Interesting, I don’t think I ever actually knew what Mapplethorpe looked like. I find something quite fascinating about the idea of visual artists doing self-portraits; clearly it’s like the auto-biography in that it requires a certain degree of self-awareness and, concomitantly, a certain kind of shame or suffering: the inability to display oneself “fully”, the radical disjunct between who I think I am and what I can bring to representation in my expressive medium. All sorts of Deleuzean affirmative bullshit aside, I think this is the real tragedy of self-representation.
“‘But I never looked like that!’ —How do you know? What is the ‘you’ you might or might not look like? Where do you find it—by which morphological or expressive calibration? Where is your authentic body? You are the only one who can never see yourself except as an image: you never see your eyes unless they are dulled by the gaze they rest upon the mirror or the lens (I am interested in seeing my eyes only when they look at you): even and especially for your own body, you are condemned to the repertoire of its images.”
R.B. by R.B.
Robert Mapplethorpe - Self-Portrait, 1980. Photograph on paper
“Bread And Fruit Dish On A Table”, 1909
By: PABLO PICASSO
(via fckyeaharthistory)
COME WITH ME ALICE. YOU’RE TOO WILD, TOO BEAUTIFUL, TO LIVE IN CHAINS. YOU BELONG OUT HERE. A ROSE IN A VASE IS NOT A ROSE IN THE FIELD. IT WITHERS.
WHERE WOULD WE GO, LUKE? WHAT WOULD WE EAT?
ANYWHERE WE WANT, MY LOVE, AND ANYTHING WE CAN CATCH OR FIND IN DUMPSTERS. YOU THINK YOU HAVE SECURITY BUT YOU HAVE SHACKLES. YOU THINK YOU ARE LOVED BUT YOU ARE A TOY FOR OTHERS’ AMUSEMENT. I WILL SHOW YOU FREEDOM. TOGETHER WE WILL BE UNSTOPPABLE. WE WILL SET THE WORLD AFLAME.
I DON’T KNOW, LUKE. YOU’RE JUST TOO DAMNED HANDSOME TO TRUST.
I CAN’T HELP THAT, ALICE. I WAS BORN THIS WAY. THE UPSTAIRS WINDOW IS OPEN. DON’T PACK A BAG.
“The road now stretched across open country, and it occurred to me—not by way of protest, not as a symbol, or anything like that, but merely as a novel experience—that since I had disregarded all laws of humanity, I might as well disregard the rules of traffic. So I crossed to the left side of the highway and checked the feeling, and the feeling was good. It was a pleasant diaphragmal melting, with elements of diffused tactility, all this enhanced by the thought that nothing could be nearer to the elimination of basic physical laws than deliberately driving on the wrong side of the road. In a way, it was a very spiritual itch. Gently, dreamily, not exceeding twenty miles an hour, I drove on that queer mirror side.” — Nabokov, Lolita.
There’s a girl I see around campus occasionally who looks a surprising amount like Jean Seberg, and I have the overwhelming desire to hear her bad French.
She would say: “Monsieur Fraser, quelle est votre plus grande ambition dans la vie?
And I would say: “Devenir immortel, et mourir (dans tes bras).”
Degueulasse, je sais bien.
Your Morning Shot: Jean Seberg
“I never knew until I came here that somebody could be really nice to you for years, and really hate your guts. Happens all the time here.”
The Misadventures of Dr. John H. Watson
(Source: ghostbees, via writingbeingundererasure)
Academic Coach Taylor is frustrated with all of you.
“
Achilles. Sag ihr, daß ich sie liebe.
Prothoe. Wie? — Was war das?
Achilles. Beim Himmel, wie! Wie Männer Weiber lieben;
Keusch und das Herz voll Sehnsucht doch, in Unschuld,
Und mit der Lust doch, sie darum zu bringen.
Ich will zu meiner Königin sie machen.
[Achilles: Tell her that I love her.
Prothoe: What? How?
Achilles: By the gods, how! How men love women:
Chaste and yet with hearts full of desire; with innocence,
And yet with the desire to relieve them of it.
I want to make her my queen.]
Kleist, Penthesilea (13. Auftritt). Penthesilea (whom Achilles loves) is the warrior-queen of the Amazons; Prothoe is her companion. Both she and Achilles want to defeat the other in battle and make the defeated his/her bride/groom.
Translation mine—the German plays on the ambivalence of the word “Wie?” which means both “How? and “Come again?” — so when Prothoe, surprised, responds “Wie?” she’s really just expressing shock, but Achilles turns this into an explanation of how he loves her.
Vlad and Vera catching butterflies. Cue *aww* chorus.
“This is a song I wrote in Spain… I was homesick at the time, I didn’t have a home but that doesn’t keep you from being homesick sometimes. But uh, I wrote this tune.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Wb0iiJghjc
“I have to go home.”
“You are home.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Qn3tel9FWU#t=1m59s
(via hamletmaschine)