Where you stand depends on where you sit

“Memory is like fiction; or else it’s fiction that’s like memory. This really came home to me once I started writing fiction, that memory seemed a kind of fiction, or vice versa. Either way, no matter how hard you try to put everything neatly into shape, the context wanders this way and that, until finally the context isn’t there anymore. You’re left with this pile of kittens lolling all over one another. Warm with life, hopelessly unstable.”

— Haruki Murakami, “The Last Lawn of the Afternoon,” The Elephant Vanishes

What you don’t see

You see that couple sitting on the next table — They look fine — They could just be saying, ‘Yeah, my brother’s buying a new shop,’ or she could be saying, ‘You know what? I can’t do this any more. I’m leaving in three days and I’m not coming back.’ And the other person might have been planning his whole life on that person staying, so he has a broken heart inside. But you can’t see it.

— Erlend Øye, quoted in Norwegian Blues, 2004.

Not today

I think as you get older, when things go wrong it hurts so much, and we question our ability to write any decent music so much, that it’s very easy just to put down your tools and say, ‘I’m not doing it today’. We could drift for months and months and months.

— Portishead’s Geoff Barrow, quoted in ‘It’s not wonderful at all – it’s horrible’, 2008.

A pain that’s heaven

The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham

“Well, you know when people are no good at anything else they become writers,” I said, with a chuckle.
“I have no talent.”
“Then what do you want to do?”
He gave me his radiant, fascinating smile.
“Loaf,” he said.

Hi

I thought maybe one day I’d like to be a part of something that lets me be around books and coffee and interesting people.

And the world will kill you too

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

The Italians asked me if I thought President Wilson would declare war on Turkey. I said that was doubtful. Turkey, I said, was our national bird but the joke translated so badly and they were so puzzled and suspicious that I said yes, we would probably declare war on Turkey.

We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others. It has only happened to me like that once. I have been alone while I was with many girls and that is the way that you can be most lonely. But we were never lonely and never afraid when we were together. I know that the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started.

If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.

---

The things they carried

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

He said he’d done his best. He’d tried to be a decent medic. Win some and lose some, he said, but he’d tried hard. Briefly then, rambling a little, he talked about a few of the guys who were gone now, Curt Lemon and Kiowa and Ted Lavender, and how crazy it was that people who were so incredibly alive could get so incredibly dead.

A lonely snail

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami

Fairness is a concept that holds only in limited situations. Yet we want the concept to extend to everything, in and out of phase. From snails to hardware stores to married life. Maybe no one finds it, or even misses it, but fairness is like love. What is given has nothing to do with what we seek.

I bought a pack of cigarettes, then phoned my apartment. Not that I expected anyone to answer, but I liked the idea of this being the last thing I did. I pictured the phone ringing on and on in an empty apartment. The image was so clear.

The sun sliced through the windshield, sealing me in light. I closed my eyes and felt the warmth on my eyelids. Sunlight traveled a long distance to reach this planet; an infinitesimal portion of that energy was enough to warm my eyelids. I was moved. That something as insignificant as an eyelid had its place in the workings of the universe, that the cosmic order did not overlook this momentary fact…I thought about snails and suzuki in butter sauce and shaving cream and Blowing in the Wind. The world is full of revelations.

History plays irrevocable jokes

The Joke by Milan Kundera

I was horrified at the the thought that things conceived in error are just as real as things conceived with good reason and of necessity…The errors were so common and universal that they didn’t represent exceptions or faults in the order of things; on the contrary, they constituted that order.

Feeling like I really understand

The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker

I think I’m going to go to RiverRun Books and look at the poetry shelves. When I see new books for sale there that I already own, it makes me happy. It makes me feel that there’s part of the world that I really understand.

In fact the letter may be better than any poem she wrote, though she wrote some good ones. But we wouldn’t be interested in reading the letter unless she’d written the poems. So once again its terribly confusing. You need the art in order to love the life.

Johnny Marr

The Smiths – Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others

The Smiths – Still Ill

Something wrong

From The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen:

Denise was a little worried by the degree of her revulsion. She didn’t understand what made her so very mean. She was unhappy to be so mean. There seemed to be something wrong with the way she thought about herself and other people [...] Her heart was full and her senses were sharp, but her head felt liable to burst in the vacuum of her solitude.

