most everybody lives their lives

blue again

2012-02-07T18:47:00.000-08:00

I've been hanging out on the Tumblr lamenting the fact that I am not good with words.

There's a longer post hanging out at the back of my mind somewhere. Will endeavour to seek it out.

Blessings, xox

Happy New Year (Everyone)

2012-01-01T16:24:00.000-08:00

Davids Bazan and Dark talk sense - ‘the fruit on the tree, that’s the thing’ - http://qideas.org/video/unsettled-questions.aspx

As I clearly have not been posting regularly here at the moment I have taken to Twitter (@mosteverybody) and Tumblr (http://mosteverybody.tumblr.com/) to see how that goes - maybe I can kickstart a bit more posting activity through triangulation.

Love to all who come across this.

hitch r.i.p.

2011-12-16T09:55:00.000-08:00

Drawing this and reading this I was unaware that Christopher Hitchens had died in the early hours of the morning. He will be much missed. Already is.

taha muhammad ali

2011-10-15T08:24:00.000-07:00

I have just discovered that Taha Muhammad Ali has died. In a different world he would be (will be) widely recognized as a truly great artist.

The news reached me through Wood's Lot. This site, more than any other, serendipitously drops words, pictures and paragraphs that stop me in my tracks and plant me a little more deeply where I stand. Doubly true today. This news. And then this Taha Muhammad Ali poem, to his notebook.

Empty Words
Ah, little notebook,
yellow as a spike of wheat
and still as a face,
I’ve protected you
from dampness and rodents
and entrusted you with
my sadness and fear,
and my dreams—
though in exchange I’ve gotten from you
only disobedience and betrayal…
For otherwise where are the words
that would have me saying:
If only I were a rock on a hill…
unable to see or hear,
be sad or suffer!
And where is the passage
whose tenor is this:
I wish I could be
a rock on a hill
which the young men
from Hebron explode
and offer as a gift to Jerusalem’s children,
ammunition for their palms and slings!
And where is the passage
in which I wanted
to be a rock on a hill
gazing. out from on high
hundreds of years from now
over hordes ,.
of masked liberators!
And where is what belongs
to my dream of being
a rock on a hill
along the Carmel—
where I call on the source of my sadness,
gazing out over the waves
and thinking of her
to whom I bade
farewell at the harbor pier
in Haifa forty years ago
and still…
I await her return
one evening
with the doves of the sea.
Is it fair, little notebook,
yellow as a spike of wheat
and still as a face,
that you conceal
what you cancel and erase,
simply because it consists of empty words—
which frighten no enemy
and offer no hope to a friend?
from NEVER MIND, Twenty Poems and a Story, translated by Peter Cole, Yahya Hijazi, Gabriel Levin, Poetry dipatch

notebooks

2011-10-14T18:30:00.000-07:00

Hooray!!!
Here's a random page from mine (it is not much but it is something).

no religion

2011-10-11T18:19:00.000-07:00

Surely my misunderstanding of the, I think, faithfully mischievous, Kornelis Miskotte. He gives a huge amount to think about. And he really does look and read as crazily happy as pictured here.

do you wanna live

2011-10-11T18:07:00.000-07:00

Handmade Portraits: tUnE-yArDs from Etsy on Vimeo.

seeing conan

2011-09-30T17:24:00.000-07:00

I love that, 'at this stage nothing is a mistake'. A lot to think about the time it takes to see someone here. (HT to AK)

drifting off the surface of the planet and coming to in San Francisco

2011-09-17T13:13:00.000-07:00

Just returned from a trip to San Francisco. This was about as artistic as I got on the visit. Everywhere we went there was the most amazing street art. Most of what follows is from one trip through the Mission District.

Clarion Alley offers ever changing views on what is happening in and to the world.

This was possibly my favourite mural - there is a cartoon quality to this that I like that combines well with the fact that it is, in all senses, news.

Cat looks familiar

During our visit we ran into Herbert Gold. We discovered his legendary status only post meeting. He wrote about Haiti years ago.

She looks familiar and new.

The Women's Building. Just as vibrant on the inside.

Deliriously happy in a mid walk Tartine visit.

And, in a bonus encounter, I met one of the founders of the amazing organization Walls that Teach on the plane ride home.

my take (such as it is) on 'the gift'...

2011-09-06T18:38:00.000-07:00

...with a detour into other things that caught my eye

london is the only place i am consistently homesick for

2011-09-06T18:35:00.001-07:00

London Bus Tour from moritz oberholzer on Vimeo.

why?

the challenge of Jesus drawn

2011-09-04T15:21:00.000-07:00

we are all in this together again

2011-08-14T16:16:00.001-07:00

John Berger thinks clearly.

fort green sidewalk (spotted after tree of life)

2011-08-12T10:22:00.001-07:00

my scrappy abstract art

2011-08-11T15:30:00.000-07:00

First reactions.

more epic

2011-08-11T15:27:00.000-07:00

tUnE-yArDs perform 'Powa' on Sound Opinions from WBEZ on Vimeo.

