The Communicative Disposition

Gordon Lightfoot, ‘Steel Rail Blues’, 1966 version...

Tue, 28 May 2013 16:16:40 -0400

Gordon Lightfoot, ‘Steel Rail Blues’, 1966 version from the album, Lightfoot!.

Thanks to these guys for showing me this one (among several others) on Saturday night.

natgeofound: With a harbor view, a teataster samples from cups...

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 17:23:24 -0400

With a harbor view, a teataster samples from cups spread upon a table in Baltimore, Maryland, September 1964.
Photograph by Bates Littlehales, National Geographic

This is my backup career in case philosophy doesn’t work out.

"Suppose I ask ‘What is the point of doing so-and-so?’ For example, suppose that I ask..."

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 10:41:38 -0400

“Suppose I ask ‘What is the point of doing so-and-so?’ For example, suppose that I ask Old Father William ‘What is the point of standing on one’s head?’ He replies in the way that we know. Then I follow this up with ‘What is the point of balancing an eel on the end of one’s nose?’ And he explains. Now suppose I ask my third question ‘What is the point of doing anything—not anything in particular, but just anything?’ Old Father William would no doubt kick me downstairs without the option. But lesser men, raising this same question and finding no answer, would very likely commit suicide or join the Church. (Luckily, in the case of ‘What is the meaning of a word?’ the effects are less serious, amounting only to the writing of books.)”

- J.L. Austin, ‘The Meaning of a Word’

heavytweedjacket: Party talk. (The New Yorker, 4/8/1961. Barney...

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 18:11:50 -0500

heavytweedjacket:

Party talk. (The New Yorker, 4/8/1961. Barney Tobey, 1906-1989)

This is a most beautiful kettle. (Via Minimalissimo, which can...

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 10:22:26 -0500

This is a most beautiful kettle.

(Via Minimalissimo, which can be a real tease sometimes.)

Architects wear round glasses.

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 10:16:32 -0500

Le Corbusier, who (I like to imagine) was a pool shark.

I.M. Pei, having a great time.

Philip Johnson.

Architects wear round glasses.

Colin Stetson: The Stars in His Head (Dark Lights Remix) Check...

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 22:17:32 -0500

Colin Stetson: The Stars in His Head (Dark Lights Remix)

Check out how he makes this beautiful music:

A friend of mine bought me a copy of Erich Fromm’s The Art...

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 14:13:47 -0500

A friend of mine bought me a copy of Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving from the used book store in our home town. As I remember it, the book had been placed in the Self Help section, probably due to some combination of its gaudy pink cover, its title, and the hilarious subtitle that the publisher had no-doubt appended specifically to cash in on the self-help craze at the time:

The world-famous psychoanalyst’s daring prescription for love.

Here is a particularly brilliant sample of what’s inside:

Our whole culture is based on the appetite for buying, on the idea of a mutually favorable exchange. Modern man’s happiness consists in the thrill of looking at the shop windows, and in buying all that he can afford to buy, either for cash or on installments. He (or she) looks at people in a similar way. For the man an attractive girl — and for the woman an attractive man — are the prizes they are after. “Attractive” usually means a nice package of qualities hich are popular and sought after on the personality market. What specifically makes a person attractive depends on the fashion of the time, physically as well as mentally. During the twenties, a drinking and smoking girl, tough and sexy, was attractive; today the fashion demands more domesticity and coyness. At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, a man had to be aggressive and ambitious — today he has to be social and tolerant — in order to be an attractive “package”. At any rate, the sense of falling in love develops usually only with regard to such human commodities as are within reach of one’s own possibilities for exchange. I am out for a bargain; the object should be desirable from the standpoint of its social value, and at the same time should want me, considering my overt and hidden assets and potentialities. Two persons thus fall in love when they feel they gave found the best object available on the market, considering the limitations of their own exchange values. Often, as in buying real estate, the hidden potentialities which can be developed play a considerable role in this bargain. In a culture in which the marketing orientation prevails, and in which material success is the outstanding value, there is little reason to be surprised that human love relations follow the same pattern of exchange which governs the commodity and labor market.

Every time I think about the book, I become giddy from imagining people over America picking up the book in order to get over a messy divorce or whatever and unwittingly being radicalized by its contents.

