Sander en Lernert
procrastinators, melting chocolate rabbit, 't Schaap
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=ARFjRbpIKkk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy2169jWJ6k
http://www.sanderplug.com/index.php?/projects/the-procrastinators/
Saturday, 25 August 2012
Friday, 24 August 2012
Jorge Luis Borges - "You Learn"
After a while you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,
And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning
And company doesn’t mean security.
And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts
And presents aren’t promises,
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open
With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,
And you learn to build all your roads on today
Because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans
And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.
After a while you learn…
That even sunshine burns if you get too much.
So you plant your garden and decorate your own soul,
Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure…
That you really are strong
And you really do have worth…
And you learn and learn…
With every good-bye you learn.
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,
And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning
And company doesn’t mean security.
And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts
And presents aren’t promises,
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open
With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,
And you learn to build all your roads on today
Because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans
And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.
After a while you learn…
That even sunshine burns if you get too much.
So you plant your garden and decorate your own soul,
Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure…
That you really are strong
And you really do have worth…
And you learn and learn…
With every good-bye you learn.
Melanie - "Look what they've done to my song, ma!"
I keep "discovering" this song over the years. Heart breaking.
Louie
Amazingly funny show. His jokes, though about common subjects, are often original, deadpan and intensily recognizable.
- moving the black kids to the window seats when their schoolbus gets stuck in Harlem
- his niece from the country side is visiting New York and sees a bum: "don't touch him. Don't touch him! Yes he needs your help, he needs your help desperately. Don't touch him!"
- The way you say "Jesus Christ" can put you in hell. "And what did they say when they were crucifying him? Eh? What did they say?! '*mumble mumble* that's really bananas'!"
Wednesday, 22 August 2012
Ezra Pound on poetry writing
excerpt from "A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste"
Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work.
He then moves on to specific prescriptions for the use of language:
Don’t use such an expression as ‘dim lands of peace.’ It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer’s not realizing that the natural object is always the adequate symbol. Go in fear of abstractions. Don’t retell in mediocre verse what has already been done in good prose. Don’t think any intelligent person is going to be deceived when you try to shirk all the difficulties of the unspeakably difficult art of good prose by chopping your composition into line lengths. What the expert is tired of today the public will be tired of tomorrow. Don’t imagine that the art of poetry is any simpler than the art of music, or that you can please the expert before you have spent at least as much effort on the art of verse as the average piano teacher spends on the art of music. Be influenced by as many great artists as you can, but have the decency either to acknowledge the debt outright, or to try to conceal it. Don’t allow ‘influence’ to mean merely that you mop up the particular decorative vocabulary of some one or two poets whom you happen to admire. A Turkish war correspondent was recently caught red-handed babbling in his dispatches of ‘dove-gray’ hills, or else it was ‘pearl-pale,’ I can not remember. Use either no ornament or good ornament.
Next, he examines rhythm and rhyme:
Let the neophyte know assonance and alliteration, rhyme immediate and delayed, simple and polyphonic, as a musician would expect to know harmony and counter-point and all the minutiae of his craft. No time is too great to give to these matters or to any one of them, even if the artist seldom have need of them. Don’t imagine that a thing will ‘go’ in verse just because it’s too dull to go in prose. Don’t be ‘viewy’ — leave that to the writers of pretty little philosophic essays. Don’t be descriptive; remember that the painter can describe a landscape much better than you can, and that he has to know a deal more about it. When Shakespeare talks of the ‘Dawn in russet mantle clad’ he presents something which the painter does not present. There is in this line of his nothing that one can call description; he presents. Consider the way of the scientists rather than the way of an advertising agent for a new soap.
The scientist does not expect to be acclaimed as a great scientist until he has discovered something. He begins by learning what has been discovered already. He goes from that point onward. He does not bank on being a charming fellow personally. He does not expect his friends to applaud the results of his freshman class work. Freshmen in poetry are unfortunately not confined to a definite and recognizable class room. They are ‘all over the shop.’ Is it any wonder ‘the public is indifferent to poetry?’
Don’t chop your stuff into separate iambs. Don’t make each line stop dead at the end, and then begin every next line with a heave. Let the beginning of the next line catch the rise of the rhythm wave, unless you want a definite longish pause. In short, behave as a musician, a good musician, when dealing with that phase of your art which has exact parallels in music. The same laws govern, and you are bound by no others. Naturally, your rhythmic structure should not destroy the shape of your words, or their natural sound, or their meaning. It is improbable that, at the start, you will be able to get a rhythm-structure strong enough to affect them very much, though you may fall a victim to all sorts of false stopping due to line ends and caesurae. The musician can rely on pitch and the volume of the orchestra. You can not. The term harmony is misapplied to poetry; it refers to simultaneous sounds of different pitch. There is, however, in the best verse a sort of residue of sound which remains in the ear of the hearer and acts more or less as an organ-base. A rhyme must have in it some slight element of surprise if it is to give pleasure; it need not be bizarre or curious, but it must be well used if used at all.
Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work.
He then moves on to specific prescriptions for the use of language:
Don’t use such an expression as ‘dim lands of peace.’ It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer’s not realizing that the natural object is always the adequate symbol. Go in fear of abstractions. Don’t retell in mediocre verse what has already been done in good prose. Don’t think any intelligent person is going to be deceived when you try to shirk all the difficulties of the unspeakably difficult art of good prose by chopping your composition into line lengths. What the expert is tired of today the public will be tired of tomorrow. Don’t imagine that the art of poetry is any simpler than the art of music, or that you can please the expert before you have spent at least as much effort on the art of verse as the average piano teacher spends on the art of music. Be influenced by as many great artists as you can, but have the decency either to acknowledge the debt outright, or to try to conceal it. Don’t allow ‘influence’ to mean merely that you mop up the particular decorative vocabulary of some one or two poets whom you happen to admire. A Turkish war correspondent was recently caught red-handed babbling in his dispatches of ‘dove-gray’ hills, or else it was ‘pearl-pale,’ I can not remember. Use either no ornament or good ornament.
Next, he examines rhythm and rhyme:
Let the neophyte know assonance and alliteration, rhyme immediate and delayed, simple and polyphonic, as a musician would expect to know harmony and counter-point and all the minutiae of his craft. No time is too great to give to these matters or to any one of them, even if the artist seldom have need of them. Don’t imagine that a thing will ‘go’ in verse just because it’s too dull to go in prose. Don’t be ‘viewy’ — leave that to the writers of pretty little philosophic essays. Don’t be descriptive; remember that the painter can describe a landscape much better than you can, and that he has to know a deal more about it. When Shakespeare talks of the ‘Dawn in russet mantle clad’ he presents something which the painter does not present. There is in this line of his nothing that one can call description; he presents. Consider the way of the scientists rather than the way of an advertising agent for a new soap.
The scientist does not expect to be acclaimed as a great scientist until he has discovered something. He begins by learning what has been discovered already. He goes from that point onward. He does not bank on being a charming fellow personally. He does not expect his friends to applaud the results of his freshman class work. Freshmen in poetry are unfortunately not confined to a definite and recognizable class room. They are ‘all over the shop.’ Is it any wonder ‘the public is indifferent to poetry?’
Don’t chop your stuff into separate iambs. Don’t make each line stop dead at the end, and then begin every next line with a heave. Let the beginning of the next line catch the rise of the rhythm wave, unless you want a definite longish pause. In short, behave as a musician, a good musician, when dealing with that phase of your art which has exact parallels in music. The same laws govern, and you are bound by no others. Naturally, your rhythmic structure should not destroy the shape of your words, or their natural sound, or their meaning. It is improbable that, at the start, you will be able to get a rhythm-structure strong enough to affect them very much, though you may fall a victim to all sorts of false stopping due to line ends and caesurae. The musician can rely on pitch and the volume of the orchestra. You can not. The term harmony is misapplied to poetry; it refers to simultaneous sounds of different pitch. There is, however, in the best verse a sort of residue of sound which remains in the ear of the hearer and acts more or less as an organ-base. A rhyme must have in it some slight element of surprise if it is to give pleasure; it need not be bizarre or curious, but it must be well used if used at all.
Friday, 17 August 2012
Bukowski - If you try it...
If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery — isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.
Thursday, 16 August 2012
Marianne Faithfull - "Summer Nights"
Nice old song, to be played on a warm dusky evening, reminiscing.
Wednesday, 15 August 2012
Moonrise Kingdom
Lovely film by Wes Anderson about a very young teenage love story... or rather, what can happen when children and parents switch roles.
For the adults in this film seem as simpleminded (focused) as children, as dificult to see through more complex situations as a teenager might... Yet the young kids behave like adults; wise, smart, computing...
Small island, small community. A scout runs away, with a "very troubled" girl from a local family.
Bill Muray, Tilda Swanson, Bruce Willis, Edwart Norton.
For the adults in this film seem as simpleminded (focused) as children, as dificult to see through more complex situations as a teenager might... Yet the young kids behave like adults; wise, smart, computing...
Small island, small community. A scout runs away, with a "very troubled" girl from a local family.
Bill Muray, Tilda Swanson, Bruce Willis, Edwart Norton.
Breaking Bad (series, season 1)
Interesting, though not every episode is as strong.
Only 7. Sometimes there are scenes that make you wonder why they took the trouble.
Particularly the first episode, with the van driving off like crazy into the dessert, is pretty impressive.
Probably gonna watch this in season-split installments.
Only 7. Sometimes there are scenes that make you wonder why they took the trouble.
