via wordthecat…

Anne Briggs, heavyweight vocalist of the 60s/70s English folk revival sings an acapella rendition of ‘young tambling’, a song about a woman who is ravaged by a mysterious man in the woods and left pregnant. Later, as she ventures out again to the woods to pick a herb which will abort the baby, the man reappears and reveals he has been trapped in the wood by the vicious and capricious queen of elves. However, tonight being Halloween the elfin horde will ride out across the countryside. If the lady can pass a test then she can win the mysterious man’s freedom.

So whether you’re riding a bike or eating some steamed vegetables, you better keep your head down and be quiet about it, because here in America it’s a cardinal sin to offend the majority with your sensible behavior.

ORWELL VS. HUXLEY

This, then, is the spirit of the times. Formulaic music from the 1980s evokes not rage but comparisons to exhibitions at MOMA. Mayonnaise is sold in boutiques. Pretty much everything qualifies as a “culture,” and the members of a “culture” celebrate when someone appropriates their “culture” and sells it back to them. We live in a strange age of intellectual political correctness, where everything is brilliant and nothing is crap, and all creative expression no matter how derivative warrants the same degree of sycophantic fawning.

-BSNYC

月既不解飲。 The moon, alas, is no drinker of wine;

影徒隨我身。 Listless, my shadow creeps about at my side.

暫伴月將影。 Yet with the moon as friend and the shadow as slave

行樂須及春。 I must make merry before the Spring is spent.

我歌月徘徊。 To the songs I sing the moon flickers her beams;

我舞影零亂。 In the dance I weave my shadow tangles and breaks.

醒時同交歡。 While we were sober, three shared the fun;

醉後各分散。 Now we are drunk, each goes their way.

永結無情遊。 May we long share our eternal friendship,

相期邈雲漢。 And meet at last on the paradise.

The Clash of Generations

“Everything is already in art,” the painter gently demurs. “Like a big bowl of soup. Everything is in there already, and you stick your hand in and you find something for you.”

“There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes where life is not painful.”

-Fernando Pessoa

Be modern,

collectors, museums.

If you have old paintings,

do not despair.

Retain your memories

but detourn them

so that they correspond with your era.

Why reject the old

if one can modernize it

with a few strokes of the brush?

This casts a bit of contemporaneity

on your old culture.

Be up to date,

and distinguished

at the same time.

Painting is over.

You might as well finish it off.

Detourn.

Long live painting.