One Man's Journey Into Night

Fig. 1. Bill Henson - Untitled #35, 2007/8


'The object in my photographs is not always the subject.'

Bill Henson

Your Ears Will Orgasm #2 - Twilight Mix (MixPod Player)

The Desert Mocks Prada

Fig. 1. Burk Uzzle - Desert Prada, Texas, 2006.


'In most of these pictures I am exulting in America’s personality out on a limb with itself. It’s as if America and I try so hard to get everything right, but in spite of ourselves we invariably end up out on that limb, finding that often the only real salvation comes with a gentle chuckle and a sly, knowing smile. All of my pictures seem to conclude that logic, while useful to a point, is by itself a bore. So we might as well have a little fun, even if it’s in between some tears.'

Burk Uzzle

Stick To Painting On Celluloid, J...u...l...i...a...n.

Fig. 1. "Henriette" (Marie-Josée Croze) in Le Scaphandre et le papillon, 2007 - d. Julian Schnabel


‘Today, my life feels like a string of near misses. Women I was unable to love, opportunities I was unable to seize, moments of happiness I let drift away. Had I been blind and deaf, or did the harsh light of disaster make me find my true nature?’

"Jean-Do" (Mathieu Amalric) - Le Scaphandre et le papillon, 2007

Addendum: Blow, Obama, Blow!

From The Legible To The Sensible

Fig. 1. Suzanne Opton - Soldier: Claxton, 120 days in Afghanistan, Fort Drum, NY, 2005, 2005


'The aesthetic regime of the arts stands in contrast with the representative regime. I call this regime aesthetic because the identification of art no longer occurs via a division within ways of looking and making, but it is based on distinguishing a sensible mode of being specific to artistic products. The word aesthetics does not refer to a theory of sensibility, taste, and pleasure for art amateurs. It strictly refers to the specific mode of the being of objects of art. In the aesthetic regime, artistic phenomena are identified by their adherence to a specific regime of the sensible, which is extricated from its ordinary connections and is inhabited by a heterogeneous power, a power of a form of thought that has become foreign to itself: a product identical with something not produced, knowledge transformed into non-knowledge, logos identical with pathos, the intention of the unintentional, etc.'

Jacques Rancière (The Distribution of the Sensible)

A Passion For Everything - And Nothing

Fig. 1. Jean-Antoine Watteau - The French Comedians, 1720-21

'The variety of Paris is matched by the energy, the voraciousness and the passion of its population. Balzac observed that the appetites for gold and pleasure were so strong in Paris that its citizens quickly burned themselves out. 'In Paris there are only two ages,' he wrote, 'youth and decay; a bloodless, pallid youth and a decay painted to seem youthful.' He also took note of the Parisians' love of novelty - and their devotion to nothing. Or, as he put it:

The Parisian is interested in everything and, in the end, interested in nothing . . . Intoxicated as he is with something new from one day to the next, the Parisian, regardless of age, lives like a child. He complains of everything, tolerates everything, mocks everything, forgets everything, desires everything, feels everything passionately, drops everything casually - his kings, his conquests, his glory, his idol, whether made of bronze or glass . . .

Since Balzac's day, of course, Paris has changed. No one is too ambitious, since its populace is now cosseted in the meagre but constant comforts of the socialist state, and the city's glory days are long in the past. But the passion for novelty still reigns. Perhaps Paris is the one city left where the tyranny of Paris fashions still holds women in its thrall. A great theatre director, a perfume, a new fad - all will be embraced one season and forgotten the next. There is nothing more final or frightening than the way a Parisian hisses out the words ‘C’est fini! ça? c’est dépassé, d’est démodé.’ Even children say it with ruthless confidence.'

Edmund White (The Flâneur)

Don't Erase Your Head, Just Its Limits

Fig. 1. David Lynch


'I am very interested in meditation (in particular, transcendental meditation), and this is a technique, a mental technique, that allows any human being to dive within. And why in the world would we want to "dive within"? Why would we want to experience subtler levels of mind and intellect? Because, at the subtlest level of intellect, we transcend, and we experience an unbounded ocean of consciousness: the home of all the ideas: modern science's unified field, where anything that is a thing had its origin. And it's a field of pure creativity. You grow in this, and life gets better. Ideas flow. Intuition grows. Negativity begins to recede. Anger, fear, anxieties, sorrows, depressions - all these things that restrict the flow of creativity (and it's like a heavy, heavy weight on us) begin to lift away. That's what I'm interested in. And I'm interested in making films.'

David Lynch (interview at FNAC Ternes, Paris, 3rd February 2007)

Your Ears Will Orgasm #1 (MixPod Player)

Lykke Li - Youth Novels, 2008

Nowhere To Go But Everywhere

Fig. 1. Jack Kerouac

'[Then] they danced down the street like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"'

Jack Kerouac (On The Road)