"I'm no longer a child and I still want to be, to live with the pirates. Because I want to live forever in wonder. The difference between me as a child and me as an adult is this and only this: when I was a child, I longed to travel into, to live in wonder. Now, I know, as much as I can know anything, that to travel into wonder is to be wonder."-- Kathy Acker
"He seemed excited by the story, which relieved me because it was my gift. My love for him was so immense, I’d decided it would take a fairytale’s unlimited decor to make him happy and would take its blessing of illogic to cause someone reading this who doesn’t want to feel that much for anyone, or who thinks there must be something faithless going on behind a love so vast, believe it was realistic."-- DC
"Love, a feeling unknown, unhoped for, unexpected -- in so far as it could be a matter of conscious awareness, took entire possession of him, and he understood, with joyous amazement, that this was for life.” -- Thomas Mann
"Sometimes you just know something."-- DC
"The sun and your heart are compacted of the same substance."-- Pierre Reverdy
"My heart is like the sun dressed up for Halloween."-- DC
"Love can only consist in failure ... on the fallacious assumption that it is a relationship. But it is not. It is a production of truth."-- Alain Badiou
"He was a mystery, whether he was puzzling to himself or just wanted to be known selectively. I longed to understand him, and he liked or even loved that I did, but he curtailed me at a certain depth, or else he guessed he was exactly who I understood by then and there nothing more covert to find, and he just liked that I was dreaming he was more concealed than who he was because that’s how he loved to see himself and maybe always had."-- DC
“What a wonderful phenomenon it is, carefully considered, when the human eye, that jewel of organic structures, concentrates its moist brilliance on another human creature.” -- Stendhal
"When he's happy, his face becomes the most profound, illusive face or thing or idea or even natural phenomenon in the world. You can not possibly imagine, and words withstand it. It’s the secret to me."-- DC
“All I want to do now is to make a last effort to understand, to begin to understand, how such creatures are possible. No, it is not a question of understanding. Of what then? I don’t know."-- Samuel Beckett
"I wish words weren’t so important when you fantasize about them. I wish sex didn’t make love seem really simple like a gun when you fantasize about it. That’s all."-- DC
“Love goes away when your mind goes away and then you're someone else.” -- Kathy Acker
"He warrants more happiness than anyone on earth could feel without exploding or something. But what would make him feel as jubilant as he deserves is too unrealistic, even for likes of fiction. Or it's not, but the delivery is easier conceptualized than said. Reality's a border where love, however intricately worded, dissipates into the crux of an imaginative leap or becomes explosive, and I'm that limit’s bitch."-- DC
“Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will, childhood equipped now with man's physical means to express itself, and with the analytical mind that enables it to bring order into the sum of experience, involuntarily amassed.” -- Charles Baudelaire
"He began to call himself an artist when he reached the age when people wanted more than someone's name and how he looked as an ID because the things he dreams of making are too original to qualify as anything but art. But even art's too narrow a jalopy for his thinking. Art is like the chimneys through which Santa Claus ideally can but doesn’t scrunch."-- DC
"Love, with its frantic haughty imagination, swings its object clear of the everyday, over the rut of living, making him all looks, silences, gestures, attitudes, a burning phrase with no context."-- Elizabeth Bowen
"Maybe not unlike his love for dreams in which the clunky world could work with his imagination -- or else stop working, more like, maybe -- my love is too unskilled -- or maybe too skilled, more like -- to develop on my inconvenient surface. So, my love for him outflanks me, or tries its best, and employs the promise of my writing to reorient me as his dreams' devout if ill-equipped assistant, and I assist myself, or maybe both of us, I hope, by phrasing that."-- DC
"You will strike up the march of the future, boys will swear by your name, and thanks to your madness they will no longer need to be mad.” -- Thomas Mann
"I wish to blurt out something that would spread his impact, that, in its rashness and neglect of what I'm known for, would streamline what love's wallop of my measurable language has reduced or else enlarged me to. It definitely feels like I’m enlarging, but what I'm good at hasn’t come along yet."-- DC
“Whatever I wrote was surrounded by rays of light. I used to close the curtains, for I was afraid that the shining rays emanating from my pen might escape into the outside world through even the smallest chink; I wanted suddenly to throw back the screen and light up the world.” -- Raymond Roussel
"He does nothing but make art with every thought he has, but the things that art inhabits are too solid to cooperate. So, for all intents and purposes, his art remains a series of construction sites. Those who think artists must deliver frozen things to qualify as artists think he merely stares and smiles and plays a lot. Or, and this is key, if they’re imaginative enough to feel ambivalent about the object’s status as proof positive, they have everything they need to know he is beyond them, like, say, Michelangelo, but without the disappointing, dated things the artist left."-- DC
