Filed under: He Said She Said | Tags: anne carson, hara tamiki, hiroshima, summer flowers
I: Death
HT: Death made me grow up
I: Love
HT: Love made me endure
I: Madness
HT: Madness made me suffer
I: Passion
HT: Passion bewildered me
I: Balance
HT: Balance is my goddess
I: Dreams
HT: Dreams are my everything now
I: Gods
HT: Gods cause me to be silent
I: Bureaucrats
HT: Bureaucrats make me melancholy
I: Tears
HT: Tears are my sisters
I: Laughter
HT: I wish I had a splendid laugh
I: War
HT: Ah war
I: Humankind
HT: Humankind is glass
I: Why not take the shorter way home
HT: There is no shorter way homeInterview with Hara Tamiki (1950) by Anne Carson from Men in the Off Hours
- Engraved in stone long ago,
- Lost in the shifting sand,
- In the midst of a crumbling world,
- The vision of one flower.
Filed under: He Said She Said | Tags: all about love: new visions, bell hooks
“To begin by always thinking of love as an ACTION rather than a FEELING is one way in which anyone using the word in this manner automatically assumes accountability and responsibility. We’re often taught we have no control over our “feelings” yet most of us accept that we choose our actions, that intention and will inform what we do. We also accept that our actions have consequences. To think of actions shaping feelings is one way we rid ourselves of conventionally accepted assumptions such as that parents love their children, or that one simply “falls” in love without exercising will or choice, that there are such things as “crimes of passion,” i.e., he killed her because he loved her so much. If we were constantly remembering that love is as love does, we would not use the word in a manner that devalues and degrades it’s meaning. When we are loving, we openly and honestly express care, affection, responsibility, respect, commitment, and trust.
Definitions are vital starting points for the imagination. What we cannot imagine cannot come into being. A good definition marks our starting point and lets us know where we want to end up. As we move towards are desired destination we chart the journey, creating a map. We need a map to guide us on our journey to love — starting with the place where we know what we mean when we speak of love.” – bell hooks
“When we reveal ourselves to our partner and find that this brings healing rather than harm we make an important discovery — that intimate relationship can provide a sanctuary from the world of facades, a sacred space where we can be ourselves, as we are….This kind of unmasking, speaking our truth, sharing our inner struggles, and revealing our raw edges – is sacred activity, which allows two souls to meet and touch more deeply.” – John Welwood, All About Love: New Visions
Filed under: He Said She Said | Tags: antoine de saint exupery, the little prince
Grown-ups like numbers. When you tell them about a new friend, they never ask questions about what really matters. They never ask: “What does his voice sound like?” “What games does he like best?” “Does he collect butterflies?’. They ask: “How old is he?” “How many brothers does he have?” “How much does he weigh?” “How much money does his father make?” Only then do they think they know him.
Men occupy very little space on Earth. If the two billion inhabitants of the globe were to stand close together, as they might for some public event, they would easily fit into a city block that was twenty miles long and twenty miles wide. you could crowd all humanity onto the smallest Pacific islet. Grown-ups, of course, won’t believe you.
The earth is not just another planet! It contains one hundred and eleven kings (including, of course, the African kings), seven thousand geographers, nine hundred thousand businessmen, seven-and-a-half million drunkards, three-hundred-eleven million vain men; in other words, about two billion grownups.
All grown-ups were children first. (But few remember it).
–The Little Prince, Antoine de saint Exupéry
Filed under: He Said She Said | Tags: complex magazine, drake, He Said She Said
“The whole tape extends from one of my closest friends Oliver. One night we were having a discussion about women and the way we were talking about them, it was so brazen and so disrespectful. He texted me right after we got off the phone and he was like, “Are we becoming the men that our mothers divorced?” That’s really where the cover comes from, too. It’s just this kid in pursuit of love and money. We’re good guys, I’m friends with some real good people and for him to even text me after we got off the phone it just showed we have a conscience. But sometimes you just get so far gone, you get wrapped up in this shit. The title has a lot of meanings as the way we carry ourselves, the way we dress, the way people view us, not to sound cocky, it’s just that feeling that we’re just distanced in a good way. You’re just elevating past the bullshit and past all the shit that you used to be a part of and you’re not that proud of, you’re just so far gone…” — Drake in Complex
“Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make. You can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won’t know for twenty years! And you may never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce.
