Author: Mark

Repulsion

~ Mark

Repulsion. My third by Polanski. As in Rosemary’s Baby–and The Shining, Psycho, Black Swan and others–here we have a largely housebound voyage into a disturbed mind. A common thread with these types of movies is that I find them mostly mediocre when they’re not boring. This one is decent, although (because?) it is pretty much completely absent of plot. You’re just watching this affectless woman fall apart. Great sound design from jazz in the streets to clocks and phones and alarms. And I will never complain about watching Catherine Deneuve for 90 minutes. Movies I’ve seen in recent years that also star a crazy woman: Suddenly, Last Summer, Sunset Boulevard, Mulholland Drive, Play Misty for Me, Monster, Mother, and Martha Marcy May Marlene.

Does cheater deserve a second chance? – Carolyn Hax – The Washington Post

~ Mark

Carolyn Hax tumbles are going to become a regular feature here. On the dangers of storytelling:

My advice is to discard whatever narrative you’re tempted to superimpose on yourself, your boyfriend, your relationship and whatever else, and just live by the reality you have in hand. That means recognizing that your partner is a temptation-wrestler or birthday-forgetter or stress-eater or emotion-bottler or whatever other trait just isn’t going away, no matter how much better life would be if it did. And it means choosing to stay with someone only if you can see these things as the price of a life that suits you well, not as temporary obstacles to some imaginary better life.

Does cheater deserve a second chance? – Carolyn Hax – The Washington Post

~ Mark

Always make a definition or sketch of what presents itself to your mind, so you can see it stripped bare to its essential nature and identify it clearly, in whole and in all its parts, and can tell yourself its proper name and the name of those elements of which it is compounded and into which it will be dissolved.

Marcus Aurelius. I’m taking the words out of context here so it appears that he likes sketching. I’ve been reading Martin Hammond’s Penguin translation and bookmarking every 3 paragraphs or so.

What makes music boring? | Music | The Big Questions | The A.V. Club

~ Mark

The reason you’re not connecting might very well be you. Your boredom could indicate an inability to appreciate a particular kind of music at this moment in time. You should regret that—or take it as a (here’s that word again) “challenge”—not wear it like a badge of honor. What good is there in not being able to like a song, something that might bring you pleasure?

Amen. This reminds me of Edmund Burke’s On Taste:

Almost the only pleasure that men have in judging better than others, consists in a sort of conscious pride and superiority, which arises from thinking rightly; but then, this is an indirect pleasure, a pleasure which does not immediately result from the object which is under contemplation.

What makes music boring? | Music | The Big Questions | The A.V. Club

Composers As Gardeners – Brian Eno – Edge

~ Mark

The reason I have an a cappella group is because it gives me every Tuesday evening the chance to do some surrendering. Which is, by the way, the reason people go to church, I think, as well. And to art galleries. What you want from those experiences is to be reminded of what it’s like to be taken along by something. To be taken. To be lifted up, to be whatever the other words for transcendence are. And I think we find those experiences in at least four areas. Religion, sex, art, and drugs. […] Essentially they’re all experiments with ourselves in trying to remind ourselves that the controlling talent that we have must be balanced by the surrendering talent that we also have. And so my idea about art as gardening.

More from Brian Eno. (via)

Composers As Gardeners – Brian Eno – Edge

~ Mark

For if he shall begin to fall into dotage, perspiration and nutrition and imagination and appetite, and whatever else there is of the kind, will not fail; but the power of making use of ourselves, and filling up the measure of our duty, and clearly separating all appearances, and considering whether a man should now depart from life, and whatever else of the kind absolutely requires a disciplined reason, all this is already extinguished. We must make haste then, not only because we are daily nearer to death, but also because the conception of things and the understanding of them cease first.

Marcus Aurelius, reminding you that even if you live a long life, those last years probably won’t be very useful. Have a great day!

Martha Marcy May Marlene

~ Mark

Martha Marcy May Marlene. Wrenching. You just want to know, is she going to be okay? I’m not sure of other movies that deal with the dazed, overwhelmed confusion of self like this one. I also realized a while after movie started how refreshing it is to see a rural setting on film again. So many of our movies are urbanized, you don’t see a lot of love for those greens and browns. Elizabeth Olsen is impressive. John Hawkes, equally awesome (see: Winter’s Bone). This is absolutely worth seeing, but just know you probably won’t come out happy and refreshed.

~ Mark

Silva rerum – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Silva Rerum (diary) of Krassowscy family from Ziemia Drohicka in Podlasie, Poland.

In historical Poland [silva rerum] was written by members of the Polish nobility as a diary or memoir for the entire family, recording family traditions, among other matters; they were not intended for a wider audience of printing (although there were a few exceptions); some were also lent to friends of the family, who were allowed to add their comments to them. It was added to by many generations, and contained various information: diary-type entires on current events, memoirs, letters, political speeches, copies of legal documents, gossips, jokes and anecdotes, financial documents, economic information (price of grain, etc.), philosophical musings, poems, genealogical trees, advice (agricultural, medical, moral) for the descendants and others – the wealth of information in silva is staggering, they contain anything that their authors wished to record for future generations).

This blew my mind a little bit. A private book for multiple generations! Fascinating.

Hypomnema – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

~ Mark

…a Greek word with several translations into English including a reminder, a note, a public record, a commentary, a draft, a copy, and other variations on those terms.

The context was Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, but it sounds like a good description of Tumblr, Twitter, and a number of wonderful things on the internet. I first came across hypomnemata (sleep + thread…) in The Present Alone is Our Happiness (recommended in Ryan Holiday’s super awesome reading list email archive).

Reading the Wikipedia entry, it made me realize what I often (mostly?) use this Tumblr for: to make notes to myself, shaping and re-shaping my perspective. Many of my favorite posts (tagged, e.g., work, opinions, empathy, arguments, happiness, death, travel, thinking, philosophy, stoicism, psychology) function as a sort of admonishment that I really do re-read every now and then. It’s an attempt to refresh and re-calibrate, internalize. This journaling/commonplacing thing isn’t new, but there’s something satisfying about knowing that one strand of the tradition goes back to an old Greek word. See also commentarii, commonplace, memoranda.

Hypomnema – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

~ Mark

When we say, “What do you do?” we really mean what do you learn? Because that’s what makes a person interesting – what they are learning. No one wants to answer the question what do you do if they have a job where they are not learning. That’s how you know it’s the learning that matters.

Penelope Trunk.
~ Mark

Never be ashamed of how you live or where you from.
You stack a mill’, ***s will see how far you come.

T.I. – Be Better Than Me. My favorite song on Trap Musik besides Look What I Got. Here’s T.I. on the proper ingredients for success:

Stay down, stay on your grind and yo digits’ll come.
Bottom line? You gotta shine, no matter what you become.
These streets is 40 percent of yo’ mind and 5 percent muscle,
10 struggle, 10 time, and 35 percent hustle.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)