Monday, December 4, 2017

Quotes of the day. Grief.

...(on grief) ...
And you do come out of it, that’s true.
After a year, after five.
But you don’t come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the downs into sunshine and that swift, rattling descent to the Channel; you come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil-slick.
You are tarred and feathered for life.”

― Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot.

Thursday, June 15, 2017

Film Radiator (2014)

Why I wish I'd stopped trying to change my elderly parents:
Прекратите пытаться изменить своих пожилых родителей или пытаться заставить их делать то, что вы хотите.
/Том Браун/

Том Браун рассматривает семейные отношения и то, как они тестируются когда родители стареют.
Он рассказывает историю последних лет жизни его родителей.
"Мои отношения с родителями всегда были сложными.
Мои родители вызывали одновременно мое беспокойство и мое возмущение.
Они, похоже, не хотели моей помощи - они, конечно же, никогда не просили о помощи, но когда я время от времени бывал у них, я видел, что ситуация ухудшается.
Мой 85 - летний отец лежал на диване, неспособный даже добраться до ванной.
Он не мог заставить себя противостоять его хрупкости.
Он сдался.
И была моя мать, на 13 лет его моложе, но ослабевшая и доведенная до изнеможения постоянным уходом за ним.
Дом был холодный и запущенный, мышь бегала по кухне, крыша протекала, и все их реликты прошлого покрывала густая пыль.
Они перестали быть теми, кем были, и я не распознавал их прежних в этом хаосе.
Я приеду, накричу на них, возмущаясь состоянием их жизни...и уезжаю к себе.
Они больше не могли заботиться о себе, но они не хотели никого вмешивать в их жизнь.
Это казалось таким безответственным, эгоистичным.

Если бы я на мгновение подумал о них, как о посторонних мне людях, а не о моих родителях, я бы увидел их такими, какие они были: два пожилых профессионала, напуганные их утратой независимости и надвигающимися смертями.
Я бы мог просто посидеть с ними за бутылкой вина и несколькими забавными историями из моей жизни.
Все, что они хотели - это приятно провести время, насладиться обществом своего сына.
Динамика, на которой основывались наши отношения, осталась неизменной: они были родителями, а я был их мальчиком.

Их брак всегда был для меня загадкой и источником гнева.
Я ненавидел тот факт, что мой отец был так груб с моей матерью, и я ненавидел тот факт, что она терпела его.
Но эти отношения сложились задолго до моего появления в их жизни.
Их брак был основан на давно созданном пакте, который я никогда не мог понять.


Я полагаю, это было мое эго, которое было поставлено на карту.
Вам приятно думать, что вы несете ответственность за своих стареющих родителей, но оказывается, что это не так.
Я был отвергнут, когда они проигнорировали мой совет и отказались от моей помощи, но на самом деле они вели себя так, как вели себя всегда.
Конечно, мой отец не хотел страдать от унижения, когда его купает его сын. Я должен был это понять.
Мне виделось, что их жизнь могла бы быть намного проще, гораздо удобнее, если бы только они выслушали меня и позволили мне организовать их жизнь.
Теперь я знаю, что это была безуспешная попытка навязать им мои собственные стандарты образа жизни.
Их поколение с ужасом наблюдало за нашим образом жизни: как мы тратим £2.50 на кофе; обедаем не дома, а в ресторанах; выбрасываем, а не ремонтируем наше имущество.

Они пережили военные годы, и они ценили свои вещи, берегли то, что находили интересным или красивым: некролог, вырезанный из газеты; кусок красного дерева; поделку из кузнечного цеха.
Для них это была своеобразная красота, тогда как для меня это было просто барахло, которое нужно будет разобрать после их смерти.

Мы всегда думали, что мама переживет отца, потому что она была намного моложе, но именно она умерла сначала, внезапно.
Я признаюсь, что почувствовал облегчение - ей больше не придется заботиться о моем отце.
Это было так грустно. Ее жизнь могла быть частью жизни моих сыновей.
Ей было всего 73 года.
Папа умер несколько месяцев спустя.
Мне всегда казалось, что я лучше пойму своих родителей, когда буду разбирать их вещи после их смерти.
Это оказалось не так: все значимое было передо мной там, пока они были живы, но я был не в состоянии этого видеть.