HT to Austin

epic

2011-08-02T21:14:00.000-07:00

lucien freud

2011-07-24T07:07:00.000-07:00

I will miss sharing food with Lucian. We had some lovely breakfasts together at his place. I would say he was a good, plain cook – an idiosyncratic cook, perhaps, but a good one. He could take a hung woodcock and pop it in the oven and it would be a very good lunch. He was generally good on the subject of wine and on food. He was a stylish man and, although not a great eater, he did like to go out in the evenings. He would have day sitters and night sitters in his home and he would usually take them out afterwards as part of the payment. He liked the Wolseley in Piccadilly, in particular. I would say it was his current favourite and had been for a while. He called it "the best room in London", so I am not surprised they have honoured him with a black tablecloth and a candle on his regular table. He liked Clarke's in Kensington, too, and, in fact, both Sally Clarke and Jeremy King of the Wolseley sat for him. Lucian used to like the River Cafe too… I have lost count of the places we have gone out to together.
William Feaver

a big picture

2011-07-19T17:28:00.001-07:00

One Day on Earth - Motion Picture Trailer from One Day On Earth on Vimeo.

a brief effort to recall some of the parts of my day

2011-07-17T18:17:00.000-07:00

A late-in-the-day effort to recall the last twenty four hours of reading and watching.
Some of those highlights:
Zizek - funniest thing I have read in the Guardian ever
Twombly - ongoing
The Tree of Life - saw it Friday - love it - This is our story. It has not ended. Jesus & God seemed to be quite palpably in this.
The thump and sigh of my heart
Inspector Bellamy
Heartbreaker
The klezmer joy surprise - stumbled upon Magpie - Live!

Sean Penn/Robert Smith Nazi Hunter

bread

books

2011-07-16T12:52:00.000-07:00

There's No Place Like Here: Brazenhead Books from Etsy on Vimeo.

HT @DavidDark

candoco

2011-07-16T11:37:00.000-07:00

CANDOCO by cemaforre
I stumbled on this 18+ years ago on BBC2. It has held an important and generous place in my imagination since then. I was surprised to find the complete unedited show online. Watching it again a lot of the specific meanings I have attached to it fell to the side (isn't that always the way?) but I came away with new wonders to ponder.

'twombly creating language' - 'thinking was mainly what he did'

2011-07-10T12:27:00.000-07:00

Cy Twombly's art hit me with a lot of force this week as I read obituaries and listened to interviews. In particular, as introductions, there were Michael Wood's juxtapositions here and Jonathan Jones's reflection (now a few years old) here.

a refugee and an unorthodox writer

2011-06-25T06:36:00.000-07:00

Most impressive and winning here is John Lukacs:
In 1974 he was to write of his

gratitude...[and] contentment with the fact that, after all is said, I, a refugee and an unorthodox writer and academic, have been able to secure for myself private conditions of existence in this country that are beyond the dreams of my former countrymen, and without having had to sacrifice my intellectual independence in the bargain.

all you need for breakfast

2011-06-19T12:57:00.000-07:00

Right here.

neil gaiman

2011-06-19T06:37:00.000-07:00

You once said that your biggest influence, for your writing, was punk rock—the idea that you could do something just by doing it.
It still is. You have to be willing to make mistakes, and you have to be willing to make mistakes in public. Sometimes the best way to learn something is by doing it wrong and looking at what you did. When I was 15 going on 16, punk rock, the idea of here’s a chord, here’s another, here’s one more chord, now form a band, is one that sort of always stayed with me. I remember recruiting the drummer in my punk band because he used to hit things. And he used to hit me! [Laughs] I thought, If he’s really good at hitting me, he’s obviously got a lot of aggression. I sort of sidled over to this guy, who later became my best friend. Up until this point, he had been somebody who punched me on the way to class. And I said, you want to be a drummer? He said, oh yeah I want to be a drummer. So I said, cool. I’m starting a punk band. He said, great! We’ll start it in my parent’s garage. It still seems to be the smartest, most glorious way to do anything: You do it. People who want to be writers say, what should I do? And you say, write! [Laughs] And they’ll say, then what? And you say, well, finish things! And they say, well, then what? Well, write something else. That’s how you do it. If you do it over and over, sooner or later you’re going to be writing stuff that’s publishable. And if you keep doing it, you’ll probably get fairly good. You have, you know, a million lousy words inside you, and you’ve got to get them out. I think there’s something very real and very true in that. How do you do it? You do it. Look at other people. Learn everything you can from everywhere. The most important thing is to do it.

paul muldoon

2011-06-18T06:18:00.000-07:00

It doesn’t come naturally to me to defend these things as poems. As a concept, I see it like this: the word “poetry,” as you know, means “making,” so these are constructs in the world…. One is trying to construct something that will help us to make sense of things, and a construct, or building even, let’s say, a space, a clearing, a momentary stay against confusion (from Robert Frost’s phrase), which, when we enter, we have some clarification, however slight, and when we leave it, something, however slight, has been clarified. We have been helped in some way to make sense of the world.

