painting with shapes

When an artist explains what he is doing, he usually has to do one of two things: either scrap what he has explained, or make his work fit in with the explanation.

by Alexander Calder

The greatest weight

What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence - even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!"
Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?... Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?

from The Gay Science by Friedrich Nietzsche

amor à simetria

ao Kubrick e aos supercuts do Kogonada

Ceniza

y todo parece que se va a desintegrar ahí
mientras atraviesa la ciudad hasta la casa
no puede olvidar los edificios y la calma, cayendo
y sentía que su corazon iba subiendo (a explotar)

sólo espero que esté bien en medio del desastre
y que no se descontrole mas
sólo quiere llegar pronto y que todos estén…. todos bien

nos tempos livres

Aleister Crowley a jogar xadrez com Fernando Pessoa (via)

a surplus of reason would be lethal for the existence

Where can so much void and inexplicability lead? We cling to our living days because the desire to die is too logical, therefore inefficient. If life had at least one argument for itself – one tenable, indestructible argument – it would be torn apart; instincts and prejudices fade when in contact with Rigor. Every living creature feeds on the unexplainable; a surplus of reason would be lethal for the existence – an endeavor to reach the Absurd … Give a precise meaning to life and it will instantaneously lose its savor. The lack of clarity of its goals makes it superior to death; a grain of precision would lower it to the triviality of a tomb. For a positive science dealing with the meaning of life would depopulate the Earth in one single day and no fool would ever succeed in resurrecting the fertile improbability on its surface.

from A Short History of Decay by E. M. Cioran

There is no authentic lyricism without a grain of interior madness.

There are experiences and obsessions one cannot live with. Salvation lies in confessing them. The terrifying experience of death, when preserved in consciousness, becomes ruinous. If you talk about death, you save part of your self. But at the same time, something of your real self dies, because objectified meanings lose the actuality they have in consciousness. This is why lyricism represents a dispersion of subjectivity; it is a certain quantity of an individual's spiritual effervescence which cannot be contained and needs constant expression. To be lyrical means you cannot stay closed up inside yourself. The need to externalize is the more intense, the more the lyricism is interiorized, profound, and concentrated.

(...)

To be lyrical from suffering means to achieve that inner purification in which wounds cease to be mere outer manifestations without deep complications and begin to participate in the essence of your being. The lyricism of suffering is a song of the blood, the flesh, and the nerves. True suffering begins in illness. Almost all illnesses have lyrical virtues. Only those who vegetate in a scandalous insensitivity remain impersonal when ill, and thus miss that deepening of the personality brought about by illness. One does not become lyrical except after a total organic affliction.

from On the Heights of Despair by E. M Cioran

no tempos livres

David Lynch, american gothic style (via)

as lágrimas de Schopenhauer, o riso de Nietzsche e o sono de Cioran

The logic of pessimism moves through three refusals: a no-saying to the worst (refusal of the world-for-us, or Schopenhauer’s tears); a yes-saying to the worst (refusal of the world-in-itself, or Nietzsche’s laughter); and a no-saying to the for-us and the in-itself (a double refusal, or Cioran’s sleep).

Crying, laughing, sleeping — what other responses are adequate to a life that is so indifferent?

from Cosmic Pessimism by Eugene Thacker

days of exile

A day comes when, thanks to rigidity, nothing causes wonder any more, everything is known, and life is spent in beginning over again. These are the days of exile, of desiccated life, of dead souls. To come alive again, one needs a special grace, self-forgetfulness, or a homeland. Certain mornings, on turning a corner, a delightful dew falls on the heart and then evaporates. But its coolness remains, and this is what the heart requires always. I had to set out again.

from Return to Tipasa by Albert Camus

Have you ever experienced absolute loss?

- I doubt any of us is a stranger to grief.
- No, more than grief. Its deep down… inside… every cell screams… you can hear… nothing else.

in Twin Peaks

people just don't have the same drives

I was young. And I felt that everybody had talent. And that for some reason they were being arbitrary and not employing that talent. I thought, 'Well, these people are the giants of an industry, they must have a good brain and a good heart and ability, how come they don't use it?' And Gena said, 'Look, a lot of people just don't have the same drives, the same desires, the same gun that sparks them. You're acting like these people all understand you; nobody understands you, I don't understand you. How the hell can anybody understand you? You're nuts!'

from Cassavetes on Cassavetes

pai natal

olha que bonito que este set ficava ali na minha prateleira :)

pitiful

There, I was alone with myself. And disgusting as I was it was better than being with somebody else, anybody else, all of them out there doing their pitiful little tricks and handsprings. I pulled the covers up to my neck and waited.

by Charles Bukowski


se a minha misantropia voltar ao de cima nos posts seguintes, blame it on PMS.

animação da boa

Through & through, they wanna walk all over you.

Crest by The Antlers

disembodied

Who said that time heals all wounds? It would be better to say that time heals everything - except wounds. With time, the hurt of separation loses its real limits. With time, the desired body will soon disappear, and if the desiring body has already ceased to exist for the other, then what remains is a wound, disembodied.

in Sans Soleil by Chris Marker

ainda 17F

quero este álbum, já!

edit: I'm blushing with the idea of Frederic Merk visiting this blog :$
in case you see this again, I really love your music. have a nice day.

To suffer together, what disunion!

They felt that everything was fleeting, that everything wore out, that everything that was not dead would die, and that even the illusory ties holding them together would not endure. Their sadness did not bring them together. On the contrary, they were separated by all the force of their two sorrows. To suffer together, alas, what disunion!

from The Inferno by Henri Barbusse

a song about some famous assholes, who climbed tall mountains

para encontrar o verdadeiro significado de uma obra de arte, devemos procurar no mundo interior em que estas foram concebidas

Toda creación es epifánica, y toda creación nos libera, pues la creación se basa en liberar el propio sufrimiento al que el ser es condenado, en el que el ser ha sido arrojado y en el que se halla inmerso. Solo el ser humano completo, o que se halla en la búsqueda de su ser, vivencia cuán insoportable es el hombre para sí y es por esto que necesita de la creación, de un anhelo, para amar y sentirse amado.