Для меня фильм стал своего рода искуплением: размышлением о том, что я должен был сделать, или, точнее, то, чего я не должен был делать.
Мои родители не были способны к переменам.
Как жаль, что я не принял их такими, какими они были …с разговором за бутылкой красного вина и вкусной едой."
'via Blog this'

Friday, June 2, 2017

"He's withdrawing us from the world community."

https://www.instagram.com/markbittman/
"The President is withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate agreements, which is to say he's withdrawing us from the world community. (One might as well leave the UN.)
We now find ourselves in the position of preventing catastrophe and building the aspects of society that can stand independently of the federal government.
"Sustainable" has a new meaning. We are fighting to protect ourselves and others, to protect human life on earth.
Progressives believe that climate change must be fought hard, and now; we believe that part of our role as humans is to steward the earth and all of its creatures, not destroy them.
We must collaborate with every ally we can find, every defender of the environment, the species, and democracy, in order to avert catastrophe and ultimately stabilize and improve life on this planet.
The election, actually, did not change this at all: It just made it more clear."

Thursday, March 30, 2017

Lord Michael Heseltine. Thenford House. 2016.

Lord Michael Heseltine interview 2016: dog Kim, gardens & Thenford House - Tatler:
Thenford House, Arboretum & Gardens.

The Sculpture Garden: the one piece that gets most comments from visitors, unsurprisingly, is the socking great head of Lenin.
It was removed from a KGB building in Latvia soon after the collapse of the Soviet Empire. But what are several tons of Communist propaganda doing on a huge brick plinth in the garden of a Tory peer?
‘People forget that under Communism, the only Soviet patron was the state,’ says Lady Heseltine, ‘so all these artists had to channel their talent into pieces like this. When the Berlin Wall came down, I was worried that all these things would be destroyed so I was determined to rescue something.’

'via Blog this'

Monday, March 20, 2017

Antidepressants and the Placebo Effect

Antidepressants and the Placebo Effect:

'via Blog this'

Jeremy Paxman.

Despite the revelations in his memoir, Jeremy said he did not want to be portrayed as "poor little me".

He said: "There comes a point, about the age of 40, when you have to stop saying how you are is a consequence of how you were brought up.

"And particularly when you are 66, it is pathetic to say 'I am as I am because of things that happened in my childhood'."

Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Alice Neel. Collector of souls.

"Alice Neel (January 28, 1900 – October 13, 1984) was an American visual artist, who was particularly well known for oil painting and for her portraits depicting friends, family, lovers, poets, artists and strangers."

- Alice Neel:
“I have this overweening interest in humanity. Even if I’m not working I’m still analysing people.”

- Andrew Neel on ‘Alice Neel’ (Watch It Now FREE!) | IndieWire:
The American painter's troubled life fed into her disturbing, exhilarating portraits – of family, friends, artists and socialites.

- A Grandson Paints a Portrait of a Portraitist - The New York Times:
In November 1928, whilst living in the Bronx, Alice gave birth to her second child, a daughter, Isabella Lillian, who became known as Isabetta. It was around this time that problems appeared with regards Alice and Enrquez’s relationship. The couple had often planned to go to Paris but it had never happened. However, in May 1930 Enriquez, along with Isabetta, left America and travelled back to his parent’s home in Cuba. His idea was to leave his daughter with his parents whilst he returned to America, collected Alice and for them both to head off to France. Alice had agreed to the plan and had even sub-let their New York apartment and moved back in with her parents in Colwyn. She also found work at the art studio of her friends, Ethel Ashton and Rhoda Meyers. Everything seemed to be going to plan, but………

One sequence examines the mystery of Isabetta, who committed suicide in 1982, two years before her mother’s death.
They saw each other only three times after 1930; during the most extended visit, in 1934, Isabetta, then 6, posed naked for a portrait.
In the film her daughter, Cristina Lancella, a Cuban émigré who lives in Miami and has never met her uncles, complains bitterly about Isabetta’s abandonment.
Speaking of the portrait’s possibly damaging effect on her mother, she says: “I think it’s disgusting. I would never have my children naked like that.”

- Alice Neel. Part 1 – The early days | my daily art display:

- Alice Neel | Gemeentemuseum Den Haag:

- The weird world of Alice Neel | Art and design | The Guardian:

- https://www.nytimes.com/video/arts/1194817097801/a-portrait-of-a-painter.html

-

Wednesday, February 1, 2017

'All is lost'

"I'm sorry. I know that means little at this point, but I am.
I tried, I think you would all agree that I tried.
To be true, to be strong, to be kind, to love, to be right.
But I wasn't.
And I know you knew this. In each of your ways.
And I am sorry.
All is lost here, except for soul and body, that is, what's left of them, and a half day's ration.
It's inexcusable really, I know that now.
How it could have taken this long to admit that I'm not sure, but it did.
I fought till the end.
I'm not sure what that is worth, but know that I did.
I have always hoped for more for you all.
I will miss you.
I'm sorry."

