This sentence from the Rovi music review of Madonna’s first album contains a wonderful final phrase:
And that’s the hallmark of dance-pop: every element blends together into an intoxicating sound, where the hooks and rhythms are so hooky, the shallowness is something to celebrate.
And there it is. I tend to think that the shallowness we celebrate is the shallowness that offers us escape from who we currently are.
It’s been a fairly productive few weeks, both socially and with the art projects. Here are some highlights:
This has been another fantastic week.
There are several projects running right now. I’ve been really careful to design them in a way that I can keep current on all of them while still, you know, getting out a few times a week. Thank god for the books on personal organization I read last year.
As one dear friend recently opined,
“Keep this fucking thing up. Don’t be like blogging one minute and then dating some [example of the type of person I've mistakenly dated before] the next. This shit is too good to lag. You have a duty to America, bitch.”
So here’s the latest architecture of current projects:
That’s it for now. Thanks for tuning in and for all of your support in emails.
On Friday, I launched an ad campaign for a project of mine to introduce it to the public. In less than 48 hours, the campaign has generated over 175,000 impressions, over 240 followers on Facebook (none of which are my friends yet), and some great comments. There’s an active discussion around the new brand that’s spirited, passionate, and with exactly the crowd I hoped for.
Thanks to everyone who made the first 48 hours so successful. It feels good to build something again.
I’m pleased to say that this week I was able to finish several exciting projects — and get a few others close to launch. Here’s a quick recap of the week:
I’d also like to thank all the people who made the week great: Koo & Anna for a night of jawdropping hilarity, Aristotle for tons of bourbon and conversation over Korean, Grza for his normal panache, Karen & Noah for the pizza and hospitality, the Polens for clearing the palate and reinstating the old tribe, and Miss Christina for a very feisty night at Beauty and Essex.
I read this from Yeats last night and loved it:
HER TRIUMPH
I did the dragon’s will until you came
Because I had fancied love a casual
Improvisation, or a settled game
That followed if I let the kerchief fall:
Those deeds were best that gave the minute wings
And heavenly music if they gave it wit;
And then you stood among the dragon rings.
I mocked, being crazy, but you mastered it
And broke the chain and set my ankles free,
Saint George or else a pagan Perseus;
And now we stare astonished at the sea,
And a miraculous strange bird shrieks at us.
I spent two life-altering semesters in classes with Kenneth Koch, who has since passed on. Last week, I found my notebook from those classes, which is filled not with notes, but with quotes. He could barely speak without seeming to mean, well, everything.
Here is a reprinting of many of the quotes — feel free to return to these from time to time, as I do.
Kenneth Koch Quotes
“Beauty can’t be separated from youth. Even Helen. They probably could have avoided that whole war if she’d have been over 45.”
“Some of the most interesting effects in poetry come from the ability to speed up, then slow down time.”
“There’s a pleasure in being the source of someone’s sublime thoughts.”
“Very few poets with any kind of talent write just to say something that”s already been said. You write to discover your secret knowledge.”
“By ‘talking the new morality’, he’s referring to free love. And she’s thinking of putting that new morality into practice.”
“If you want to be quick, sometimes you have to be obscure. If I say, “Emily was mean to me’, you might wonder who Emily is, but really, who cares? It’s much quicker than, ‘My next door neighbor Emily, of whom I’m quite fond….’”
“I love this little phrase ‘japanese paper napkin’. It’s a little bit of something just right.”
“The advantage of youth is being able to be lazy and enjoy it.”
“One realizes what the dog really should be doing, and, by analogy, what we probably really should be doing.”
“No one would want to wager their life on what ‘slipper green’ means.”
“When I was younger, I sent some of my poetry to Stevens. He wrote me back with a short note that said ‘I enjoy the freedom of your poetry, but I don’t think that you celebrate that freedom enough.’ “
“Understanding, you see, is a type of happiness.”
“With little charcoal eyes? I don’t think so.”
– on a bad, overly literal interpretation of The Snowman
“Well, I like the idea, but I don’t know if it will sustain me until lunch.”