(...)

Es en el dualismo de lo que estamos hechos, del bien y el mal, del ánima y el ánimus, del ying y el yang, de donde toda creación nace. El artista y el místico no solo completan lo creado, sino que se completan a sí mismos, son su propio Dios, son Hermes, el arquetipo del sí- mismo; son los héroes de su propia vida y de la creación humana en sí misma.

Solo siendo conscientes y comprendiendo esto, podemos ver el cine, así como el arte, como una oportunidad para evolucionar, para ser, permitirse ser uno mismo; para conocerse y poder concebir todo el misterio que nos rodea y que alojamos en nosotros.

ensaio de Francisca Pageo

Mumblecore

a silly name for a movement that never existed - ironically given to a loose collection of films by 20-something hipsters in which very little happens, sex is realistic, strange and funny, isolated individuals negotiate their urban environment embarrassingly badly, and the part-improvised dialogue is often mumbled.

by Charlie Phillips

Que génios esconderam o rio com prédios e o céu com cabos?

Tantos quilómetros de cabos servem para nos unir ou para nos manter afastados cada um no seu lugar?

in Medianeras by Gustavo Taretto

um prémio Nobel pra ti

Ainda Pode Descer by Foge Foge Bandido

uma cimeira pra ver
tomar um chá e esquecer
não é teu filho que está
na boca desse canhão
um prémio Nobel pra ti
promove a paz e sorri
vem amanhã ao meu show
e eu vou mostrar-te quem sou

ainda pode descer mais
os homens querem ver
se os homens querem pode descer

deus não me quer responder
mãe ajuda-me a ver o sentido da luta
nós fizemos tudo por tudo
contratámos os melhores filhos da puta

isso existe

isso existe mas nunca acontece
e do que só parece o coração desiste

isso existe

ainda pode descer mais
os homens querem ver
se os homens querem
pode descer mais

estive há dez minutos atrás da varanda
do meu quinto andar,
a observar a cúpula invisível entre o
céu e o enorme lego de betão
e a sentir-me um inquilino passageiro
desta pensão de uma estrela
perdida na imensa cidade negra a que
damos o nome de universo.
curiosamente parece que é o único
sítio que temos para passar a longa
noite que nos espera.
e é aí que eu saio para apanhar a frequência.
como que a comer um ponto e a cagar um verso
no meu prisma, a encaixar,
provavelmente no de outros feito um
filósofo de merda.
mas a vida é isso mesmo, um monte de
gente a fazer de conta que se entende
e ninguém sabe dizer o que viveu.
e por isso nos pedem que caminhemos
alegres para o precipício, sem questionar,
porque estaremos sempre longe.
mas longe rapidamente fica perto
e perto rapidamente passa por nós.
eu não quero mandar-te para baixo,
mas eu sei que me entendes,
tu também tens medo de morrer,
toda a gente tem. só que normalmente
evocamos nomes de problemas
para nos convencermos que estamos
ocupados a resolver uma situação importante
quando não tem importância nenhuma.
entretanto o tapete rola
e nós irrita-mo-nos com a inevitabilidade,
e nos nossos sonhos dizemos:
torna-me imortal! torna-me imortal!
eu não vou aguentar deixar de existir!
e é aí que eu entro para sair da frequência,
seduzir-te com os meus sonhos,
tu não vês como empreendo? e como eu
mais um milhão de sonhadores leva com
ele muitos braços de outros,
acéfalos, na lotaria dos ideais,
descrentes, beijando o número do bilhete.
mas quero dizer-te que a viagem é tua,
e eu não quero empurrar-te à força para a rua.
se eu falhar eu vou passar de deus a carrasco,
embalsamado e metido dentro de um frasco,
para te lembrares da mentira,
mas a verdade é que ganhamos sempre.

E com coisas que valem a pena, não nos detemos nós

deixamo-las, pela mesma razão, ou por experiência, sabendo que essas histórias de valores não são para vocês, que já não sabem muito bem o que fazem, nem por que fazem, e que devem continuar a ignorá-lo, sob pena de, pergunto-me de quê, sim, pergunto-me de quê.

from Molloy by Samuel Beckett

deep down into the dark rooms of our souls

Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.

by Ingmar Bergman (via fuckeyeahdirectors)

há dias...

em que uma pessoa inexplicavelmente acorda com uma música de há 15 anos atrás na cabeça, toma banho a cantar a maldita e ouve-la vezes e vezes sem conta o resto do dia.
para minha sorte passo o dia sozinha em casa e ninguém me ouviu... não fossem julgar pelo conteúdo da letra que estou apaixonada, o que não podia estar mais longe da verdade.
felizmente tanto ouvi e tanto cantei que só num dia já a enjoei, evitando assim atazanar o juízo de quem queira dormir nesta casa, como já me aconteceu uma vez em tempos de universidade.

*inserir ilustração pipi onde me encontro eu (numa ponta da casa) a enviar sms à minha colega (na outra ponta da casa) a pedir que mande a do meio parar de cantar para que assim possamos nós as duas dormir em paz e sossego*

isto tudo para vos deixar com a dita cuja, porque apesar de tudo é uma música bonita.

Problema de Expressão dos Clã

bless you, Cassavetes

To have a philosophy is to know how to love and to know where to put it. But you can’t put it everywhere. You’ve gotta be a priest saying, "yes, my son, yes, my daughter, bless you". But people don’t live that way. They live with anger and hostility and problems and lack of money, lack of - you know, tremendous disappointments in their life. So what they need is a philosophy. I think what everybody needs is a way to say "where and how can i love, can i be in love so that i can live with some degree of peace?" and so that’s why i have a need for the characters to really analyse love, discuss it, kill it, destroy it, hurt each other, do all that stuff in that war, in that word polemic and picture polemic of what life is. The rest of the stuff really doesn’t interest me. It may interest other people but i have a one-track mind. All I’m interested in is love.