Thursday, January 26, 2017

Villa Road, Brixton.

Lefties-Property is Theft - YouTube:
Brixton – video.squat.net:
The story of Villa Road, a squatted street, during the heyday of squatting in the late 1970s, when all over the country people lived together in politicised communities.
These squatters were on the left, and were part of a generation whose views were underwritten by Marxist ideology.
They believed that the revolution was coming and the state would be overthrown.

Villa Road in south London brought together an extraordinary community of over 200 people.

QUOTES
“The idea was that there would be a revolution. One was always a little bit vague about exactly what form that might take in Britain, maybe a general strike or whatever.
It sounds and it was wildly utopian.”
Mike Reid, Villa Roader

Anarchists mixed with hippies and feminists, and homeless single mothers rubbed shoulders with marxist revolutionaries.
The core group in Villa Road were white middle-class graduates.
These politicised intellectuals with allegiances to various left-wing groups led the Villa Roaders in all their anti-capitalist campaigns.
Villa Roaders were against the nuclear family, which they felt denied the full potential of the individual.
They were antagonistic to the police, who they viewed as an embodiment of the state.
They identified politically with the working class, and supported striking workers.
These were also the early days of feminism, and women on Villa Road struggled to free themselves from male domination by attending consciousness-raising groups and Marxist reading groups.
As well as engaging in political activism, some on Villa Road were interested in transforming their unconscious minds through psychotherapy.
This took an extreme form at number 12, which was a primal scream commune, run by the charismatic and wholly untrained Jenny James, who now runs a commune in Colombia and gives a rare interview in this film.

In the hot summer of 1976, the Villa Roaders barricaded the street to fend off eviction and demolition.
They won a partial victory: half of the street was saved and still stands today.
The communist revolution, however, failed to materialise.

The film also documents London’s most long-standing squatted community, St Agnes Place, a street close to Villa Road.
They fought eviction and demolition for over 30 years, and were finally evicted by the council only recently, in December 2005.
'via Blog this'

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Mark Fisher.

Mark Fisher (11 July 1968 – 13 January 2017) was a British writer and cultural theorist.
The Quietus | Features | Tome On The Range | Mark Fisher On Kubrick, Tarkovsky & Nolan: An Extract From The Weird And The Eerie:
"Andrei Tarkovsky’s two great films from the 1970s — Solaris (1972) and Stalker (1979) — are extended engagements with the alien-eerie. In both cases, Tarkovsky’s versions went against the grain of the source material from which they were adapted: Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris (1961) and Boris and Arkady Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic (1971). What Tarkovsky subtracts from the novels are their satirical, ironic and absurdist elements, in favour of his habitual focus on questions of faith and redemption. But he retains the novels’ core preoccupations of encounters with the unknown.

Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Live and let live.

- No raw food after 4pm – it’s better to eat salads for lunch when your metabolism is fired up and the stomach is better equipped to digest foods.
- Chew, chew and chew to produce the enzymes needed to break down food.
- Steer clear of processed foods, which lose nutritional value when heat-processed and often contain chemical additives.
- Listen to your body: all too often the warning signs are ignored. If you have indigestion after eating a particular food then avoid it.
- Hands off! Stop touching your face – hands can be filthy, transferring dirt and acne-causing bacteria from place to place. Clean hands will help keep your skin clear and congestion free.
- The key to a healthy glow and losing weight is simple: eat less, exercise more and go to bed early.
- Live and let live. The most important rule is to concentrate on you and do what feels right for your body.
/Make-up artist and Burberry Beauty Artistic Consultant Wendy Rowe./

Monday, January 16, 2017

Friday, January 13, 2017

A letter to … my father, who has just killed himself .

A letter to … my father, who has just killed himself | Life and style | The Guardian:
"It’s Sunday, 4.50pm. In 10 minutes you will be calling. For at least 13 years you have always called me at 5pm on a Sunday, on the dot. I’m thinking about what we will discuss. Today we will talk about Brexit (you will be appalled and disbelieving), maybe the football, your holiday to Spain which starts tomorrow. You were recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s. It’s been a shock for you. You feel out of control. You are scared for the future. I’ll ask you how you are. You’ll say, “Pretty dreadful, thanks,” and laugh.

