On novelty

This is worth living for: that I can imagine as hard as I wish, I can mentally construct in the maximum detail of which I am capable the most mundane of future events, build a daydream out of things I already know, but that despite my best efforts, the future is always absolutely novel. Each moment I am alive is a complete surprise, and never more than when I am in fact experiencing things for the first time. May he who denies life novelty come face to face with himself in the realization that every moment runs aground all his expectations, and this, instead, is what it is like.

From Henri Bergson's The Creative Mind:

Our action exerts itself conveniently only on fixed points; fixity is therefore what our intelligence seeks; it asks itself where the mobile is to be found, where it will be, where it will pass. ... But it is always with immobilities, real or possible, that it seeks to deal.
...
But how can we help seeing that the essence of duration is to flow, and that the fixed placed side by side with the fixed will never constitute anything which has duration.
...
Intuition is what attains the spirit, duration, pure change.
...
To think intuitively is to think in duration.
...
Criticism of an intuitive philosophy is so easy and so certain to be well received that it will always tempt the beginner.
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[When thinking intuitively] our mind is as if it were in a strange land, whereas matter is familiar to it and in it the mind is at home. But that is because a certain ignorance of self is perhaps useful to a being which must exteriorize itself in order to act.
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This direct vision of the mind by the mind is the chief function of intuition.
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True, the faculty of intuition exists in each one of us, but covered over by functions more useful to life.
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Man is essentially a manufacturer.

Anarchist folksongs

Click here to listen to "Das Zelt" by the Jeans Team (YouTube)

Mach Dich auf In die Welt In ein andres Land Wo's Dir gefällt Bis zum Rand Und übers Meer Dich hält Hier nichts mehr Ref: Kein Gott Kein Staat Keine Arbeit Kein Geld Aus dem Haufen Dieser Stadt Musst Du raus Und Du wirst sehn Du wirst Dich verändern In all diesen Ländern Ref: Kein Gott Kein Staat Keine Arbeit Kein Geld Mein zu Hause Ist die Welt Mein zu Hause Ist die Welt Das Himmelszelt Ist Dein Dach Mit all den Lichtern Die Dich leiten Von den Sternen Die Dich begleiten Kannst Du lernen Klar zu sehn Ref: Kein Gott Kein Staat Keine Arbeit Kein Geld Mein zu Hause Ist die Welt Mein zu Hause Ist die Welt

(My amateur translation) Move away Into the world To another land That you like Up to the edge And across the sea Nothing more Holds you here No god No country No work No money Out of the ruins (?) Of this city You must go And you will see You will change In all these lands No god ... My home Is the world The tent of the sky Is your roof With all the lights Which lead you From the stars Which follow you You can learn To see clearly

Wind

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Night falls early. If you are in a windowless room, you become aware of the darkening subconsciously, as the lights inside seem somehow to change in color or intensity. Gradually you become filled with a feeling that you are in the wrong place. The clock on the wall reads 4:23, and you know this to be true. Still, in your mind it is much later than this. You should be home now, surrounded by the warm lights you are accustomed to, surrounded by your familiar things, safe and stationary until tomorrow. This spectral feeling fidgets around inside you, breaking your concentration. You glance at the clock more often than you would like to, struggling to stay interested in what you are doing. Your back is turned toward the door.
From behind you comes a noise unlike anything you have heard before. It is the sound of the sun setting; the sound of a holy wind; the sound of an air duct falling apart; the sound of smooth thunder; the sound thunder aspires to; the sound you would have heard if the light had not killed you. Your eyes widen. You are paralyzed until the sound passes, and you realize it was a sound that could not have occurred under any other circumstances. As you begin to recover, you look breathlessly at the others in the room. They did not hear it. They wait impatiently for the day to end.

Realism

"Invalides de Guerre Jouant aux Cartes" ("War Cripples Playing Cards") by Otto Dix, 1920

Click to read an article from the August 6, 1934 issue of Time Magazine about Otto Dix.



"I had to experience how someone beside me suddenly falls over and is dead and the bullet has hit him squarely. I had to experience that quite directly. I wanted it. I'm therefore not a pacifist at all - or am I? - perhaps I was an inquisitive person. I had to see all that for myself. I'm such a realist, you know, that I have to see everything with my own eyes in order to confirm that it's like that. I have to experience all the ghastly, bottomless depths for life for myself; it's for that reason that I went to war, and for that reason I volunteered."

Otto Dix c. 1920

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What follows is an example of a painting that is almost photorealistic. In the space filled by the almost, there is some kind of magic which makes paintings in this style feel more real than reality itself.

Oswald Achenbach, S. Pietro in Vincoli, 1883

What is the difference?

Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi



To which groups are our identities opposed? Who do we place outside of ourselves so that we may draw a boundary around ourselves and know that boundary to be safe? There is no mystery in ourselves; we know what we are not. I know what I am not--I am not you. At least I am not you. There are five castes.

There are five senses. Everything you perceive must come through one of these or it is a fantasy. There are seven colors in the rainbow. A wave of light stretches from red to violet in six violent jerks as if it is falling down the stairs.

An evicted Roma family (Budapest, 2000)

- Tell me more about the village where your grandmother lives. - It is a very nice village, 120 kilometers from here. There is a lake on the edge of a forest. - How many people live there? - It is a small village, 3,000 people. And no gypsies!

I have been thinking ...
I have been thinking of the difference between water
and the waves on it. Rising,
water's still water, falling back,
it is water, will you give me a hint
how to tell them apart?

Because someone has made up the word
"wave," do I have to distinguish it
from water?

There is a Secret One inside us;
the planets in all the galaxies
pass through his hands like beads.

That is a string of beads one should look at with luminous eyes.

-Kabir, 13th Century

On boiling

"I show you light now. It burns bright forever.
No more blue tomorrows. You’re on high now, love."

People overthink all sorts of things. The truth boils underneath like an underground lake.

Art causes the soul to boil. Interpreting and reading and thinking about this boiling is a way of turning the heat down. "Cinema is a language that can say abstractions."