John Cassavetes from A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (via Emissions in the Dark)

Uncommon Deities

amor a este álbum.
estou particularmente vidrada na The God Of Small Caresses, onde David Sylvian lê o seguinte poema

He never touches us, but he loves us, and he wants us to love one another, gently and intently. He has golden locks and smells of newly bathed childhood. While we sleep, he speaks to us from somewhere inside our sleep, every word like a smile. He expresses himself through faint puffs of breath, on the borders of the audible. When he smiles we realize that we are finite and mortal. His company is a band of small angels, plump and drowsy, at dusk resembling seals or penguins with their impractical wings and waddling gait. At times he shows himself as a bumblebee or hummingbird and whenever a flower opens he is filled with a reckless joy, distilled and concentrated in the word “bliss”. The wind whispers to the grass and the grass whispers back. He loves us. He dreams of kissing us with lips of fire. For each newborn child he plants a tree in the light with roots that reach down into the dark. He knows how troubled we are. He is waiting for us. He is listening out for our footsteps. We are often drenched and forlorn. He is waiting to see us home.

Man is a genius when he is dreaming.

For me, filmmaking combines everything. That’s the reason I’ve made cinema my life’s work. In films painting and literature, theatre and music come together. But a film is still a film. A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet. Movie directors, or should I say people who create things, are very greedy and they can never be satisfied… That’s why they can keep on working. I’ve been able to work for so long because I think next time, I’ll make something good. To have not seen the films of Satyajit Ray is to have lived in the world without ever having seen the moon and the sun. Man is a genius when he is dreaming.

by Akira Kurosawa (via Hedgehog in the Fog)

há dias...

em que uma pessoa recebe a visita inesperada do "anjo da guarda". ou não tivesse eu levado com isto mesmo na testa (o desgraçado até ficou sem uma asa para o provar)! por pouco não me apanhou o olho.
escusado será dizer que levar com porcelana em cima doí que se farta.

there's nothing like a grown man crying

A Young Girl's World by Daughn Gibson

não sei se é um mal comum

mas de cada vez que tento desenhar alguma coisa é uma chatice porque ou faço tudo de enfiada ou nunca mais volto a pegar naquilo que deixei a meio.

dito isto, é possível que não volte a tocar neste.

You’re cheating yourself out of today.

Today is calling to you, trying to get your attention, but you’re stuck on tomorrow, and today trickles away like water down a drain. You wake up the next morning and that today you wasted is gone forever. It’s now yesterday. Some of those moments may have had wonderful things in store for you, but now you’ll never know.

from Love, Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli (via talking to kafka)

It’s a Hard World for Little Things

Dream, little one, dream
Oh the hunter in the night
Fills your childish heart with fright
Fear is only a dream
So dream, little one, dream.

in The Night of the Hunter

perfectly able to hold my own hand, but I still can't kiss my own neck

City Whispers

by Ray K. Metzker

How strange talking is

what mists rise and fall -- how one loses the other and then thinks to have found the other -- then down comes another soft final curtain. . . . But it is incredible -- don't you feel -- how mysterious and isolated we each of us are -- at the last. I suppose one ought to make this discovery once and for all, but I seem to be always making it again.

Katherine Mansfield, numa carta datada de 1921 (via)

You Don't Own Me

aproveitando a deixa.

I shall say it again.

          You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
     You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
     You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
     You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
     You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.

You say I am repeating (from The Four Quartets) by T. S. Eliot

they'll try to steal that flame from in your eyes

candy
please don't let them in your heart
because they'll try to put out every fire you start

candy
you can light the match again
and as they try to run and hide
we'll burn down everything in sight

oh, candy
your touch is like a veil over my eyes
and when we're driving in your car
i could be anyone tonight

oh, candy
please don't let them in your heart
because they'll try to steal that flame from in your eyes

oh, candy
oh, candy


a recordar os vícios musicais deste verão.

notes to self

• You don’t have to achieve great things by the time you’re 25
• You have intrinsic value above and beyond your perceived utility to other people and society at large.
• You don’t have to have sex, or have sex in any way that you find uncomfortable or unpleasant, to keep anyone’s love or good opinion of you. They didn’t love you or think very well of you to start with if they demand it.
• You don’t have to stay with someone who isn’t meeting your emotional or sexual needs because they need you, or you’ve been with them for awhile, or you need to be in a relationship. You need you. Your time is your own and it is finite.
• It’s ok to work at a job you enjoy that doesn’t make you miserable even if it’s not a career and it won’t “lead to anything.”
• Your life is not a narrative. It is not leading to anything, there is no overarching thesis, it does not have themes beyond the usual shared cultural experiences of your time and place. This is ok. It does not mean that your life is without purpose or meaning.
• It’s ok not to like or get along with the vast majority of people you encounter, so long as you afford them the same respect, courtesy and dignity that they afford you.
• Expensive is not always better.
• Failure is temporary if you’re still alive.
• People are both much better and much worse than you’d suspect, but usually not all at once.
• Stop thinking of your future self as a different person and it will be easier to prevent money and health problems.
• Let people help you, lean on them when you need to, and be available to help, but don’t swing too far in either direction. Try to carry your half of the life basket as evenly as you can.
• Set boundaries, and do not be afraid to kick people out of your life who disregard them. You will not end up alone and unloved. People who love you will be ok with your boundaries.
• Your power does not come from money or beauty, but from seeing life steadily and wholly, from a curious and thoughtful mind, and from your ability to say no when you want to, and yes when you want to, and I don’t know when you don’t know.
• There will be bad times, maybe lots of bad times, but not only bad times.
• Love will not heal the wounds in your soul, but love can give you the impetus to begin the work of healing yourself.
• Life might be a long series of starting over, and that’s alright.
• You’re really cool, you’re really beautiful, you’re really special. Really. Not to everyone, but to a lot of someones sometimes. 

