The Fulsome And Final Missives Of Those We Miss

Fig. 1. Le Testament d'Orphée (still), 1960 - d. Jean Cocteau

'After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.'

Jean Cocteau

Your Ears Will Orgasm #15: Cello Concerto (Farewell to Philosophy) - Gavin Bryars (MixPod Player)

Addendum #1: The Delicate And Precarious Tact In Audacity*

Klaus Nomi (1944-1983) - 'The Cold Song' from Henry Purcell's opera King Arthur (Munich, December 1982)

The Cold Song

What Power art thou,
Who from below,
Hast made me rise,
Unwillingly and slow,
From beds of everlasting snow!

See'st thou not how stiff,
And wondrous old,
Far unfit to bear the bitter cold.

I can scarcely move,
Or draw my breath,
I can scarcely move,
Or draw my breath.

Let me, let me,
Let me, let me,
Freeze again...
Let me, let me,
Freeze again to death!

Henry Purcell (music) & John Dryden (lyrics)

At the time of this performance, Klaus' audience was unaware of his HIV-positive status. Although frustrated with shortness of breath and fatigue, he was determined to perform to his home crowd. Six months later, Nomi died. He was thirty-nine years old.

* 'The tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.' Jean Cocteau

Addendum #2: This Strange Weimar Version Of Mickey Mouse*

Klaus Nomi performing 'Mon coeur s'ouvre a ta voix' from Samson et Dalila by Camille Saint-Saëns:

* 'Toward the end of the show, the lights dimmed and the room was filled with a thundering musical ovation. The curtains opened and the spotlight fell on a strange, unearthly presence wearing a black gown, clear plastic cape, and white gloves. As the orchestral refrain from Saint-Saëns' Samson and Dalila was played, this strange Weimar version of Mickey Mouse began singing in an angelic voice. "I still get goose pimples when I think about it," remembers Joey Arias, who was in the audience that night. "Everyone became completely quite until it was over."'

Steven Hager (Art After Midnight: The East Village Scene)

Signor C. Regrets He's Unable To Lunch Today*

Fig. 1. Loretta Lux - At The Window, 2004


'Autobiography begins with a sense of being alone. It is an orphan form.'

John Berger

* Miss Otis Regrets - Cole Porter, 1934

Addendum: A Stranger Miss Otis You're Unlikely To Find

Kirsty MacColl & The 1st Battalion Of Irish Guards - Miss Otis Regrets (Jools Holland Hootenanny, 1995)

Editors Are The True Handmaidens Of Creativity*

Fig. 1. Reiner Ruthenbeck - White Paper Heap, 1979


'Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.'

Eric Fromm

* 'Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity.' T. S. Eliot

Everything That Is And Isn't In A Name, Idea Or Thing

Fig. 1. Joseph Kosuth - Titled (Art as Idea as Idea, Nothing), 1967


'Singularities are the true transcendental events. . . . Far from being individual or personal, singularities preside over the genesis of individuals and persons; they are distinguished in a 'potential' which admits neither Self nor I, but which produces them by actualising or realising itself. . . . Only a theory of the singular point is capable of transcending the synthesis of the person and the analysis of the individual as these are (or are made) in consciousness. . . . Only when the world, teeming with anonymous and nomadic, impersonal and preindividual singularities, opens up, do we tread at last on the field of the transcendental.'

Gilles Deleuze (The Logic of Sense)

Addendum: Coup de Silence (or, The Dictatorship of Dumbness)

John Cage - 4'33", 1952 (BBC Symphony Orchestra - c. Lawrence Foster, 2004)

‘The material of music is sound and silence. Integrating these, is composing. I have nothing to say, and I am saying it.’

John Cage

It Is A Double Pleasure To Deceive The Deceiver*

Fig. 1. Friedrich Eduard Bilz - Das Neue Naturheilverfahren, vol. 3, c. 1910


'It is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them. . . . Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many.'

Niccolò Machiavelli (The Prince)

* Niccolò Machiavelli

Addendum: My impressively erudite friend Julian has just brought Claudia Roth Pierpont's article about Machiavelli, recently published in The New Yorker, to my attention, adding; "The Prince itself is almost an act of deception - at odds with Machiavelli's general personal decency and quiet commitment to the Florentine republic." I thank him for his thoughtful contribution.

When Words Leave Off, Music Begins*

Fig. 1. Jan Brueghel the Elder - The Sense of Hearing, 1618

'Music is the best means we have of digesting time.'

W. H. Auden

Addendum: György Ligeti - Poème Symphonique For 100 Metronomes, 1962

* Heinrich Heine

When The Seen Can't Be Shown, We Resort To Words

Fig. 1. Jan Bruegel the Elder - The Sense of Sight, 1617


'To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.'

Paul Valéry

Addendum: The Sunday Six - Part Three (Relatively Whimsical)

Fig. 2. Marcel Dzama - Gargoyle Man, 2005

Fig. 3. Marcel Dzama - The Rimbaudian Scholarship, 2005

Fig. 4. Marcel Dzama - Shelley's Historic Morning, 2005

Fig. 5. Marcel Dzama - You Gotta Make Room for the New Ones, 2005

Fig 6. Marcel Dzama - Diogenes, 2007

Fig. 7. Marcel Dzama - Ljubojevicm, 2007