Something For the Weekend #7

It is the function of creative men to perceive the relations between thoughts, or things, or forms of expression that may seem utterly different and to be able to combine them into some new form’. William Plomer

Some inspirational snippets and recommendations for your weekend

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Something to Watch:  

DVD:  Let the Right One In

INTIMATE, DENSE, IMAGINATIVE

A  film  directed by Tomas Alfredson  with a screenplay by John Ajvide Lindqvist (adapted from his book of the same name ) from 2008 starring  Kåre Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson. A  sensitive and lyrical  horror film (yes, they can be) about a  young boy Oskar  and his blossoming friendship with Eli which becomes a tale of life and death.

Why you could watch it:

For its subtlty,  sensitivity and lyricism.  It has a few vampiric moments but it’s actually an egrossing tale about friendship, love  and not fitting in.  Elements of our lives that we have all shared. And the young leads are great too.

Here’s the author, Lindquist, talking about his book:

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Something To Listen To: 

Gavin Bryars: Jesus’ Blood Never Left Me Yet

MESMERISING, SOULFUL, DELICATE

A piece composed from a drunken song he heard being sung by a person living rough on the streets in London. Looping the words round and round he created this:

  Official Website

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Something To Look At:

George Braque (1882-1963)  

SPLITTING, RESTORING, DEFINING

20^th century French painter and sculptor, who along with Pablo Picasso developed the art style known as Cubism

Once an object has been incorporated in a picture it accepts a new destiny. 

To define a thing is to substitute the definition for the thing itself.

Persephata

The Violin

Still Life With A Bunch of Grapes

Seated Nude (1906)

Fruit Bowl

Birds on A Blue Bottom (1963)

 

An Interesting Mini-Audio on Georges Braque’s, Mandoline à la sonate

Conor Jordan, Deputy Chairman of Christie’s autioneers discusses Mandoline a la Sonate

http://www.christies.com/features/audio-georges-braque-mandoline-a-la-sonate-2266-4.aspx

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Something To Read:

Gertrude Stein

(1874-1946)

American

Modernist experimental writer of prose and poetry;

and art collector

EXPERIMENTING, QUESTIONING, EXCHANGING

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Here’s an Audio Biography of Stein:

http://www.biography.com/people/gertrude-stein-9493261

 

And Excerpts from Tender Buttons (1914)

From ‘Objects’

A Long Dress

What is the current that makes machinery, that makes it crackle, what is the current that presents a long line and a necessary waist. What is this current.  What is the wind, what is it.  Where is the serene length, it is there and a dark place is not a dark place, only a white and red are black, only a yellow and green are blue, a pink is scarlet, a bow is every color. A line distinguishes it. A line just distinguishes it. 

 A Red Hat

   A dark grey, a very dark grey, a quite dark grey is monstrous ordinarily, it is so monstrous because there is no red in it. If red is in everything it is not necessary. Is that not an argument for any use of it and even so is there any place that is better, is there any place that has so much stretched out. 

For more see:

http://www.bartleby.com/140/

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Here’s an online version of her famous Cubist influenced novel Three Lives (1906):

http://www.bartleby.com/74/

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Something To Think About:

FLUX, PATHS, FLUIDITY

Heraclitus (c535 BCE-c475BCE)

A Greek Philosopher

Heraclitis and Democrotius by Salvatore Rosa

famous for his insistence on ever-present change in the universe

Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character. 

Much learning does not teach understanding.

Knowing not how to listen, they do not [know] how to speak

Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/h/heraclitus.html#5LqJL3LAH517voLr.99 

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A Reading on Heraclitus from Bertand Russell’s The History of Western Philosophy:

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Something For You:

 Feelings, whether of compassion or irritation, should be welcomed, recognized, and treated on an absolutely equal basis; because both are ourselves. The tangerine I am eating is me. The mustard greens I am planting are me. I plant with all my heart and mind. I clean this teapot with the kind of attention I would have were I giving the baby Buddha or Jesus a bath. Nothing should be treated more carefully than anything else. In mindfulness, compassion, irritation, mustard green plant, and teapot are all sacred. Thich Nhat Hanh    

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Something For the Weekend #6

It is the function of creative men to perceive the relations between thoughts, or things, or forms of expression that may seem utterly different and to be able to combine them into some new form’. William Plomer

Some inspirational snippets and recommendations for your weekend

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Something to Watch:  

DVD:  The Page Turner

A  film  written and directed by Denis Dercourt  from 2006  starring Catherine Frot and Deborah Francois. A film about a 10 year old butcher’s daughter who holds revenge at the core of her heart until it is released as an adult as a page turner against the pianist who rejected her as a child.