So that is what poetry means to me. I need to be provoked by it. I can’t quite accept what seems to be a fairly conventional notion of poetry as that which bolsters us up in what we already know. I am less interested in that than in poetry that puts us in a difficult position and makes us think again about how things are, and that is almost an article of faith.

Another article of faith (which I touched on briefly) has to do with unknowing, and that, I think, connects it to many experiences that could be described as “spiritual” experiences, and I know you are all familiar with those, where one has a sense of giving oneself over to something beyond oneself, something one doesn’t quite understand; and only when one does that, and only in a spirit of humility, is there half a chance that one will come out the other side knowing anything at all in some minor way. So I think I am really pleased that you enter these discussions in the spirit of unknowing, because that is the spirit in which we all engage in the business of trying to write poems.
Paul Muldoon

statuesque

2011-06-13T18:39:00.001-07:00

'the main thing is to document'

2011-06-11T14:02:00.001-07:00

Jafar Panahi has been imprisoned for making movies.

This excerpt from 'This is not a Film' gets at the pressures he has been under and movingly shows his determination and ability to make films, to create, under any circumstances.

anne lamott

2011-06-04T14:33:00.000-07:00

the sunny side of don draper

2011-05-30T13:17:00.000-07:00

Herman Dune - Tell Me Something I Don't Know (official video, long version) from City Slang on Vimeo.

From an alternate universe...

listening in, drawing

2011-05-28T08:34:00.000-07:00

Not feeling very inspired and definitely not very wordy at the moment. But I was very happy finding this excerpt from a Joann Sfar work in progress, to be put out by Citizen Film.

A rough cut excerpt from Joann Sfar Draws from Memory, directed by Sam Ball from Citizen Film on Vimeo.

more merrill

2011-05-27T15:52:00.001-07:00

in the interests of posting

2011-05-21T12:15:00.000-07:00

Not surprising that the always inspiring Austin Kleon has a desk set-up that is inspired.

respect

2011-05-21T09:21:00.000-07:00

Will be seeing him next month.

'i can touch any idea'

2011-05-09T18:46:00.001-07:00

Revisiting the Yohji Yamamoto interview.

recorded

2011-05-06T17:08:00.000-07:00

Just realised that I had never posted this. A most remarkable book about someone working his way through life. Astonishing.

sensual tangible language

2011-05-06T17:01:00.000-07:00

Especially around the 2.30 mark.

there is a lot that can not be settled here

2011-04-30T07:33:00.000-07:00

This turns out to be a mix of this week and last. I am glad to be here.

Restrepo from Philippa Levenberg on Vimeo.

The David Foster Wallace piece is here:
Wallace made clear what he was hoping to do. He would take the most boring and repetitive job imaginable, apply to it the same formula about heightened attention and awareness that he offered to the Kenyon College graduates, and demonstrate how tedious, irksome labor could yield a path to grace and the salvation of the soul:

Ability to pay attention. It turns out that bliss—a second-by-second joy + gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious—lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (tax returns, televised golf), and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Constant bliss in every atom.

This is a variant on the old and familiar Christian theme of how to ennoble lowly toil by doing it in the service of Christ. Milton touches on it in “On His Blindness” (“They also serve who only stand and wait”), and George Herbert explores it in “The Elixir”:

…All may of thee partake:
Nothing can be so mean,
Which with his tincture (for thy sake)
Will not grow bright and clean.

A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine:
Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws,
Makes that and the action fine.

This is the famous stone
That turneth all to gold…

Make faces

Missing from the drawn pages was David Dark's amazing review of Love Wins - I read this in part as a gloss and expansion on the DFW business:
As Barth argues in The Epistle to the Romans, the gospel has to be (and remain) a question mark sitting strangely next to whatever we dare to deem orthodox and sound in our own thinking. And when it comes to what we hope to understand of the judgments of God, we have to leave an awful lot to unwritten history lest we believe ourselves to own the copyright on them or find ourselves explaining them away.
and
Judgment, the decision to be made, the alive and signaling, evangelical pinch isn’t to be deferred. It’s now. Or as Modest Mouse famously puts it, “If you wasted this life, why wouldn’t you waste the afterlife?” Life in the age to come is as inescapably social and ethically laden as this one, only moreso. With Jesus’ counsel to the young man to sell everything he has and give to the poor, we’re given a vision of here and there which is anything but neutral (economically, politically, what have you). “Heaven also confronts. Heaven, we learn, has teeth, flames, edges, and sharp points. What Jesus is insisting with the rich man is that certain things will not survive in the age to come.” As Bell points out, the Apostle Paul draws on the same sensibility in his vision of values, identifiers, and fixations being burned and those overly attached to them being saved, but only as one passing through the flames. No disembodied faith will. The question of inheriting olam habah can’t be evangelically distinguished from the question of what we’re up to now, because here is the new there: “How we think about heaven, then, directly affects how we understand what we do with our days and energies now, in this age.”
The news from Mr. Dark is always welcome even when it disturbs.

