Monday
Jun032013
How Miss Bartlett's Boiler was so Tiresome
How would she fight against ghosts? For a moment the visible world faded away, and memories and emotions alone seemed real.
– E.M. Forster, A Room with a View
June 3, 2013Tuesday
May282013
Miuccia Prada
This poignant portrait of Miuccia Prada in the NYT reminded me of how I became so intimate with, and why I distanced myself from, fashion. Also: the time that I was so fond of Miu Miu's Spring 2010 that I bought a UO cut-out dress vaguely resembling some pieces from the collection, that I still wear, that if you look closely enough is patterned with small hearts... Mmmhmm.
Wednesday
May222013
Comrade Laski, C.P.U.S.A (M.-L.)
As it happens I am comfortable with the Michael Laskis of this world, with those who live outside rather than in, those in whom the sense of dread is so acute that they turn to extreme and doomed commitments; I know something about dread myself, and appreciate the elaborate systems with which some people manage to fill the void, appreciate all the opiates of the people, whether they are as accessible as alcohol and heroin and promiscuity or as hard to come by as faith in God or History.
– Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Tuesday
May212013
Jacques Cousteau / The Ceiling
If Rainbow Fish were a music video, it would look like this. And if I could hug (or just hover over) a bloated puffer fish in the ocean, I would.
Tuesday
May072013
Spring
Christian Rohlfs. Sonnenblumen.
Those final weeks... are blurred in memory, perhaps because our understanding of each other had reached that sweet depth where two people communicate more often in silence than in words...
– Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's
Thursday
May022013
Jacob Wrestling
Rembrandt. Jacob wrestling with the angel. c. 1659
Gaze into the fire, into the clouds, and as soon as the inner voices begin to speak, surrender to them, don't ask first whether it's permitted or would please your teachers or father, or some god.
–Hermann Hesse, Demian
Sunday
Apr212013
Applied Design
The amazing Paola Antonelli on The Colbert Report speaking about iPads, modernism and the Applied Design exhibition at MoMA. Also, Mine Kafon (a low cost wind-powered land mine detonator) is blowing my mind.
Sunday
Apr142013
To the wonder
Initially, I watched this trailer because the thumbnail of an article triggered the retrieval of a dream from last night – where I wrote an incredibly mediocre screenplay for Ben Affleck (??? the last time I spent mental energy on him was maybe in 2002 when he appeared in the Jenny on the Block music video...)
Saturday
Mar302013
Shy gestures
A lovely video featuring Serbian artist and designer Ana Kraš by The Avant/Garde Diaries...
I don't think we are really aware of inspirations when we are receiving them. It's not very obvious. It's really shy and quiet.
Sunday
Mar242013
On keeping a notebook
Looking back, it almost seems appropriate that I would stumble across a Joan Didion book – that I was recently searching for on Amazon – tucked among walls of cheesy romance novels, in a closed used bookstore, which was only open because the group of enthusiastic card-playing Greek men occupying the shop had forgotten to shut the doors behind them.