Eid Mubarak!
Eid Mubarak!
The American people have spoken – and we have heard them. Yes, indeed, there is a ‘new sheriff in town.’ Which has made it a very different ‘town’ — one that some of us no longer wish to visit. It is no longer obligatory. Thank you for your friendship and continued support. Let’s not give up hope for better times.
— András Schiff (via Alex Ross)
I imagine the Tesla protests are so much more effective than the social media exoduses in large part because their impact is seen and felt more widely and directly. In the end, leaving a platform or service for any reason other than one’s preference isn’t particularly helpful for the anti-Trump/Musk cause. I’m still glad I deleted my Substack account and deactivated or deleted my X and Meta accounts, but I’m not sure it accomplished anything.
The United States has long bought into the idea that freedom is endless expansion. But slouching across land simply because it is there uplifts neither the land nor the people on it.
Looking at the past, I see, if I may oversimplify the picture, a mixture of failures and achievements. The failures were due to well-meaning but shortsighted thinking, to a pedestrian ideology; the achievements were due to a magnanimity of spirit, to the heaven in the heart.
Abraham Joshua Heschel, “Existence and Celebration”
Church isn’t a showcase for saints, it’s a hospital for sinners.
Black youth, A Time for Burning
Manhattan, New York City
I appreciate the thought behind the spending boycott tomorrow but urge shoppers instead to spend at non-corporate businesses. I’m a small-business owner myself and we can’t afford a day of no customers. Hopefully, some people already have this in mind. Amazon and the like shouldn’t get any of your money anyway. every day might be a boycott day where they’re concerned.
The word “devotion,” as I am using it, need not refer to the embodiment of a specific religious form. Rather, it is the opening or the interruption that allows us to experience what is hidden, and to accept with our hearts our given situation.”
— Nathaniel Dorsky, [Devotional Cinema]
It’s been nearly impossible to write anything here. I say nearly but of course I mean impossible. The last few months — and more so the last few weeks — have left me baffled and stunned, despairing and frightened. My usual complaints against social media and the like seem to be both confirmed and irrelevant. Even my repeated use of both and or or or else don’t present sufficient range to join the commentary. I am not articulate in my anger, not eloquent or concise in my fear. And there are plenty of people out there who are suited to addressing these matters with passion and authority and they are a source of fleeting comfort and inspiration. I can’t keep pace with up-to-the-minute news in its form or content or temperament. I’m getting most of my news from print editions of the publications I read (The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, The New York Review of Books) and prefer the pace. I definitely don’t have a point here except that I feel I should crack the seal and post something, let anyone wondering know that I’m very much still out here, wishing you peace and progress.
Brooklyn, NY
How to make art:
Manhattan, NYC
Voicemail from the library is always good news.
Brooklyn, NY
The more I think about songs, the more mysterious they become. They stand in our minds as spiritual histories of certain times; they represent in their lyrics and lines of melody wars and other disasters, moral process, the fruits of experience, and, like prayers, the consolations beyond loss. Peoples are brought into being by them. They are a resource both for the loyalists defending their country and the revolutionists overthrowing it. Yet they are such short and linear things. Little sale tags on life. It is essential for their effect that they not go on and on. Not only their single-mindedness but their brevity makes them instantly accessible as no other form is.
The smartphone is what you get when the architecture of media collapses. It’s a black hole full of light: information supercompressed but radiant. In its singularity, it might be described as the first postmedia medium. Its circuitry dissolves difference, renders all content equal and equally disposable. Media becomes medium.
Thinking about the difference between knowing how to do something and knowing how it’s done.
‘President Biden Is Bowing Out After One Term. He’s Not the First.’ 🔗 Chris Cameron / nytimes.com
‘We’re All Trying to Find the Guy Who Did This’ Charlie Warzel / theatlantic.com
That Zuckerberg should look out over his kingdom and see it as “out of touch” isn’t a criticism of “woke” Democrats or a regulation-crazy government: It’s a criticism of the way he himself capitulates.
BrooklynVegan.com
My some-of-my-favorite-records-from-2024 list is live at BrooklynVegan. Thanks again to the editors for inviting me to take part.
Queens, New York, 2023
Brooklyn, NY
Sit down. Be yourself. Be prepared. Be attentive. Defy the voices. Be the thing you want to be. Write. Be playful. Be reckless. Remember that you are uniquely designed for the idea that is moving toward you. You are good enough. The idea is about to arrive.
Nick Cave