What am I seeing?, I have wondered as the names, dates, events, and sensory impressions pile up. By coincidence I found the film “Zerograd” this week, the Soviet entry for Best Foreign Language Film for the Academy Awards in 1989.
Our tastes are being changed for us, homogenized by algorithms that force clicks of approval into spirals of popularity.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning exclaimed only, “Beautiful!” Martin Luther relaxed into amiability and said only “Yes.” Truman Capote—and this revelation breaks my heart—kept repeating “Mama.”
The letter was V-Mail, as it was called, for corresponding with service members overseas then. It was strict in its single-sheet economy, as letters were photographed then shipped on microfilm and printed on the other end. Add the need for operational security, and the handwritten letter has a pinched but personable tone.
One of the throughlines in Matisse’s work was his love of water: swimming in it, rowing across it, and above all, painting it. He described the water in Nice as “the color of sapphires, of the peacock’s wing, of an Alpine glacier, and the kingfisher, melted together, and yet it is like none of these.”
When I saw the full lots, I knew reports of the death of the book had been greatly exaggerated.
Our marriage has changed the way the town has, stacking up dreams, failures, exciting beginnings, convergences of interest, losses, and new capacities.
Dipping into the freaky voices gathered by Jerome Rothenberg for new song lyrics, I found myself in bottomless waters.
This documentary lets Eco eternally stalk his prey of a desired volume in his beautifully utilitarian library. But most of the film exists to let him continue to express a fierce belief in print culture.
I watched Art Garfunkel smell the diner and think about walking away from it. Then he stood up, put a small pile of money on the table next to a white bowl with what appeared to be the dregs of pea soup, and prepared to walk away.