He who bestows all of his time on his own needs, who plans out every day as if it were his last, neither longs for nor fears the morrow. For what new pleasure is there that any hour can now bring? They are all known, all have been enjoyed to the full.
Seneca is my new jam.
Without the making of theories I am convinced there would be no observations.
–Charles Darwin.
(Via Sam Anderson’s sentence of the week. Been thinking about “we see what we’re looking for” in terms of writing, and especially blogging. I find that when I set up a tag, often it’s a hopeful gesture, as if I’m saying, “Two or three makes a pattern. I’ll bet there’s more. I’ll name this so I can keep track of it and then I’ll keep an eye out for things to add.” And when I start a book, it’s, “There’s something to this. Let’s give this a name and start working on it.” Then the real gathering begins…)
Reminds me of a favorite Justin Wehr quote: “‘Organizing’ is really just an ugly way of saying ‘drawing connections’.” Or like with photo captions, you can’t help but be influenced by the labels put on things…
Pretty sure I was Buster Keaton’s biggest fan in a previous life.
Art Space Tokyo. If my vacation wasn’t the last-minute cluster that I seem to specialize in, I would have purchased this book ahead of time. Luckily, Craig Mod is kind and has some awesome Tokyo art maps online, too.
Catherine Christer Hennix – The Electric Harpsichord [1976]. Dang. Great piece of music. (Some say it’s “possibly THE obscure masterpiece of the days of the early American minimalism.”) In a stroke of unintentional genius, I apparently had my playlist such that it segued right into Bach’s Fantasy in A minor, BWV922 on harpsichord. Boom. And apparently I already had a harpsichords tag?
Heaven knows! such lives as yours, though they should pass the limit of a thousand years, will shrink into the merest span; your vices will swallow up any amount of time.
Days of Thunder
Days of Thunder. It’s not very good. But is Robert Duvall the most likable actor of all time? Also, I didn’t realize that director Tony Scott is Ridley Scott’s little brother.
Of course it’s a little strange if there’s another player that usually beats the best player ever. This debate is funny, and not just because it’s impossible to compare players across generations. It’s an attempt to make the present eternal.
Back to the Future
Back to the Future. I had an essentially perfect viewing at Screen on the Green. Far too long since the last time. I’m still blown away how flawless this movie is. Seems like not a single wasted second in the whole thing.
General Orders No. 9. I’m curious about this documentary. Trailer.
General Orders No. 9 breaks from the constraints of the documentary form as it contemplates the signs of loss and change in the American South.
[…] Told entirely with images, poetry, and music, General Orders No. 9 is unlike any film you have ever seen. A story of maps, dreams, and prayers, it’s one last trip down the rabbit hole before it’s paved over.
Fake Prada Bags: Why counterfeits help high-end designers sell more of the real thing.
When most people think about the effect of counterfeits on legitimate brands—and when brands themselves litigate against counterfeiters—they focus on the “business stealing” effect: Every fake Prada handbag represents a lost sale for Prada. A dirty little secret is that Prada rip-offs can also function as free advertising for real Prada handbags—partly by signaling the brand’s popularity, but, less obviously, by creating what MIT marketing professor Renee Richardson Gosline has described as a “gateway” product. For her doctoral thesis, Gosline immersed herself in the counterfeit “purse parties” of upper-middle-class moms. She found that her subjects formed attachments to their phony Vuittons and came to crave the real thing when, inevitably, they found the stitches falling apart on their cheap knockoffs. Within a couple of years, more than half of the women—many of whom had never fancied themselves consumers of $1,300 purses—abandoned their counterfeits for authentic items.
Fascinating.
I imagine it’s hard to let go of a that signaling power, especially when, over the time of ownership, you’ve begun to see yourself less as a sneaky-counterfeit-buyer and more as a apparent-Prada-owner. See also Why Elite Shoppers Eschew Logos.
Fake Prada Bags: Why counterfeits help high-end designers sell more of the real thing.
No, no, there is no going back.
Less and less you are
that possibility you were.
More and more you have become
those lives and deaths
that have belonged to you.
You have become a sort of grave
containing much that was
and is no more in time, beloved
then, now, and always.
And so you have become a sort of tree
standing over a grave.
Now more than ever you can be
generous toward each day
that comes, young, to disappear
forever, and yet remain
unaging in the mind.
Every day you have less reason
not to give yourself away.
My friend’s fortune. Not good.
Look back in memory and consider when you ever had a fixed plan, how few days have passed as you had intended, when you were ever at your own disposal, when your face ever wore its natural expression, when your mind was ever unperturbed, what work you have achieved in so long a life, how many have robbed you of life when you were not aware of what you were losing, how much was taken up in useless sorrow, in foolish joy, in greedy desire, in the allurements of society, how little of yourself was left to you; you will perceive that you are dying before your season!
Seneca. I’ll probably have a few more from this one soon…
There’s all this talk about “bias” in public radio … the real bias in public radio is against joy.
Roman Mars, lamenting the dwindling experimentation and serendipity in public radio. His show 99% Invisible is a good antidote. (via)
Two couples have a cookout in Cherokee National Forest. Photo by J. Baylor Roberts. Who doesn’t love picnics?
Philosophy and jokes proceed from the same impulse: to confound our sense of the way things are, to flip our worlds upside down, and to ferret out hidden, often uncomfortable, truths about life. What the philosopher calls an insight, the gagster calls a zinger.
Mark Larson 