from Things I want to tell people, that I wish people had told me

o nada que é tudo

I believe that around us there is only one word on all sides, one immense word which reveals our solitude and extinguishes our radiance: Nothing! I believe that that word does not point to our insignificance or our unhappiness, but on the contrary to our fulfillment and our divinity, since everything is in ourselves.

from Hell by Henri Barbusse

dos dias em que preferias não ter saído da cama

have you ever woke up feeling like you just run the marathon. all your body aches.
you lose your appetite. you can't even inhale properly, the simple act of breathing demands so much effort from you.
what am I doing wrong, you wonder, when hours of sleep suck all your energy, when it should be the other way around.

There’s zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.

(via Brain Pickings)

para lembrar que não há mal nenhum em ser-se introvertido.

hoje levo esta para a cama

We Drift Like Worried Fire by Godspeed You! Black Emperor

dos filmes mindfuck

- Are... Are you okay?

- I'm not... I'm not okay. I went to another world, Rosemary. I see what others cannot see.

- Please...

- I looked into the eye of God. It looked right back through me. It looked through everything. Rosemary, it was so, so, so beautiful. Like a black rainbow. And it chose me. It chose to reveal itself to me.
You're nothing. You're less than nothing. Just... spit in the wind.

from Beyond The Black Rainbow

acaricias o mundo em vez de agarrá-lo

'All your stories are so touchingly young. You say far more about the impressions which things inspire in you than about the things and objects themselves. That is lyrical poetry. You caress the world, instead of grasping it.'
'So my writing is worthless?'
Kafka grasped my hand,
'I did not say that. Certainly these little stories have a value for you. Every written word is a personal document. But art…'
'Art is different,' I continued bitterly.
'Your written is not yet art,' said Kafka firmly. 'This description of feelings and impressions is most of all a hesitant groping for the world. The eyes are still heavy with dreams. But in time that will cease and then perhaps the outstretched groping hand will withdraw as if caught by the fire. Perhaps you will cry out, stammer incoherently, or grind your teeth together and open your eyes wide, very wide. But - these are only words. Art is always a matter of the entire personality. For that reason it is fundamentally tragic.'

from Conversations with Kafka by Gustav Janouch

Reading The Greens

não querendo violar os direitos de autor de determinada música lembrei-me de reeditar a seguinte experiência.

acontece que durante o processo viciei-me na Reading The Greens dos Hogan Grip e agora não consigo parar de visualizar o meu próprio vídeo. how off is that?

you have to make films from the perspective of the weak

Do you believe that movies are still an effective way to inform young people?

I'm not talking about education. What I'm after is telling the truth. Movies are entertainment, but that doesn't stop us from telling the truth through them. In Harada's film you get Beethoven on the soundtrack and Koji Yakusho as the chief of police. It's a hymn to the cops, but it was those same cops that pushed those kids to go as far as they did. If it's a profit you're after, there are other ways to make money than by making films. Me, I try to at least remain truthful when I make my films. Also, a true filmmaker doesn't make films from the point of view of those in power. To me, that's a fundamental rule: you have to make films from the perspective of the weak. Take Akira Kurosawa, for instance. His films were always about the downtrodden.

entrevista a Koji Wakamatsu (via Mignight Eye)

o realizador japonês faleceu hoje, 5 dias após ter sido atropelado por um taxi em Tokyo.

nos tempos livres

Ingmar Bergman & Liv Ullmann no set do filme Hour of the Wolf
(via This Must Be The Place)

You say what you want to say when you don't care who's listening.

Allen Ginsberg & Neal Cassady (via Art Lies)

I'm so feeling this...

não consigo entender se os arrepios na nuca são do frio horrível que se faz sentir hoje, se da música. possivelmente os dois, aliados ao vídeo.
(via the curious brain)

A man attaches himself to a woman - not to enjoy her, but to enjoy himself.*

(via pauses between thought)

* Simone de Beauvoir

You Have To Be Careful

You have to be careful telling things.
Some ears are like tunnels.
Your words will go in and get lost in the dark.
Some ears are flat pans like the miners used
looking for gold.
What you say will be washed out with the stones.

You look a long time till you find the right ears.
Till then, there are birds and lamps to be spoken to,
a patient cloth rubbing shine in circles,
and the slow, gradually growing possibility
that when you find such ears,
they already know.

from Words Under the Words by Naomi Shihab Nye

perishable.

aprendam com as mariposas.

está-me a falhar alguma coisa?

o ryan gosling, a rooney mara, o christian bale, a natalie portman, o michael fassbender e..e.. o lizardman? todos juntos num filme do Terrence Malick?

(via)

amigas passageiras

a propósito do surto de borboletas que para aqui vai neste quarto, lembrei-me duma passagem que sublinhei no 1Q84, do Haruki Murakami

Às borboletas, mesmo sem nome, consigo distingui-las pela forma e pelos desenhos. Além disso, de pouco ou nada me serviria dar-lhes um nome, uma vez que não tardam a morrer. Digamos que são amigas passageiras sem nome. Venho aqui todos os dias, visito-as e falo com elas acerca de vários assuntos. Quando é chegada a sua hora, as borboletas desaparecem, sem fazer alarde. De certeza que isso significa que morreram, porém, a verdade é que nunca encontrei o corpo delas sem vida. Desaparecem sem deixar rasto, como se tivessem sido absorvidas pelo ar. As mariposas são, acima de tudo, criaturas de uma elegância efémera: vêm do nada, procuram tranquilamente um número limitado de coisas e voltam a desvanecer-se em silêncio. Talvez regressem a um mundo diferente deste.