And they say there’s no fate, but there is, it’s what you create. And even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are only here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead, or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain wasting years for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it alright, but it never comes. Or it seems to, but it doesn’t really.
So you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope that something good will come along, something to make you feel connected, something to make you feel whole, something to make you feel loved. And the truth is is, I feel so angry! And the truth is, I feel so fucking sad! And the truth is, I’ve felt so fucking hurt for so fucking long and for just as long, I’ve been pretending I’m okay, just to get along!
I don’t know why. Maybe because no one wants to hear about my misery because they have their own. Well, fuck everybody. Amen” – Charlie Kaufman, Synecdoche New York
“What’s happening right now in the Hip Hop industry is that it is deeply affected by the general economy of the country. The people who are getting the money now are young. When you are young “money” is not the same. I give you an example: If you are 19 years old and you get a record contract with $15,000 dollars, you’re a cool 19 year old motherfucker. So it doesn’t bother you, you know?! You don’t even realize it. But for the artists that are 25 and up $15,000 dollars is not a great salary, it’s a medium salaray. So that’s where the problem comes out. If you see somebody like Souljah Boy, who is only 16 years old, making fucking 200 Grand a year, then he’s doing great. And all he is buying is sneakers and candy. But if you are dealing with a rapper that is 25 years old that may have his first child on the way, or maybe his first home he has to buy, there’s the problem.
And I think as time goes on that generation of rappers who’s making it now is gonna face the same thing that my generation was facing, which is the decrease of sales. The decrease of hard-copies. As the hard-copies decrease, the royalty decreases. So they are going to face that and they are going to have to realize that they have to say something about it. So I think it will make a change.” – The RZA, WildStyleMag.com Inteview and image courtesy of FWMJ
Filed under: He Said She Said | Tags: friedrich nietzsche, on reading and writing
“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”
Filed under: He Said She Said | Tags: cornball city, palimpsest, story telling
Tell us a story,
Tell even us.
Begin wherever you wish.
I forget when it begins or ends but I remember the sea…
I remember fighting for my first breath
against the push and pull of the tide.
I remember coming into consciousness;
That unsettling adjustment period marked by
A dizzy spell from resisting external pressure-
A force much stronger than my own.
All I could see were hues of blue and gray
mixing and then separating
into shifting amorphous shapes.
I saw the world through a distorted kaleidoscope
of formless color.
Naming the sky felt like a futile exercise
so I just focused on floating.
On the feeling of water lapping over my body.
On the rhythm of the waves rippling back and forth.
I remember bursts of light
breaking into the quiet of my breath.
And so I sank deeper and deeper into the sea.
Seeking refuge from the strange world above
into the unknown world below.
I liked to get lost in the thick clouds of
black dust that collected at the bottom
where it was cold and dark.
I felt oddly safe there
submerged in ambiguity.
I remember looking up,
chasing the silhouettes of stars
reflected at the surface.
The rays of light illuminated
the turquoise sea of bodies around me where
I dreamt the moon in all of its brilliance.
Sometimes,
I still forget the undulations of breath.
The echoes of waves
crashing against a distant shore.
I forget the others and their names.
All I can remember
is the sensation of moving inside the currents,
the turbulent episodes that would
push me into new waters,
the insignificance of it all.
I remember sinking into sand in search of secrets buried
long ago by unknown wanderers.
I remember their markings,
faint traces of what existed before me.
I remember these things because I have to,
because everyone else forgets
about us and how we came here.
People still write our existence
in myth and magic,
in mist and smoke.
I just broke y’all off with a little excerpt from my Senior Thesis performance “Palimpsest”. The description is inspired by a myth my father created about my past life as a fish. The story goes that San Antonio (my previous guardian) expelled me from the sea for being a talkative troublemaker (he needed to return silence to the waters). The corresponding picture is taken from the shrine of San Antonio in my motherland of Uruguay. I always go visit the shrine to pay respects to my old friend…I was compelled to tell a story In the midst of elections hysteria. Now more than ever, I find myself holding onto all of you and all of our stories because at the end of the day that’s what really matters. I know: CORNBALL CITY! I hope you all have a good weekend and for everyone headed back to school: best of luck with that (hit the books and hit the house parties while the rest off us in the Real World are subjected to dress codes and covers)
Filed under: He Said She Said, Politricks | Tags: jeff chang, nas, politics
Silhouetted against the sunset, Nas looked out into the crowd and said, “I don’t believe in politicians or none of that. I believe in the people.” – Jeff Chang