jtp sings again (and strolls the streets of paris)

2011-04-30T07:32:00.001-07:00

Josh T. Pearson | Sweetheart I Ain't Your Christ | Thou Art Loose | A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

rowan marries

2011-04-30T06:37:00.000-07:00

It was good to see Rowan Williams in all his finery yesterday (along with lots of other people in fancy dress - I sincerely believe we would all benefit from being allowed to play dress-up more).

I recently read Rowan's Rule, which presents a wonderfully warm and spiritual man facing a very difficult situation. His intelligence and humility are very encouraging. I think it is telling that the Archbishop was also in the news today for his letter to a 6-year old.

yohji fashions

2011-04-30T06:33:00.000-07:00

I reflected briefly on Mr Yamamoto before here.

terry gilliam DRAWS!

2011-04-30T06:26:00.001-07:00

good friday

2011-04-22T16:01:00.000-07:00

Always a sad day. But we're all here.

jtp

2011-04-15T17:10:00.000-07:00

In spite of wise words from the friend who introduced me to his music, I am not quite sure what to make of Joshua T. Pearson. I keep on listening. This drawing is rare, for me, in that I drew it from Joshua in motion. While I am happy to steal from the deeply impressive Austin Kleon (to me this looks surprisingly like his drawings of musicians), I am not sure that this is quite what he had in mind.

You can hear the whole JTP album here.

Jools Holland online is a lovely find.

and this

trondheim draws

2011-04-13T16:04:00.001-07:00

LensMotion | Video Documentary Production in Toronto [ Lewis Trondheim Toronto Tour ] from LensMotion on Vimeo.

there was this bloke who wrote about everything

2011-04-09T16:45:00.000-07:00

'man will remain funny for ever'

2011-04-05T16:36:00.000-07:00

Peter Berger takes the opposite view, arguing that while ―tragedy can never go beyond immanence, comedy is transcendent. In Christian eschatology, redemption appears after the terrors of the world as a form of comic relief and,
though heaven will be free from tragedy, man will remain funny for ever. Comedy therefore transcends
tragedy‘s sense of human courage with its own sense of wild, irrational hope. Similarly, Wood argues that Christian faith is comic because it is about eschatological laughter and joy and hope, grounded in the God who ―himself is the comedian who wants his audience to laugh- to rejoice in and thus to be transformed by the Good News. The Gospel itself is a comedy that proclaims the ultimate happy ending, namely, the guaranteed triumph of the kingdom of God. In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus we find the final and absolute reversal of human expectations and desert, through which the Gospel presents so comic a deliverance that the Christian simply cannot respond with ―humorless doubt.

Serious play, indeed.

This is helpful. From Jessica N. DeCou's paper here. (HT to Ben.)

The drawing was my attempt to play with a photo of Amedeo Modigliani that I like.

technicolour jr

2011-04-04T18:15:00.000-07:00

le chat, le chat

2011-04-04T18:12:00.000-07:00

THE RABBI'S CAT - LE CHAT DU RABBIN - TEASER from Banjo Studio on Vimeo.

photografitti

2011-04-02T16:10:00.000-07:00

JR on what he's going to do with his TED Prize money. His enthusiasm and engagement and the resultant art are all very moving to me.

the morphing cup

2011-03-31T16:12:00.000-07:00

I love tea. I am not this didactic in real life (well, sometimes I am - when it comes to how you brew in the teapot).

why draw

2011-03-25T16:24:00.000-07:00

A great and moving post from Roger Ebert here.

He fondly recalls Annette Goodheart's lesson (and admits that it is what he remembers she said, not necessarily what she said, which I like):

Begin with a proper sketch book. Draw in ink. Finish each drawing you begin, and keep every drawing you finish. No erasing, no ripping out a page, no covering a page with angry scribbles. What you draw is an invaluable and unique representation of how you saw at that moment in that place according to your abilities. That's all we want. We already know what a dog really looks like. ...

I found this was a benefit that rendered the quality of my drawings irrelevant. Whether they were good or bad had nothing to do with their most valuable asset: They were a means of experiencing a place or a moment more deeply.