to panic in fear or bask in nothingness, that is the question

If a tree fell in the forest, and you were the only one there to hear it; if its fall to the ground didn’t make a sound, would you panic in fear that you didn’t exist, or would you bask in the bliss of your nothingness?

by Andrea Gibson


(eu diria que tinha perdido momentaneamente a audição)

o que é que ela anda a ver às 2h da manhã..

dos vícios

o raio da música. primeiro estranhou-se, depois entranhou-se.

keeping people away

Why one reads is important. If it’s just for escape, that’s all right, it’s like taking junk, it’s meaningless. It’s kind of an insult to yourself. Like modern conversation—it’s used to keep people away from one another, because people don’t feel assaulted by conversation so much as silence. People have to make conversation in order to fill up this void. Void is terrifying to most people. We can’t have a direct confrontation with somebody in silence—because what you’re really having is a full and more meaningful confrontation.

by Marlon Brando (via The Paris Review)

uma súbita vontade de voar até Saravejo

Hungarian arthouse director Bela Tarr is opening a PhD-level filmmaking academy in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Film Factory, housed in Sarajevo University's School of Science and Technology, will bring together some of the world's top directors to teach a full-time, three-year program, culminating in students making full-length features.

(via Unspoken Cinema)

Cry, cry, cry 'til you know why

Know Who You Are At Every Age by Cocteau Twins

I'm not real and I deny
I won't heal unless I cry
I can't grieve so I won't grow
I won't heal 'til I let it go


a acrescentar à bucketlist: fazer um videoclip para uma música dos Cocteau Twins

tricky

Once I had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: "No good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.

by Eleanor Roosevelt

emotional landscapes

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.

But what precisely is an encounter with someone you like? Is it an encounter with someone, or with the animals who come to populate you, or with the ideas which take you over, the movements which move you, the sounds which run through you? And how do you separate these things?

from Dialogues by Gilles Deleuze (via worshiping flows)

nos tempos livres

James Dean no seu apartamento em Nova Iorque (via Life)

Our reason, our intelligence, are constantly testing us that this world is atrocious, reason for which the reason is annihilating and leads to skepticism, cynicism and finally to annihilation*

It might be said that the human race is incapable of withstanding the drastic changes that are taking place in today’s world. For those changes have been so terrible, so far-reaching and, above all, so swift that they make those that caused the disappearance of the dinosaurs pale into insignificance. Man has not had time to adopt to the sudden and powerful changes that his technology and society have produced around him, and it might safely be said that many of today’s illnesses are the means used by the cosmos to eliminate this proud human race. Man is the only animal to have created his own environment. Ironically, he is also the only one to have thus created his own means of self-destruction.

by Ernesto Sábato

 *luckily, man is almost never a reasonable being, so hope is reborn again and again in the midst of calamitie.

Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you.

But your solitude will be a support
and a home for you,
even in the midst of very
unfamiliar circumstances,
and from it you will find all your paths.

by Rainer Maria Rilke

crisálida

há que franzir o olho quando, após ouvires por mais do que uma vez a analogia entre a metamorfose da lagarta e a tua vida, te começam a surgir borboletas brancas no quarto, uma após outra.

que fique aqui registado. até já as comecei a enumerar por fotografias.



edit: e já vão em 4

Tudo se esbate. Um pouco mais e é a cegueira.

Não é preciso ser muito sagaz para encontrar um calmante à vida dos mortos. Que espero eu, então, para conjurar a minha? Há-de chegar, há-de chegar, estou aqui estou a ouvir o grande berro que vai tudo apaziguar, embora não seja eu quem o há-de soltar. Enquanto se espera, inútil saber-mo-nos defuntos, não estamos, a gente torce-se ainda, os cabelos crescem, as unhas alongam-se, as entranhas esvaziam-se, todos os gatos-pingados estão mortos. Alguém puxou as cortinas, nós mesmos quem sabe. Nem o mais pequeno ruído. Onde as moscas que tão faladas foram? Há que render-mo-nos à evidência, não somos nós que estamos mortos, são todos os outros.

from Molloy by Samuel Beckett

the rooks have arrived

People in trees by Mikola Gnisyuk

ᔥ Lens

i've missed you not, too

Outdoor Texts by Endre Tót

pergunta-me se já tenho saudades de casa ao que respondo afirmativamente, sabendo que o esperava de mim, e evitando assim falar mais sobre o assunto. menti. no lugar do sim queria ter dito que não, não tenho saudades de casa, como não vou ter saudades do aqui e agora, ou de lugar nenhum. e assim como não tenho saudades de lugar nenhum, vou-me apercebendo de que lugar nenhum sente a minha falta.
so yeah, that's that.

Dasein

a German word which literally means being there, often translated in English with the word existence. It is a fundamental concept in the existential philosophy of Martin Heidegger particularly in his magnum opus Being and Time.

(...)

By using the expression Dasein, Heidegger called attention to the fact that a human being cannot be taken into account except as being an existent in the middle of a world amongst, that Dasein is 'to be there' and 'there' is the world. To be human is to be fixed, embedded and immersed in the physical, literal, tangible day by day world.

(via wiki & royby)

bucket list

arranjar um aparelho para projectar o Retour d'un repère, da Rose Lowder, em loop, na parede do meu quarto.
é bom saber que posso recorrer aos estímulos visuais quando necessito de um calmante.

We die to each other daily

(still from Chungking Express)

What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.

The Cocktail Party, T.S. Eliot

He is the universe’s helpless captive, kept to fall into nameless possibilities.

