Se eu tivesse de ter uma obsessão

...disseste nove menos vinte no instante em que o impulso do ponteiro nove menos dezanove, não o traço grosso, um traço fininho, o relógio sem números, quatro traços fininhos entre dois traços grossos ou seja quarenta e oito traços fininhos e apenas doze grossos...

António Lobo Antunes, Eu hei-de amar uma pedra (Dom Quixote, 2004).

Seria o tempo, que as vezes me parece viscoso, só para nos lembrar como é bom quando não interessa para nada.

I met a man who wasn’t there

The Man Who Sold The World, sonhada por Bowie em 1970 e elogiada por Cobain em 1993.

E sobre as referência cruzadas em cultura popular, Antigonish de Hughes Mearns:

Yesterday, upon the stair,

I met a man who wasn’t there

He wasn’t there again today

I wish, I wish he’d go away...

When I came home last night at three

The man was waiting there for me

But when I looked around the hall

I couldn’t see him there at all!

Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more!

Go away, go away, and please don’t slam the door... (slam!)

Last night I saw upon the stair

A little man who wasn’t there

He wasn’t there again today

Oh, how I wish he’d go away

Oh, how I wish he’d go away

Los Angeles

Portrait of a City.

via A Continuous Lean

Romanian Rip

Even though a photographic document is suspect by nature, we often want to believe in it. The photographer is manipulated by this subject just as much as the subject manipulates him. By inserting myself in each image, I wanted to ask the question of the truth in the photographic image. The fluorescent orange of the shutter release, clearly visible, asserts my intrusion inside the image. I thus sign the making of the document and its origin.

At the same time, I try to merge into the image. By dressing up and behaving like the people photographed, I strive to erase our representations of nationalities and social backgrounds linked to dress codes. Strangely, no-one considered this approach as being odd and all said they felt more at ease in front of the camera when I was with them. Absent from the captions in which the other names betray their romanian, italian, serbian, hungarian, german, austrian or turkish origins of the people I photographed, I question my position and the imaginary barriers raised by men between them.

"Romanian Rip" por Rip Hopkins, via BOOOOOOOM!

The imaginary barriers raised by men between them.

A Most Peculiar Man

Simon & Garfunkel, Sounds of Silence (Columbia, 1966).

That's what Mrs. Riordan said and she should know;
She lived upstairs from him.

misplaced manhole covers

Misplaced manhole covers form part of a loose photographic study of the minutiae of our everyday surroundings, entitled 'As found'. 'As found' is a collection of photographs, taken by a number of contributors, documenting hiccups, adaptations, encounters and subversions in the street.

Goodbye Norma Jean

Though I never knew you at all
You had the grace to hold yourself
While those around you crawled

Nebraska

Bruce Springsteen, Nebraska (Columbia, 1982).

A versão american white trash de "Anel de Rubi".

The celebrity spokesperson for a line of jewelry from Chanel

I'm So Tired

The Beatles, The Beatles ("The White Album"); Apple/Parlophone, 1968.

Go, Soul, the body's guest,
Upon a thankless errand;
Fear not to touch the best;
The truth shall be thy warrant:
Go, since I needs must die,
And give the world the lie.

All that we can hope for

The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view, I think. All that we can hope for is to put some order into ourselves.

Willem de Kooning

Ghost in the machine

The "ghost in the machine" is British philosopher Gilbert Ryle's derogatory description of René Descartes' mind-body dualism. The phrase was introduced in Ryle's book The Concept of Mind (1949) to highlight the perceived absurdity of dualist systems like Descartes' where mental activity carries on in parallel to physical action, but where their means of interaction are unknown or, at best, speculative.

o interruptor

hoje quando estava a sair de casa olhei para o
relógio e percebi que devias estar p'ra chegar

e então deixei a luz da cozinha acesa porque é a
que gasta menos para que não encontrasses a casa às
escuras na chegada

mas depois pensei melhor

ao chegares vendo a luz acesa podias pensar
que eu estava em casa a fazer-te uma sandes de atum
ou um cachorro e ias ficar desiludida

porque eu estou a sair

e quando chegares já me fui

e vais sentir a mostarda ou a maionese no canto da
boca mas vai ser mentira

por isso para não te desiludir saio deixando atrás de
mim a casa escura

para não te magoar


João Negreiros, "a verdade dói e pode estar errada". Camões & Companhia, 2010.

Preferia

Um miúdo de doze anos matou-se porque não aguentava mais. Preferia uma florzinha de estufa, perdoa a idelicadeza.

via Plomb du Cantal

The Filfth and the Profundity

Tom Friedman
Untitled (blown-up detail)
1992
feces on a pedestal

Good art is like a good stripper, it flirts and reveals a lot but remains mysterious and evasive. Art provokes the need to possess it, know it, often defile or deface it but its elusive, flexible meaning only heightens its allure. No one wants a whiny, didactic, confessional stripper. And as Waters says, "Transcendence is a great thing, but I don't want it or expect it all the time."

Silent and present

"To be at peace means to be as much like the mountains as possible: silent and present. Vacant."

Don't Call It Night, Amos Oz

Don't Take My Sunshine Away

Sparklehorse, Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain (Astralwerks, 2006).

For a while there, I was really scared that when I technically died — which I guess I did for a few minutes — that the part of my brain that allowed me my ability to write songs would be damaged.

For a while there.

Pull me out of the aircrash, pull me out of the lake.

Isto é capaz de ser boa ideia.

Au Revoir Simone

David Black (que eu invejo pelo tempo passado com a Chan Marshall), via A Continuous Lean.