Barbara Eherenreich, Living with a Wild God, 2014.
“[I]f you’re not prepared to die when you’re almost sixty, then I would say you’ve been falling down on your philosophical responsibilities as a grown-up human being.”
Carl Theordor Dreyer and Ordet
Jan Wahl, Carl Theordor Dreyer and Ordet: My Summer with the Danish Filmmaker, 2012.
The Chronology of Water
Lidia Yuknavitch, The Chronology of Water, 2011.
Light While There is Light
“The history of my mother’s religious opinions should be told as the record of a pilgrimage. As I imagine most pilgrimages, it was less the struggle towards a given end than a continual flight from disappointment and unhappiness. Neither the joys of heaven nor hell’s worst prospects provide as forceful a motive as the mere emptiness of the world.”
One of my favorite books. I read it first 20 years ago as a memoir, not a novel. Whatever it might be, it’s a wonderful book.
Ben Lerner had a nice piece on it in the New Yorker a while back.
Fog Line
Larry Gottheim, Fog Line, 1970.
(16mm, color, silent, 11min)
Conversation Piece
Inspiration: James Baldwin, Born on This Day
Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word “love” here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace – not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.
— James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
Sacred Oracle
John Zorn, “Sacred Oracle,” The Mysteries, 2013.
The Man I Love
Ike Quebec, “The Man I Love,” Heavy Soul, 1962.
Fundamental: Talking Heads
Talking Heads, “Once in a Lifetime,” Remain in Light, 1980 (Chris Frantz: drums, percussion).