reminiscing
October 12, 2020
Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God
Simone Weil, 1942
June 17, 2019
I recently heard about Kanopy– NYPL’s cinema library with free online streaming
(a short-lived program– no longer exists)
I highly recommend the Story of Film series
Also, Combat Obscura
+ there’s an entire A24 section!
What belongs to death?
January 18, 2019
inside Recovery House of Worship Brooklyn (link to gallery)
We never look at the people we’re serving as different from us, says [Pastor Edwin] Colon. It’s just us in a different year.
Photos accompany story by Emily Belz for Philanthropy Round Table
Foreign Policy - on Yemen
November 21, 201
October 26, 2018
Because I’m back to editing Teachers College photos this week (silent images of students looking deeply into one another’s souls/professors, sanguine and unguarded/perfect hues of florescent waves), I’ve been listening to podcasts and found
this– The Argument by The New York Times Opinion.
Three NYT columnists, David Laoenhard, Michelle Goldberg and Ross Douthat, explain/debate/argue contemporary politics from positions (which they personally hold) across the political spectrum. I’m no polysci major, but... I’m actually hearing historical details and networks explained. The debates are lively, but substantive (and rarely do the columnists talk over one another). They do spend a bit of time each episode projecting into the future. In those moments, I have to work to tamp down anxieties, but it’s those estimations that remind me that what happens on Twitter does in fact take form in physical reality.
Episode Oct 25, 2018 How Screwed Up is American Democracy?
-or- Spotify
July 20, 2018
My personal response to IMAGE CULTURE - Episode 14
IMAGE CULTURE - William Jess Laird
- Episode 14: Robert Buck
(photo and podcast by William Jess Laird)
July 14, 2018
Composers as Gardeners
A talk by Brian EnoWhat fascinated me about these kinds of music was that they really completely moved away from that old idea of how a composer worked. It was quite clear with these pieces, for example "In C," that the composer didn't have a picture of the finished piece in his head when he started. What the composer had was a kind of menu, a packet of seeds, you might say. And those musical seeds, once planted, turned into the piece. And they turned into a different version of that piece every time.
...What we're not so used to is the idea that another great gift we have is the talent to surrender and to cooperate. Cooperation and surrender are actually parts of the same skill. To be able to surrender is to be able to know when to stop trying to control. And to know when to go with things, to be taken along by them. And that's a skill that we actually have to start relearning.
-Brian Eno
Encouragement and relief for anyone trying to create anything.
July 12, 2018
Adrian Piper at MoMA
(personal photos + photos from MoMa.org) “It seemed that the more clearly and abstractly I learned to think, the more clearly I was able to hear my gut telling me what I needed to do, and the more pressing it became to do it.” Adrian Piper, 1996
Piper’s art is an excellent example of drawing as thought chronicals and art as activism.
The exhibition at MoMa includes a hundred+ diagrams and equations, patterns, mixed media works and videos. An advocate for the philosophy that the concept of a piece should take precedence over the art object, Piper stressed that her works should be rough, immediately replicated and easy to distribute. Her early works are more “drawing” like (less like a crystalized statement), crytpic and difficult to digest (for me). Her later works retain the look and style of a drawing, but they are very much a declaration and appear a bit illustrative. I was intellectually provoked more by the later work, but I deeply enjoyed the early aesthetic sensibility in her patterns and mind-maps.
Many of her works have images underneath the phrases–
“everything will be taken away”
“pretend not to know what you know”
you could even purchase a temporary tattoo (like Lenten ashes) to mark your forehead.
“One reason for making and exhibiting a work is to induce a reaction or change in the viewer...in this sense, the work as such is nonexistent except when it functions as a medium of change between the artist and viewer” -Adrian Piper
(and another reason for making and exhibiting a work is to induce a reaction or change in the artist!)
July 2, 2018
What I’m listening to:
Juana Molina, Micael
(+the whole album)
(album artwork ©Juana Molina, Crammed Discs)
June 28, 2018
Great summer reading, at times, out loud
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garica Marquez
June 17, 2018
IMAGE CULTURE - Episode 13: Eileen Myles
(photo and podcast by William Jess Laird)
++Episode 12: Gideon Jacob
June 15, 2018
Just saw the documentary of a lifetime– Won’t You Be My Neighbor
I’m in reverent awe
May 31, 2018
Phineas Newborn Jr. - Newport Blues
on Spotify
May 25, 2018
Shane Claiborne and Red Letter Christians pleading for a revival - New York Times....Mr. Claiborne still wanted to lead a group onto the Liberty campus and hold a prayer vigil — or at least leave a gift for Mr. Falwell, who had just opened a new $3.2 million gun range on campus. Mr. Claiborne had ready a hand plow that he made from a melted-down handgun, a literal following of the Bible’s instruction to ‘beat swords into plowshares’ - Laurie Goodstein, NYT
A Confession of Faith in a Time of Crisis
May 24, 2018
The Atlantic Interview (episode 19)
on Spotify
May 22, 2018
Link to The Atlantic Interview (episode 17)
on Spotify
May 21, 2018
Today, I’m Still Processing with Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham
May 20, 2018
Childish Gambino - This is America
on Spotify
This is America - Camera Angles & Movement
...
May 19, 2018
Link to The Atlantic Interview (episode 22)
On Spotify
Index