All makes me want to draw out in the world more.

My sketch doesn't look like me but it feels like me when I drew it.

the reason for my blog absence

2011-03-25T15:35:00.000-07:00

Well, this is one of them. I've been baking. I'm taking a course.

a bit of a ramble (or...if I waited for fully formed ideas before acting I would never post anything)

2011-03-05T15:59:00.000-08:00

I think that for a good few years I would have said I was looking for a unified theory to explain everything and propel me forward. I now realize (for me at least) that was a bit silly, the theory a bit of a red herring, idolatrous. I knew this for theology a few years ago (settling on one theology, so you can be some kind of -ist definitely not for me now). Trying to explain the infinite and unfixable with something finite and fixed just doesn't work.

That said, I love that we come up with theology (and with theories). I love thinking and talking about the way things are. Rambling. Talking nonsense is an important part of my creative process and a lot of my rambling is nonsense - but fun. I like an idea/theology that admits it is just a part of the picture, open to revision. (I need more conversation.)

This is why I love when people offer a story, a metaphor, a picture, a parable (any of that sort of thing) as part or the whole of their justification. Have to admit that I am not very good at any of this yet. (I would love to work on it.)

So not a theory but themes. What I am looking for are ways to process what is happening around me and beyond - the thoughts and feelings that these happenings provoke, the horror, the horror, the sad beautiful kaleidoscope. My drawing is part of this. Even though I feel far from it, I get that there is a style there somewhere and happy influences and some sense of what's going on. I want to move towards something that is spontaneous and vibrant enough to catch some of the extraordinary everyday.

There's a lot of work that needs to go into this. Most days I just scratch the surface. But I am trying.

All of which is to say, This drawing makes me really happy.

The idea for the drawing was stolen from here. For someone who is having a great go at telling stories at the moment try here.

2 more informers (facts are subversive)

2011-03-03T19:06:00.000-08:00

...in a good way. Tim & Tom.
And because it feels like ages since I posted a drawing.

[Garton Ash] explains that facts are “subversive of lies, half-truths, myths; of all those ‘easy speeches that comfort cruel men.’” “In our time,” he writes, “sources of fact-fixing are mainly to be found at the frontier between politics and the media. Politicians have developed increasingly sophisticated methods to impose a dominant narrative through the media.” That is, among other things, an excellent description of American politics in the last two years.

jr has a plan

2011-03-03T18:46:00.000-08:00

TED Prize Winner JR & INSIDE OUT from TED Prize on Vimeo.

...for this. Described here. Wonderful-imagination-space-changing-compassion.

shaun tan wins an oscar

2011-03-03T18:40:00.000-08:00

...for this.

me again

2011-02-22T16:05:00.000-08:00

two potters

2011-02-21T14:32:00.000-08:00

Good interview with Mr. De Waal here.

At 10PM, Daniel Kitson Will Be Drinking Tea and Blowing Minds Again

2011-02-18T15:54:00.000-08:00

Daniel Kitson has occupied quite a big space in my imagination since I saw him perform last month. This is partly because he has eschewed DVDs, books, TV shows, and the like so far. Because I do not know very much about him I keep on thinking about what I saw and wondering. This is part of his art, I'd say. It all remains quite immediate and this helps me start wee conversations with myself, which sets me off in pursuit of the windy ways of my own thinking.

It also helps that he writes sad and funny things like this (for We are Gathered Here):

Everyone you have ever known will die.

And so will you.

And yet we dance in the looming shadows of mortality, we dance and we talk and we eat and we argue. We read books. We care for people. We buy houses. We plant trees and we start to drive and we learn how to make milk frothy. Because something, somewhere in the middle of it all has to matter. As our seconds and minutes and days slip by, something has to be important. And who are we to giggle and point and sneer at what others have found to care about? Who is to say what is beneath us, what is not worthy of our hearts?

Everybody needs something to hold when it gets dark, so who am I, who are any of us, to point at anything and call it facile or redundant or stupid or rubbish

Even when it quite clearly is.

A new stand up show about finding something important in an ocean of twaddle.

turmoil

2011-02-18T15:44:00.000-08:00

A short week after everything seemed to go so right on the streets of Egypt, the seem to be going wrong everywhere else. Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, and Iran are all in different states of turmoil and violent repression.

As with the events of the last few weeks, I have been haphazardly following what is known about what is happening here.

DD is also pointing sensibly and compassionately at the news.

what to do? what to do?

2011-02-17T18:57:00.000-08:00

The lp, quite fairly, points out that how often I say this sort of thing (quite a bit) is no predictor of real change or even action. (He sighs.) This fact can make me despair a wee bit. This is definitely a spiritual problem, which is to say, a problem - the very good that I want to do I can not do, etc. More sighing and wondering, 'What to do? What to do?'

