Tuesday, 21 August 2012

Negative Capabillity


"The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed."

Ernest Hemingway, author and journalist, Nobel laureate (1899-1961)

Monday, 20 August 2012

Invictus

 
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
  
William Ernest Henley (1888)
 

Saturday, 18 August 2012

A Night Like This - Smashing Pumpkins cover



Smashing Pumpkins - A Night Like This from m smith on Vimeo.

Say goodbye on a night like this
If it's the last thing we ever do
You never looked as lost as this
Sometimes it doesn't even look like you

It goes dark
It goes darker, still, please stay
But I watch you like I'm made of stone
As you walk away

I'm coming to find you if it takes me all night
A witch hunt for another girl
For always and ever is always for you
Your trust, the most gorgeously stupid thing I ever cut in the world

Say hello on a day like today
Say it everytime you move
The way that you look at me now
Makes me wish I was you

It goes deep
It goes deeper still this touch
And the smile and the shake of your head
And the smile and the shake of your head

I'm coming to find you if it takes me all night
Can't stand here like this anymore
For always and ever is always for you
I want it to be perfect like before

Oh, I want to change it all
Oh, I want to change

I'm coming to find you if it takes me all night
Can't stand here like this anymore
For always and ever is always for you
I want it to be perfect like before

Oh, I want to change it all
Oh, I want to change
Oh, I want to change it all
Oh, I want to change

Medellia of the Gray Skies - The Smashing Pumpkins - Live in Chicago



You're an empty promise, you're an easy chairYou're the Gods forces struck down somewhere
You're a secret noticed, you're a mystery skyYou're a wish floated up to the night
Medellia of my eyes, you're the emptiness of IYou're the reason that I writeAnd if you say you will, I will love you stillAnd if I could, I'd throw away this worldI'd dress you all in pearlsI'd give you what you wanted
You're all I notice in a crowded roomYour vacant motives unmoved, revealed

Medellia of my eyes, you're the emptiness of IYou’re the reason that I driveAnd if you say you will, I will love you stillAnd if I just could be anything for youJust anyone at allAnything that mattered, washed out
You’re the silly reasons in a goldfish laughYou're the agelss season, at rest at last. 

O-mission


"The epitaph that I would write for history would say: I conceal nothing. It is not enough not to lie. One should strive not to lie in a negative sense by remaining silent."

Leo Tolstoy, novelist and philosopher (1828-1910)

Monday, 13 August 2012

Amorph(e/o)us


“There is a gulf fixed between those who can sleep and those who cannot. It is one of the greatest divisions of the human race.”

Iris Murdoch, writer (1919-1999)

Sunday, 12 August 2012

Comme un hommme



"La grandeur d'un métier est peut-être, avant tout, d'unir les hommes : il n'est qu'un luxe véritable, et c'est celui des relations humaines."

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Terre des hommes (1939)

Je ne sais plus si j'ai déjà publié cette citation qui guide certains de mes choix depuis de nombreuses années. Toujours est-il qu'elle est revenue sur le tapis, une fois de plus, hier, et quelques jours avant aussi, qu'elle a résonné comme des cloches d'église, pour un ami comme pour moi, un ami qui s'est tenu comme un homme, avec une dignité qui me fit retirer mon chapeau alors, et qui plus tard me fit lever mon verre de bière, seul, pour porter un toast à la santé de ceux qui sont partis peut-être trop tôt parce qu'on n'avait pas eu le temps d'achever certaines phrases, et à la santé de ceux qui continuent de parler, et de marcher, avec ou sans moi, près ou loin de moi, mais qui sont là.
Mon ami, toi qui lis ces lignes, lis ce roman qui me hante, lis ces phrases dont presque toutes pourraient être des citations comme autant de choix de vie.

University of the Self


"The greatest university of all is a collection of books."

Thomas Carlyle, writer, essayist, teacher, historian (1795-1881)

Silly little details

  You said it was the way I looked at you played with your fingertips drowned in your eyes starving your skin you felt happiness again your ...