Why you could watch it:

For the slowly ratcheted tension that is built up throughout the film, and the two female leads particularly Deborah Francois whose cultivated stare is pitched perfectly to get under your skin.

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CINEMA

Here’s another great film review of The Hobbit by the tale of bengwy: 

http://bengwy.wordpress.com/2012/12/14/the-hobbit-an-unexpected-journey/

 

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Something To Listen To: 

1. The Cocteau Twins– Song To the Sirens

2.Song To the Moon by Anton Dvorak from Rusalka

3. Sharon Van Etten, Live ‘Give Out’

Just discovered Sharon this morning. Beautiful

http://sharonvanetten.com/

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Something To Look At:

Robert Delauney

(1885-1941)

 

 French artist

 Cofounded the Orphism art movement, noted for its use of strong colours and geometric shapes…His key influence related to bold use of colour, and a clear love of experimentation of both depth and tone.

Click link (left) under name for more…

‘Our understanding is correlative to our perception.‘

Relief Disques

Robert Delauney

Nu a la Lecture

City of Paris

The City

Le Premier Disque (1913)

I am very much afraid of definitions, and yet one is almost forced to make them. One must take care, too, not to be inhibited by them.
Robert Delaunay 

Read more at 

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/r/robert_delaunay.html#ZPbICX3XCDfhj6PR.99 

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Something To Read:

Hugh MacDiarmid

(1892-1978)

Scottish poet, attempted to revive the Scottish language in poetry as a means of asserting Scotland’s artistic independence from England and re-invigorating a literature suffering from sentimentality. 

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It is time we in Scotland put England in its proper place and instead of our leaning on England and taking inspiration from her, we should lean and turn to Europe, for it is there our future prosperity lies.
Hugh MacDiarmid 

Read more at:

 http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/h/hugh_macdiarmid.html#g30bTUm2KISLmRyX.

Completely beautiful articulation of national identity:

Scotland

by Hugh MacDiarmid

It requires great love of it deeply to read

The configuration of a land,

Gradually grow conscious of fine shadings,

Of great meanings in slight symbols,

Hear at last the great voice that speaks softly

See the swell and fall upon the flank

Of a statue carved out in a whole country’s marble,

Be like Spring, like a hand in a window

Moving new and old things carefully to and fro,

Moving a fraction of a flower here,

Placing an inch of air there,

And without breaking anything.

So I have gathered unto myself

All the loose ends of Scotland,

And by naming them and accepting them,

Loving them and identifying with them,

Attempt to express the whole.

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From Complete Poems, edited by Michael Grieve and W.R. Aitken (Carcanet Press, 2 vols., 1993-4)

Reproduced by permission of the publisher

See:

http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poetry/poems/scotland-0

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Hugh MacDiarmid Reading the Watergaw:

http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=1558

 

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Hugh MacDiarmid: A Portrait by Margaret Tait (1964)

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 Something To Think About:

Arthur Schopenhauer

(1788-1860)

German Philosopher

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“Without books the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are the engines of change, windows on the world, “Lighthouses” as the poet said “erected in the sea of time.” They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind, Books are humanity in print.” 

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“Hope is the confusion of the desire for a thing with its probability. ” 

For quotes see:

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/11682.Arthur_Schopenhauer

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Schopenhauer, BBC, Sea of Faith with Don Cupitt

http://www.doncupitt.com/don-cupitt

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Something For You:

 

‘If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise. ‘ Robert Fritz

 

Something For the Weekend #5

It is the function of creative men to perceive the relations between thoughts, or things, or forms of expression that may seem utterly different and to be able to combine them into some new form’. William Plomer

Some inspirational snippets and recommendations for your weekend

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Something to Watch:  

DVD:  PERSONA

A  film  written and directed by Ingmar Bergman from 1966  starring Liv Ullman and Bibi Andersson. One of Bergman’s most influential films charting the startling merging of two women’s personalities and identities

Why you could watch it:

For the sheer innovation of the cinematography and camera angles, and for the intensity of the female leads and the morphing face frame which is incredibly powerful

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 Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.
Ingmar Bergman 

Read more at:

 http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/i/ingmar_bergman.html#K8VAzzsscTTU023B.99 

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Here’s  the first part of an interview with Bergman . 

