RIP

Eternity of the moment

"Cartier-Bresson has the weakness of his strength: an Apollonian elevation that subjugates life to an order of things already known, if never so well seen. He said that the essence of his art was, 'the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event, as well as the precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression.' Too often, the 'significance' feels platitudinous, even as its expression dazzles. Robert Frank, whose book 'The Americans' treated subjects akin to many in the older photographer's work, put it harshly but justly: 'He travelled all over the goddamned world, and you never felt that he was moved by something that was happening other than the beauty of it, or just the composition.' The problem of Cartier-Bresson's art is the conjunction of aesthetic classicism and journalistic protocol: timeless truth and breaking news. He rendered a world that, set forth at MOMA by the museum's chief curator of photography, Peter Galassi, richly satisfies the eye and the mind, while numbing the heart." Finding flaw in the seemingly flawless, Peter Schjeldahl reviews the Cartier-Bresson retrospective at MOMA.

[The New Yorker]

above the clouds, where the sounds are original

So: thanks to this selfish, selfish volcano, it doesn't look like I'll be back in Edinburgh for everyone's favorite pot-themed holiday. Will instead be, y'know, down in Maryland, kickin' it sober, or maybe a little drunk, by myself, watching some television.

In related news:

"I am the eye with which the Universe beholds itself and knows it is divine."

Long lunches in the West Village: bowls of plump mussels and steak frites in saffron and double espressos, one after another; sunbathing and stiff drinks in mason jars and Super Scrabble on mattresses and homemade veggie burgers and guacamole and cherry pie and extra spicy Bloody Marys (tingling lips) on Lisa's roof; mini-golf and big, meaty burgers with Gareth, medium rare, talks of Business school in Switzerland, and will we still be able to do this when you're married. Mustard-yellow army jackets and horn-rimmed glasses; late-night club sandwiches and Maltese Male Models named Dante in Brooklyn; awkwardly avoiding eye-contact with Jesus as he hung on the wall of the New Museum, then following him down into the subway, wondering if it was all part of the act; driving and smoking, driving and smoking; cramming Wordsworth and Shelley into my brain while Brigid rides her one-eyed horse around the ring and my skin turns pinker and pinker in the Simmering Spring Sunshine, the soft breeze, the still grass, dotted with dandelions.

the portals of great jaws

"After three years of ripe, Southern indulgence to come upon this ash plain impregnated with a killer sea may have needed a strength not really found in nature: sustained necessarily by illusion. Not even whales could skirt that strand with impunity: walking along what served for an esplanade you might see one of the rotting creatures, beached, covered by feeding gulls who with the coming of night would be relieved at the giant carrion by a pack of strand wolves. And in a matter of days there would be left only the portals of great jaws and a picked, architectural web of bone, mellowing eventually to false ivory in the sun and fog." Thomas Pynchon, V.

Essentially.

"Dynamite Ham"

[Easter Dinner, 2010]

Karen Finley: performance artist, by Annie Leibovitz

I am working very hard at not thinking about how everything goes.

Joan Didion is so fucking cool.

An afternoon in Holyrood Park

Stunning photos by Suzanna Zak, from her recent sojourn to Edinburgh. (We had the loveliest of times; come again sooner than soon, Suzie!)

P.S. Doesn't the first one remind you a bit of this Courbet painting?