Man beholds the earth, and it is breathing like a great lung; whenever it exhales, delightful life swarms from all its pores and reaches out toward the sun, but when it inhales, a moan of rupture passes through the multitude, and corpses whip the ground like bouts of hail. Not merely his own day could he see, the graveyards wrung themselves before his gaze, the laments of sunken millennia wailed against him from the ghastly decaying shapes, the earth-turned dreams of mothers. Future’s curtain unraveled itself to reveal a nightmare of endless repetition, a senseless squander of organic material. The suffering of human billions makes its entrance into him through the gateway of compassion, from all that happens arises a laughter to mock the demand for justice, his profoundest ordering principle. He sees himself emerge in his mother's womb, he holds up his hand in the air and it has five branches; whence this devilish number five, and what has it to do with my soul? He is no longer obvious to himself—he touches his body in utter horror; this is you and so far do you extend and no farther. He carries a meal within him, yesterday it was a beast that could itself dash around, now I suck it up and make it part of me, and where do I begin and end? All things chain together in causes and effects, and everything he wants to grasp dissolves before the testing thought... Eventually, the features of things are features only of himself. Nothing exists without himself, every line points back at him, the world is but a ghostly echo of his voice—he leaps up loudly screaming and wants to disgorge himself onto the earth along with his impure meal, he feels the looming of madness and wants to find death before losing even such ability.

But as he stands before imminent death, he grasps its nature also, and the cosmic import of the step to come. His creative imagination constructs new, fearful prospects behind the curtain of death, and he sees that even there is no sanctuary found. And now he can discern the outline of his biologico-cosmic terms: He is the universe’s helpless captive, kept to fall into nameless possibilities.

ᔥ toward the creative nothing

olha eu cheia de inveja do Wallace

The first time I lay actual eyes on the real David Lynch on the set of his movie, he's peeing on a tree. I am not kidding. This is on 8 January in West LA's Griffith Park, where some of Lost Highway's exteriores and driving scenes are being shot. Lynch is standing in the bristly underbrush off the dirt road between the Base Camp's trailers and the set, peeing on a stunted pine.

from David Lynch Keeps His Head by David Foster Wallace

e há que terminar este post com uma musiquinha

o homem é tão apegado ao que existe que acaba por preferir suportar a sua imperfeição

Em geral, essa sensação de estar só no mundo aparece mesclada a um orgulhoso sentimento de superioridade: desprezo aos homens, acho que são sujos, feios, incapazes, ávidos, grosseiros, mesquinhos; a minha solidão não me assusta, é quase olímpica.

Mas naquele momento, como em outros semelhantes, encontrava-me só em consequência dos meus piores atributos, das minhas baixas acções. Nesses casos sinto que o mundo é desprezível, mas compreendo que também eu faço parte dele; deixo-me afagar pela tentação do suicídio, embriago-me, procuro as prostitutas. E sinto uma certa satisfação em provar a minha própria baixeza e em verificar que não sou melhor do que os sujos monstros que me rodeiam.

(...)

O suicídio seduz pela sua facilidade de aniquilação: num segundo, todo o universo absurdo cai como um gigante simulacro, como se a solidez dos seus arranha-céus, dos seus encouraçados, dos seus tanques, das suas prisões não fossem mais que uma fantasmagoria, não mais sólidos que os aranha-céus, encouraçados, tanques e prisões de um pesadelo.

A vida aparece à luz desse raciocínio como um longo pesadelo, do qual, no entanto, cada um pode libertar-se com a morte, que seria, assim, uma espécie de despertar. Mas despertar para quê? Essa relutância em lançar-me ao nada absoluto e eterno foi o que me deteve em todos os meus projectos de suicídio. Apesar de tudo, o homem é tão apegado ao que existe que acaba por preferir suportar a sua imperfeição e a dor que causa a sua feiúra, a aniquilar a fantasmagoria num acto de vontade própria. E costuma acontecer, também, que quando chegamos a essa beira do desespero que precede o suicídio por ter esgotado o inventário de tudo o que é mau e ter chegado ao ponto em que o mal é insuportável, qualquer elemento bom, por menor que seja, adquire um valor desproporcional, acaba por se tornar decisivo, e aferramo-nos a ele como nos agarraríamos desesperadamente a qualquer erva perante o perigo de rolar num abismo.

from El Túnel by Ernest Sábato

When asked, 'Why do you always wear black?', he said, 'I am mourning for my life.'

frase roubada ao Anton Chekhov, foto de minha autoria

nos tempos livres

Andrei Tarkovsky no set do filme Zerkalo

noodinâmica

A busca por sentido certamente pode causar tensão interior em vez de equilíbrio interior. Entretanto, justamente esta tensão é um pré-requisito insdispensável para a saúde mental. Ouso dizer que nada no mundo contribui tão efectivamente para a sobrevivência, mesmo nas piores condições, como saber que a nossa vida tem um sentido. Há muita sabedoria nas palavras de Nietzsche: "Quem tem por que viver suporta quase qualquer como." Nestas palavras vejo um lema válido para qualquer psicoterapia. Nos campos de concentração nazistas, poder-se-ia ter testemunhado que aqueles que sabiam que havia uma tarefa à sua espera tinham mais probabilidades de sobreviver. Outros autores de livros sobre campos de concentração chegaram à mesma conclusão, assim como investigações psiquiátricas sobre acampamentos com prisioneiros de guerra no Japão, Coréia do Norte e Vietnam do Norte.

Quanto a mim, quando fui levado para o campo de concentração em Auschwitz, um manuscrito meu, pronto para publicação, foi confiscado. Não há dúvida de que o meu profundo desejo de reescrevê-lo me ajudou a sobreviver os rigores dos campos de concentração em que estive. Assim, por exemplo, quando fui atacado pela febre do tifo, rabisquei muitos apontamentos em pedacinhos de papel para depois conseguir reescrever o manuscrito, caso vivesse até o dia da libertação. Tenho certeza de que essa reconstrução de meu manuscrito perdido, levada a cabo na penumbra dos barracões de um campo de concentração na Baviera, ajudou-me a superar o perigo de um colapso cardiovascular.