Here are the other 5 links to the other parts of the interview: 

Part 2: http://youtu.be/51WUgKcIXBw

Part 3: http://youtu.be/YRS6Uu9-OPk

Part 4: http://youtu.be/ROQZLJZ6aSs

Part 5: http://youtu.be/xt6UwqHPp54

Part 6: http://youtu.be/90CCPSAF4Zw

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CINEMA

Here’s another great film review of Life Of Pi by the tale of bengwy: 

http://bengwy.wordpress.com/2012/12/23/life-of-pi-gonna-need-a-bigger-boat/

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Something To Listen To: 

JOYCE GRENFELL

(1910-1979)

  an English actress, comedienne, monologist and singer-songwriter

Happiness is the sublime moment when you get out of your corsets at night. 
Joyce Grenfell 

*

Read more at:

 http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/joyce_grenfell.html#4jClv7ijypO1ZoWX.99

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One of Grenfell’s comic monologues animated….

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Something To Look At:

M.C Escher

(1898 – 1972)

‘known for his often mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints. These feature impossible constructions,explorations of infinity, architecture, and tessellations’. See link, left.

Official Website: http://www.mcescher.com/

‘He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder.’

Read more at:

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/m_c_escher.html#ijyRMKx9KTmI3CWQ.99 

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Convex and Concave

Modern Art

Amalfi and the Good Life

Eye 1946

Butterfly

We adore chaos because we love to produce order. 

Read more at:

 http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/m_c_escher.html#ijyRMKx9KTmI3CWQ.99 
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My work is a game, a very serious game. 

Read more at: 

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/m_c_escher.html#ijyRMKx9KTmI3CWQ.99 

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Escher Inspired Animation:

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Something To Read:

Margaret Attwood

http://www.margaretatwood.ca/

‘Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It’s like the tide going out, revealing whatever’s been thrown away and sunk: broken bottles, old gloves, rusting pop cans, nibbled fishbodies, bones. This is the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes, not knowing the future.”  ― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

Cat’s Eyes is one of my favourite books of Atwoods; it  made a real impression on me when I was younger, it helped….. 

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/3472.Margaret_Atwood

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In the Secular Night

by Margaret Atwood

In the secular night you wander around
alone in your house. It’s two-thirty.
Everyone has deserted you,
or this is your story;
you remember it from being sixteen,
when the others were out somewhere, having a good time,
or so you suspected,
and you had to baby-sit.
You took a large scoop of vanilla ice-cream
and filled up the glass with grapejuice
and ginger ale, and put on Glenn Miller
with his big-band sound,
and lit a cigarette and blew the smoke up the chimney,
and cried for a while because you were not dancing,
and then danced, by yourself, your mouth circled with purple.

Now, forty years later, things have changed,
and it’s baby lima beans.
It’s necessary to reserve a secret vice.
This is what comes from forgetting to eat
at the stated mealtimes. You simmer them carefully,
drain, add cream and pepper,
and amble up and down the stairs,
scooping them up with your fingers right out of the bowl,
talking to yourself out loud.
You’d be surprised if you got an answer,
but that part will come later.

There is so much silence between the words,
you say. You say, The sensed absence
of God and the sensed presence
amount to much the same thing,
only in reverse.
You say, I have too much white clothing.
You start to hum.
Several hundred years ago
this could have been mysticism
or heresy. It isn’t now.
Outside there are sirens.
Someone’s been run over.
The century grinds on.

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/in-the-secular-night/

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 Something To Think About:

Tillie Olsen

(1912-2007)

American writer and feminist 

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From Silences (1962) ….Literary history and the present are dark with silences: some the silences for years by our acknowledged great; some silences hidden; some the ceasing to publish after one work appears; some the never coming to book form at all. What is it that happens with the creator, to the creative process, in that time? What are creation’s needs for full functioning? Without intention of or pretension to literary scholarship, I have had special need to learn all I could of this over the years, myself so nearly remaining mute and having to let writing die over and over again in me. These are not natural silences….

For more go to:

 http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/olsen/silences.htm

Time granted does not necessarily coincide with time that can be most fully used. 

