Month: May 2020 (Page 6 of 7)

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I am a little world made cunningly
Of elements and an angelic sprite,
But black sin hath betray’d to endless night
My world’s both parts, and oh both parts must die.
You which beyond that heaven which was most high
Have found new spheres, and of new lands can write,
Pour new seas in mine eyes, that so I might
Drown my world with my weeping earnestly,
Or wash it, if it must be drown’d no more.
But oh it must be burnt; alas the fire
Of lust and envy have burnt it heretofore,
And made it fouler; let their flames retire,
And burn me
O Lord, with a fiery zeal
Of thee and thy house, which doth in eating heal.

— John Donne – Holy Sonnets

 

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When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world. His hand rose and fell softly with each precious breath. He pushed away the plastic tarpaulin and raised himself in the stinking robes and blankets and looked toward the east for any light but there was none. In the dream from which he’d wakened he had wandered in a cave where the child led him by the hand. Their light playing over the wet flowstone walls. Like pilgrims in a fable swallowed up and lost among the inward parts of some granitic beast. Deep stone flues where the water dripped and sang. Tolling in the silence the minutes of the earth and the hours and the days of it and the years without cease. Until they stood in a great stone room where lay a black and ancient lake. And on the far shore a creature that raised its dripping mouth from the rimstone pool and stared into the light with eyes dead white and sightless as the eggs of spiders. It swung its head low over the water as if to take the scent of what it could not see. Crouching there pale and naked and translucent, its alabaster bones cast up in shadow on the rocks behind it. Its bowels, its beating heart. The brain that pulsed in a dull glass bell. It swung its head from side to side and then gave out a low moan and turned and lurched away and loped soundlessly into the dark. — The Road, Cormac McCarthy

 

