Category: language

  • lucky to be

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    AG2018_1490425a

    El día de mi suerte – Héctor Lavoe, Orquesta de Willie Colón



    Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
    I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

    I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash'd babe, and am not contain'd between my hat and boots,
    And peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good,
    The earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.

    I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth,
    I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as myself,
    (They do not know how immortal, but I know.)

    Every kind for itself and its own, for me mine male and female,
    For me those that have been boys and that love women,
    For me the man that is proud and feels how it stings to be slighted,
    For me the sweet-heart and the old maid, for me mothers and the mothers of mothers,
    For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears,
    For me children and the begetters of children.

    Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded,
    I see through the broadcloth and gingham whether or no,
    And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and cannot be shaken away.

    Song of Myself, 7 , Walt Whitman
  • into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here

    via Narcos (Netflix).


    Rilke : “Death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love” via Popova.


    Jason Hirata and Park McArthur, Lot C. 11 July?–?8 November 2026.
    Incurva, curated by Saim Demircan. There is a checklist and floorplan.

    Isabella Marie Garcia on Bakehouse and Wynwood Norte (Prism)

    Spain, 2026 World Cup champion.

  • dismantle this comforting delusion

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    AG2022_2080262a

    Ben Eastham on Reba Maybury and Lucy McKenzie’s Pervert or Detective?, edited by Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen with an afterword by Susan Finlay, was published by no place press in 2025. It accompanied an exhibition on view at Ca’Buccari, Venice. (e-flux)

    When used to camouflage a deeper conservatism, which is so often the function of cliché, the phrasing reassures readers that their engagement with the work of art in question affirms their opposition to the injustice they might recently have observed in the world, might even be feeling guilty about. Aesthetic experience is reconciled with ethical principle, pleasure equated with virtue, the beautiful made consistent with the good.

    In the conversation at the heart of this book, [the] artists … dismantle this comforting delusion.

    That “perversion” … carries the implication of a desire that cannot be subordinated to any ethical framework.

    Art might in turn alert us to the “violence in which we live,” as McKenzie puts it, and lead us to establish creative spaces—subcultures—outside of those strictures.

    By decoupling art from received morality, they reclaim it as an arena in which hierarchies and social norms can be brought into question without repercussion.

    Only by expressing our unconscious desires and then measuring them against abstract ideals of the good can we approach self-knowledge and establish a workable politics.


    The right to make my dreams come true,
        I ask, nay, I demand of life,
    Nor shall fate’s deadly contraband
    Impede my steps, nor countermand;
    Too long my heart against the ground
    Has beat the dusty years around,
    And now at length I rise! I wake!
    And stride into the morning break!

    Calling Dreams, Georgia Douglas Johnson

  • those that furthest elude me

    Fullscreen capture 742019 30435 PM
    boiling point, Kitano, 1990.

    And who delivers the worst?

    Schwartz: I didn’t love Zendaya as Athena, the only deity depicted onscreen. There is a heaviness and sorrow to that wise, ingenious goddess that obscured the character’s power and playfulness—a choice made by Nolan, no doubt to emphasize his dark themes.

    Brody: All of these actors are professionals, charismatic and persuasive; when a performance is off, it’s usually the director’s fault, as here, with Matt Damon, in the lead role of Odysseus. He portrays the character, as per Nolan’s script, as a reserved, terse, inexpressive, stoic American soldier—it’s not Damon’s fault that his performance, however committed and skillful, suggests nothing of the sly ruses and scheming quickness that mark Homer’s complex hero.

    via an interview with Caroline Mimbs Nyce, New Yorker Newsletter editor

    Richard Brody’s full review.


    A person protests to fate:

    “The things you have caused
    me most to want
    are those that furthest elude me.”

    Fate nods.
    Fate is sympathetic
    .

    To tie the shoes, button a shirt,
    are triumphs
    for only the very young,
    the very old.

    During the long middle:

    conjugating a rivet
    mastering tango
    training the cat to stay off the table
    preserving a single moment longer than this one
    continuing to wake whatever has happened the day before

    and the penmanships love practices inside the body.

    A Person Protests to Fate, Jane Hirshfield

  • all the loveliness that we shared

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    AG2005-DSCF2529

    I don’t know what to do

    ????? ????? two states of mind in me

    51: I don’t know what to do, translated by Anne Carson


    I have had not one word from her
    Frankly I wish I were dead.
    When she left, she wept
    a great deal; she said to
    me, This parting must be
    endured, Sappho. I go unwillingly.”
    I said, “Go, and be happy
    but remember (you know
    well) whom you leave shackled by love
    If you forget me, think
    of our gifts to Aphrodite
    and all the loveliness that we shared
    all the violet tiaras,
    braided rosebuds, dill and
    crocus twined around your young neck

    Sappho

  • Sunshine and shadow play amid the trees

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    Sunshine and shadow play amid the trees
    In bosky groves, while from the vivid sky
    The sun’s gold arrows fleck the fields at noon, 
          Where weary cattle to their slumber hie.
    How sweet the music of the purling rill, 
    Trickling adown the grassy hill! 

    While dreamy fancies come to give repose
    When the first star of evening glows.

    July, Henrietta Cordelia Ray


    The Formalist on Bridget Hoffman.

    Nicole Combeau: When we Surrender.

    England vs Argentina (Messi), 1 – 2


    MOURGUE, Pierre. Vogue, July 15, 1933.
    MOURGUE, Pierre. Vogue, July 15, 1933.

  • Art or its silence

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    Satyr and Nymph
    Gerard van Honthorst (signed by artist), 1623
    A smiling nymph playfully tugs a satyr towards her by his goatee, clearly asserting control over him. Van Honthorst draws attention to her bare torso; her brightly illuminated white skin contrasts sharply with the satyr’s muscular physique and red head. By portraying the mythological figures up close, Van Honthorst draws us into this intimate scene.

    https://id.rijksmuseum.nl/200612824


    You can fall in love

    in a museum, but only

    with the art

    or its silence—or the stranger

    you don’t mean to follow

    …

    Diptych, Kevin Young

  • annealed through shared ambivalences

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    AG2025000000280027a

    [the] use [of] the structural productivity of ambivalence in order to make better forms of life

    Would inhabiting this help us open better imaginaries for jolting the good life into being … ?

    build something out of actively shared energy to feel more optimistic about the world

    (LB)


    Relationships annealed through shared ambivalences.

    Ongoing, Jenny Xie