Three days ago, you killed yourself. This is going to be a difficult part of our conversation. How am I going to raise this touchy subject that has come up between us? Deep breath. Let’s tackle this head on. What on earth have you been up to, Dad? What have you done? Do you understand what you have put us through? Your partner hadn’t heard from you for 24 hours. We called you. No reply. Living in the south-west of France, we couldn’t pop round. We called the local police. Could they check? Of course, they said. Thirty minutes later, the mobile rings. We have found him, I’m sorry, it’s bad news, outside the house, he’s dead.

You’ve left me numb. Yet, strangely, I also feel a mixture of anger and sadness with an emptiness in my stomach. Anger that you have taken your life in such a brutal, horrible, catastrophic way. Anger that you have been so selfish and left us with so many questions and so much doubt. Sadness that you felt so alone, so isolated, so desperate that you could think of nothing than to take your life. And the emptiness that you have gone from your family’s life for ever.

I can’t help imagining your final moments. All of them are haunting. All these images come to my mind during the day and night. Was it at least quick? Were you crying or were you cool and collected? I keep asking why. What were you thinking? Why didn’t you call?

Your mother died when you were 14. You said to me that at that time you had never felt so alone, so vulnerable, sitting in your kitchen at home. You said that you resolved never to feel like that again and that making money was your way of protecting yourself.

Then, 59 years later, you must have felt yourself alone and vulnerable again. Only you had money, but money isn’t the most important thing in life; it’s family, friends, a connection to the world and money wasn’t enough to keep you safe in the end. You weren’t alone, Dad, and you not realising that makes me feel cross. Now you’ve left us vulnerable and confused. I don’t want you to go like this. I don’t think you do either. I’m sure this was an impulsive act in the heat of the moment and you would have regretted it straight away. I expect you will be telling me when you call that yes, it was a bit silly, sorry about that. Won’t happen again.

It’s 5pm now. The phone hasn’t rung. It’s the first time in 13 years. It really is true then, you’ve gone. I can’t talk to you about Brexit, footie, your hols. I can’t ask you why and give you a big old ear-bashing for being so bloody stupid. You can’t tell me it won’t happen again. Because I realise now that it already has and there is no going back. I guess I knew the phone wouldn’t ring. So today, at 5pm, we have lit a candle and drunk a bottle of fizz in your memory. I have no doubt you would have approved.

I really hope, Dad, that out of the trauma of your passing you have found peace. I expect we will eventually come to terms with this and learn to live with it. I’m not sure I forgive you yet but I’ll work on it. Five o’clock on a Sunday will never be the same again. I guess wherever I am on that day and at that time I’ll be thinking of you. My greatest wish is that wherever you may be now, you understand that we loved you very much and we really, really didn’t want you to go just yet.

Much love,

Mark"

'via Blog this'

Wednesday, January 11, 2017

Richard Feynman's Letter to His Departed Wife.

Richard Feynman's Letter to His Departed Wife: "You, Dead, Are So Much Better Than Anyone Else Alive" (1946) | Open Culture:
"October 17, 1946

D’Arline,

I adore you, sweetheart.

I know how much you like to hear that — but I don’t only write it because you like it — I write it because it makes me warm all over inside to write it to you.

It is such a terribly long time since I last wrote to you — almost two years but I know you’ll excuse me because you understand how I am, stubborn and realistic; and I thought there was no sense to writing.

But now I know my darling wife that it is right to do what I have delayed in doing, and that I have done so much in the past. I want to tell you I love you. I want to love you. I always will love you.

I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead — but I still want to comfort and take care of you — and I want you to love me and care for me. I want to have problems to discuss with you — I want to do little projects with you. I never thought until just now that we can do that. What should we do. We started to learn to make clothes together — or learn Chinese — or getting a movie projector. Can’t I do something now? No. I am alone without you and you were the “idea-woman” and general instigator of all our wild adventures.

When you were sick you worried because you could not give me something that you wanted to and thought I needed. You needn’t have worried. Just as I told you then there was no real need because I loved you in so many ways so much. And now it is clearly even more true — you can give me nothing now yet I love you so that you stand in my way of loving anyone else — but I want you to stand there. You, dead, are so much better than anyone else alive.

I know you will assure me that I am foolish and that you want me to have full happiness and don’t want to be in my way. I’ll bet you are surprised that I don’t even have a girlfriend (except you, sweetheart) after two years. But you can’t help it, darling, nor can I — I don’t understand it, for I have met many girls and very nice ones and I don’t want to remain alone — but in two or three meetings they all seem ashes. You only are left to me. You are real.

My darling wife, I do adore you.

I love my wife. My wife is dead.

Rich.

PS Please excuse my not mailing this — but I don’t know your new address."

'via Blog this'

Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Letters of Note.

