he must make haste to impart to forlorn humankind. Later, becoming more modest, he begins to doubt his truths: and then he tries to convince himself. A few more years go by, and he knows he was mistaken all round, so there is no need to convince himself. Nevertheless he continues to write, because he is not fit for any other work, and to be accounted a superfluous person is so horrible.
- Shestov, The Apotheosis of Groundlessness
The above citation is also the concluding paragraph of the essay Cosmic Pessimism by Eugene Thacker. What follows are two more quotes from Cosmic Pessimism:
No one ever needs pessimism, in the way that one needs optimism to inspire one to great heights and to pick oneself up, in the way one needs constructive criticism, advice and feedback, inspirational books or a pat on the back. No one needs pessimism, though I like to imagine the idea of a pessimist activism. No one needs pessimism, and yet everyone—without exception—has, at some point in their lives, had to confront pessimism, if not as a philosophy then as a grievance—against one’s self or others, against one’s surroundings or one’s life, against the state of things or the world in general.
Perhaps this is why the true optimists are the most severe pessimists—they are optimists that have run out of options. They are almost ecstatically inundated by the worst. Such an optimism is the only possible outcome of a prolonged period of suffering, physical or metaphysical, intellectual or spiritual. But does this not also describe all the trials and tribulations of each day—in short, of “life?” It seems that sooner or later we are all doomed to become optimists of this sort (the most depressing of thoughts...)
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August 10, 2012
Polemic
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There were years, in my writing, in which I avoided all polemic / and then one day I thought, why avoid, why not fight for what you think, why are you so afraid of saying what you believe and possibly being wrong / take the risk of being wrong / so slowly, over time, more and more polemic was allowed into my work / and now I wonder: is my writing too much like politics, too much like advertising / is there enough ambiguity, enough mystery, since in life one can never completely know what one thinks or how one should fight / for me a real conversation is always one where the possibility is strongly present that you might still change your mind.
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There were years, in my writing, in which I avoided all polemic / and then one day I thought, why avoid, why not fight for what you think, why are you so afraid of saying what you believe and possibly being wrong / take the risk of being wrong / so slowly, over time, more and more polemic was allowed into my work / and now I wonder: is my writing too much like politics, too much like advertising / is there enough ambiguity, enough mystery, since in life one can never completely know what one thinks or how one should fight / for me a real conversation is always one where the possibility is strongly present that you might still change your mind.
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August 6, 2012
Art and Sport
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Some people like art and others like sport / some people like making art while others prefer looking at art and some people like playing sports while others prefer watching sports / some people like both making and looking at art while others like both playing and watching sports / some people like making art and watching sports while others prefer playing sports and looking at art / some people like looking at art and watching sports while others prefer making art and playing sports / some people treat art as if it were a sport, with clear winners and losers, while others play sports purely for the pleasure, and consider who wins or loses irrelevant / some people like art about art while others prefer art that works treacherously to speak clearly of things outside itself, and though arguably any given sport is always predominantly about itself, there is also a tendency to take what happens on the playing field and use it analogously towards a greater understanding of daily life and/or the world / some people don’t like art and use their love of sports as a clear signifier to differentiate themselves from the kind of person who likes art while other people who like art might do something similar, only the other way around / some people who like both art and sports might use this fact as evidence that they are well-rounded / but I suspect there are very few people alive who have never considered taking even a slight interest in either one or the other / nonetheless, there are always a few.
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Some people like art and others like sport / some people like making art while others prefer looking at art and some people like playing sports while others prefer watching sports / some people like both making and looking at art while others like both playing and watching sports / some people like making art and watching sports while others prefer playing sports and looking at art / some people like looking at art and watching sports while others prefer making art and playing sports / some people treat art as if it were a sport, with clear winners and losers, while others play sports purely for the pleasure, and consider who wins or loses irrelevant / some people like art about art while others prefer art that works treacherously to speak clearly of things outside itself, and though arguably any given sport is always predominantly about itself, there is also a tendency to take what happens on the playing field and use it analogously towards a greater understanding of daily life and/or the world / some people don’t like art and use their love of sports as a clear signifier to differentiate themselves from the kind of person who likes art while other people who like art might do something similar, only the other way around / some people who like both art and sports might use this fact as evidence that they are well-rounded / but I suspect there are very few people alive who have never considered taking even a slight interest in either one or the other / nonetheless, there are always a few.
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