No one spoke of picnics in English until 1748, when Lord Chesterfield used “pic-nic” to describe a casual mix of card-playing, drinking, and conversation. The word did not refer to an outdoor meal until 1800. But “pique-nique” had joined the French language far earlier, derived from the verb “piquer,” to pick at something, and “nique,” a trifle, a bagatelle, something of scant importance.
For forty years now, I have written on scraps, old looseleaf, and green-tinted steno notebooks (both sides). I did not want to be precious about my ideas or my scribbled rough drafts.
The change in film technology is another of those things, like the technology of warfare itself, that sometimes leave us agog, like British Army officers sitting atop camels in a desert and watching one of the first biplanes fly past.
I have watered this plant copiously, backed off watering, fed her miracles, scooted her huge pot inch by inch toward more light. I feel like an ardent suitor who cannot win my love’s heart.
Bringley’s gift is to make the scholarly approachable—and delightful. In that decade at the Met, he developed a method. Rather than hunt for some extraordinary characteristic highlighted by the experts, he does nothing, just stares, spending those first minutes in a work of art’s presence by absorbing all he can without attaching any initial judgment, and he refuses to worry about what the art-world elite think.
Anchor Steam was part of my first awareness, in the 1970s, that different traditions were at work elsewhere, and that people who might know such things believed those traditions and processes and products were superior to what mainstream corporations provided on a much bigger scale.
In some ways, we seem to want AI to replace us. Or at least to replace the people too foolish to fall in love with us or too impatient to adore our flaws.
“The Doctor” mocks identity politics even as it turns them against us, casting women as men and White actors as Black characters. After years of all of us choosing up sides, art proves the project impossible.
Travel, done with an open heart, stitches new connections. It is a way to not feel lonely.
Few of us know New York inside-out. That means we are all in this together, looking hard, following breadcrumbs and tips and our GPS. I inhale deeply and realize the city runs on coffee and cannabis.