Particularly the first episode, with the van driving off like crazy into the dessert, is pretty impressive.
Probably gonna watch this in season-split installments.
Saturday, 11 August 2012
Underworld - "Beautiful Burnout" (Oblivion With Bells)
still amazing, must be breathtaking during roadtrip.
Friday, 10 August 2012
the Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Christopher Nolan, Christian Bale
Last of the trilogy. Good fun, though a few things bugged me: the "bat"... it looked more like a Terminator. Batman is known for his sleek stuff. Not this weird thing.
The fact that he lived after all... okay, but at least don't show him anymore. Show only Michael Caine nodding.
But catwoman is sexy, and all in all it was fun.
Last of the trilogy. Good fun, though a few things bugged me: the "bat"... it looked more like a Terminator. Batman is known for his sleek stuff. Not this weird thing.
The fact that he lived after all... okay, but at least don't show him anymore. Show only Michael Caine nodding.
But catwoman is sexy, and all in all it was fun.
Thursday, 9 August 2012
Difficult books
These I'll probably never read:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/book-news/tip-sheet/article/53409-the-top-10-most-difficult-books.html
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/book-news/tip-sheet/article/53409-the-top-10-most-difficult-books.html
How long is a good idea?
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/08/09/several-short-sentences-about-writing-klinkenborg/
“You can say smart, interesting, complicated things using short sentences. How long is a good idea?”
“If there is a magic in story writing,” admonished Henry Miller, “and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.” And yet, famous advice on writing abounds.
In Several Short Sentences About Writing (public library), author and New York Times editorial board member Verlyn Klinkenborg does away with much of the traditional wisdom on writing and dissects the sentence — its structure, its intention, its semantic craftsmanship — to deliver a new, useful, and direct guide to the art of storytelling.
Klinkenborg writes in the introduction:
Like most received wisdom, what people think they know about writing works in subtle, subterranean ways. for some reason, we seem to believe most strongly in the stuff that gets into our heads without our knowing or remembering how it got there. What we think we know bout writing sounds plausible. It confirms our generally false ideas about creativity and genius. But none of this means it’s true.
[…]
Unlearning what I learned in college — teaching myself to write well — is the basis of what I know. So is a lifetime of reading and a love of language.
[…]
This is a book full of starting points. Perhaps they’ll help you find enough clarity in your own mind and your own writing to disvoer what it means to write. I don’t mean ‘write the way I do’ or ‘write the way they do.’ I mean ‘write the way you do.’
A short sampling of advice:
Know what each sentence says,
What it doesn’t say,
And what it implies.
Of these, the hardest is knowing what each sentence actually says.
There are innumerable ways to write badly.
The usual way is making sentences that don’t say what you think they do.
The only link between you and the reader is the sentence you’re making.
You can’t revise or discard what you don’t consciously recognize.
These assumptions are prohibitions and obligations are the imprint of your education and the culture you live in.
Distrust them.
Speaking to the power of ignorance and the negative space of knowledge:
What you don’t know about writing is also a form of knowledge, though much harder to grasp.
Try to discern the shape of what you don’t know and why you don’t know it,
Whenever you get a glimpse of your ignorance.
Don’t fear it or be embarrassed by it.
Acknowledge it.
What you don’t know and why you don’t know it are information too.
Complementing E. B. White’s case against absolutism when it comes to brevity and length:
You can say smart, interesting, complicated things using short sentences.
How long is a good idea?
Does it become less good if it’s expressed in two sentences instead of one?
[…]
There’s nothing wrong with well-made, strongly constructed, purposeful long sentences.
But long sentences often tend to collapse or break down or become opaque or trip over their awkwardness.
They’re pasted together with false syntax.
And rely on words like ‘with’ and ‘as’ to lengthen the sentence.
They’re short on verbs, weak in syntactic vigor,
Full of floating, unattached phrases, often out of position.
And worse — the end of the sentence commonly forgets its beginning,
As if the sentence were a long, weary road to the wrong place.
[…]
Writing short sentences will help you write strong, balanced sentences of any length.
Strong, lengthy sentences are really just strong, short sentences joined in various ways.
Klinkenborg synthesizes our arsenal of writing thusly:
What you’ve been taught.
What you assume is true because you’ve heard it repeated by others.
What you feel, no matter how subtle.
What you don’t know.
What you learn from your own experience.
These are the ways we know nearly everything about the world around us.
Unusual and unusually useful, Several Short Sentences About Writing comes as a fine addition to these essential books on how to write better.
“You can say smart, interesting, complicated things using short sentences. How long is a good idea?”
“If there is a magic in story writing,” admonished Henry Miller, “and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.” And yet, famous advice on writing abounds.
