Your twitter archive
use force suddenly and never use it by increments. and persuade the 'other' that you might just go crazy, too.
Wed Jun 02 14:52:08 +0000 2010
diplomatic representation is not the papering over of differences, though this is sometimes a useful diplomatic technique.
Wed Jun 02 14:55:30 +0000 2010
the purpose of diplomatic representation is to avoid misunderstanding between nations.
Wed Jun 02 14:57:00 +0000 2010
bumper sticker, sighted on the upper west side: 'charlton heston is my president.'
Wed Jun 02 23:59:11 +0000 2010
britten on das lied: 'It is well past midnight & society dictates that I should stop playing the Abschied. Otherwise I might go on "ewig"'
Fri Jun 04 19:15:59 +0000 2010
britten/ds: 'It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness & of pain: of strength & freedom.'
Fri Jun 04 19:18:34 +0000 2010
britten/ds: 'the "pretty" colours of the orchestral palette are used to paint this picture of loneliness. there is nothing morbid about it.'
Fri Jun 04 19:21:25 +0000 2010
the same harmonic progressions that Wagner used to colour his essentially morbid love-scenes (his 'Liebes' is naturally followed by 'Tod')
Fri Jun 04 19:22:04 +0000 2010
are used by Mahler in Das Lied von der Erde to paint a serenity literally supernatural.
Fri Jun 04 19:22:27 +0000 2010
britten/ds: 'I cannot understand it - it passes over me like a tidal wave - and that matters not a jot either...'
Fri Jun 04 19:24:14 +0000 2010
'...because it goes on for ever, even if it is never performed again - that final chord is printed on the atmosphere.'
Fri Jun 04 19:24:49 +0000 2010
britten/ds: 'I can do no more than bask in its Heavenly light - & it is worth having lived to do that.' (letter; 29 June 1937; London)
Fri Jun 04 19:26:56 +0000 2010
'the public intellectual is an intellectual with a fax machine'
Sat Jun 05 00:56:08 +0000 2010
'i don't believe the telephone is a means for the acquisition of knowledge'
Sat Jun 05 00:57:46 +0000 2010
'in order to have a worldview, you need to have a view of the world. you have to think big, even if coarse'
Sat Jun 05 00:59:04 +0000 2010
'never write what u can speak, never speak what u can whisper, never whisper what u can nod, never nod what u can wink'
Sun Jun 06 18:10:02 +0000 2010
babysitting brother's kids: cartoon: 'look at all the stuff we don't need but could be buying!'
Sun Jun 06 21:53:31 +0000 2010
argument: for clarity, rather than agreement
Mon Jun 07 21:00:00 +0000 2010
blake: 'Houses of Commons and Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools; they seem to me to be something Else besides Human Life'
Tue Jun 08 16:43:37 +0000 2010
heard at a bar: 'a neocon is a liberal mugged by reality + a neoliberal is a liberal mugged by reality who won't press charges'
Thu Jun 17 17:55:02 +0000 2010
ready for some adorno?! teddie, from "mahler," mostly 'das lied':
Thu Jun 17 18:03:52 +0000 2010
'a poor yea-sayer. His voice cracks, like Nietzsche's, when he proclaims values...and makes music as if joy were already in the world.'
Thu Jun 17 18:04:07 +0000 2010
the illusion of happiness, up to then the vital element of all music, disperses.
Thu Jun 17 18:05:33 +0000 2010
Because happiness is sacred, the music no longer pretends that it already exists.
Thu Jun 17 18:05:46 +0000 2010
Nothing remains save the gratified relaxation of one who has nothing more to lose; to the affirmative people that amounts to lack of ethos.'
Thu Jun 17 18:07:31 +0000 2010
now, me: But surely 'ethos' is a constantly moving, ungrounded fiction, or, at the least, performance?
Thu Jun 17 18:08:08 +0000 2010
Life is an unreconciled dialectic - if not a hopeless aporia - a group of creative tensions.
Thu Jun 17 18:08:42 +0000 2010
One of the reasons Das Lied is so vital is because it can be understood - to use Barbara Johnson's words viz. feminism and literature -
Thu Jun 17 18:11:00 +0000 2010
'as a place where impasses can be kept and opened for examination'
Thu Jun 17 18:11:30 +0000 2010
'where questions can be guarded and not forced into a premature validation of the available paradigms'
Thu Jun 17 18:11:38 +0000 2010
Mahler 'set out to write exalted songs,' writes Teddie, 'and wrote Das Lied von der Erde.'
Thu Jun 17 18:12:09 +0000 2010
The fact that affirmation foundered again and again in his development - negative dialectics?! - is Mahler's triumph.
Thu Jun 17 18:12:30 +0000 2010
He refuted monumental decor. He does not 'fail' - 'permanent defeat,' claims Adorno, is 'the only one without shame - merely by failing.
Thu Jun 17 18:13:20 +0000 2010
the authenticity of Mahler's last works, which turn their backs on all fictions of salvation, could have been attained by no lesser risk
Thu Jun 17 18:14:27 +0000 2010
because Mahler shatters the spell of happy, affirmative illusion.'
Thu Jun 17 18:14:47 +0000 2010
Illusion? No. Consolation? Quite possibly. Das Lied von der Erde: The Song of the Earth! How fitting a title - for we have no other!
Thu Jun 17 18:15:24 +0000 2010
We have to do our best at it, despite the parade of horribles that we know. We can't give up on the world:
Thu Jun 17 18:15:47 +0000 2010
that would be the greatest irresponsibility.
Thu Jun 17 18:15:55 +0000 2010
In our failures we demonstrate the abiding claim that the dialectic of art-work and philosophy-life must remain unreconciled and negative.
Thu Jun 17 18:16:14 +0000 2010
How, precisely, Mahler accomplishes this I am not certain. Not through horns and trumpets and fanfares and ready tunes.
Thu Jun 17 18:16:28 +0000 2010
No; Mahler's corpus as a whole - to use Johnson's words - are not a 'predetermined set of works but a mode of culture work,
Thu Jun 17 18:16:52 +0000 2010
the work of giving-to-life those impossible contradictions that cannot yet be spoken.'
Thu Jun 17 18:17:04 +0000 2010
amazon suggests that my 'PayPhrase' for 'Express Checkout' be "diminished reputation"
Fri Jun 18 00:23:23 +0000 2010
'shall we then say goodnight and mean goodbye?'
Sat Jun 26 04:23:41 +0000 2010
instead of 'i believe,' 'i am persuaded...'
Sat Jun 26 04:24:35 +0000 2010
new suggestion from amazon re: 'Express Checkout' 'PayPhrase': "Academic Power" - you can't make this stuff up! - the new 'fortune cookie'?
Sat Jun 26 21:23:50 +0000 2010
latest 'PayPhrase' suggestion: "Shady Speculations." not as fun; but perhaps it should give me pause re: the 'appliance' i'm looking at?
Wed Jun 30 18:42:52 +0000 2010