Letters of Note:
Blog.
Letters of Note is an attempt to gather and sort fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos.
Scans/photos where possible. Fakes will be sneered at.
Updated as often as possible; usually each weekday.

Tuesday, January 3, 2017

Being a parent.

‘Being a parent is a sacrifice.
One really does give up a lot and there is a part of you that does die.
Hopefully, one gets a lot back.
There is a certain joyful chaos that comes with having children, which suits me fine as I’m too lazy to want much control.
They are great kids and I’m a very hands-on mother.
They say that if you hug your babies they will grow. Well my two are enormous.’

Monday, January 2, 2017

John Peter Berger.

The Seasons in Quincy › Ways of Listening:

John Peter Berger (5 November 1926 – 2 January 2017)
- was an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet.
His novel G. won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, written as an accompaniment to a BBC series, is often used as a university text.
He lived in France for over 50 years.

Sunday, January 1, 2017

Good Will Hunting (1997)



Sean: [sitting on a bench in in front of a pond in park] Thought about what you said to me the other day, about my painting. Stayed up half the night thinking about it. Something occurred to me... fell into a deep peaceful sleep, and haven't thought about you since. Do you know what occurred to me?
Will: No.
Sean: You're just a kid, you don't have the faintest idea what you're talkin' about.
Will: Why thank you.
Sean: It's all right. You've never been out of Boston.
Will: Nope.

Sean: So if I asked you about art, you'd probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written.
Michelangelo, you know a lot about him.
Life's work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientations, the whole works, right?
But I'll bet you can't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel.
You've never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling; seen that.
If I ask you about women, you'd probably give me a syllabus about your personal favorites.
You may have even been laid a few times.
But you can't tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy. You're a tough kid.
And I'd ask you about war, you'd probably throw Shakespeare at me, right, "once more unto the breach dear friends."
But you've never been near one.
You've never held your best friend's head in your lap, watch him gasp his last breath looking to you for help.
I'd ask you about love, you'd probably quote me a sonnet.
But you've never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable.
Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you.
Who could rescue you from the depths of hell.
And you wouldn't know what it's like to be her angel, to have that love for her, be there forever, through anything, through cancer.
And you wouldn't know about sleeping sitting up in the hospital room for two months, holding her hand, because the doctors could see in your eyes, that the terms "visiting hours" don't apply to you.
You don't know about real loss, 'cause it only occurs when you've loved something more than you love yourself.
And I doubt you've ever dared to love anybody that much.
And look at you... I don't see an intelligent, confident man...
I see a cocky, scared shitless kid.
But you're a genius Will.
No one denies that.
No one could possibly understand the depths of you.
But you presume to know everything about me because you saw a painting of mine, and you ripped my fucking life apart. You're an orphan right?
[Will nods]
Sean: You think I know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are, because I read Oliver Twist?
Does that encapsulate you?
Personally... I don't give a shit about all that, because you know what, I can't learn anything from you, I can't read in some fuckin' book.
Unless you want to talk about you, who you are.
Then I'm fascinated. I'm in.
But you don't want to do that do you sport?
You're terrified of what you might say.
Your move, chief.

Good Will Hunting (1997).

Sean Maguire's Painting.



When Will first meets Maguire, he walks right up to a painting on his wall and finds out that Maguire painted it himself. He then uses his knowledge of psychology and art to make claims about Maguire's life based on the painting. For starters, he says:

WILL: […] he linear and impressionistic mix makes a very muddled composition. It's also a Winslow Homer rip-off, except you got Whitey, uh, rowing the boat there.
So for starters, he calls Maguire out on being unoriginal. But his mind games don't stop there…

The longer Will looks at the painting, the more he seems to figure out about Maguire's life.
By the time he's done, he's summing up Maguire's whole mentality, saying:


WILL: You just piss in your pants, you're cryin' for the harbors, and maybe you do what you gotta do to get out. Yeah, maybe you became a psychologist.
This is all incredibly insulting and Maguire handles it well. But the moment Will mentions his dead wife, he snaps and grabs him by the throat. It looks like Will has hit a soft spot.

So far, all of this conversation about the painting has been about Maguire.
But in a later scene, Maguire turns the whole thing around and makes it about Will, saying:


MAGUIRE: [You] presume to know everything about me because you saw a painting of mine and ripped my f***in' life apart.
The fact is that Will might think he knows people, but he doesn't know anything that Maguire couldn't go find in a book. Will is just a scared little kid who uses his intellect as a weapon to keep people away from him, and it takes Maguire less than a day to figure this out.