Oliver Messiaen and Jonny Greenwood

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 11:45:39 -0500

Here’s Oliver Messiaen’s ‘Louange a L’Eternité de Jesus’, which is part of his 1941 Quartet for the End of Time:

And here’s Jonny Greenwood’s ‘Moon Trills’, which is part of his soundtrack to Bodysong.

Greenwood has sometimes cited Messiaen as an influence (also here), but this goes beyond that and into homage. Both are very beautiful.

(This guy seems to be the only other person to notice the similarity publicly.)

Socrates, early in Book 1 of The Republic, explaining one of the worst flaws with the modern prison...

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 13:25:56 -0500

Socrates, early in Book 1 of The Republic, explaining one of the worst flaws with the modern prison system nice-and-simple-like:

Then won’t we say the same about human beings, too, that when they are harmed they become worse in human virtue?

Indeed.

But isn’t human virtue a justice?

Yes, certainly.

Then people who are harmed must become more unjust?

So it seems.

(335c, Grube/Reeve translation)

Great Designer, Great Trash Talker

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 00:20:00 -0500

Massimo Vignelli on American Airlines’ boring new replacement to his classic 1967 branding:

…

A designer can only be as good as their clients, therefore the new American Airlines Identity doesn’t surprise me much. Clients without [a] sense of history, could not understand the value of equity.

…

It seems to me that there was no need for American Airlines to undertake such a change, but many people do not understand the difference between Design and Styling, and believe in change for the sake of change. This is a very young country and has little time to appreciate the value of history. Perhaps in the future it will became wiser…

…

Design cannot cover the mistakes of bad management, but styling can. That is why American Airlines opted for that solution. (Eleven stripes for a Company in Chapter 11? an appropriate solution….). The logo we designed 45 years ago had equity, value and timelessness. Why to bother with it

…

Anyhow, I am quite proud of what I did long ago and wish the best to them. Only time will say…

Vignelli’s graphical identity for AA had been lipstick on a pig for decades.

Steve Reich, New York Counterpoint (Part 3). Performed by Evan...

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 10:39:37 -0500

Steve Reich, New York Counterpoint (Part 3). Performed by Evan Ziporyn.

"Two independent artists from Berlin and Paris—Stefan Wolpe and Edgard Varèse—served as [Morton]..."

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 00:34:58 -0500

“Two independent artists from Berlin and Paris—Stefan Wolpe and Edgard Varèse—served as [Morton] Feldman’s mentors. Wolpe had come to New York by way of Palestine, holding fast to his far-left political convictions even as he adopted a hard-driving form of twelve-tone writing. Teacher and student would have long arguments about music’s role in society; once, when Wolpe pointed out the window of his Greenwich Village studio and exclaimed that one must write for the man in the street, Feldman looked down and saw, to his ironic delight, Jackson Pollock walking by.”

- Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise, p.528

Read a few of the other entries, and then the entry for David...

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 17:47:00 -0500

Read a few of the other entries, and then the entry for David Kaplan.

(From this book.)

Terry Riley, ‘G Song’. Performed by the Kronos...

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 21:03:59 -0500

Terry Riley, ‘G Song’. Performed by the Kronos Quartet.

Terry Riley

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 21:01:22 -0500

Terry Riley

Benjamin Britten, ‘Interlude #1: Dawn’ from Peter...

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 18:08:50 -0500

Benjamin Britten, ‘Interlude #1: Dawn’ from Peter Grimes. Performed by The Royal Opera in 1978.

Benjamin Britten

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 15:50:16 -0500

Benjamin Britten

"In the fall of 1940, [Benjamin Britten] and [Peter] Pears moved into a communal household at 7..."

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 15:22:53 -0500

“In the fall of 1940, [Benjamin Britten] and [Peter] Pears moved into a communal household at 7 Middagh Street, in Brooklyn Heights, overlooking the bridge. Living with them were [W.H.] Auden, Paul and Jane Bowles, the editor George Davis, and, up in the attic, Thomas Mann’s son Golo. The high-society stripper Gypsey Rose Lee was a frequent guest; Salvador Dalí, Christopher Isherwood, Leonard Bernstein, and Golo’s brother Klaus also dropped by. When Bowles left, the novelist Carson McCullers moved in, with her alcoholic insanity.”

- Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise, p.456

Philip Glass, String Quartet 4, First Movement. Performed by the...

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 11:15:55 -0500

Philip Glass, String Quartet 4, First Movement. Performed by the Kronos Quartet.