Matt Niebuhr

examining the threshold at which ordinary visibility ends and perception begins

Arrepiante.

O que em mim vê não sabe o que há-de pensar

Apesar de trivial o momento é um misto
de tristeza e beleza, eu regresso a casa
para ir buscar uma cadeira. Sentar-me-ei
debaixo de uma árvore. Antes, porém,
fico a ver-me fechar as janelas
uma a uma, o que em mim é visto
pensa que ainda não é uma despedida.
O que em mim vê não sabe o que há-de
pensar. É uma criatura sem queda para
a troca de impressões, a palavra coragem
ainda continua a meter-lhe medo e encontra
beleza no gesto de um homem visto
de costas a fechar janelas e portas.

Helder Moura Pereira, Se as coisas não fossem o que são.

Somewhere i have never travelled

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

E.E. Cummings

In this world of silence, no truth exists

Tracings, 2009.

The only knowledge, wit or wisdom I have for now is that my paintings come from silence and a world of abandonment. In another world there is this wrestling and restless engagement with things such as aesthetics and truth in which I can sometimes aggressively articulate my experiences and carve them in stone as though unbreakable and, at the next turn, smash these tablets of truth with little regard for what, yesterday, was the law of belief. In this world of silence, no truth exists; there is the abandonment of power that truth manifestly becomes in that other world of dogma, ideology and aesthetic certainty. The silence becomes the painting, the painting comes from silence. It is the moment when painting is no longer an act of doing or making but of receiving. There is no ego shape here, no facilitative reply to aesthetic notions, whether historical or contemporary, there is only that desperate faith of the abandoned... and there is the discovery and rediscovery of 'Art' which is exhilarating.

Patrick Graham.

Bastard

A fotografia de Claudia Grass, à qual cheguei por dar capa a este álbum.

Enigmatic, unfinished, ambitious.

Although much of his assigned work was in color, he was never without a camera loaded with black and white film and a small box of extra rolls, which he used to capture what intrigued and fascinated him always: life in progress, people in their environments, enigmatic, unfinished, ambitious. His devotion to photography was lifelong and intense; he saw pictures everywhere. Taking these personal pictures kept his own course steady even as he worked, with equal devotion, on widely varying assignments which often bred new passions and fascinations, as evidenced in his involvement with the intricate beauties of technology. Some of these pictures here come from such assignments. He was there, too.

 “Where I was”, Ruth Hartmann a falar de Erich Hartmann.

Podemos ficar horas a falar sobre os deslumbrados.

10 Mile Stereo

Originalmente de "Teen Dream" (Sub Pop, 2010). Beach House.

Tear a moment from the days that carry us on forever
It can't be gone, we're still right here
It took so long, can't say we felt it all
Limbs parallel, we stood so long we fell
Love's like a pantheon, it carries on forever

Nada mais

"Uma pessoa que vai à procura de outra pessoa apenas porque compreendeu que a vida não tem nada mais importante que pedir a um ser humano. O livro chama-se Todos os Nomes. Não escritos, todos os nossos nomes estão lá. Os nomes dos vivos e os nomes dos mortos.

Termino. A voz que leu estas páginas quis ser o eco das vozes conjuntas das minhas personagens. Não tenho, a bem dizer, mais voz que a voz que elas tiverem. Perdoai-me se vos pareceu pouco isto que para mim é tudo."

Damnatio memoriae

The sense of the expression damnatio memoriae and of the sanction is to cancel every trace of the person from the life of Rome, as if he had never existed, in order to preserve the honour of the city; in a city that stressed the social appearance, respectability and the pride of being a true Roman as a fundamental requirement of the citizen, it was perhaps the most severe punishment.

Mais perfume.

- Parvo
a cada passo e eu, humilde, a escutar-te, pensando se soubesse dizer-te o que sinto, se pudesse abrir o peito para tu veres lá dentro, e os postais ilustrados, os pombinhos, os bambis, os naperons, as rolas, a tralha toda com que te afoguei ao princípio da crónica, tu, aproveitando uma pausa, a comunicares-me
- Não esperes por mim para jantar
pondo, à pressa, mais perfume, visto que a buzina de um automóvel te chama da rua, e o Jorge é suficientemente impulsivo para nos entrar casa dentro.

