Ravelstein

“The challenge of modern freedom, or the combination of isolation and freedom which confronts you, is to make yourself up. The danger is that you may emerge from the process as a not-entirely human creature”

--Saul Bellow, “Ravelstein,” p. 132

Christ, I love this book. I like it more knowing that Ravelstein is more or less Bloom in literary form. I like thinking about such amazing, brilliant friendships, like Bellow and Bloom’s. The brilliant political philosopher and the nobel-winning author. Both such prodigious figures.

I need to go hunting for interesting people. I assume this will be easier when I’m not in Damascus, but it’s not impossible from here. After all, I have the internet.

Went to Richard and Renee’s bakery today, Sweet Sin. Richard offered to give me all the wall space I wanted if I ever wanted to sell art. I think I’ll take him up on it.

Man, I really need to get my hands on more Greene

“When you visualized a man or woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity — that was a quality God’s image carried with it. When you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how their hair grew, it was impossible to hate. Hate was just a failure of imagination.”

— Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory (NY: Viking, 1940, 1971), p. 131.

Venus of Urbino

Yeah, I was there. All day. (well, I went to see it a bunch of times, anyway)

Two of my favorite comments on the painting (found on a professor's page):
As for Titian’s Venus — Sappho and Anactoria in one — four lazy fingers buried dans les fleurs de son jardin — how any creature can be decently virtuous within thirty square miles of it passes my comprehension.

Source: Algernon Swinburne, letter to Lord Houghton, March 31, 1864. Published in Swinburne’s Letters: The Yale Edition, vol. I: 1854-1869 (S.l.: Yale UP, 1959), no. 55, pp. 96-99, p. 99.

[T]here, against the wall, without obstructing rag or leaf, you may look your fill upon the foulest, the vilest, the obscenest picture the world possesses — Titian’s Venus. It isn’t that she is naked and stretched out on a bed — no, it is the attitude of one of her arms and hand. If I ventured to describe that attitude, there would be a fine howl — but there the Venus lies, for anybody to gloat over that wants to — and there she has a right to lie, for she is a work of art, and Art has its privileges. I saw young girls stealing furtive glances at her; I saw young men gaze long and absorbedly at her; I saw aged, infirm men hang upon her charms with a pathetic interest… Without any question it was painted for a bagnio and it was probably refused because it was a trifle too strong. In truth, it is too strong for any place but a public Art Gallery.

Source: Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad (1880), chapter L, at Project Gutenberg.

Mary Karr

"Minoring in religious studies and thinking you know about religion is like watching porn, reading gynecology textbooks, and thinking you know something about pussy."

— Mary Karr, quoted in Boris Kachka, “Why Author Mary Karr Struggled Writing Her Third Memoir ‘Lit’,” New York Magazine (Nov. 8, 2009)

Georgia O'Keeffe

Artist Georgia O’Keeffe walking with her dogs, Abiquiu, New Mexico, 1966

Photographer: John Loengard, LIFE

Maus and Coltrane

Samuel Beckett once said: ‘Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.’”
“Yes.”
“On the other hand, he said it.”
“He was right. Maybe you can include it in your book.”
— Art Spiegelman, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, II: And Here My Troubles Began (NY: Pantheon, 1991), p. 45. (http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0679729771)

...

"I had heard, just before meeting him, some cassettes of his latest compositions, and I said, “John, if you don’t mind, I will ask you a question. I just heard some recordings of your new compositions and I was very intrigued.” He looked perplexed. I continued, “I was so impressed and found it amazing and touching as well. But in places I felt you were crying out through your instrument, and it was like a shriek of a tormented soul. I have heard the same from many other great jazz performers, which is quite understandable because of their pain, and the hurt of generations comes out in their music. But seeing and knowing you I thought that the interest and love of our tradition and music has helped you to overcome this.” I will never forget the expression on his face, and the words which he said with such a deep feeling which brought tears to my eyes. He said, “Ravi, that is exactly what I want to know and learn from you, how you find so much peace in your music and give it to your listeners.”
— Ravi Shankar’s memories of John Coltrane, recorded in 2001. They first met around 1964; Coltrane died in 1967. Source: The Ravi Shankar Foundation webpage.

...

I'm pleased when songs I love remind my friends of me.

My Dinner with Andre

"I mean, isn’t it amazing how often a doctor will live up to our expectation of how a doctor should look? I mean, you see a terrorist on television: he looks just like a terrorist. I mean, we live in a world in which fathers, or single people, or artists, are all trying to live up to someone’s fantasy of how a father, or a single person, or an artist, should look and behave! They all act as if they know exactly how they ought to conduct themselves at every single moment. And they all seem totally self-confident. Of course, privately people are very mixed up about themselves. They don’t know what they should be doing with their lives. They’re reading all these self-help books."
--André Gregory, speaking in My Dinner with André (dir. Louis Malle, 1981)http://www.allmovie.com/work/my-dinner-with-andre-34015