kitchen gardens

I like Ian Frazier's sketches from his trip to Siberia. There is a nice one of a house with a kitchen garden.

His articles in The New Yorker, along with Simon Roberts's photos, are giving me wanderlust.

refractions

Spent some time this afternoon reading a couple of posts on the artist Makoto Fujimara's blog. I particularly liked his reflections on collaborating with Susie Ibarra and on the value of art. Here are some of the things that struck me.

tha magic of going to film

I've been quite disheartened this week, trying to think about jobs, careers and what might really be a right thing to do next. I feel pretty leaden most days and really wonder when I will have the imagination or even gumption to work on something new and passion-inducing and somehow useful.

A bright spot was coming across an article on a rolling film festival organized by Tilda Swinton, the actress, and Mark Cousins, the film critic and festival reviver. And I love this clip of Mr. Cousins talking about the wonders of bringing a West Bengali cinema to the Edinburgh International Film Festival.



This reminded me of the mobile solar powered cinema that used to travel to Greenbelt every year. Maybe it will be there this year. Anyway, I thought, why can't I do something like that?

engaged piety

I've been thinking and talking about interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary projects over the past few days. Earlier in the week I bemoaned the unnecessary narrowness of some academic projects. (Maybe I was being uncharitable (bitter?) in this bemoaning.) I like writers and academics, thinkers, artists, who bring together a lot of different interests in their work - no matter how narrowly focused the work itself might actually be.
This came up in Wendell Berry's preface to The One-Straw Revolution: 'It is exactly because of such habitual expectations - because we have learned to expect people to be specialists and books to have only one subject - that we are in need of 'The One-Straw Revolution'.'

And I also read Michael Massing's NYRB piece this week on the best of political blogging; from this I got the idea of the blogger as a filter uniquely processing (and adding value to) multiple sources. Massing on Andrew Sullivan: 'But as a regular reading of his posts shows, his multiple links to a wide array of sources, processed through his idiosyncratic gay-Catholic-Thatcherite-turned-libertarian-radical mind, produces an engaging and original take on the world. A dramatic demonstration of this occured just after the Iranian elections...'

The necessity of bringing some disciplined (or multi-disciplined) thought and imagination to filter through all that one comes across is important. (David Dark has this great quote from Cornel West on his site at the moment: 'Piety ought to be inseparable from critical thinking'.) Equally important and pressing, I think, is the ability in thinking through all the different things one encounters to turn them into something else - a new piece of writing, a piece of art, a cartoon, a link on a blog, something. At least, I feel the need to do this a lot more systematically for myself.

My friend Richard asked what was wonderful about the gapingvoid quote from a couple of posts ago (in a way that reminded me of one of our teachers - but that is another story). The wonderful thing is that the author of the gapingvoid posts has in his cartoons a medium through which he can filter, synthesize, and think critically about the world, making a new new thing as he goes.

giant hello kitty

random drawing and quote

Click for Gapingvoid quote source, the dependable Hugh, who also says:
'Being a book author is not important to me. Neither is being a blogger or a marketing guy. Drawing cartoons is important to me. I know that if I keep on drawing the cartoons, interesting things will come out of it eventually, so my plan is to to just keep focusing on that.'
Something very wonderful in this.

ah well

I wanted to systematically think about the integration between art and living in my downtime today. This was in response to a blog that I have flagged but not yet read. However, my difficulty concentrating and focusing continues. I did keep thinking about the integration, though, as I crossed paths with James Alison, Donata Wenders, and Michael Chabon.

the english surgeon

I have not been able to get this drawing right at all. Not sure what this is indicative of, though the first go clearly shows that I am finding it hard to stay focused at the moment. But I start the week feeling very upbeat about everything(???). More on this to come.

The doctor looks like quite an amazing character. (Follow the link and see how far off my drawing is from what I was working from.)

'vision over visibility'

Beautiful person Pip has a lovely post on Bono and the song The Moment of Surrender:

At the moment of surrender
Of vision over visibility
I did not notice the passers-by
And they did not notice me

Bono looks good in a hoodie. I think this is my favourite sweetly smiling picture of him.

where I find myself

Looking for work is hard. I do wonder if the biggest thing holding me back is a fear related to the one described here. I have no idea what project or job it is that I would give myself to but the thought of starting along a new path is daunting. I am not scared of losing out on other pleasures. I'm just more scared of not getting things right than I should be. This goes against the position I want to be in, the attitude I want to have; but, if I am honest, it is where I find myself at the moment. Of course, finding myself at the moment is a topic that is taking some of my time as well.