Narrative restraint, the refusal to fill in the gaps and provide closure, is a requirement of this method, as is the imperative to respect black noise – the shrieks, the moans, the nonsense, and the opacity, which are always in excess of legibility and of the law and which hint at and embody aspirations that are wildly utopian, derelict to capitalism, and antithetical to its attendant discourse of Man.
Hartman, Saidiya, Venus in Two Acts, small axe 26, June 2008, p. 1 – 14
Is there a person to whom I could ask such a question and would that person have an answer that would make sense to me in a rational way (in the way even I have come to accept things as rational), and would that person be able to make the rational way imbued with awe and not so much with the practical; I know the practical, it will keep you breathing; awe, on the other hand, is what makes you (me) want to keep living.
JK
still, inconspicuous things, to what is common, the incidental and the customary – the things that do not attract us but ground us in being
Meaning and coherence are founded on narration
Lingering on things in contemplation, intentionless seeing, which would be a formula for happiness
Byung-Chul Han, Non-things : Upheaval in the Lifeworld
blackness descended like a shroud on life itself. […] Nothing would change, it would merely be enriched.
LA
Fate of the Kingdoms | Ramin Djawdi.
Other Echoes Inhabit The Garden takes its title from T.S. Elliot’s first poem in his Four Quartets: Burnt Norton (1936) by way of Edward Said’s speech at Toronto’s York University in 1993. Said concludes,
Imperialism consolidated the mixture of cultures and identities on a world scale. But its worst and most paradoxical gift was to allow people to believe that they were only, mainly, exclusively white or black or Western or Oriental. Just as human beings make their own history, they also make their cultures and ethnic identities. No one can deny the persisting continuities of long traditions, sustained habitations, national languages and cultural geographies…Survival, in fact, is about the connections between things. In Eliot’s phrase, reality cannot be deprived of the “‘other echoes that inhabit the garden.’
Clare began to talk, steering carefully away from anything that might lead towards race or other thorny subjects. It was the most brilliant exhibition of conversational weightlifting that Irene had ever seen. Her words swept over them in charming well-modulated streams. Her laughs tinkled and pealed. Her little stories sparkled.
Passing, Nella Larsen
