non-paperback snippets
Hi friend! long time no see. I haven’t been reading paperbacks as much these few weeks, but wanted to share some pure clips/snippets/paragraphs that resonated with me.
Susan Sontag (1977)
Seen through the acute eye of the camera, any object acquires beauty or appears interesting — the most mundane subject constitutes art. The camera empowers everyone to make artistic judgments about importance, interest, or beauty, to assert “that would make a good picture.”
A capitalist society requires a culture that is based on images. It needs to generate images of new commodities and forms of entertainment in order to stimulate buying. It also needs to gather unlimited information, the better to utilize natural resources, increase productivity, keep order, and produce jobs. Serving these needs, ideally, are the camera’s twin capacities: to “subjectivize” reality and to objectify it. Cameras define reality in the two ways essential to the workings of a capitalist society: as a spectacle to absorb the attention of the citizenry; and as an object of scrutiny to assist officials responsible for governing. The production of images reflects the prevailing ideology of a society. In the U.S., social change is expressed in a change in images. The freedom to consume a variety of images and goods is equated with freedom itself. This narrowing of free political choice to free economic consumption requires the constant production and consumption of images.
The logic of consumption provides the ultimate reason for photographing everything in modern, capitalist society. To consume means to burn, to use up — and, therefore, to require replacement. As images are made and consumed, the consumers need more and more of them. Images are manufactured at an ever-faster rate. Cameras are both the antidote and the disease. Photographic images add to the natural world the manufactured images that help to bolster a depleted sense of reality. But by so doing, these images further deplete the real world, making it appear drab and obsolete by comparison.
sooo interesting. I’ve never thought to connect photography with consumerism, in its capitalist shell. I realize! that I can be pretty quickly “influenced” by things that I see online. In friendly terms, I’m “open-minded”, otherwise, “gullible”. The cool vintage clothes and vacation photos people post. And now, there’s another driving force behind it, because all photographs are manufactured, because no matter how we try to savour and capture a moment in its raw, natural, and relaxed, ordinary form, it is a phony. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t worth capturing, or that more genuine photos are necessarily “superior” photos, or whether the attempt of framing something as genuine is fraudulent in of itself. See? Guilty here. quite easily influenced by Susan Sontag’s writing.
M. Bradbury (1991)
Deconstructionism, as applied to literary criticism, is a paradox about a paradox: It assumes that all discourse, even all historical narrative, is essentially disguised self-revelatory messages. Being subjective, the text has no fixed meaning, so when we read, we are prone to misread. Deconstructionism emerged from Paris and, notwithstanding its claim to universality, has an evident history. It is a manifestation of existential anxieties about presence and absence, reality and appearance. It developed via structuralism, with its emphasis on semantics and symbolism.
Deconstruction exalted itself with ever higher pretensions. As one academic critic exulted, “The history of literature is part of the history of criticism.” Deconstruction transformed everything into social commentary, easily making affinities with sexual and racial politics, two other militant philosophies that challenge the sanctity of text. It presented itself as a supra-ideological mode of analysis, exposing the ideological aberrations of others while seemingly possessing none itself.
I felt attacked by this. But there is merit in the argument, isn’t there? Why do we have to make literature more than literature, and why do we have to cut it down, tease it apart, and make it serve some subjective judgement, stripping away all creativity that is its fundamental art form? Why is literature served to students this way, when we are systematically rewarded to deal with it with so much pointedness that we lose the ambiance?
The San Francisco Ballet (SFB), the oldest professional ballet troupe in the US, is lauded the world over for its masterful execution of ballet in the neoclassical “Balanchine aesthetic”. The San Francisco Ballet School (SFBS) is one of the most competitive dance programs in the world, with even the Level One program (for dancers aged 7–8) rejecting over 85% of auditioners. what makes the SFB and the SFBS unique is its especially strong adherence to the uniformity of body type demanded by the Balanchine aesthetic.
George Balanchine was at the forefront of the neoclassical emphasis on movement itself as the key expressive element of ballet as a medium. He stripped away props, sets, and even costumes and haircuts. Dancers wore plain leotards, kept their hair in a tight bun, and were encouraged to have no facial expression at all — nothing to distract from the pure expression of movement. In his later years, Balanchine continually revised his works to simplify everything but the movement and music, and demanded ever more rigorous uniformity in the look and bodies of the dancers themselves. To those who continue the Balanchine approach into the 21st century, classical ballet all but demands a dancer have a height as near as possible to 5’ 8”, an exceptionally slim build, a small head and bust, and long, willowy arms and legs.
An adherence to this look landed the SFBS in hot water in 2001 when it found itself subject to a lawsuit by Krissy Keefer on behalf of her 8 year-old daughter, Fredrika Keefer. Krissy is herself a classically trained dancer and knows, better than most, the rigors of a classical ballet education. Several members of the SFBS faculty suggested to her that it would not be worth Fredrika’s time to audition as she would be unlikely to be selected. Nonetheless, Krissy persisted and the school permitted Fredrika to audition. Afterwards, when 18 of the 22 auditioners were rejected, Fredrika found her- self as one of them.