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“Elephant Skull” was a unique sight, as one elephant after another came over to the skull during the course of half an hour, quietly, gently smelling it, feeling it with their trunks, clearly knowing exactly whose skull it was.” — Nick Brandt
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p.s. Hey. ** As today is France’s tentative reopening day, I thought I would celebrate by restoring this beautiful guest post that was made for here around eight years ago by the legendary spell caster, brainiac, dl emeritus and much more aka (Emma) Wolf. It’s a dreamy classic. Do enjoy yourselves. Thank you again from the future, Wolfie. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, wow. Everyone, Check out a coupla snapshots of Mr. Phoenix shot by our own Mr. Ehrenstein back in 1991. Here. Thanks, D! And, yes, RIP Little Richard. Two major music geniuses (LR and Florian Schneider) knocked off in just a couple of days. Fucking hell. ** jamie, Well, hello there, Jamie! Welcome inside this place. Can I serve you a refreshment? Thanks about my little obit thing. Oh, I actually think Joaquin Phoenix is a terrible, stagey actor — an unpopular opinion, I know — so, no, I wouldn’t say he has carried on River’s promise in the slightest. You good, bud? You hanging in there? You getting freed up at all? Love, me. ** MANCY, Hey, hey, S! Yay, a Power Pop sympathiser at last. Twilley, in his early stuff, is among pop music’s least acknowledged genius auteurs. Yes, my eyes/ears perked up at your description of that segment, you bet. I’ll … see if I can find a fragment. How are you? Are you getting through this messy hell phase in an okay or more fashion? ** Armando, RIP LR, a true greatness source. I’m good. Well, Paris has done a rather dramatic shift into semi-openness today, and I haven’t been out yet, so I’ll go find out how it’s doing. Ah, big congrats on the review! Emily Colucci is great and a smarty! Awesome! Everyone, Armando’s first novel ‘Hey Boy’, celebrated here on the blog a few weeks back, has been reviewed, and ultra-positively, by the terrific Emily Colucci on the excellent site Filthy Dreams, and … go read it, of course. Sweet! ** Misanthrope, Hi. Sleep’s good. I could use a little bit more. Yeah, friends and I went and added some flowers to the tower of flowers on his death spot the morning after. I did the only thing on Mother’s Day I could: thought about mine. ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul! You’re the same age as RP. Wow. I don’t know why that seems so strange. Yeah, I decided the Scientists didn’t quite fit. I did check to see if they’ve been categorised within that fold to make sure, and they haven’t as far as I can tell. I’m good, curious to go outside post-p.s. Interesting about your online teaching gig. 12 weeks! What’s the gig, i.e. what are you teaching? How’s everything pandemic- and otherwise in Tokyo at the moment? ** Ian, Hi, Ian. Oh, I would kill for some snow flurries. We only got about 40 seconds of very shitty snow our entire winter. Try to enjoy? The internet is one very, very mixed bag, that’s for sure. ** Steve Erickson, Yep. Everyone, Steve E. has reviewed the new Perfume Genius album in a very positive manner for the world’s and your delectation, so take advantage. I’m happy to learn that you like Daniel and Clara’s work. Me too, and ‘Notes from a Journey’ might well be their best yet, and I’m putting together a Day about them right now. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Did I forget to tell you how much I liked your story? I can’t remember. If so, I did, very much. It’s really sharp. Congrats to X-R-A-Y and to its readers and to you! ** Dominik, Hi, D!!!! I know what you mean. Jeff Jackson mentioned in his comment that a friend of his wrote a bio book about River, but I don’t know if that’s the same book you read. My weekend … I finished a draft of the fiction (?) thing I was working on and sent it to Zac. Oh, I sent it to him because, as I may have mentioned (?), what it is is an attempt to transfigure the doomed TV show script into something readable that stands on its own, and Zac is half of that. Otherwise, I Skyped with a friend, worked on stuff, took a last stroll through Paris-as-tomb, and … ? Did you have a good one and a good Monday? 15 year old love secretly reading Shotacon during tennis lessons, me ** Bill, If you haven’t seen it, the rather ugh James Franco edited together 90 minutes of outtakes from MOPI, and there are several incredible RP sequences in it. I wouldn’t have pegged you as a Power Pop guy, it’s true, ha ha. I don’t hear Gary Numan, but I’ve been listening to ‘Jet Fighter’ since it was born, so … Reorganising old code … that’s what I’ve been doing too if wordage counts as code, which it does in my book(s). Ha ha, I don’t do selfies. In fact, if I ever accidentally do, shoot me in the head. I have not seen ‘Chambre 212’, no. I watched the preview and decided I wanted to stay away from it. It had a very mixed reception here. If you watch it, let me know your take. ** brendan, Hey, hey, hey, B! Lurking’s fine. My whole life has been an act of non-stop IRL lurking for two months. Yes, that’s a big loss, Little Richard. I saw him live a bunch of times in the late 60s, early 70s when he suddenly became cool again to the hippie and post-hippie set. I can imagine about downtown LA. Paris too, in its French way. But we reopened this morning. It’s gonna be so weird to step outside and see people/cars/etc today. Happy to hear about your photo making! Very happy! I can’t wait to get to LA. I was supposed to come in June, and now it’s October, and prayers that the US will let me in by then. Take care, pal. Wonderful to see you. ** Jeff J, Hey, man. Thanks about the Power Pop shebang. Such a shame that The Quick only recorded that one album, as good as it is. They became substantially greater, but there’s only that comp album of demos and things left to show it. Great about where your nose has been. What’s the book your friend wrote? What’s its title, I mean? I’m all right, ready to check out reborn-ish Paris. As I mentioned above to Dominick, I sent a draft of the maybe fiction (or something) thing to Zac to read/consider. It’s based on the ‘dead’ TV script, so he will be its co-author if it isn’t a failure. We’ll see. Fingers crossed. ** Corey Heiferman, Hi. He’s great in everything even when the thing is far from great. I intend to enjoy my semi-liberation to the max, and I mostly expect to feel weird. New things by you! I’ll get on them in a bit. Everyone, The multi-talent Corey Heiferman has made two audio works intriguingly titled ‘I Wish I Loved Computers’ and ‘My Tiny Little Corner’, and I’m just about to go fill my ears with them. You? Highly recommended, I don’t even need to say. Here. ** Okay. I’ll go take a shower and then go see what reopened Paris has in store, and you guys please feast your eyes and brains on Wolf’s lovely construction, and let’s meet back here tomorrow.