In Several Short Sentences About Writing (public library), author and New York Times editorial board member Verlyn Klinkenborg does away with much of the traditional wisdom on writing and dissects the sentence — its structure, its intention, its semantic craftsmanship — to deliver a new, useful, and direct guide to the art of storytelling.
Klinkenborg writes in the introduction:
Like most received wisdom, what people think they know about writing works in subtle, subterranean ways. for some reason, we seem to believe most strongly in the stuff that gets into our heads without our knowing or remembering how it got there. What we think we know bout writing sounds plausible. It confirms our generally false ideas about creativity and genius. But none of this means it’s true.
[…]
Unlearning what I learned in college — teaching myself to write well — is the basis of what I know. So is a lifetime of reading and a love of language.
[…]
This is a book full of starting points. Perhaps they’ll help you find enough clarity in your own mind and your own writing to disvoer what it means to write. I don’t mean ‘write the way I do’ or ‘write the way they do.’ I mean ‘write the way you do.’
A short sampling of advice:
Know what each sentence says,
What it doesn’t say,
And what it implies.
Of these, the hardest is knowing what each sentence actually says.
There are innumerable ways to write badly.
The usual way is making sentences that don’t say what you think they do.
The only link between you and the reader is the sentence you’re making.
You can’t revise or discard what you don’t consciously recognize.
These assumptions are prohibitions and obligations are the imprint of your education and the culture you live in.
Distrust them.
Speaking to the power of ignorance and the negative space of knowledge:
What you don’t know about writing is also a form of knowledge, though much harder to grasp.
Try to discern the shape of what you don’t know and why you don’t know it,
Whenever you get a glimpse of your ignorance.
Don’t fear it or be embarrassed by it.
Acknowledge it.
What you don’t know and why you don’t know it are information too.
Complementing E. B. White’s case against absolutism when it comes to brevity and length:
You can say smart, interesting, complicated things using short sentences.
How long is a good idea?
Does it become less good if it’s expressed in two sentences instead of one?
[…]
There’s nothing wrong with well-made, strongly constructed, purposeful long sentences.
But long sentences often tend to collapse or break down or become opaque or trip over their awkwardness.
They’re pasted together with false syntax.
And rely on words like ‘with’ and ‘as’ to lengthen the sentence.
They’re short on verbs, weak in syntactic vigor,
Full of floating, unattached phrases, often out of position.
And worse — the end of the sentence commonly forgets its beginning,
As if the sentence were a long, weary road to the wrong place.
[…]
Writing short sentences will help you write strong, balanced sentences of any length.
Strong, lengthy sentences are really just strong, short sentences joined in various ways.
Klinkenborg synthesizes our arsenal of writing thusly:
What you’ve been taught.
What you assume is true because you’ve heard it repeated by others.
What you feel, no matter how subtle.
What you don’t know.
What you learn from your own experience.
These are the ways we know nearly everything about the world around us.
Unusual and unusually useful, Several Short Sentences About Writing comes as a fine addition to these essential books on how to write better.
Wednesday, 8 August 2012
Food Inc.
Impressive, as dark as you think it will be, documentary about the food industry. The meat, the corn, the soybeans, the Big Corporations, the involvement with politics.
Not happy. Not at all. Gripping.
Not happy. Not at all. Gripping.
Werner Herzog - "Grizzly Man" (2005)
Intriguing documentary about "Grizzly Man", who lived with grizzlies for 13 summers until he and his girlfriend / partner got eaten by them.
Not so much the nature side of things, but the human take on nature was intriguing.
Not so much the nature side of things, but the human take on nature was intriguing.
- his overwhelming love for the animals, to the point of fake
- the practical "well, you could wait until he got eaten" viewpoint
- the adolation of all he did for them
- the Inuits (?? no, others, from Alaska), who basically saw his involvement with the bears as infringement. Plus, it might make the bears trust people. Utterly wrong.
Saturday, 4 August 2012
Raising Arizona
crazy early film by the Coen brothers (their 2nd film?) in which Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter steal a baby.
Amazing scene where John Goodman emerges from the mud in sweeping rain when escaping from prison.
Running gag; leaving the baby behind.
Amazing scene where John Goodman emerges from the mud in sweeping rain when escaping from prison.
Running gag; leaving the baby behind.
the Glad Version - "Under the Pines" (Make Islands)
started off with a Muse-like sound.
Interesting.
2012-08-24 - update:
Listening to the whole album now. Not that inspiring.
Interesting.
2012-08-24 - update:
Listening to the whole album now. Not that inspiring.
Friday, 3 August 2012
Man Man - "Black Mission Goggles" (Six Demon Bag)
La-la-la-esque circus cabaretesque a la Gogol Bordello.
Jump with me!
Jump with me!
the Residents - "How To Get A Head.Road" (Roadworms)
Crazy song, half sung and shouted by a lost girl, haunting lyrics and a mental sound.
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