Marlinspike

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Where is today’s dangerous art? I live in a nation where police drones, abstract wars, intrusive corporations, and Christian hate are increasingly common features. The emerging Occupy Movement is the only modern extension of Tzara’s disgust, the only glimmer of sanity in a society that is losing dignity by the day — yet where is the new writing, the new art and music? If asking such a question immediately reveals that I’m out of touch, that’s fine. I simply want to know. I want someone to take my hand and walk me over to the bleeding edge.

Perhaps technology is the new avant-garde. The internet oftentimes feels like a collective exercise in automatic writing that plumbs the psyche of our culture. Screens are the new mechanism to forge new alliances and shock the normals, yet we’re more concerned with building new channels, new applications and widgets rather than filling these things with emotional content that might trigger a response. In 1917, the Russian Constructivists fetishized technology, dreaming of the day when we would have “a universal trampoline that will enable a great leap into human culture.” We have it now.

What was the last piece of art to scandalize an audience? The last book to cause an uproar? Looking in the rearview at art movements from one hundred years ago offers a skewed image, yet I believe that Tristan Tzara and André Breton are the ideal spiritual guides for this age of violence, speed, complacency, and sudden modernity. We need more mischief and outrage in our words and pictures.

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Reblogged from varanine

James A. Reeves, More Than Mere Art (via varanine)

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How do you deal with things you believe, live them not as theory, not even as emotion, but right on the line of action and effect and change?

[And] That sense of writing on the edge, out of urgency, not because you choose it but because you have to–that sense of survival–that’s what the poem is out of… Once you live any piece of your vision it opens you to a constant onslaught. Of necessities, of horrors, but of wonders too, of possibilities… like meteor showers all the time, bombardment, constant connections.

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Audre Lorde

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“Tuleb pead ära vahetada ja siis oma peaga teise südant kallistada. Ainult nii hakkavad pead ja südamed ‘kokku kõlama’.”

‘Exchange your head with another’s and then try and hug the heart of another’s. Only so will our hearts and minds “harmonize”’.

Only so will we actually notice our own arrogance.

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Uku Uusberg, ‘Pea vahetus’

"Before you speak, ask yourself: is it kind, is it necessary, is it true, does it improve on the silence?"

Shirdi Sai Baba

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Who would have thought that one day, the manufacturing of sticks would be outsourced to China.

But the kid shouldn’t be wasting his time on a stick anyway. If he’s four years old, he should be home studying for his kindergarten entrance exams.

Isn’t it just a sophisticated form of child abuse?

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George Carlin, It’s Bad For Ya

"Human beings took our animal need for palatable food … and turned it into chocolate souffles with salted caramel cream. We took our ability to co-operate as a social species … and turned it into craft circles and bowling leagues and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We took our capacity to make and use tools … and turned it into the Apollo moon landing. We took our uniquely precise ability to communicate through language … and turned it into King Lear.

None of these things are necessary for survival and reproduction. That is exactly what makes them so splendid. When we take our basic evolutionary wiring and transform it into something far beyond any prosaic matters of survival and reproduction … that’s when humanity is at its best. That’s when we show ourselves to be capable of creating meaning and joy, for ourselves and for one another. That’s when we’re most uniquely human.

And the same is true for sex. Human beings have a deep, hard-wired urge to replicate our DNA, instilled in us by millions of years of evolution. And we’ve turned it into an intense and delightful form of communication, intimacy, creativity, community, personal expression, transcendence, joy, pleasure, and love. Regardless of whether any DNA gets replicated in the process.

Why should we see this as sinful? What makes this any different from chocolate souffles and King Lear?"

Reblogged from varanine

Sex and the Off-Label Use of Our Bodies - Greta Christina

(via runciblehat) (via varanine, sexisnottheenemy)

"Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors."

Andrew Boyd

"A life. A life, Jimmy! You know what that is? It’s the shit that happens when you’re waiting for moments that never come."

Det. Lester Freamon, Clarke Peters, The Wire

"What does patience feel like? It’s a subtle unfolding, with time as your ally. You feel relaxed and trust that it will all work out, even if in this very moment there’s no clear path to the end. It feels like the subtle uneasiness of allowing all you’re uncomfortable with to be exactly as it is."

Jackson Kiddard