Tillie Olsen

Read more at:

 http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/tillie_olsen.html#XIZOYRGU8mItrKtT.99

I know that I haven’t powers enough to divide myself into one who earns and one who creates.
Tillie Olsen 

Read more at:

 http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/tillie_olsen.html#62K8b2okBR34aBvK.99

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Something For You:

…Everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. Viktor Frankl, from Man’s Search For Meaning

 

Something For the Weekend #4

It is the function of creative men to perceive the relations between thoughts, or things, or forms of expression that may seem utterly different and to be able to combine them into some new form’. William Plomer

Some inspirational snippets and recommendations for your weekend

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Something to Watch:  

DVD:  PLEASANTVILLE

A  film  written and directed by Gary Ross from 1998  starring Tobey Maguire, Jeff Daniels and Joan Allen,  multi-layered, aesthetically and emotionally ,  set in Pleasantville where there has never been any rain, aggression,  change, acceptance, passion or love. Until Now…..

Why you could watch it:

it grapples with our relationship to history and time; it addresses issues in relation to   feminism, race, art and writing.  It uses colour in an amazingly innovative delicate way too. And there’s Joan Allen and  William H Macy and the  makeup scene.   

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Here’s  a taster clip. 

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Something To Listen To: 

Kate Rusby

English Folk Singer From North Yorkshire

Simply beautiful, the song

….Underneath the Stars…..from Kate’s album Underneath the Stars 

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Underneath the stars I’ll meet you
Underneath the stars I’ll greet you
There beneath the stars I’ll leave you
Before you go of your own free will

Go gently

Underneath the stars you met me
Underneath the stars you left me
I wonder if the stars regret me
At least you’ll go of your own free will

Go gently

Here beneath the stars I’m landing
And here beneath the stars not ending
Why on earth am I pretending?
I’m here again, the stars befriending
They come and go of their own free will

Go gently
Go gently

Underneath the stars you met me
And Underneath the stars you left me
I wonder if the stars regret me
I’m sure they’d like me if they only met me
They come and go of their own free will

Go gently
Go gently
Go gently

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Something To Look At:

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954)

I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration. 
Frida Kahlo 

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Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/f/frida_kahlo.html#oJBvyK8peZt0PyMX.99 

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Self-Portrait-Roots

Self-Portrait in a Velvet Dress

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Something To Read:

Philip Larkin

(1922-1986)

 

“Everyone should be forcibly transplanted to another continent from their family at the age of three.” 
― Philip Larkin, Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica

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Best Society

When I was a child, I thought,
Casually, that solitude
Never needed to be sought.
Something everybody had,
Like nakedness, it lay at hand,
Not specially right or specially wrong,
A plentiful and obvious thing
Not at all hard to understand.

Then, after twenty, it became
At once more difficult to get
And more desired – though all the same
More undesirable; for what
You are alone has, to achieve
The rank of fact, to be expressed
In terms of others, or it’s just
A compensating make-believe.

Much better stay in company!
To love you must have someone else,
Giving requires a legatee,
Good neighbours need whole parishfuls
Of folk to do it on – in short,
Our virtues are all social; if,
Deprived of solitude, you chafe,
It’s clear you’re not the virtuous sort.

Viciously, then, I lock my door.
The gas-fire breathes. The wind outside
Ushers in evening rain. Once more
Uncontradicting solitude
Supports me on its giant palm;
And like a sea-anemone
Or simple snail, there cautiously
Unfolds, emerges, what I am.

 

http://www.poemhunter.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Larkin

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Philip Larkin Sunday Sessions (Extract)

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Something To Think About:

George Steiner

(1929-)

literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist, translator, and educator.

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Language can only deal meaningfully with a special, restricted segment of reality. The rest, and it is presumably the much larger part, is silence. 
Read more at

 http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/g/george_steiner.html#1vwq3rhl8CHhkpc1.99 

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The most important tribute any human being can pay to a poem or a piece of prose he or she really loves is to learn it by heart. Not by brain, by heart; the expression is vital.
Read more at

 http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/g/george_steiner.html#1vwq3rhl8CHhkpc1.99

http://www.superfluitiesredux.com/2011/05/17/quotes-george-steiner/

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CHRISTMAS PICTURE QUIZ: Who is Who?

The Answers. Mouse over the bottom of each picture

W. G Sebald

Virginia Woolf

Einstein

Anne Sexton

Edith Sitwell

Orson Welles

Henry Moore

Claude Monet

Marlene Dietrich

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Mozart

Nanci Griffiths

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Something For You:

Joy, rather than happiness, is the goal of life, for joy is the emotion which accompanies our fulfilling our natures as human beings. It is based on the experience of one’s identity as a being of worth and dignity. Rollo May

Something For the Festive Weekend #3

It is the function of creative men to perceive the relations between thoughts, or things, or forms of expression that may seem utterly different and to be able to combine them into some new form’. William Plomer

Some inspirational snippets and recommendations for your weekend

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Something to Watch:  

DVD:  REQUIEM FOR A DREAM

A Darren Aronofsky film from 2000 starring Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto & Jennifer Connelly, on the surface a high octane tale about drug addiction.