“To approach the Other in conversation is to welcome his expression, in which at each instant he overflows the idea a thought would carry away from it. It is therefore to receive from the Other beyond the capacity of the I, which means exactly: to have the idea of infinity. But this also means: to be taught. It comes from the exterior and brings me more than I contain. In its non-violent transitivity the very epiphany of the face is produced.” -- Emmanuel Lévinas
"To please someone, Santa Claus would use his magic skills to make the world seem weird to everybody else, fuck them all, and he would even give himself a gift -- love, someone's -- but someone only loves things that look like things that are unrealizable, and gifts are expositions, and Santa has that stupid overly articulated image problem."-- DC
“There is no such thing as an empty word, only one that is worn out yet remains full.” -- Martin Heidegger
"I’ve decided it’ll take a novel to accumulate enough of my deficient sentences to make anything I'm writing even worthy of him."-- DC
“The poet is never inspired, because he is the master of that which appears to others as inspiration. He does not wait for inspiration to fall out of the heavens like roasted ortolans. He is never inspired because he is unceasingly inspired, because the powers of poetry are always at his disposition, subjected to his will, submissive to his own activity.” -- Raymond Queneau
"People think Santa Claus is so abstractly nice he doesn’t differentiate between the recipients of his kindness. They think he just skims their billions of back stories and doles out goodies by necessity. They think he’s moral and that, to him, they’re traditionally good or bad and, thus, deserve to be rewarded annually or not. They think he thinks in the most average suppositions. They think his brain is almost a computer and his heart is like a Christian church. Actually, they don’t even think that. They just think about gifts or no gifts."-- DC
"O my dearest and most lovable thought, why should I try further to legitimize your birth?"-- Andre Gide
"He had blue eyes so warmed and startled by his thoughts, they looked both blind and blinding yet as compelling to explore as lakes that you’ve been told are bottomless. I also had blue eyes, as engrossing as his, but only when I looked at him or thought about him, which was almost always." -- DC
*
p.s. Hey. ** Empty Frame, Hey. I guess we're both the birds and the worms? Krazsnakorkai ... I'm blanking on who/what that is. I think it's just a morning, coffee-impaired blank, though. Deleuze on Bacon? I don't know that stuff. Hunh, curious combo. Those drawings you're doing sound way intriguing. I'm not wild about any of the Rimbaud Collected/Selected books and translations, to be honest. I guess if I had to choose, maybe the Modern Library edition by Wyatt Mason. It's okayish. Wallace Fowlie's aren't too bad but are a little stiff. Avoid the Paul Schmidt ones. I would go for a book w/ 'Illuminations' and/or 'Season in Hell', and my favorite is the Enid Peschel translation of them both in one volume. But if you want the whole shebang in one book, I guess the Mason one, but, like I said, I'm not 100% in favor of it at all. ** Marcus Whale, Hi there, Marcus! Thanks, man, re: the selections. And for the report on the event. It sounds kind of nice, like an event that dawned rather than happened exactly or something. Any documentation of it that one/I could see? You should def. get Michael to show you 'Silence'. I'm going to talk to him in a few hours, and I'll nudge him in your direction when I do. Take care. ** Tomáš, Happy New Year to you! Well, I'll be back on the 21st and then will be here mostly until earlyish February, so let's try to meet up then. As you can surely imagine, a blog post circa "ten vintage porn movies that Dennis could write the script" sounds fantastic and like big fun to me. Yeah, if you don't making that, that would be so great! Thanks, T! ** Scunnard, No prob, thanks, re: the gig. Man, I so wish I had my record player here. I could almost fit it in this very small room where I live, but not fit enough vinyl to make having the player worth the space it would steal from other stuff. Sucks. What a trio of listens those are. Snakefinger, man, how long has it been since I've heard him. And it stills sounds effective? ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Trying to throw an Italo wrench into my gig, are you? Ha ha, kidding. I'll try that track. Everyone, _B_A countered my gig yesterday with a suggestion that you spend some minutes with this example of Italo Disco, and I certainly can't argue with that. Congrats on getting some art-making inspiration. Ah, Kate. Inverted even! I just read some poll the other day that reported which people Americans admire the most, and, in the 'female category', Kate was way up there, which simultaneously boggled my mind and made me briefly very depressed. Maybe my goodie bag will come today. The day remains young. ** David Ehrenstein, Thank you. Has there ever been a really good, and I mean really good novel written by someone who is primarily a musical artist? I can't think of any. I know there are lots of people who think Nick Cave's novels are great, but I don't. ** Kyler, Hi. Wow, I don't think anyone has ever used that pun on me before. So it was super fresh and effective, thank you. Title! I like it. Yeah, it's really good. It's a grower too. Yeah, that worked out really well. Nice, nice, K! I was positively astonished when I thought up the title 'The Sluts' and checked and found out that there had never been a book called that before. So weird. It is kind of the all-time best novel title, if I don't say so myself. But, man, 'TSofRT' has to be a close second. ** Cap'm, Job hunt, argh, yeah, take care of your knees, and best of luck to them and to the entirety of their surroundings, which is a labored way of saying you. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh. I go to Japan on Monday for two weeks, back to Paris on the 21st of January. Drat that our paths there won't intersect. I think I'll probably be in Antarctica when you're in Tokyo. Close but no cigar. Your trip sounds great, and I love that Japan is really good for your sentence structure. That's an exquisite idea. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Well, as a fan of 'cool' music, I don't mind academics wrapping their heads and jobs around it, I guess. It makes sense even. I think of LA as a city of light, a city with huge, bright-light skies most of the time. That's interesting. Yeah, I think it's relatively quite light there. I guess it can't compete with being in the top parts of Scandinavia at certain times of year where I think it's light 80% of every 24 hours or something. My dad had some important thing to do with Cal Tech, I can't remember exactly what. Maybe he was on their board or directors or something? Very happy to hear that about your and Flit's connection! ** Allesfliesst, Oops, I suspect that today has crashed your browser to smithereens if you're even able to get far enough to read this. Sorry. Hm, yeah, a gigantic novel that is accessible and appealing might not be my thing. It's weird that, if a book is really huge, I can never get into it or work up interest in reading it in the first place unless it's really a difficult read. There seems to be some counter productivity going on there. Yeah, treat me to a super-oishii bowl of soba in Tokyo instead. That sounds good. I'll be long since back from Japan and getting ready to step onto a ship heading for Antarctica about the time you head to Tokyo. Damn. Next time. Thank you! ** Jeffrey Coleman, Hi, Jeff. Tsembla's real good. Cool, I'll go discover those two discoveries that you kindly blessed me with via links. What Cope likes always has something really, really interesting in it. Oh, I see, so the new marijuana thing is going to be kind of just like the medical marijuana thing. That's weird. I can't imagine that it'll stay exclusive like that for very long. Definitely a good step. Definitely the beginning of a bigger step everywhere. Thanks, Jeff. ** Gary gray, Hi, Gary. You sound like you were the kind of person I used to get romantically involved with before I went into therapy and figured myself out a little more, ha ha. It's true, though. You write beautifully and lucidly about it. Fascinating. Speaking of, those two things you're working on sound very exciting. I hope they pan out. It seems like they have everything you would need. Early Baldessari is great. Almost everything up until the 80s. I still like what he does a lot, but there was a searching going on up until then that maybe became paved over by his work's signature look or something. Man, that trailer is nothing like the 'porn' we're making, but it was cool to watch, thanks! ** Keaton, I was going to say something about the youtube ripping thing, but then Keaton said it with an actual key to the problem, if you saw his comment. That fucking plan seems sensible to me. Fucking and being sensible at the same time is an interesting combo. Congrats on the snow. We're still bone-dry over here. Or rather wet as hell, but no flakes. ** Flit, Hi, Flit. Cool, glad the gig got you shoveling. I need skipping needle-type nudges too. Not about writing, but about, well, emailing is writing too, I guess. Thanks, buddy. ** Bill, Thanks for the gig props, man. I think the new Jarmusch is a good one. Better than 'Limits of Control' almost for sure, although I did like certain things about that film. I think the new is more initially up your alley, at least. Up mine too. Art installations, cool. Seriously, I want to see that even in a flat documentative (that's not a word?) version. Best of luck with the deadlines. I hope it ends up being the art that ramps up, and that you yourself will get to ride it like that kid rides that doggie dragon creature in whatever that movie was called. Shit. Oh, 'The Neverending Story', which I never actually saw. Teasers, yes, please. Oh, man, no sweat on the post. I want it, but I'll take it whenever. ** Steevee, Yeah, the ÄÄNIPÄÄ album came out a few weeks ago. I haven't seen any argument against the Scorcese film amongst the crabs against it that has sounded convincing at all. But I haven't seen the film. ** Creative Massacre, Hi. It's true that it seems like all the shows that everybody I know were so into last year are being criticized as having lost their edge or inspiration or something now. I watched first minute or so of that 'Monsters Inside Me' clip before I got squeamish and stopped. I'm weirdly squeamish. But it does look like something one could get really into. Thank you, pal. You have a great weekend too. ** Misanthrope, Those few inches sound wonderfully catastrophic when you got nothing. It seems like if the arctic hated you, it would make things really hot, no? I mean to love is to share or something, right? So, maybe it's just trying to love you the only way it knows how. Re: the medicare thing: who knows indeed. Who the hell fucking knows, for sure. ** MyNeighbour JohnTurtorro, Hey. I was hoping your streak of liking my 'of late' gigs would not be cut short by my latest one, so cool! Thanks! Oh, I see. I totally jumped the wrong gun on those festivals. Damn, Glasgow ... not going to get to that. But Unpleasant Meeting Fest is plenty. The Cravats ... wow, I think I've heard of them and maybe have even heard them. I'm going to go find out. That's clear, yes, and exciting to boot. Best weekend to you too, man. ** Okay. This weekend I'm putting up the new scrapbook page re: my ongoing, building novel. As ever, what it transmits may or may not be of interest or be very legible, I don't know. Anyway, I will be back to blab with you 'live' one last time on Monday before I go to Japan and this blog goes into reruns for two weeks, and I greatly look forward to seeing you then.