Yet right now I am distracted by the fact that I remembered to include the watch in each panel. So hooray for that, at least.

JR

2011-02-17T18:54:00.001-08:00

FACE 2 FACE a GENEVE - 2008
Uploaded by JR. - Watch original web videos.
I have not had a chance to watch this - so this serves mainly as a reminder. A whole movie on the photographer/artist/activist/imaginateur's work.

a man

2011-02-16T16:12:00.000-08:00

Based on a photo by the multi-talented Prash.

the things that get me through the day

2011-02-15T16:59:00.000-08:00

I have been surprisingly happy about this wee on my desk at work guy all day. Makes me feel quite cheering having him sitting there playing away as I work. A ridiculous but necessary contrast with all the other things that pass across my desk (and through my head).

christine

2011-02-14T17:12:00.000-08:00

Christine Seela

Ganzeer, an Egyptian visual artist based in Cairo, is drawing each of the martyrs who died over the course of Egypt's current revolution.

There's another memorial here.

here comes everybody

2011-02-11T08:49:00.000-08:00

the lp: 'the most astounding thing ever'

the david lynch recipe for happiness

2011-02-11T07:03:00.000-08:00

All the ingredients laid out here. HT to DD.

Reading this article, I reflected on how terrifying Wild at Heart was for me. But Mr. Lynch's skills as a filmmaker are such that as long as Sailor and Lulu were on screen together I knew everything was going to be okay. Palpable love and celluloid meet.

the uprising

2011-02-11T06:51:00.000-08:00

Taken in Tahrir Square, earlier this week.

I have not really weighed in much here from a sociological perspective (and am not about to) but this Zizek article helped me make some more sense of what is happening (in terms of the sociological imagination) on the ground in Egypt. And, harking back to my own work on social movements, this statement from Zizek rings very true: Either the entire Mubarak power edifice falls down, or the uprising is co-opted and betrayed.

Now is clearly the moment when the individuals and the movement either determine a changed direction for their country (at least in the short term) or head back to the status quo. Right now it very much looks as though they are choosing the former of the two options, and peacefully.

what is possible

2011-02-11T05:39:00.000-08:00

Feverishly checking in on what is happening in Egypt.

Wael Ghonim's twitter profile: Constantly Changing, Serious Joker, Internet Addict, Love challenging status quo!
Sounds like something to aspire to.

And, on completely unrelated matters (on second thoughts, it is all related), there were a couple of drawings from bloggers that I wanted to highlight this week, both of them very moving.

Guy DeLisle has posted a wonderful page from his upcoming book - pretty universal and challenging of the status quo.

One panel:

And then there's this, from Hugh at Gapingvoid on what is possible.

Take that as far as you like.

courage imagination

2011-02-10T17:39:00.000-08:00

After a hopeful day everything seems to be up in the air in Egypt again. Altogether heartbreaking. The courage and imagination of everyone in Tahrir Square is deeply moving and encouraging, whatever the immediate and long term outcomes.

As much as I can, I have been following what is up here and here.

'mair nonsense'

2011-02-09T16:07:00.001-08:00

A quick trip to Scotland and it seemed to be all Robert Burns all the time. He got inside my head.

Hugh McDiarmid says of the man:

Mair nonsense has been uttered in his name
Than in ony's barrin liberty and Christ.
If this keeps spreedin as the drink declines,
Syne turns to tea, wae's me for the Zietgeist!

Certainly reinforced during the visit.

My drawings all playing off of Peter Howson's work, by far the best part of the new Burns museum in Alloway.

being in the world

2011-02-08T18:24:00.000-08:00

another beard

2011-01-26T16:11:00.000-08:00

I am very slowly working my way through Michael Chabon's complete works. I started in 2000 and am only covering one book every 3 to 4 years. I *love* everything I have read so far and really need to pick up the pace. The drawing came about while reading some of his guest blogs for Ta-Nehisi Coates. I particularly like this one.

He really does not look this imperious.

part 2 in a series...

2011-01-26T15:57:00.000-08:00

...of posts on men with beards. Except that I have never seen the Slacktivist, to whom I wished to dedicate the post. He might not have a beard, so I am posting this doodle, one of the chaps in this photo. That picture, which is the current screensaver on my work, delights me. It looks like part of a very good evening.

Anyway, the Slacktivist has a particularly great post on a serendipitous meeting between his listening and his reading. Worth your time. And he is posting a lot at the moment and it is all worth the time it takes to read and digest. This one is particularly great too (if it is possible to have 2 particularly great posts at once - dilutes the particular-ness, I suppose - I hope anyone reading will indulge me).