Why you could watch it:

because it’s actually an edgy panoramic tale about love and identity that draws you in powerfully despite the uncomfortable moments; and it has an amazing performance by Ellen Burstyn

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Here are a few clips. It’s harrowing but it’s worth sticking with:

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Something To Listen To: 

Ralph Vaughan Williams 

(1872-1958)

But in the next world I shan’t be doing music, with all the striving and disappointments. I shall be being it.  Ralph Vaughan Williams 

 

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Read more at:

 http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/r/ralph_vaughan_williams.html#sY7c64lHtu939SIC.99

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Christmas Songs

Lark Ascending

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DESERT ISLAND DISKS – Annie Lennox

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/castaway/a3635f2a#b00b6x4g

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Something To Look At:

Edward Hopper (182-1967)

American Realist painter

Truthful, Insightful, As Is, Elegant 

Automat 1927

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See For more information:

http://poulwebb.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/edward-hopper.html

 

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Early Sunday Morning, 1930

Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world.  Edward Hopper 

 

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Read more at:

 http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/edward_hopper.html#GRhoK45ddZTFllAg.99

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Something To Read:

William Blake

(1757-1827)

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Holy Thursday (Innocence)

Twas on a Holy Thursday their innocent faces clean
The children walking two & two in red & blue & green
Grey headed beadles walked before with wands as white as snow
Till into the high dome of Pauls they like Thames waters flow

O what a multitude they seemed these flowers of London town
Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own
The hum of multitudes was there but multitudes of lambs
Thousands of little boys & girls raising their innocent hands

Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song
Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of heaven among
Beneath them sit the aged men wise guardians of the poor
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door

*

Holy Thursday (Experience)

Is this a holy thing to see.
In a rich and fruitful land.
Babes reduced to misery.
Fed with cold and usurous hand?

Is that trembling cry a song?
Can it be a song of joy?
And so many children poor?
It is a land of poverty!

And their sun does never shine.
And their fields are bleak & bare.
And their ways are fill’d with thorns
It is eternal winter there.

For where-e’er the sun does shine.
And where-e’er the rain does fall:
Babe can never hunger there,
Nor poverty the mind appall.

 

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/holy-thursday-experience/

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/holy-thursday-innocence/

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Something To Think About:

1. Albert Camus

In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.  Albert Camus 

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Read more at:

 http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/albert_camus.html#BU5Cl0r81ct9vg8c.99

In Our Time: 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b008kmqp

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2. OSHO

EXPRESS YOURSELF IN AS MANY WAYS AS POSSIBLE WITHOUT FEAR.THERE IS NOTHING TO FEAR.THERE IS NOBODY WHO IS GOING TO PUNISH OR REWARD YOU. EXPRESS YOUR BEING IN ITS TRUEST FORM, IN ITS NATURAL FLOW, YOU WILL BE REWARDED IMMEDIATELY, NOT TOMORROW BUT TODAY, HERE & NOW. YOU ARE PUNISHED ONLY WHEN YOU GO AGAINST YOUR NATURE. BUT THE PUNISHMENT IS A HELP. IT IS SIMPLY AN INDICATION THAT YOU HAVE MOVED AWAY FROM NATURE, THAT YOU HAVE GONE A LITTLE ASTRAY-OFF THE ROAD-COME BACK. PUNISHMENT IS NO REVENGE.NO, PUNISHMENT IS ONLY AN EFFORT TO WAKE YOU UP: ‘WHAT ARE YOU DOING?’ . SOMETHING IS WRONG, SOMETHING IS GOING AGAINST YOURSELF. THAT’S WHY THERE IS PAIN, THERE IS ANXIETY.

  EVOLUTION IS INTRINSIC TO MAN’S NATURE, EVOLUTION IS HIS VERY SOUL, AND THOSE WHO TAKE THEMSELVES FOR GRANTED REMAIN UNFULFILLED. THOSE WHO THINK THEY ARE BORN COMPLETE REMAIN UNEVOLVED. THEN THE SEED REMAINS THE SEED. IT NEVER BECOMES A TREE AND NEVER KNOWS THE JOYS OF SPRING AND THE SUNSHINE AND THE RAIN AND THE ECSTASY OF BURSTING INTO MILLIONS OF FLOWERS.   From The Book of Understanding

http://astrodreamadvisor.com/OSHO_Quotes.html

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CHRISTMAS PICTURE QUIZ: Who is Who?

