Black Friday
Don’t go shopping. So not worth it.
I’m not sure I’m ready to join any kind of movement, especially if there are people around who do things like use the word movement, but I fully endorse this sentiment.
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(this post was reblogged from fuckyeahexistentialism)
Like all dreamers, I confuse disenchantment with truth.
Jean–Paul Sartre (via samsaramotel) (via lafave) (via smut-to-go) (via fuckyeahexistentialism)
This applies with the dis- or without.
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I’ve long been opposed to caring about celebrity personal lives on principle, or at least letting those biographies warp critical judgment, and one shitty thing about the ’00s (a byproduct of hip-hop, probably) is how the phenomenon became more commonplace — or at least, how so many pop stars recorded music that arrogantly presumes we keep up with their lives’ details. Seems a recent development — most great pop music used to be about our lives, not theirs.
Chuck Eddy, speaking a truth I hadn’t recognized until he verbalized it.
In the long wheel of history, this can be understood as the latest iteration of the unfortunate mid-60s Beatles/Dylan-based fetishization of pop stars who write their own material. Like bloggers or first-time novelists, what are people with too much platform and too little experience going to write about but themselves?
(I don’t agree with what he goes on to say about the new Rihanna single, but that’s neither here nor there.)
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These were esteemed very highly by the other slaves, and looked upon as privileged ones of the plantation; for it was no small affair, in the eyes of the slaves, to be allowed to see Baltimore.
Frederick Douglass, 1845.
Which reminds me, I’ve really got to get around to watching The Wire.
What happened to me? In high school I used to pump out fiction by the pound. It wasn’t any good, but at least I got that shit done. Seriously, in four years I believe I wrote five novels, a dozen short stories, and like three volumes’ worth of poetry. (All shit.)
And here it is the 23rd of November and I’m only 7,500 words into my NaNoWriMo piece. Which leaves, uh, 42,500 words to go. If I didn’t have two other papers to write before December, I could probably get it done. I still might; I’m just going to have to live on coffee and Canabalt.
But man, these are muscles I haven’t stretched in a long, long time. I’ve become a nonfiction writer almost by accident (music nerddery will do that) and with every word I’m becoming more vividly aware of just how little fiction published within my lifetime — or even my father’s lifetime — I’ve read. But my fundamentals are still solid, I think; I just need to work on technique.
Okay, pep talk’s over. Time to get back to work.
Ellington.
If it were a drawing, I’d say the artist needed to study proportions better.
Played 4 times
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Igor Stravinsky’s Concerto In D
Just listened to this on the way home. Not much else to say about it, except…
Are you supposed to boogie to modernism?