For a few minutes, the orange flotation device was the only object he had. It was his last object and so, instinctively, he loved it and pulled it close. Then they hauled him out of the water and dried him off and wrapped him up. They treated him like a child, and he reconsidered the wisdom of surviving.

From my peaceful corner, i conceal the world

From Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, a book with an “unlikeable” hero:

Who, then, if not an author, must speak the sacred truth? You fear the deeply penetrating gaze, you are afraid to penetrate anything deeply with your own gaze, you like to skim over everything with unthinking eyes. You will even have a hearty laugh over Chichikov…will turn to yourself with redoubled pride, a self-satisfied smile will appear on your face, and you will say: ‘One can’t help agreeing, the most strange and ridiculous people turn up in some provinces, and no small scoundrel at that!’ And who among you, not publicly, but in quiet, alone, in moments of solitary converse with himself, will point deeply into his own soul this painful question: ‘And isn’t there a bit of Chichikov in me, too?’

Waste of space

When i’m low i talk like a fool

From The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway:

The waiter seemed a little offended about the flowers of the Pyrenees, so I overtipped him. That made him happy. It felt comfortable to be in a country where it is so simple to make people happy. You can never tell whether a Spanish waiter will thank you. Everything is on such a clear financial basis in France. It is the simplest country to live in. No one makes things complicated by becoming your friend for any obscure reason. If you want people to like you you have only to spend a little money. I spent a little money and the waiter liked me. He appreciated my valuable qualities. He would be glad to see me back. I would dine there again some time and he would be glad to see me, and would want me at his table. It would be a sincere liking because it would have a sound basis.

Wikileaks and american journalism

From “The Shameful Attacks on Julian Assange” by (my former professor!) David Samuels in The Atlantic:

Every honest reporter and editor in America knows that the fact that most news organizations are broke, combined with the increasing threat of aggressive legal action by deep-pocketed entities, private and public, has made it much harder for good reporters to do their jobs, and ripped a hole in the delicate fabric that holds our democracy together.

Before you decide if Wikileaks’ radical actions are right or wrong, know that they’ve done with 5-10 people what the entire American journalism industry professes to do daily as a supposed lynchpin of our system of checks and balances. And before you condemn Pfc. Bradley Manning to life imprisonment for treason, think about what made it possible—and easy—for him to download and distribute classified data in the first place.

Obviously, we are completely unprepared to fight a cyber war.

November playlist

Oval - Ah!
Simian Mobile Disco - Casu Marzu
Mount Kimbie - Would Know
James Blake - Limit To Your Love
Chad Valley - Anything (Seams Remix)
Kleerup feat Lykke Li - Until We Bleed
Crystal Castles - Suffocation
Laurel Halo - Embassy
Little Anchor - Keep Me Warm In November
Diamond Rings - Wait & See

1960s kenner spirograph kit

I don’t think I’m old enough to have nostalgia for this thing.
But I absolutely must get a kit this christmas.

Information design

Francesco Franchi designs incredible infographics for the Italian business newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore.

Who knows if they’re actually informative, but they sure are pretty. Looking at these and The Guardian‘s consistently stellar designs coming out of its graphics department, I’m left slightly disappointed by their American counterparts :(

The Times London also just release a killer one-off iPad app for its science magazine, Eureka. First time I’ve seen navigation architected and designed in a way that gives credence to tablets (specifically the iPad) as any kind of game-changer.

Linie, Line, Linea

Wow what a book cover! Linie, Line, Linea – Contemporary Drawing

Cover art:
Thomas Müller
untitled, 2008
ballpen on paper

This survey examines the state of drawing in Germany through the lens of 19 artists working in the medium, among them Irina Baschlakow, Marc Brandenburg, Monika Brandmeier, Fernando Bryce, Marcel van Eeden, Pia Linz, Theresa Lükenwerk, Nanne Meyer, Christian Pilz, Alexander Roob, Malte Spohr, German Stegmaier, Markus Vater, Jorinde Voigt and Ralf Ziervogel.

Would’ve liked to see this exhibition. Would also like to own this very expensive book.