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p.s. Hey. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. Well, ultimately, his films are more wacky and comedic than horrifying, but still. And there is enough fake blood in most of them to paint Manhattan. So you’re probably right. ** David Ehrenstein, The premise that ghosts are either lonely and desperate to communicate their loneliness to those still sentient or angry to be dead and driven to punish the non-dead for their privilege is the paranormal’s blueprint. France is strangely, to me, traditionally not very interested in the paranormal. You can go back through their literature and films for years and years and barely find a single ghost. I wonder why. Some smarty-pants should write a book about that. ** Dominik, Hi, D!!! I’m okay, had shitty sleep last night for no good reason, so I’m kind of mentally boinked this morning, but I’m fine. Wow, your recent week beats my recent year or years by a landslide! That’s amazing! Congratulations for chasing your dreams into reality. That’s super incredible and heartening to hear! Was the second session good/even better? Amazing! Your Jarrod Wiggley tribute is beautiful. The blurry blown-up look of the photos is dreamy. I love him (them?). Yes, one week from yesterday we are told we can venture outside and very, very cautiously act like free human beings to some degree. All the shopkeepers in my vicinity were out vacuuming their premises yesterday in anticipation. I think it’ll still be kind of spooky out, but we’ll see. And I just discovered that the Chipotle sort of near me has reopened for take-out, which probably sounds like nothing, but when you’ve been eating microwaved vegan stuff for two months, even a mediocre burrito attains a holy water-like status. So I’m strolling over there today, bright eyed and bushy tailed. Are those cookies delicious? Love exactly like Pannu Kakku (Finnish pancakes, very yum), Dennis. ** Bill, They are nuts. That they are. For better and sometimes worse. Yeah, I’m where you are, I think, trying stuff out early on, feeling the promise, motivated to inch that promise in the right direction. Could be worse, right? Can the Roxie’s stuff be streamed over here? I’m sort of asking myself that, I guess, and I’ll go find the answer. ** Jeff J, They’re fun. Most of them. Pretty fun. The guy knows his way around a gory effect. Congrats on the novel loosening. Loosening is one of the hardest tasks. I love ‘La Guerre Est Finie’. People don’t like it? In God’s name why? Huh. Been a while, but I kind of adored it when I saw it. Yes, great news about Anne Boyer’s Pulitzer, for her and for Jeremy. I don’t suppose that could reverse his situation there? I just checked, and, huh, no, I haven’t done a post about Daniel Schmid. I thought I had too. Well, I’ll go search around and see if I can make such a post today. What brings his name to your mind? ** Steve Erickson, The UK has had a shitload of paranormal shows and documentaries. I feel almost certain just on gut instinct that they must have invented the form. My all-time favorite paranormal investigation show is a UK one, ‘Most Haunted’. It was very stylised and very over the top with old-school MTV editing and a wonderfully scary/overacting host. Miss it. Warner Bros. used to do lots of very imaginative promo stuff for their artists back in the peak days with their Reprise label. There are five or six amazing compilation albums from that period with otherwise unavailable tracks by everyone from Beefheart to Van Dyke Parks to Neil Young to … whoever. That was quite a incredible, daring label back in those days, especially for a major. Luck with your air-conditoner replacing. ** Misanthrope, Right? The comedy, the pathos, the hotness … it’s meta. I’ve never heard of Cornhole, or, you know, that game. I suppose it has nothing with you-know-what. Saturday sounded fun. Ace. ** Okay. The non-essential post I’ve restored today comes from the period when I was first writing my new novel, and, were you to remember this post when/if you finally read my novel, which is most unlikely, you would then understand why I built this particular post into existence in the first place. Otherwise, … have fun? See you tomorrow.