Answers given in the next snippet. Or take a stab yourself and leave your answers in the reply box ! 

W. G Sebald

Virginia Woolf

Einstein

Anne Sexton

Edith Sitwell

Orson Welles

Henry Moore

Claude Monet

Marlene Dietrich

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Mozart

Nanci Griffiths

Something For the Weekend #2

‘It is the function of creative men to perceive the relations between thoughts, or things, or forms of expression that may seem utterly different and to be able to combine them into some new form’. William Plomer

Some inspirational snippets and recommendations for your weekend

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Something to Watch: 

DVD: Heaven

A Cate Blanchett and Giovanni Ribisi film directed by Thomas Tykwer (Run Lola Run) about a woman who takes the law into her own hands, and much much more…

Why you could watch it:

Brilliant performances, beautiful cinematography, challenging direction and beautiful, beautiful soundtrack:

CINEMA

Great film review of ‘The Hunt’ the latest film from Thomas Vinterberg director of Festen by ‘the tale of bengwy’( a site with stimulating music, film and book reviews).

http://bengwy.wordpress.com/2012/11/30/the-hunt-pointing-the-finger/

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Something To Look At: 

Gerti Schiele in a Plaid Garment by Egon Schiele

Angular, Edgy, Delicate and Spiky

Egon Schiele
charcoal and tempure on brown wove paper, c. 1908

To restrict the artist is a crime. It is to murder germinating life. 
Egon Schiele 
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/egon_schiele.html#QkKEPm0OCUsTwg8s.99

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/gerti%20schiele%20in%20a%20plaid%20garment

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egon_Schiele

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Something To Read:

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A Night-Piece by William Wordsworth

——The sky is overcast
With a continuous cloud of texture close,
Heavy and wan, all whitened by the Moon,
Which through that veil is indistinctly seen,
A dull, contracted circle, yielding light
So feebly spread, that not a shadow falls,
Chequering the ground–from rock, plant, tree, or tower.
At length a pleasant instantaneous gleam
Startles the pensive traveller while he treads
His lonesome path, with unobserving eye
Bent earthwards; he looks up–the clouds are split
Asunder,–and above his head he sees
The clear Moon, and the glory of the heavens.
There, in a black-blue vault she sails along,
Followed by multitudes of stars, that, small
And sharp, and bright, along the dark abyss
Drive as she drives: how fast they wheel away,
Yet vanish not!–the wind is in the tree,
But they are silent;–still they roll along
Immeasurably distant; and the vault,
Built round by those white clouds, enormous clouds,
Still deepens its unfathomable depth.
At length the Vision closes; and the mind,
Not undisturbed by the delight it feels,
Which slowly settles into peaceful calm,
Is left to muse upon the solemn scene. 

William Wordsworth

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-night-piece/

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Something To Think About:

Humility is attentive patience. 
Simone Weil 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_Weil

In Our Time , Radio feature on Simone Weil.

Really interesting!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nthz3

Something For the Weekend #1

‘It is the function of creative men to perceive the relations between thoughts, or things, or forms of expression that may seem utterly different and to be able to combine them into some new form’, William Plomer

Some inspirational snippets and recommendations for your weekend

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Something to Watch:

Set in Dublin a story the lives of two ‘kindred spirits’ (one musician) the other a young mother (also with a love of music) intertwine.

 

Why: Brilliant score, beautiful scenery and warmth.

 

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Something To Look At:

Philosopher In Meditation by Rembrandt, 1832

From: http://www.rembrandtpainting.net/index.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher_in_Meditation

In common with Michelangelo and Rembrandt I am more interested in the line, its rise and fall, than in color.
Edvard Munch

 

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Something To Read:

An Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) Poem:

A Light Exists In Spring

A Light exists in Spring
Not present on the Year
At any other period —
When March is scarcely here

A Color stands abroad
On Solitary Fields
That Science cannot overtake
But Human Nature feels.

It waits upon the Lawn,
It shows the furthest Tree
Upon the furthest Slope you know
It almost speaks to you.

Then as Horizons step
Or Noons report away
Without the Formula of sound
It passes and we stay —

A quality of loss
Affecting our Content
As Trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a Sacrament.

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-light-exists-in-spring/

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Something To Think About:

‘If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heartbeat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence’.

George Eliot, Middlemarch (1872)

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• And check out Classic Friday with Nisha Moodley on author Elizabeth Gaskell here