Don’t hate me, but I understand SFB’s rationale here. I think, it’s fair. Sometimes, we can’t have it all. But I sympathize, deeply, with both Keefers and the unrealistic standards set for dance, by a man who decides what proportions make a dance beautiful. And how that really puts a dent in how dancers perceive themselves, and question something as simple as moving their bodies. But ballet is an observed art form with its culture and history, and the willowy elegance is… a part of it. It doesn’t mean I will choose ballet without a second thought for my kids, but it also doesn’t mean that ballet can’t go on being… ballet.
Robert Heinlein
Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist-a master-and that is what Auguste Rodin was-can look at an old woman, protray her exactly as she is… and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be… and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart…no matter what the merciless hours have done to her. Look at her, Ben. Growing old doesn’t matter to you and me; we were never meant to be admired — but it does to them.
One of the reasons I die for art galleries. so here’s a dump from a few weeks AGO 🫶
P.S. that’s Art Gallery of Ontario.
The sharp drop in the creativity of aging rock songwriters has often been noted in particular cases, including those of Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Paul McCartney.
During the first half of the twentieth century, American popular songwriters developed a professional tradition. The best of these writers, individually or in teams, combined fluent and often witty use of vernacular language with a sophisticated knowledge of music. Their best songs expressed universal emotions simply and clearly, with melodies that were easy to learn and remember.
These “Golden Era” songwriters wrote songs to fit the needs of musical comedies. Their songs were intended to advance the plots of those productions and to develop their characters. Furthermore, they were written to be sung by professional actors and might even have been tailored to the personalities and abilities of specific singers.
A handful of new artists transformed popular music during a brief period in the mid-1960s. The leaders of this revolution created a new kind of popular music that was neither simple nor clear. Complex verbal images were often combined with new recording technologies to make songs that eluded precise interpretation. The Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields” is a classic example of a conceptual innovation made by young, inexperienced artists. Artists as different as Dylan and Lennon were concerned with creating new art forms with little regard for, or knowledge of, traditional rules and constraints. Their inexperience effectively liberated them from conventions that constrain more experienced, or more respectful, artists.
These new conceptual songwriters performed their own songs. James Miller described the change in the nature of the Beatles’ music during this period of transition: “Until then, rock and roll had been primarily a music of revelry, a medium for lifting people up and helping them dance their blues away… [T]he Beatles would turn it into something else again: a music of introspective self-absorption, a medium fit for communicating autobiographical intimacies, political discontents, spiritual elation, inviting an audience, not to dance, but to listen — quietly, attentively, thoughtfully.”
Traditional artists’ work tends to improve with age, as they gain a greater understanding both of their subject and of their art. Bing Crosby’s 1942 version of “White Christmas” sold more than 30 million copies and the song went on to become perhaps the most successful popular song ever written. Irving Berlin, who wrote both the lyrics and music, was 54 years old at the time. In contrast, conceptual artists’ work tends to deteriorate with experience, as they lose the freshness of their early approach and become constrained by acquired habits of thought. Thus, the aging McCartney remembered the novelty of writing hits in the early years of the Beatles, and Dylan could only look back with regret and awe at the powerful imagery he had created in his youth.
This was cool because it expanded what I consider to be pristinely good music. we’re all flawed in some way. then, I think about how music is constantly evolving, how there is alt and then new alt, and how now, we like “production quality in which elements usually regarded as imperfections in the context of a recording or performance are present, sometimes as a deliberate choice”. When in the last century, songwriters didn’t even remotely sing their own songs but made a personality for the singer (who is someone else)! shoutout to NIKI. impossible perfection.
Hemingway, like any other writer, must direct his narrative to a fictional audience or reader — some individual or group he conjures up himself like one of the characters in his novels or short stories. For, except in special cases, the writer’s audience is not actually present during the writing process. Unlike the reader of a personal letter, the fictional reader is inevitably cast in some sort of role not occupied in real life. He or she must either play along with it or put down the book.
In Hemingway’s case, a “you-and-me” relationship is fictionalized between the author and such a mock reader, who is close enough temporally and photographically to feel like a vicarious participant. Language usage places the reader “on the scene,” and the omission of some details implies that he or she already knows facts that would have had to be described to a stranger.
The opening sentence of A Farewell To Arms illustrates the terms of engagement Hemingway’s prose characteristically imposes on those who read it. “The late summer of that year,” the novel begins, “we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.” What year? What river? Apparently, the reader is supposed to know. The reader — every reader — is being cast in the role of a close companion or confidant.
The reason why the writer is tight-lipped here is ostensibly that much of the descriptive detail would bore an insider. Hemingway points to a “this” or “that” as though the reader could differentiate the near from the far, fully aware of the physical vantage point of the narrator. Moreover, Hemingway trains the definite article (“the”) on a particular article or object of our attention. This omission of an indefinite article (through an initial introduction of “a river”) implies a degree of shared information that would likely have baffled a sixteenth-century reader.
Hi you. We’ve discussed him before and so this is old news. Hopefully, I’ll catch you again quite soon, so be there be square.