“I like the thrill of evil in this poem.”
– Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
“We are born into separation, and from that comes a music. The poem is a thinking vigil: watching for an idea about what is obscure and dark.”
“Think of marriages and funerals. It’s odd how words make an event.”
“Why buy nice China? Why learn to cook? I don’t know. I kinda think it gets us close to something. Paradoxically, we never really get there, but it’s fun being close.”
“The computer was backed up. What? Oh, I don’t know what computers do….”
“There’s this other concern one has with the sun.”
“Why is it we get excited when something looks like something else? Mistaking one thing for another is a glimpse of order that slips away.”
“It sounds like one might be caught on the blade of an enormous lawnmower, yet it doesn’t sound cluttered…”
– on a part of Le Monocle
As Koch was ruminating on Stevens, we all heard a strange sound in the front of the classroom that resembled a metal clack, which Koch likened to a bullet being accepted into a chamber:
Koch: Does someone have me covered?
TA: I’m sorry. I was trying to open a can of soda quietly.
Koch: Who tries to do that? You can’t do that. Does a cherry have no pit? Does a baby not cry?
“Why not just destroy Nantucket? Williams would say, ‘Because of this moment.’”
“As soon as things get too legato, they’re false.”
“I like the idea of getting dressed up to go to a poem.”
“People tend to look wonderful when they’re absorbed.”
“Everyone, really, loves violence.”
“Suppose you’re looking at the face of someone who gives you delight and despair. What are you going to write about? A nose? Teeth? Some ears? How do you keep that intensity? Art is basically making that intensity more accessible.”
“Take my word for it.”
– To a very amateur student disputing his interpretation of a poem
“It’s like a canteen of childhood happiness that one carries around.”
“People are sentimental around children because they’re threatened by them.”
“I presume there wasn’t much of a courtship.”
“Do lovers get more out of the night?”
“That longing seems to Rilke to be important, to be some part of the truth.”
“I like the way you opened the poem: it’s a bit like being dragged into a dark room and being punched in the stomach.”
“There’s a certain lack of quality…..everyplace.”
“Pleasure should be your guide in eating and art.”
Seth Miguel last night after my advice to him:
I know, you’re right. I pointed out the same kind of thing to a student of mine the other day. The disease is always fear, but we only ever treat the symptoms.
What a pleasure to regularly hang out with friends who spit such things out in casual conversation.
Sitting on a couch in Room and Board with Shortlist on Saturday, I tried to explain why most of Room and Board (while cool) does not excite me. I did rather poorly explaining this. In the end, it has nothing to do with Room and Board, which I remain fond of.
I’ve thought about it since, and it comes down to something very simple. When I look at most people’s furniture/clothes/apartment, I can see their tribe but I can’t see their personality.
Our tribes — the already-existing lifestyles that we adopt from outside because we stumble upon them and love them — are truly important. Tribe membership is an integral part of the modern self. If you like the Yankees or Rolex or mid-century modern furniture or you have a whole bookshelf of Kawabata, I get it. I know your tribe. But I don’t know your personality and too often we confuse a mish-mash of bought objects with our uniqueness, when in actuality there’s nothing unique of us in that mish-mash at all. There are only parts of the external world you have bought and called your own.
For example, if I walk into your home and you have an abstract expressionist painting in a highly modern living room, I understand your tribe. But if you have an Edward Piatt wood-stain print based on a personal photograph of you playing guitar in ecstasy on stage at Piano’s, I know a little something about who you are. There’s a difference.
Not everything in your life needs to be a beacon of your uniqueness. I’ve learned (the hard way) that an excessive focus on expressing one’s unique self is, um, not healthy. It comes from being so emphatic about one’s own coherence that one can’t let go or be seen as complex or flawed. I do understand that.
But we now live in an age where these personalized objects — that actually suit us much better and embody who we really are — are as affordable and easy to obtain as the mass-produced “I’m in this tribe” goods. These personalized objects come from a place of creation rather than consumption, and they are rooted in the person you are, not simply the semiotics of membership or consumption.
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