This is an additional serving of Montaigne and an addendum to yesterday’s post regarding the book, How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, by Sarah Bakewell. A few more passages and thoughts from the book… On the relevance of Montaigne to our age and time: Some […]
Philosophy
- Philosophy
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Sidestepping the Sequence of Meaningless Events
i’m on the look out for other ways to be with the world since I’ve put myself on a Lenten program of no political reading or discussions. Too bleak. Too close to hopeless. So here’ a bit of advice on “attainable felicity” from the author of our greatest American novel, even after all these years, […]
- Philosophy
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Tinker Away
It is important to have a secret, a premonition of things unknown. It fills life with something impersonal, a numinosum. A man who has never experienced that has missed something important. He must sense that he lives in a world which in some respects is mysterious; that things happen and can be experienced which remain […]
- Art/Theory
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Irony and Meaning
Barnett Newman I’ve been having a lot of discussions lately about irony, particularly its role in art. Many of these are conversations I have been having with parts of myself, but some of them are with friends and cotravelers. This interest was piqued a few weeks ago when a good friend with an exceptionally developed […]
Something to Fasten Upon
Sarah McLachlan in 1998. Her 2010 Lilith Fair tour has had to cancel dates. Lady Gaga, whose influence is pervasive among many female pop singers. (Photo: Steve Granitz/WireImage—Getty Images; Andy Paradise/Associated Press) Sincerity. I knew it was beleaguered but who knew it was on life support? The Sunday Times‘ Arts & Leisure above-the-fold article is […]
Whole Body Seeing
Brooklyn Workshop Gallery: Paintings by Deborah Barlow and sculpture by Rina Peleg Beautiful imperfection: real beauty is rooted in reality. Give up the pursuit of perfection—visual perfection can be cold and unforgiving. Things yield their value at different rates. Enjoy things that aren’t obviously beautiful, or even a little clumsy, if they engage the senses […]
- cinema
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On Examing Life
The Thinkers: From left, Slavoj Zizek, Avital Ronell, Judith Butler and Cornel West discuss ideas in the documentary “Examined Life.” (Photo: Zeitgeist Films) The title of this post of course is making reference to the famous line from Plato about unexamined lives not being worth much. That phrase was also the inspiration for Astra Taylor’s […]
- Books
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Spellbound
My friend Thalassa recently lent me her copy of Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier, translated from the German. Our tastes are highly confluent, so I was ready and primed for something delicious. And indeed it is. This book cast a spell on me. I don’t know what other language I could use to […]
- Ideas
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Have it Your Way: Modern vs PoMo
How heartening it is when you find a passage that captures the essence of some of your internal floaters—those inchoate, imprecise concepts that circumambulate in the mind and never quite land on two feet. I had the settling sensation of an exhale that comes when order has been brought to a previously perceived chaos when […]
Family Wittgenstein
At the family estate, summer 1917. Paul Wittgenstein is second from left; Ludwig Wittgenstein is at right. Photo: Michael Nedo This photo of the Wittgenstein family (as in Ludwig) captures a certain something about Fin-de-Siècle Vienna, a period of time that perpetually fascinates and compels many of us all these years later. And then there […]