António Lobo Antunes, "Os caminhos do Senhor".

Lucky you.

Getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that - well, lucky you.

Philip Roth

I have lived my life on these moments.

A few times in my life I've had moments of absolute clarity, when for a few brief seconds the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think, and things seem so sharp and the world seems so fresh. I can never make these moments last. I cling to them, but like everything, they fade. I have lived my life on these moments. They pull me back to the present, and I realize that everything is exactly the way it was meant to be.

A Single Man, Tom Ford/David Scearce/Christopher Isherwood, 2009.

Steve Messer

Untitled, originally uploaded by Steeeve Messer.

"Untitled", as seen in j skilla's new project, Modern Geometry.

via Not Content.

I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

1

I celebrate myself;  
And what I assume you shall assume;  
For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you.  
  
I loafe and invite my Soul;  
I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass.
  
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes—the shelves are crowded with perfumes;  
I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it;  
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.  
  
The atmosphere is not a perfume—it has no taste of the distillation—it is odorless;  
It is for my mouth forever—I am in love with it;
I will go to the bank by the wood, and become undisguised and naked;  
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.  


Walt Whitman.  Leaves of Grass.

Há tantas coisas por fazer.

it may not always be so;and i say
that if your lips,which i have loved,should touch
another's,and your dear strong fingers clutch
his heart,as mine in time not fara away;
if on another's face your sweet hair lay
in such a silence as i know,or such
great writhing words as,uttering overmuch,
stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;

if this should be,i say if this should be
you of my heart,send me a little word;
that i may go unto him,and take his hands,
saying,Accept all happiness from me.
Then shall i turn my face,and hear one bird
sing terribly afar in the lost lands.


e.e. cummings

Pequeno léxico de palavras mal entendidas (primeira parte)

"Amara-a desde a infância até ao dia em que a acompanhara ao cemitério, e ainda continuava a amá-lá em recordações. Por isso pensava que a fidelidade é a virtude mais importante, que é a fidelidade que dá unidade à nossa vida, que, sem ela, se dispersaria em mil e uma impressões fugidias."

Milan Kundera, A Insustentável Leveza Do Ser.

No Second Troy

Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?

Yeats, Responsibilities and Other Poems.

Ternura de calafrio.

Devia morrer-se de outra maneira.
Transformarmo-nos em fumo, por exemplo.
Ou em nuvens.
Quando nos sentíssemos cansados, fartos do mesmo sol
a fingir de novo todas as manhãs, convocaríamos
os amigos mais íntimos com um cartão de convite
para o ritual do Grande Desfazer: "Fulano de tal comunica
a V. Exa. que vai transformar-se em nuvem hoje
às 9 horas. Traje de passeio".
E então, solenemente, com passos de reter tempo, fatos
escuros, olhos de lua de cerimônia, viríamos todos assistir
a despedida.
Apertos de mãos quentes. Ternura de calafrio.
"Adeus! Adeus!"
E, pouco a pouco, devagarinho, sem sofrimento,
numa lassidão de arrancar raízes...
(primeiro, os olhos... em seguida, os lábios... depois os cabelos... )
a carne, em vez de apodrecer, começaria a transfigurar-se
em fumo... tão leve... tão sutil... tão pòlen...
como aquela nuvem além (vêem?) — nesta tarde de outono
ainda tocada por um vento de lábios azuis...

José Gomes Ferreira

In the morning, in the winter shade

"Casimir Pulaski Day". Sufjan Stevens, Illinois (Asthmatic Kitty, 2005).

All the glory that the Lord has made
And the complications you could do without
When I kissed you on the mouth

Unmasking lust and loss

If I hadn’t documented her death, both the description of my state of mind and my declaration of love would have been incomplete. I found consolation in unmasking lust and loss, by staging a bitter confrontation between symbols. After Yoko’s death, I didn’t want to photograph anything but life – honestly. Yet every time I pressed the button, I ended up close to death, because to photograph is to stop time.

Nobuyoshi Araki, a propósito de Winter Journey, livro que reúne a documentação fotográfica dos últimos meses da sua mulher, Yoko, que morreu em 1990.

É assim.