I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying. – Woody Allen
Month: August 2010
The Sound of Silence : Paul Simon
“I used to go off in the bathroom, because the bathroom had tiles, so it was a slight echo chamber. I’d turn on the faucet so that water would run — I like that sound, it’s very soothing to me — and I’d play. In the dark. ‘Hello darkness, my old friend / I’ve come to talk with you again’.” -Paul Simon
Hello darkness, my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted
In my brain still remains
Within the sound of silence
In restless dreams, I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
‘Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash
Of a neon light that split the night
And touched the sound of silence
And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices
Never share and no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence
“Fools”, said I, “You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you”
But my words, like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence
And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, The words of the prophets are written
On the subway walls and tenement halls
And whispered in the sounds of silence”
Knowing “Knowing”
The Poem Must Resist the Intelligence Almost Successfully
Man Carrying Thing
The poem must resist the intelligence
Almost successfully. Illustration:
A brune figure in winter evening resists
Identity. The thing he carries resists
The most necessitous sense. Accept them, then,
As secondary (parts not quite perceived
Of the obvious whole, uncertain particles
Of the certain solid, the primary free from doubt,
Things floating like the first hundred flakes of snow
Out of a storm we must endure all night,
Out of a storm of secondary things),
A horror of thoughts that suddenly are real.
We must endure our thoughts all night, until
The bright obvious stands motionless in cold.
–Wallace Stevens
Garden of Earthly Delights Interpretation : Hieronymus Bosch
A neat site that breaks down some of the strangeness going on Hieronymus Bosch’s most famous painting.
(Just a side note : my interpretation of the above picture differs from his, but the rest seems pretty solid)
Steve Martin : Is this a Lolcat?
Poetry Magazine : July/August : 2010
The Miracle of the Bees and the Foxgloves : Anne Stevenson (taken from Chuck Darwin’s “The Effects of Cross- and Self- Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom”)
There’s a nice moment in Landscape Made From Egg and Sperm : Sandra Simonds
Heart Valve : Elizabeth Arnold
A Fun poem from Connie Voisine : Testament
Singin in the Rain : Star Wars Edition
I continue to be a sucker for anything geeky with dancing :
Pirating
Relativity : Albert Einstein
“Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love. How on earth can you explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love? Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.”
– Albert Einstein