July 2010
42 posts
June 2010
64 posts
and I found a flower in a field
a field of cars and people;
rows of concrete, paint, and steel
manhattan is where it grew
-avett brothers
“je veux reussir a traduire ce que je ressens.” - monet
“When we pay good money for tape measures that famous people have touched, or treasure our children’s clumsy kindergarten art, it is because we believe that something about the person’s essence exists in the object itself. How else to explain Jonathan Safran Foer’s collection of blank sheets of paper? These are not just any blank sheets: they are the sheets that were about to be written on...
“Nabokov was also a professor of literature, and in his copy of the New Yorker anthology he gave every story a letter grade. The way he wrote each grade in the table of contents next to the story’s title carried the authority of one who expects that hearts will soar or plummet at the sight of his boldly printed capital. Many of the stories did not fare too well, and would not have got their...
“much more than the architect, who designs for life, most of his work is life—enjoyment, movement, smiles, poignancy, some sadness and, of course, light.” – david gibbs on alan fletcher
“remember you always have freedom of choice.” - jenny holzer, south african “truism”
the art that is frankly decorative is the art to live with. it is, of all visible arts, the one art that creates in us both mood and temperament. mere colour, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied by definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways. the marvels of design stir the imagination… - oscar wilde, the artist as critic
“I am in search of the simple, elegant, seductive, maybe even obvious IDEA. With this in my pocket I cannot fail.”
- tibor kalman
“with his secondhand kodak retina, the poet had surreptitiously illustrated not only his energetic generation, but his own oeuvre, leaving behind a catalog of images to reawarken the euphoric thesis that he’s scribbled across the arch of his lifetime: namely, that sex and poetry and the “cosmic vibrations” of youth and life are way, way awesome.”
inside allen...
“…and it’s one life, and it’s this life, and it’s beautiful…”
first aid kit, live at the bell house, brooklyn, ny
“Il faut regarder toute la vie avec des yeux d’enfants.” —henri matisse
e.b. white, describing the different “new yorks”
the greatest is the last—the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York’s high-strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but...
Part of the reason people live in New York is that the city attracts extraordinary people who do unbelievable things in public: walk a tightrope between the World Trade Center towers; crash-land an airplane on the Hudson River without harming a single person; volunteer for the pain of sitting still, without a sip of water or a bathroom break for an entire season. You want to be here to see them....