At 10PM, Daniel Kitson Will Be Drinking Tea and Blowing Minds

2011-01-26T03:49:00.000-08:00

This video features the rather wonderful, very lovely, Daniel Kitson, insightfully rambling teller of self-contained stories that seem to touch everything without any reference to the wider world.

DARREN HANLON - FINGERTIPS AND MOUNTAINTOPS (Starring DANIEL KITSON) from Natalie van den Dungen on Vimeo.

We saw him at St. Ann's.

from fromm

2011-01-23T11:33:00.001-08:00

HT to DD

exit through the gift shop

2011-01-23T11:29:00.000-08:00

Trailer BANKSY- EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP from alamode film on Vimeo.

Fascinatingwildride

trains of thought this week

2011-01-23T11:20:00.000-08:00

"Yesterday, for Hannukah, I read a story on Hannukah to my children. It says that God exists and is very nice because every time someone tries to exterminate the Jews, He lets a few of them live to tell how cool he is. It reminds me of the stories with Attila maiming a surviving guy before saying “let him live, so he’ll tell everyone what we’re capable of”. Once again, I noticed how hard it is to find children literature for non-believing children. You’ll find thousands of books on Moses, Buddha, Mahomet, Jesus, hundreds of handbooks with naive pictures savantly telling you it’s good to believe in this God of love and progress, the One that so often treats women like furniture and non-believers like heating wood. But no book for kids hints at the non-existence of God. I would love a book called “God’a jerk”, or “Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy do exist, but as far as God is concerned I’ve my doubts”, “Calvin and Hobbes are losing their religion”, “Alice pisses in the font”, “Mouloud & Moshe are fed up with the gregarious bullshit they’re stuffed with, they’d rather be pals”. Yeah, it’s a lost cause, I know. Anticlericalism for children is not trendy. I was ruminating on that because the Figaro, a daily, wanted me to write something on spirituality, after Des Hommes et des Dieux (Of Gods and Men), the Rabbi’s Cat…I was thinking I should tell them what a miscreant I was…And while I was mulling on all that, somewhere behind Montmartre cemetery, I tripped– a hell of a fall. It was black ice of course, but some sick part of my mind couldn’t help thinking the God of my ancesters had found the time to punish me for my blasphemy. That’s the way it is : if religious guys get you when you’re a child, you’re fucked for the rest of your life! I couldn’t be more irrational about that : a non-believer who prays all the time. Who said I had to solve such contradictions ? The older I get, the more suspicious I am of consistent people."
JoJo

"I'm also slow to know what I think, and slow to know how I feel: we're talking reptile time, rock time, empires rising and then crumbling to dust. I still haven't decided how I feel about Sandinista!, for example, and I've been thinking about it on and off since 1980. I tried to mark the fitful shifts in my thinking over a period of about 12 hours in my previous post, about the memorial in Tucson, to mixed effect, I guess."
MC

"So, I would like to start a great paper recycling phase : Bibles for comics, based on a simple principle. You go to a comics dealer with a Bible, a Koran or a Torah and in exchange, you get a good comics album. It’s a win-win operation : you rid the society of Neanderthalian concepts while boosting the comics industry. Instead of learning that man is guilty and woman’s even worse, the children would start drawing Popeye and we would all get a break. Please don’t get me wrong : I don’t want to offend anybody and I do understand the archaeological interest of shepherd’s spirituality in the Near East thirty-three, twenty and thirteen centuries ago. I’m perfectly ready to admit that the holy books all have their own way of telling us how cruel man can be, and how unable we are to put up with one another. Religion is doubtlessly very useful to appeal to our basest, SM and domineering instincts. But hey, damn it, comics can do that too, they can also convey stupidity and violence and intolerance. So please be kind and support today’s artists instead of giving your pieces of silver to God, who doesn’t get any royalties. Let’s exchange Bible for comics, our cities will be cleaner and the comics industry will feel better. "
Peppy Jo

"So here’s a question as we bury 2010 and begin to get to know 2011: are you living to die? Have you dedicated your life to a certain way of dying in the hope of something better? My advice: live as Jesus did. Forget resurrection. Live as if this were it, and if the cold tomb is disturbed some time in the future, then so be it."
KB

"The inability to act spontaneously, to express what one genuinely feels and thinks, and the resulting necessity to present a pseudo self to others and oneself, are the root of the feeling of inferiority and weakness. Whether or not we are aware of it, there is nothing of which we are more ashamed than of not being ourselves, and there is nothing that gives us greater pride and happiness than to think, to feel, and to say what is ours...If the individual realizes his self by spontaneous activity and thus relates himself to the world, he ceases to be an isolated atom; he and the world become part of one structuralized whole."
EF (HT to DD)

"I'm not always articulate, and sometimes I'm just crap, but I'm never ironic."
PS

"And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds."
P

more tea

2011-01-22T16:19:00.000-08:00

From here.

patti

2011-01-22T10:52:00.000-08:00

"...more her sense of wonder, her openness to the possibility of wonder in herself and others. It underlines in her an unexpected warmth and delicacy. The openness has always been a kind of survival strategy too..."