Pode-se ver, assim, que a saúde mental está baseada num certo grau de tensão, tensão entre aquilo que já se alcançou e aquilo que ainda se deveria alcançar, ou o hiato entre o que se é e o que se deveria vir a ser. Essa tensão é inerente ao ser humano e, por isso, indispensável ao bem-estar mental. Não deveríamos, então, hesitar em desafiar a pessoa com um sentido em potencial a ser por ela realizado. Somente assim despertaremos do estado latente a sua vontade de sentido. Considero perigosa a errônea noção de higiene mental que pressupõe que a pessoa necessita em primeiro lugar de equilíbrio, ou, como se diz na biologia, de "homeostase", ou seja, de um estado livre de tensão. O que o ser humano realmente precisa não é um estado livre de tensões, mas antes a busca e a luta por um objetivo que valha a pena, uma tarefa escolhida livremente. O que ele necessita não é a descarga de tensão a qualquer custo, mas antes o desafio de um sentido em potencial à espera do seu cumprimento. O ser humano precisa não de homeostase, mas daquilo que chamo de "noodinâmica", isto é, da dinâmica existencial num campo polarizado de tensão, onde um pólo está representado pelo sentido a ser realizado e o outro pólo, pela pessoa aque deverá realizá-lo. E ninguém pense que isto é válido somente para situações normais; isto vale ainda mais para indivíduos neuróticos. Quando os arquitectos querem reforçar uma arcada que ameaça desabar, eles aumentam a carga por ela sustentada, pois com isso os componentes são ligados mais firmemente. Da mesma forma, quando os terapeutas desejam incrementar a saúde mental dos seus pacientes, não deveriam ter receios de criar uma sadia quantidade de tensão através da reorientação para o sentido da vida".

Em Busca do Sentido, Viktor Frankl

como é para um surdo ouvir música pela primeira vez?

Being able to hear the music for the first time ever was unreal.
When Mozart's Lacrimosa came on, I was blown away by the beauty of it. At one point of the song, it sounded like angels singing and I suddenly realized that this was the first time I was able to appreciate music. Tears rolled down my face and I tried to hide it. But when I looked over I saw that there wasn't a dry eye in the car.

ler o resto aqui.
diz que já adoro o rapaz só pelo comentário que faz à música country.
e não podia deixar de reparar na frase com que termina o artigo.

nos tempos livres

Ingmar Bergman

like an outcast

Where are those old friends with whom in years gone by I felt so closely united? Now it seems as if we belonged to different worlds, and no longer spoke the same language! Like a stranger and an outcast, I move among them — not one of their words or looks reaches me any longer. I am dumb for no one understands my speech — ah, but they never did understand me! It is terrible to be condemned to silence when one has so much to say.

Was I made for solitude or for a life in which there was no one to whom I could speak? The inability to communicate one's thoughts is in very truth the most terrible of all kinds of loneliness. Difference is a mask which is more ironbound than any iron mask.

Friedrich Nietzsche, numa carta à irmã (1886)

ᔥ toward the creative nothing

by chance

há qualquer coisa de fantástico numa caminhada às 9h da noite quando vais a ouvir a banda sonora do Drive no mp3. já o sol se pôs e começa-te a tocar a Tick of the Clock no momento em que vais a passar junto a um armazém guardado por dois cães que começam a ladrar freneticamente na tua presença. som esse que se sobrepõe à música, ecoando no pinhal do lado oposto. com todo aquele som surround por momentos senti que personificara o driver numa cena de perseguição.
foi bom enquanto durou.

Most people don't know what they want or feel.

And for everyone, myself included, It's very difficult to say what you mean when what you mean is painful. The most difficult thing in the world is to reveal yourself, to express what you have to... As an artist, I feel that we must try many things - but above all, we must dare to fail. You must have the courage to be bad - to be willing to risk everything to really express it all.

John Cassavetes

have you suffered the torment of insomnia, when you count the minutes for nights on end, when you feel alone in this world, when your drama seems to be the most important in history and history ceases to have meaning, ceases to exist?

are you familiar with the frightening sensation of melting, the feeling of dissolving into a flowing river, in which the self is annulled by organic liquidization? everything solid and substantial in you melts away in a wearisome fluidity, and the only thing left is your head. i'm speaking of a precise painful sensation, not a vague and undetermined one. as in a hallucinatory dream, you feel that only your head is left, without foundation and support, without a body. this feeling has nothing to do with that vague and voluptuous weariness by the seaside or in melancholy dreamy musings; it is a weariness which consumes and destroys. no effort, no hope, no illusion can satisfy you any longer. shocked witless by your own catastrophe, unable to think or to act, caught in cold and heavy darkness, solitary as in moments of profound regret, you have reached the negative limit of life, its absolute temperature, where the last illusions about life freeze.

from On the Heights of Despair by E. M. Cioran

amor aos inconvenientes de ser socially awkward*

Sair, sair sem dizer nada, ir embora, bazar, dar o fora.
Fazê-lo sem um aceno que fosse distante, mudo, envergonhado, é no mínimo má educação.


*e às mensagens do S. que até quando era para me por defeitos o fazia com estilo.

stand still

Time could truly be made to stand still. Texture could be retained despite violent movement.

Alfred Hitchcock & Teresa Wright by Gjon Mili

Deus enquanto metáfora

I ask Edmond Jabès:
"You say you are an atheist. How can you constantly write of God?"
"It's a word my culture has given me."
Then he expands:
"It is a metaphor for nothingness, the infinite, for silence, death, for all that calls us into question. It is the ultimate otherness."
Or, as he puts it later, in the conversations with Marcel Cohen:
"For me the words 'Jew' and 'God' are, it is true, metaphors. 'God' is the metaphor for emptiness; 'Jew' stands for the torment of God, of emptiness."

from Lavish Absence: Recalling and Rereading Edmond Jabes by Rosmarie Waldrop
↬ bookslut

amor às músicas que te viciam contra a tua vontade

Even Though You're With Another Girl by Trentemøller



e às que te viciam voluntariamente!

