Beautiful World, Where Are You?

Beautiful World, Where Are You? by Sally Rooney quotes (read on Kindle so no page numbers):

"...we hate people for making mistakes so much more than we love them for doing good that the easiest way to live is to do nothing, say nothing, and love no one."

"I have put between myself and my parents such a gulf of sophistication that it’s impossible for them to touch me now or to reach me at all. And I look back across that gulf, not with a sense of guilt or loss, but with relief and satisfaction. Am I better than they are?"

"I know we agree that civilisation is presently in its decadent declining phase, and that lurid ugliness is the predominant visual feature of modern life. Cars are ugly, buildings are ugly, mass-produced disposable consumer goods are unspeakably ugly. The air we breathe is toxic, the water we drink is full of microplastics, and our food is contaminated by cancerous Teflon chemicals. Our quality of life is in decline, and along with it, the quality of aesthetic experience available to us. The contemporary novel is (with very few exceptions) irrelevant; mainstream cinema is family-friendly nightmare porn funded by car companies and the US Department of Defense; and visual art is primarily a commodity market for oligarchs."

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Manet and Degas

Brilliant video explaining the exhibit. Go to the Met and see the exhibit! It's really quite special. In the last gallery the painting this sketch is based off of, of the execution of a Mexican president. The painting has been cut into sections, and the surviving Degas has reassembled them. NY Times review

Silo

This is a dark show that I'm reluctant to watch. Slow burn with reveals along the way. Lots of padding and important small details you have to pay attention to, which sometimes I don't because I'm looking at my phone. The TV competes with the phone. Either I'm playing chess, or another game, or surfing for news about my favorite soccer team NYCFC. They're supposed to sign some new players and can register them tomorrow, but the team usually doesn't do things in a timely way, they're messy. The first few episodes of the 10 episode first season are about the sherif and his wife, played by Rashid Jones . Then there's like a buffer action episode where the generator almost goes kaput. Then it becomes Longmire, a woman sheriff who doesn't know the protocols and rules, and doesn't care, she just wants truth and answers. Everyone lives in the Silo, it's huge and mysterious and you can't have relics, things from the past, that might clue you i...

Introduction

Robert B. Palmer's introduction to his translation of Walter F. Otto's Dionysus: Myth and Cult (p. ix-xi) Gods of Hellas, gods of Hellas, Can ye listen in your silence? Can your mystic voices tell us Where ye hide? In floating islands, With a wind that evermore Keeps you out of sight of shore? Pan, Pan is dead. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING The Dead Pan W H E N Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote these lines which sound so pessimistic and so limited to any lover of the beauty and truth of Greek mythology, she had in mind a famous passage out of Plutarch's De Oraculorum defectu {Mor. 419 A-E) in which it was reported on good authority that Pan had died. But let Plutarch tell the story (Philip is speaking): As for death among such beings [i.e., deities], I have heard the words of a man who was not a fool nor an impostor. The father of...

Motley Kamuka

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