Clare Bowen and Sam Palladio - "If I Didn't Know Better"

Slow sad country. Beuatiful.

Delta Rae - "I Will Never Die"

Powerful female singer song. Hints of rhythm & blues.

Found via nice 8tracks: http://8tracks.com/missfit2/payday

short stories

Writers and readers: If you could give someone who has never read a short story one short story to start with, with the aim of getting her to fall in love with the form, what would you give her?

http://www.rachellyon.work/blog/

Arbeid Adelt! - "Slik"

Belgische electropop? "electrobelpopensemble" blaft 3voor12 zelfs. Bizarre teksten. Intrigerend.

"Wat het zoal doet / dat weet ik niet / wat het nu weer doet / dat deert me niet"

Meteor Musik - "Asteriu"

Belgium, it says, but Russian voices... real ones?

Nice enough synth scapes, woooeeeeeewyyyy 80s sounds, instrumental.

Michael Sandel - Justice - What is the right thing to do

http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_sandel_what_s_the_right_thing_to_do

Great talk (only watched 15 min or so) about justice and the moral / right thing to do.

Consequential morality: locates morality in the consequences of an act
Categorical morality: locates morality in certain duties and rights

"Philosophy teaches us, and unsettles us, by confronting us with what we already know."

"Philosophy estranges us from the familiar, not by supplying new information, but by inviting and provoking a new way of seeing. ... Once familiar things estrange, nothing will ever be the same again."


Part 2
John Stuart Mill, utilitarianism, says there is a distinction between higher and lower pleasures (important when attaching a value to them) : "Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, then that is the more desirable pleasure."

Another one by Mill: "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied. Better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool or the pig are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their side of the question."

Flying Horseman - "Night is Long" (2015)

Particularly the long, last, eponymous song is beautiful and haunting.

This reminds me of both Dead Can Dance as well as Japan's "Nightporter".

Albert Camus - "The Rebel" (an essay on the man in revolt)

"Once crime was as solitary as a cry of protest; now it is as universal as science. Yesterday it was put on trial; today it determines the law."

p4. "But slave camps under the flag of freedom, massacres justified by philanthropy or by a taste for the superhuman, in one sense cripple judgment. On the day when crime dons the apparel of innocence - through a curious transposition peculiar to our times - it is innocence that is called upon to justify itself."

p5. "Each day at dawn, assassins in judges' robes slip into some cell: murder is the problem today."

p6. "The final conclusion of absurdist reasoning is, in fact, the repudiation of suicide and the acceptance of the desperate encounter between human inquiry and the silence of the universe."

p10. "The first and only evidence that is supplied me, within the terms of the absurdist experience, is rebellion. Deprived of all knowledge, incited to murder or to consent to murder, all I have at my disposal is this single piece of evidence, which is only reaffirmed by the anguish I suffer. Rebellion is born of the spectacle of irrationality, confronted with an unjust and incomprehensible condition. [...] Rebellion engenders exactly the actions it is asked to legitimate. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that rebellion finds its reasons within itself, since it cannot find them elsewhere."

p15. "The part of himself that he wanted to be respected he proceeds to place above everything else and proclaims it preferable to everything, even to life itself. It becomes for him the supreme good. Having up to now been willing to compromise, the slave suddenly adopts ("because this is how it must be . . .") an attitude of All or Nothing. With rebellion, awareness is born."

p17. "... the rebel's aim is to defined what he is. He does not merely claim some good that he does not possess or of which he was deprived. His aim is to claim recognition for something which he has and which has already been recognized by him, in almost every case, as more important than anything of which he could be envious."

p18. "The rebel, [...] refuses to allow anyone to touch what he is. He is fighting for the integrity of one part of his being. He does not try, primarily, to conquer, but simply to impose."

p19. "We insist that the part of man which cannot be reduced to mere ideas should be taken into consideration - the passionate side of his nature that serves no other purpose than to be part of the act of living."

p20. "...the spirit of rebellion finds few means of expression in societies where inequalities are very great (the Hindu caste system) or, again, in those where there is absolute equality (certain primitive societies). The spirit of rebellion can exist only in a society where a theoretical equality conceals great factual inequalities."

Albert Camus - "The Fall"

• choice of words: Dutch are "primates"
• hearing a Frenchman describe my country
• how talking about de Zuiderzee puts it in a very specific period for me

p27. "To achieve notoriety it is enough, after all to kill one's concierge. Unhappily, this is usually an ephemeral reputation, so many concierges are there who deserve and receive the knife."

p31. "Friendship is less simple. It is long and hard to obtain, but when one has it there's no getting rid of it; one simply has to cope with it."

p33. "A woman who used to chase after me, and in vain, had the good sense to die young. What room in my heart at once! And when, in addition, it's a suicide! Lord, what a delightful commotion! One's telephone rings, one's heart overflows, and the intentionally short sentences yet heavy with implications, one's restrained suffering and even, yes, a bit of self-accusation!"

p48. "I could never talk without boasting, especially if I did so with that shattering discretion that was my specialty."

p50. "This I progressed on the surface of life, in the realm of words as it were, never in reality."

p55. "What does it matter, after all, if by humiliating one's mind one succeeds in dominating everyone? I discovered in myself sweet dreams of oppression."

p57. "My relationship with women was natural, free, easy, as the saying goes. No guile in it except that obvious guile which they look upon as a homage. I loved them, according to the hallowed expression, which amounts to saying that I never loved any of them. I always considered misogyny vulgar and stupid, and almost all the women I have known seemed to me better than I. Nevertheless, setting them so high, I made use of them more often than I served them. How can one make it out?"

p63. "Believe me, for certain men at least, not taking what one doesn't desire is the hardest thing in the world."

p66. "I couldn't deceive myself as to the truth of my nature. No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures - have I read that or did I think it myself, mon cher compatriote?"

p67. "Be it said, moreover, that as soon as I had rewon that affection I became aware of its weight. In my moments of irritation I told myself that the ideal solution would have been the death of the person I was interested in. Her death would, on the one hand, have definitely fixed our relationship and, on the other, removed its compulsion. But one cannot long for the death of everyone or, in the extreme, depopulate the planet in order to enjoy a freedom that cannot be imagined otherwise. My sensibility was opposed to this, and my love of mankind."

p72. "We are reaching the dike. We'll have to follow it to get as far as possible from these too charming houses. Please, let's sit down. Well, what do you think of it? Isn't it the most beautiful negative landscape? Just see on the left that pile of ashes they call a dune here, the gray dike on the right, the livid beach at our feet, and in front of us, the sea the color of a weak lye-solution with the vast sky reflecting the colorless waters. A soggy hell, indeed! Everything horizontal, no relief; space is colorless, and life dead."

p76. "Martyrs, cher ami, must choose between being forgottne, mocked, or made use of. As for being understood - never!"

p83. "A liking for truth at any cost is a passion that spares nothing and that nothing resists. It's a vice, at times a comfort, or a selfishness. Therefore, if you are in that situation, don't hesitate: promise to tell the truth and then lie as best you can. You will satisfy their hidden desire and doubly prove your affection."

p120. "I have ceased to like anything but confessions, and authors of confessions write especially to avoid confessing, to tell nothing of what they know. When they claim to get to the painful admissions, you have to watch out, for they are about to dress the corpse."