Today's Supernatural by Animal Collective

gathering evidence for history

I work much more like a forensic photographer in a certain way, collecting evidence.

© Gilles Peress

No fundo, os seres humanos não passam de veículos, ou locais de passagem para os genes.

De geração em geração, correm dentro de nós até nos esgotarem, como cavalos de corrida. Os genes não pensam no bem e no mal. Não querem saber se somos felizes ou infelizes. Para eles, não passamos de um meio para atingir um fim. Só pensam no que é mais eficaz do seu ponto de vista.

(...)

Se, como a senhora dissera, não passamos de veículos dos genes, por que razão tantos de nós têm vidas tão extravagantes? O nosso propósito genético - a transmissão do ADN - não se cumpriria igualmente bem se vivêssemos vidas simples, sem esgotarmos a cabeça em turbilhões de estranhos pensamentos, dedicando-nos unicamente à preservação da vida e à sua transmissão? Haveria algum benefício para os genes no facto de vivermos vidas tão retorcidas, para não dizer bizarras?

from 1Q84 by Huraki Murakami

everything is alive, nothing is ever still. we're surrounded by life, we must live, too

© Steven Russell

how can you lie to me, on such a night as this, beneath such sky? tell your lies in autumn, if you must, in the gloom and the mud, but not now, not here. you're being watched! look up, you absurd man! a thousand eyes, all shining with indignation! you must be good and true, just as all this is good and true. don't break this silence with your little words!

from Wild Honey by Anton Chekhov

amor às listografias

(clicar na imagem para aceder à lista)

idealistas vs materialistas

para além das suas profundas divergências filosóficas, facilmente se distinguem idealistas alemães de materialistas alemães pelas suas posturas (claramente opostas) no que diz respeito ao pêlo facial.



ᔥ Dinu Lipatti's bones

as mãos e os olhos enquanto locais de reconhecimento

What interests me about the eyes is that they are the part of the body that doesn't age. In other words, if one looks for one's childhood across all the signs of aging in the body, the deterioration of musculature, the whitening of the hair, changes in height and weight, one can find one's childhood in the look of the eyes. And what's striking about this is that a man of my age keeps the exact same eyes that he had as a child.
Hegel says that the eyes are the outer manifestation of the soul. Through the eyes, the inner soul presents itself to the outside. But I translate this though as follows:
That one's act of looking has no age. One's eyes are the same all of one's life. And I'll say something related to this about the subject of hands.
In a book I just published, I spoke a lot about hands. I'm very interested in the hands of philosophers. I've written a text on the hands of Heidegger, which also references the hands of Kant, Husserl... So the hands of philosophers interest me a lot, and what they say about hands, and the privilege that's given to this part of the body.
Keeping in mind that there's a history of the hand, the evolution of man, what we call the hominization of the animal, occurs via the transformation of the hand. I think that it's not the body of the hand that stays the same, the hand changes from childhood to old age. It is the eyes and hands that are the sites of recognition, the signs through which one identifies the other.

from Jacques Derrida - On Eyes and Hands

David Lynch's Bathtub Experiments

To lay in the dark and listen to this dizzying succession of blissful noise is a different way to get “lost” in the vast space of then the visuals of the film itself.

↬ huffington post 

the passion for the absurd is the only thing that can still throw a demonic light on chaos

the passion for the absurd can grow only in a man who has exhausted everything, yet is still capable of undergoing awesome transfigurations. for one who has lost everything there is nothing left in life except the passion of the absurd. what else in life could still move such a person? what seductions? some say: self-sacrifice for humanity, the public good, the cult of the beautiful, and so forth. i like only those people who have done away with all that - even for a short time. only they have lived in an absolute manner. only they have the right to speak about life. you can recover love or serenity. but you recover it through heroism, not ignorance. an existence which does not hide a great madness has no value. how is it different from the existence of a stone, a piece of wood, or something rotten? and yet i tell you: you must hide a great madness in order to want to become stone, wood, or rot. only when you have tasted all the poisoning sweetness of the absurd are you fully purified, because only then will you have pushed negation to its final expression. and are not all final expressions absurd?

from On The Heights of Despair by E. M. Cioran

a mix perfeita.

para quem duvidar que é possível tornar duas horas de discursos sobre o espaço, ciência e religião interessantes e inspiradores (e ainda conseguir encaixar Arcade Fire lá pelo meio), que oiça esta mix. vale mesmo a pena. plus, é uma óptima forma de relaxar quando chega a hora de ir para a cama.

direitinha para o meu mp3.

↬ an existential life

penteados com pinta.

os arquivos privados de Ingmar Bergman (e que arquivos!)

curioso com um rumor, Marcus Lindeen lá arranjou forma de vasculhar os arquivos privados de Ingmar Bergman e comprovar a existência de numerosos guiões, sketches e rascunhos de filmes do realizador que nunca chegaram a passar do papel. estes incluem uma comédia erótica sobre um príncipe sexualmente reprimido, uma peça sobre um canibal que come parte de si mesmo, alguns actos que se passam dentro dum útero, e um libreto de ópera por compor.

↬ ingmarbergman.se

seized by disgust and fear

Faith is a heavy burden, you know? It’s like loving someone out in the darkness, who never comes, no matter how loud you call.

in The Seventh Seal by Ingmar Bergman

inability to connect

I feel completely detached from any country, any group. I am a metaphysically displaced person.

E. M. Cioran in conversation with Fernando Savater

What’s the matter with you?

Nothing.
Nothing was slowly clotting my arteries. Nothing slowly numbing my soul. Caught by nothing, saying nothing, nothingness becomes me. When I am nothing they will say surprised in the way that they are forever surprised, "but there was nothing the matter with her".

from Gut Symmetries by Jeanette Winterson