In “Let My People Go,” performed at the Performance Art Institute, the French actress, dancer, and director looks at the life and work of two women who died young. The English poet and playwright Sarah Kane was twenty-eight when she killed herself; the German Jewish painter Charlotte Salomon was gassed at Auschwitz at age twenty-six. From Kane’s raw words and Salomon’s images, bright against a bleak present, Astrid Bas creates a blend of movement, spoken text, and video that honors courage in the face of death.
Franconia Performance Salon #2. In our second Salon, we worked together to present a live version of Andy Warhol’s film The Life of Juanita Castro with Michael Hunter directing the actors live using Ronald Tavel’s script.
The social function of court life is to enlist the support and adherence of the public for the ruling house. The Renaissance princes want to delude not only the people, they also want to make an impression o the nobility and bind it to the court. But they are not dependent on either its services or its company; they can use anyone, of whatever descent, provided he is useful. Consequently, the Italian courts of Renaissance differ from the medieval courts in their very constitution; they accept into their circle upstart adventurers and merchants who have made money, plebeian humanists and ill-bred artists – entirely as if they had all the traditional social qualifications. In contrast to the exclusive moral community of court chivalry, a comparatively free, fundamentally intellectual type of salon life develops at these courts which is, on the one hand the continuation of the aesthetic social culture of middle-class circles, such as described in the Decamerone and in the Paradiso degli Alberti, and represents, on the other, the preparatory stage in the development of those literary salons which play such an important part in the intellectual life of Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art: Volume 2: Renaissance, Mannerism, Baroque
I have no idea of what is going to happen or in which parts the pain will be. We are only in spring, and spring has a twisting light. Spring’s images are made of crystal and cannot be recalled. There will be suffering, but you know how to coax it. There will be memories, but they can be deflected. There will be your heart still moving in the wind that has not stopped flying westward, and you will give a signal. Will someone see it? Paul Bowles, Next to Nothing
May 10, 2012 | Categories: Adventure, Wanderlust | Comments Off on no idea of what is going to happen
Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay. Robert Frost,Nothing Gold Can Stay
Donny was a good bowler, and a good man. He was one of us. He was a man who loved the outdoors… and bowling, and as a surfer he explored the beaches of Southern California, from La Jolla to Leo Carrillo and… up to… Pismo. He died, like so many young men of his generation, he died before his time. In your wisdom, Lord, you took him, as you took so many bright flowering young men at Khe Sanh, at Langdok, at Hill 364. These young men gave their lives. And so would Donny. Donny, who loved bowling. And so, Theodore Donald Karabotsos, in accordance with what we think your dying wishes might well have been, we commit your final mortal remains to the bosom of the Pacific Ocean, which you loved so well. Good night, sweet prince. The Big Lebowski
Mar 31, 2012 | Categories: Individualism | Comments Off on Palo Alto Lawn Bowling
The Great God hath sent us signs in the sky
we have heard uncommon noise in the heavens
and have seen HEADS fall down upon the earth…aSpeech of Tahayadoris a Mohawk sachem at Albany October 25, 1689. WilliamAbbatt, The Magazine of History with Notes and Queries. Original from Harvard University: Page 282. (1906)
a cannibalistic monster or spirit from Iroquois and Wyandot mythology
Speech of Tahayadoris a Mohawk sachem at Albany October 25, 1689. WilliamAbbatt, The Magazine of History with Notes and Queries. Original from Harvard University: Page 282. (1906)
Feb 25, 2012 | Categories: Individualism | Tags: Iphone | Comments Off on Big Headed Demons
Solipsism on Christmas Eve in Tucson, specifically the Santa Catalina Mountains.
…people outdoors here just scuttle in vectors from air conditioning to air conditioning. The sun is a hammer. I can feel one side of my face start to cook. The blue sky is glossy and fat with heat, a few thin cirri sheared to blown strands like hair at the rims. David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
The Stanford Movie Theatre on University Avenue in Palo Alto. For a few days in the late 80s I worked a jackhammer on a construction crew remodeling this iconic movie palace.
I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
I would rather be ashes than dust I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
The function of man is to live, not to exist.
I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time. Jack London Source: Ernest J. Hopkins, San Francisco Bulletin, 2 December 1916
Dec 04, 2011 | Categories: Solipsism | Tags: Sharka Cão de Água | Comments Off on Self Portrait (Solipsism in Bagan)
Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life. John Muir
I remember clearly the deaths of three men. One was the richest man of the century, who, having clawed his way to wealth through the souls and bodies of men, spent many years trying to buy back the love he had forfeited and by that process performed great service to the world and, perhaps, had much more than balanced the evils of his rise. I was on a ship when he died. The news was posted on the bulletin board, and nearly everyone received the news with pleasure. Several said, “Thank God that son of a bitch is dead.”
Then there was a man, smart as Satan, who, lacking some perception of human dignity and knowing all too well every aspect of human weakness and wickedness, used his special knowledge to warp men, to buy men, to bribe and threaten and seduce until he found himself in a position of great power. He clothed his motives in the names of virtue, and I have wondered whether he ever knew that no gift will ever buy back a man’s love when you have removed his self-love. A bribed man can only hate his briber. When this man died the nation rang with praise…
There was a third man, who perhaps made many errors in performance but whose effective life was devoted to making men brave and dignified and good in a time when they were poor and frightened and when ugly forces were loose in the world to utilize their fears. This man was hated by few. When he died the people burst into tears in the streets and their minds wailed, “What can we do now?” How can we go on without him?”
In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, mo matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror….we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world. John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Oct 08, 2011 | Categories: Individualism | Comments Off on RIP Steve
New York! The white prisons, the sidewalks swarming with maggots, the breadlines, the opium joints that are built like palaces, the kikes that are there, the lepers, the thugs, and above all, the ennui, the monotony of faces, streets, legs, houses, skyscrapers, meals, posters, jobs, crimes, loves… A whole city erected over a hollow pit of nothingness. Meaningless. Absolute meaningless. Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
Sep 15, 2011 | Categories: Wanderlust | Tags: Henry Miller | Comments Off on Rickshaw Porn
