Living Once Is Enough

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.”

― Robert Frost (Source: Goodreads)

https://twansphotos.tumblr.com/post/661332428800114688/silver-wings

Randomness

I found some stuff.

• Your body sometimes just needs deep rest.
• Amazing what you can find out from one photo online.
• I really like the articles at Web Development History. The latest one takes me back to the days when I was messing around with Netscape and Apache servers myself and using the Mosaic browser.
• Tardi’s walking.

Good Intentions

Life has it’s problems.

• Eliza Shaddad – Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood
• Patrick Blancos – Back to Black
• Amanda Marshall – Birmingham
• How To Destroy Angels – A Drowning
• JINJER – Wallflower
• Beck – Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometimes
• The Strokes – Why Are Sundays So Depressing
• FOALS – Neptune
• HEALTH x NINE INCH NAILS :: ISN’T EVERYONE
• Puscifer – Bedlamite
• Depeche Mode – It’s No Good
• The Lumineers – Sleep On The Floor
• Kodaline – High Hopes
• Seafret – Oceans
• Amber Run – I Found
• Dean Lewis – Waves
• Elbow – The Bones Of You
• Richard Ashcroft – They Don’t Own Me
• Stereophonics – Maybe Tomorrow
• Portishead – Roads

Gin and tonics, coming up.

Like this:

“If other people do not understand our behavior—so what? Their request that we must only do what they understand is an attempt to dictate to us. If this is being “asocial” or “irrational” in their eyes, so be it. Mostly they resent our freedom and our courage to be ourselves. We owe nobody an explanation or an accounting, as long as our acts do not hurt or infringe on them. How many lives have been ruined by this need to “explain,” which usually implies that the explanation be “understood,” i.e. approved. Let your deeds be judged, and from your deeds, your real intentions, but know that a free person owes an explanation only to himself—to his reason and his conscience—and to the few who may have a justified claim for explanation.”

― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being (Source: Goodreads)

The mourning of the growing of a flower

“There’s nothing to mourn about death any more than there is to mourn about the growing of a flower. What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don’t live up until their death. They don’t honor their own lives, they piss on their lives. They shit them away. Dumb fuckers. They concentrate too much on fucking, movies, money, family, fucking. Their minds are full of cotton. They swallow God without thinking, they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, they let others think for them. Their brains are stuffed with cotton. They look ugly, they talk ugly, they walk ugly. Play them the great music of the centuries and they can’t hear it. Most people’s deaths are a sham. There’s nothing left to die.”

― Charles Bukowski

Just going through the motions from birth to death is not living. Sometimes you need to kick and scream to wake yourself up, to feel it. And I can feel myself getting itchy again. (I almost typed a ‘like’-sentence there, but I hate ‘like’ with a vengeance, so, no.)

I want to ride the next big wave. Problem is, I don’t see it yet. There are ripples, but nothing substantial is underneath just yet. Sometimes I see something that excites me, great art, an awesome band, a blog with thought-provoking content, maybe some photography that really speaks to me, or just a great, creative idea. But the real taste is not there yet.

Unrest leading to (a) movement, leading to action. It doesn’t have to disrupt — an unsatisfying word these days anyway, since business and marketing had their way with it — as long as I am being swept up and carried off on the manifestation of some real, honest, great, gritty, dirty energy.

Oh well, maybe tomorrow.

Bet my brains

Music choices courtesy of my weird, cottony brain:

• Starcrawler – Bet My Brains
• Whale – I’ll Do Ya
• Skunk Anansie – Selling Jesus
• The Gossip – Standing in the Way of Control
• Garbage – Only Happy When It Rains
• Elastica – Stutter
• The Stranglers – No More Heroes
• Bob Marley – Exodus
• JINJER – On The Top
• Maximum the Hormone – 恋のスペルマ

Like this:

“What something is, depends more on when it is, than anything else.”

— Frank Zappa, Frank Zappa : A Pioneer of Future Music

All that jazz

Music is like a dream. One that I cannot hear.

― Ludwig van Beethoven

This post is all over the place. Like my mind is these days. But it is Friday and on Fridays, after a week of long hours, my love and I like to stay up late and make them count. Netflix and gin-and-tonics and salted peanuts. Filling up the room with evaporated electric liquid. And then, when the movie is done and the light comes up, we lay down our heads, knowing this weekend will be too short, too nice, too delicious and the coming week will be dreadful. Again.

“Well, it’s nice to die of alcoholism, it’s very glorious. But if you write dull shit, it doesn’t do any good what you die from… You see?“

In here

Blog posts that jumped up at me in my WordPress.com Reader:

• Spring To Summer
  An ode to spring (and summer) by Stephen Allen (AKA Stoic)
• beetleypete- Random Blogger Interviews
  Krish Mayani Dadlani interviewed Pete about his blog and blogging experiences.
• Past Imperfect – #366
  Brian Lageose again showing where a photograph can take him.
• Doh!
  Steve having a ‘doh!’ moment while he was looking into Heathcock Court in London.
• If I was a TV
  I love Michael Aiken’s way of looking at the world.

Out there

Stuff I caught floating around on the interwebs:

• What Does Gen Z Have Against Question Marks
  It might be the Gen-Xer in me, but I think she forgot a question mark at the end of that title? (Oh, and now I know to be on alert when my wife texts me: ‘k’…)
• The one where no one will read your book (and other truths about publishing)
  Damn, that’s depressing.
• The Literally Edition
  Language-ing about ‘literally’.

Soundtrack

Ivory ticklings:

• Erik Satie – Gnossienne No.1
• Chopin – Nocturne op.9 No.2
• Struggle for pleasure – Wim Mertens
• Beethoven – Moonlight Sonata
• Mischa Maisky plays Bach Cello Suite No.1 in G (full)
• Michael Nyman – Chasing Sheep is Best Left to Shepherds
• In The Mood For Love – Yumeji’s Theme
• F. Liszt – “Ständchen” Piano Transcriptions After Schubert – Khatia Buniatishvili
  Wait for the coin to drop…
• Arthur Jussen – Schubert Impromptus Opus 90 No.2+3
• The Cinematic Orchestra – ‘To Build A Home’
• Ryuichi Sakamoto – Forbidden Colours (Original)

Today

Thank you, Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins.

"Today is the tomorrow you were so worried about yesterday." https://t.co/LmLEeTvoMk

— Twan van Elk (@toonvanelk) June 4, 2021