Thoughts From The Road
The Joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard,
dies young.– Anne Sexton, “Welcome Morning” (1975)
Sophistry is a word I’m seeing everywhere all of a sudden. Phony prophets are also everywhere, too, tho, so it makes sense.
November Mix: 63+.0ff.+|-|e.$|_|฿|\/\/@¥
Sometimes being kind means not being nice.
I am the sole Jewish resident of my 16-Unit condominium complex in Brooklyn. That’s not a thought I ever had, not something I ever noticed, in all the 15-years in my apartment. Until this week. Crazy.
For sure this is the age of the critic, for better and worse. It’s kinda cool how more people make a solid living from writing about art than creating art. Maybe it’s always been that way.
Criticism and critique are conflated now, tho. Most current criticism is worthless, because its default is to find fault, rather than connection.
This is an age of relentless publication and production pressure. If only my writing was a fast-food analog, then Chrome’s File Menu drop down could read “New (Drive-Thru) Window … ⌘N.”
Alas, inspiration is always found, never forced.
What a shame that I can only write when ‘the thing’ spontaneously arrives. I am thus at the mercy of time.
– Clarice Lispector
Why does talking directly into a camera, sitting behind a desk, framed shoulder-to-head, convey credibility?
The most personal means of communication are the most inefficient — by design. There’s no time “saved” on a 20-hour drive to see someone you love. But there’s no time lost, either. Your physical movement through space means time isn’t standing still.
A letter, written by hand, is dropped into a mailbox, carried across distance, and opened by a human reader. Often its reception is a total surprise and delight. There used to be nothing ordinary about exchanging written or oral messages with friends.
Technology, however, of course, brings communication efficiency. Emails, texts, zooms, insta, toktik, etc… In most contexts, the elimination of friction is tech’s raison d’être. Its perfect end-state is telepathy lol.
https://westyreflector.medium.com/telegraph-waves-f108163348de
The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.
– Glenn Gould
Why do people with power always claim they have no power?
That is to ask…
Why do people who could change everything always claim they can’t change anything?
Maybe the dirtiest secret is that change itself (especially “socio-political change”) is an abstraction. Perhaps calls for “change” are just diversionary tactics. In many ways, the most “activist” thing you can do is stand still, in silence.
The world might change, but not because you’re trying to change it.
– Alan Watts
speak in the first person
see in the second
draw in the third
How we speak to ourselves is upstream from how we speak to each other.
Enlightened academics is teaching not teachings.
October Playlist: $+|_|C|<.!|\|.+#3.C!+¥
Road trips are the best thing. Most New Yorkers never leave New York City with any regularity. Hell, most dogs get outside their NYC apartments more than some people.
Everyone in the US should have the opportunity to travel 1000 miles from home. Home is way bigger than your city.
Road trips always recollect for me Beautiful Blur, off my 2011 record :^D. The song was inspired by a night at Pinky Masters bar in Savannah, GA, the final night of an October 2011 road trip in which me and an acid-testy cast of pranksters took an RV from NYC to Cumberland Island, off the coast of Georgia.
Pinky’s jukebox was connected to a global master blaster, so it found us Brandy by The Looking Glass and then Walking on a Dream by Empire of the Sun. In the end, tho, times that never end are still never enough time.
Hello from the road
I got a thousand miles to go
Last night, we made a beautiful blur
You set me freeYou and I never get enough
Time to make
More than a beautiful blurLast night under the stars
Your words whippin’ like wind around a car
We had nothing to lose
Except timeHello from the road
It’s a favorite song
Hey Savannah, yeah play it one more time
Set me freeYou and I never get enough
Time to make
More than a beautiful blur