me again

two potters

Good interview with Mr. De Waal here.

At 10PM, Daniel Kitson Will Be Drinking Tea and Blowing Minds Again

Daniel Kitson has occupied quite a big space in my imagination since I saw him perform last month. This is partly because he has eschewed DVDs, books, TV shows, and the like so far. Because I do not know very much about him I keep on thinking about what I saw and wondering. This is part of his art, I'd say. It all remains quite immediate and this helps me start wee conversations with myself, which sets me off in pursuit of the windy ways of my own thinking.

It also helps that he writes sad and funny things like this (for We are Gathered Here):

Everyone you have ever known will die.

And so will you.

And yet we dance in the looming shadows of mortality, we dance and we talk and we eat and we argue. We read books. We care for people. We buy houses. We plant trees and we start to drive and we learn how to make milk frothy. Because something, somewhere in the middle of it all has to matter. As our seconds and minutes and days slip by, something has to be important. And who are we to giggle and point and sneer at what others have found to care about? Who is to say what is beneath us, what is not worthy of our hearts?

Everybody needs something to hold when it gets dark, so who am I, who are any of us, to point at anything and call it facile or redundant or stupid or rubbish

Even when it quite clearly is.

A new stand up show about finding something important in an ocean of twaddle.

turmoil

A short week after everything seemed to go so right on the streets of Egypt, the seem to be going wrong everywhere else. Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, and Iran are all in different states of turmoil and violent repression.

As with the events of the last few weeks, I have been haphazardly following what is known about what is happening here.

DD is also pointing sensibly and compassionately at the news.

what to do? what to do?

The lp, quite fairly, points out that how often I say this sort of thing (quite a bit) is no predictor of real change or even action. (He sighs.) This fact can make me despair a wee bit. This is definitely a spiritual problem, which is to say, a problem - the very good that I want to do I can not do, etc. More sighing and wondering, 'What to do? What to do?'

Yet right now I am distracted by the fact that I remembered to include the watch in each panel. So hooray for that, at least.

JR

FACE 2 FACE a GENEVE - 2008
Uploaded by JR. - Watch original web videos.
I have not had a chance to watch this - so this serves mainly as a reminder. A whole movie on the photographer/artist/activist/imaginateur's work.

a man

Based on a photo by the multi-talented Prash.

the things that get me through the day

I have been surprisingly happy about this wee on my desk at work guy all day. Makes me feel quite cheering having him sitting there playing away as I work. A ridiculous but necessary contrast with all the other things that pass across my desk (and through my head).

christine

Christine Seela

Ganzeer, an Egyptian visual artist based in Cairo, is drawing each of the martyrs who died over the course of Egypt's current revolution.

There's another memorial here.

here comes everybody

the lp: 'the most astounding thing ever'

the david lynch recipe for happiness

All the ingredients laid out here. HT to DD.

Reading this article, I reflected on how terrifying Wild at Heart was for me. But Mr. Lynch's skills as a filmmaker are such that as long as Sailor and Lulu were on screen together I knew everything was going to be okay. Palpable love and celluloid meet.

the uprising

Taken in Tahrir Square, earlier this week.

I have not really weighed in much here from a sociological perspective (and am not about to) but this Zizek article helped me make some more sense of what is happening (in terms of the sociological imagination) on the ground in Egypt. And, harking back to my own work on social movements, this statement from Zizek rings very true: Either the entire Mubarak power edifice falls down, or the uprising is co-opted and betrayed.

Now is clearly the moment when the individuals and the movement either determine a changed direction for their country (at least in the short term) or head back to the status quo. Right now it very much looks as though they are choosing the former of the two options, and peacefully.

what is possible

Feverishly checking in on what is happening in Egypt.

Wael Ghonim's twitter profile: Constantly Changing, Serious Joker, Internet Addict, Love challenging status quo!
Sounds like something to aspire to.

And, on completely unrelated matters (on second thoughts, it is all related), there were a couple of drawings from bloggers that I wanted to highlight this week, both of them very moving.

Guy DeLisle has posted a wonderful page from his upcoming book - pretty universal and challenging of the status quo.

One panel:


And then there's this, from Hugh at Gapingvoid on what is possible.

Take that as far as you like.

courage imagination

After a hopeful day everything seems to be up in the air in Egypt again. Altogether heartbreaking. The courage and imagination of everyone in Tahrir Square is deeply moving and encouraging, whatever the immediate and long term outcomes.

As much as I can, I have been following what is up here and here.

'mair nonsense'

A quick trip to Scotland and it seemed to be all Robert Burns all the time. He got inside my head.

Hugh McDiarmid says of the man:

Mair nonsense has been uttered in his name
Than in ony's barrin liberty and Christ.
If this keeps spreedin as the drink declines,
Syne turns to tea, wae's me for the Zietgeist!

Certainly reinforced during the visit.

My drawings all playing off of Peter Howson's work, by far the best part of the new Burns museum in Alloway.

being in the world