Great article on Patti Smith in today's Guardian.

I finished Just Kids earlier this week. I was delighted too.

i love tea

2011-01-18T19:04:00.000-08:00

the ties that bind

2011-01-16T13:09:00.000-08:00

Does bread exist in every culture?

a spark of hope

2011-01-16T06:46:00.000-08:00

An extraordinarily hopeful article in the Guardian on the extraordinarily forgiving Izzeldin Abuelaish.

And, because I always need reminding, here is Taha Muhammad Ali reading his poem Revenge.

interests this week

2011-01-15T08:55:00.000-08:00

How do you pursue thoughts about what interests you? Put them together? Wondering about that led to this list (compiled in a workshop on something else altogether). I am surprised by what I missed but will post the names as they came to me and then maybe follow up with those I missed. Synthesis is the key idea I think - working artists bringing otherwise disparate parts of their lives and the world together.
Shields
Daisey
Grey
Robinson
Sfar
Demme
Chabon
Sacco
Kalman
Satrapi
Duncan
Brewin
Jonze
Dark
Kleon
Marquez
Eggers
Marker
Banksy
JR
Smith
Campbell
Howie

personalized pesto

2011-01-09T17:12:00.000-08:00

Available now to people of good taste everywhere.

Happy Birthday RV.

glimpses

2011-01-03T16:26:00.000-08:00

My time management skills are such that I am not getting to post many words at the moment. And these 2 pages are not even complete. But its another year. I have a lot of hope. For myself, my loves, and the world.

Happy new year.

happy bread year

2010-12-31T12:29:00.000-08:00

There are always new wonders to discover.

idiot with a tripod

2010-12-31T07:40:00.000-08:00

Amazing and surprisingly moving.
Roger Ebert writes about this here.
Jamie Stuart's website is here.

We were out of town for the storm. Tried to get back ahead of it but were forced to turn around. Our second, successful, trip took 18 hours (but allowed for a movie and dinner out - ideal way to wait out congestion and become unstuck).

here again

2010-12-31T07:21:00.001-08:00

Some of the stuff that accumulates in my head (and out onto my desk) while I am at work.

essayers

2010-12-23T20:41:00.000-08:00

i'm here

2010-12-20T18:14:00.001-08:00

These are some work doodles.

a cloud

2010-12-08T16:28:00.000-08:00

Maybe found a way to track what I come across in the course of a day/week/month/year...(I got the 'players' form from David Hughes).

The rest of the page.

And the quote that I have dwelt on most this week (with a bonus quote and Kanye drawing):

That quote in full (which I got from a book that I have Andrew to thank for):

“If you tell me Christian commitment is a kind of thing that has happened to you once and for all like some kind of spiritual plastic surgery, I say go to, go to, you’re either pulling the wool over your own eyes or trying to pull it over mine. Every morning you should wake up in your bed and ask yourself: “Can I believe it all again today?” No, better still, don’t ask it till after you’ve read The New York Times, till after you’ve studied that daily record of the world’s brokenness and corruption, which should always stand side by side with your Bible. Then ask yourself if you can believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ again for that particular day. If your answer’s always Yes, then you probably don’t know what believing means. At least five times out of ten the answer should be No because the No is as important as the Yes, maybe more so. The No is what proves you’re human in case you should ever doubt it. And then if some morning the answer happens to be really Yes, it should be a Yes that’s choked with confession and tears and …great laughter.” [Frederick Buechner, The Return of Ansel Gibbs, 303]

blackout wisdom

2010-12-08T16:23:00.000-08:00

Austin Kleon is a wise man. His book is definitely worth looking at - I love it.

thanksgiving

2010-11-29T17:05:00.000-08:00

wow

2010-11-29T16:58:00.000-08:00

I made the Tartine bread of a few posts ago. Amazing. I only veered from the recipe where I was not equipped to follow the directions. This meant a tray of boiling water at the base of the oven and frequent spirts of water to ensure there was enough steam. Really really pleased with this. As good a crust as I have ever made. As good and tasty as it looks. Ingredients: water, flour, salt.

Again, Wow.

what is precious

2010-11-29T16:49:00.000-08:00

Really, one of the best 'things' I have ever read.

delights dilemmas

2010-11-23T16:54:00.000-08:00

Some of the past week.

The Zadie Smith essay is a must read.

tartine

2010-11-21T14:36:00.001-08:00

Tartine Bread from 4SP Films on Vimeo.

As part of a broadening in the way that I make bread, I am starting to worker my way through the Tartine Bread book. Working on my first starter. Stay tuned.