unpublishable private literature at 1400 mph

Um… I’m going to delete my tumblr around midnight tonight or thereabouts.

Justin, I have your address written in my little black book and will be in touch via snail mail, everyone else… i bid you adieu.

“That man was not a thinker, he felt no need of getting beyond faith; he deemed it the most glorious thing to be remembered as the father of it, an enviable lot to possess it, even though no one else were to know it.”

From the Prelude of Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard

notational:

lesoldat:

themedicine:

To all those who feel as though all the sleep in their lifetime wouldn’t negate the profound weariness and bizarre lucidity of sensation, of existing, I recommend the Book of Disquietude by Fernando Pessoa. It isn’t something to be medicated I see now, by any means, but to be explored and dredged. I think contemplative art-making is the sole option for this bunch; it seems circumventing conventional rational reasoning is the lot… and though this be a source of shame and sputtering shrugs in philosophy class it should be the wellspring of each one’s art- that viscous pool into which one runs his fingers and comes up with incomprehensible, but reflective, forms and motions and convulsions. It contains both horrors and instances of true beauty and goodness.

I think if Pessoa’s vignettes were drawings or paintings that they would resemble Bacon’s stuff… albeit Pessoa’s might be a mark less vehement. Or perhaps not, but regardless they would certainly be similar. If Bacon’s images were writings, they would be Pessoa’s; the places and names would be switched according to time and setting of course.

Pessoa has refined the sloppy art of fragmented, honest, and specific but frighteningly universal human experience. And the best part is, I don’t suppose he ever really meant to refine anything. I agree that Bacon’s paintings are visually comparable to Pessoa’s words. I think Bacon’s vaguely inhuman portraits parallel Pessoa’s literary self-portraiture in his Book of Disquietude. Both Pessoa’s and Bacon’s creative efforts stray just slightly enough from historically presupposed human essence to expose humanity in, if not a completely, at least a slightly more honest light - something unrecognizable and alien that hits frighteningly close to home.

I love being able to feel what he writes, but there is a much more realist side to me that steps back and shouts that all he addresses are mundane events. I can only read a couple of pieces per sitting because I like to soak them in, and i must fight not to internalize them.

To all those who feel as though all the sleep in their lifetime wouldn’t negate the profound weariness and bizarre lucidity of sensation, of existing, I recommend the Book of Disquietude by Fernando Pessoa. It isn’t something to be medicated I see now, by any means, but to be explored and dredged. I think contemplative art-making is the sole option for this bunch; it seems circumventing conventional rational reasoning is the lot… and though this be a source of shame and sputtering shrugs in philosophy class it should be the wellspring of each one’s art- that viscous pool into which one runs his fingers and comes up with incomprehensible, but reflective, forms and motions and convulsions. It contains both horrors and instances of true beauty and goodness.

I think if Pessoa’s vignettes were drawings or paintings that they would resemble Bacon’s stuff… albeit Pessoa’s might be a mark less vehement. Or perhaps not, but regardless they would certainly be similar. If Bacon’s images were writings, they would be Pessoa’s; the places and names would be switched according to time and setting of course.

It seems as though meaning must be discerned through a great, great deal of effort. I will go to extremes when I am on my own.

how did i just now, for the very first time, see francis bacon’s work? Christ.

” ‘It’s what we do now instead of bohemias,” He says.

“Instead of what?”

“Bohemias. Alternative subcultures. They were a crucial aspect of industrial civilization in the two previous centuries. They were where industrial civilization went to dream. A sort of unconscious R&D, exploring alternate societal strategies. Each one would have a dress code, characteristic forms of artistic expression, a substance or substances of choice, a set of sexual values at odds with those of the culture at large. And they did, frequently, have locales with which they became associated. But they became extinct.”

“Extinct?”

“We started picking them before they could ripen. A certain crucial growing period was lost, as marketing evolved and the mechanisms of recommodification became quicker, more rapacious. Authentic subcultures required backwaters, and time, and there are no more backwaters. They went the way of geography in general. Autonomous zones do offer a certain insulation from the monoculture, but they seem not to lend themselves to recommodification, not in the same way. We don’t know why exactly.’ “

-excerpt from All Tomorrow’s Parties, by William Gibson

i wonder why it is i find it so much easier to get up and run or rigorously work out than to sit down and make art