No Room For Dust

"The revenant keeps watch over the dead and the living. … Without injustices, the name of..."

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 22:54:36 -0500

“The revenant keeps watch
over the dead and the living.
…
Without injustices,
the name of justice
would mean what?”

- Heraclitus, fragment 123, fragment 60

"For such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or..."

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 11:04:49 -0500

“For such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; Yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves: For they see their own wit at hand, and other mens at a distance.”

- Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapter XIII

cheekychip: Arsenal fan Spike Lee hanging with Arsenal legend...

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 19:18:16 -0500

cheekychip:

Arsenal fan Spike Lee hanging with Arsenal legend Thierry Henry at a New York Knicks game

Black Milk — The Steve Dress

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 15:39:24 -0500

Black Milk — The Steve Dress:

Why of course you want to wear a dress emblazoned with Steve Buscemi’s face on it.

"The Rue de l’Hirondelle […] its clientele made up of anarchists, prowlers, students,..."

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 22:25:19 -0500

“The Rue de l’Hirondelle […] its clientele made up of anarchists, prowlers, students, oddballs, tarts, down-and-outs, regaling themselves on the cheap […] If there are places in the world, quarters reserved for human perversity, that surpass in ignominy these bordering on the Seine and stretching around Rue Mazarine, where are they?”

- Alexandre Privat d’Anglemont, Paris anecdote

LRB blog on the normalisation of WikiLeaks

Sat, 09 Jul 2011 10:27:20 -0500

LRB blog on the normalisation of WikiLeaks:

‘We’re going to fuck them all,’ Assange wrote in an email in January 2007, just after the site had been set up. ‘We’re going to crack the world open and let it flower into something new.’

This is not a reform project, nor should it be.

Essential summer listening: World Hood - Indigenous 808 (sonora...

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 14:19:00 -0500

Essential summer listening: World Hood - Indigenous 808 (sonora remix)

Eclectic Epiphytes and Electrophoretic Epigrams: The Kerguelen Cabbage

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 11:44:00 -0500

Eclectic Epiphytes and Electrophoretic Epigrams: The Kerguelen Cabbage:

Fascinating piece: “What will happen to the Kerguelen cabbage, this wondrous vegetable that saved the lives of so many sailors in centuries past? What have we done to Terra Australis?”

Fichte's Greatest Hits

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 18:59:21 -0600

“Nevertheless, the idea of an infinity to be thus completed floats as a vision before us, and is rooted in our innermost nature. We are obliged, as it enjoins us, to resolve the contradiction; though we cannot even think it possible of solution, and foresee that in no moment of an existence prolonged to all eternity will we ever be able to consider it possible. But this is just the mark in us that we are destined for eternity” (ENG 238; GER I, 270).

“The ultimate ground of all consciousness is an interaction of the self with itself, by way of a not-self that has to be regarded from different points of view. This is the circle from which the finite spirit cannot escape, and cannot with to escape, unless it is to disown reason and demand its own annihilation” (ENG 248; GER I, 282).

“We do not become aware of our own action, and are necessarily bound to assume that we have received from without what we have in fact ourselves produced by our own forces, and according to our own laws” (ENG 255; GER I, 290).

[Trans. Heath & Lachs, 1970]

Phoenix does an acoustic “1901” at the Eiffel Tower.

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 08:21:24 -0600

Phoenix does an acoustic “1901” at the Eiffel Tower.

Bon - Iver - “Blood Bank”

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 12:13:44 -0600

Bon - Iver - “Blood Bank”

The Mountain Goats - This Year

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:44:12 -0600

The Mountain Goats - This Year

One of my favorite Lifter Puller songs, Nassau Coliseum.

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:50:24 -0600

One of my favorite Lifter Puller songs, Nassau Coliseum.

(A) Philosopher's Lineage

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:18:00 -0500

Going backwards, through documents, in proper genealogical style…:

In Foucault’s essay “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” at the bottom of page 143 of the collection language, counter-memory, practice (ed. Brouchard), Foucault quotes Nietzsche as he writes, “It is now impossible to believe that ‘in the rending of the veil, truth remains truthful; we have lived long enough not to be taken in.’” This quote from Nietzsche is take from Nietzsche contra Wagner, and can be found on page 682 of Kaufmann’s The Portable Nietzsche (his alternate translation is: “We no longer believe that truth remains truth when the veils are withdrawn—we have lived enough not to believe this”). Nietzsche was making a veiled (har har) reference to Hegel and his Phenomenology of Spirit; on page 103 of the Miller translation, at the very end of the “Force and Understanding” section of the text, Hegel writes, “This curtain [of appearance] hanging before the inner world is therefore drawn away, and we have the inner being [the ‘I’] gazing into the inner world.” Hegel is here referencing Novalis’ novel, Die Lehrlinge zu Sais, which is translated as either The Apprentices of Sais or The Novices of Sais. In this text, Novalis writes (again, there are multiple differing translations of the quote), “One person succeeded. He lifted the veil of the goddess of Sais. And what did he find? Himself.” Hegel, in the quote from “Force and Understanding,” is making an argument against Kant’s epistemology and his phenomenal/noumenal distinction. Novalis is responding to a poem of Schiller’s called The Veiled Image of Sais, which also concerns the question of, and search for, knowledge and truth.

Le Mépris

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 16:05:00 -0500

Le Mépris

"Seul, inconnu, les dos courbé, les mains croisées, Triste, et le jour pour moi sera comme la nuit."

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 18:53:43 -0500

“Seul, inconnu, les dos courbé, les mains croisées,
Triste, et le jour pour moi sera comme la nuit.”

- “Demain, dès l’aube…” Victor Hugo

"…et m’aidaient à mieux comprendre la contradiction que c’est de chercher dans la réalité les..."

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:24:00 -0500

“…et m’aidaient à mieux comprendre la contradiction que c’est de chercher dans la réalité les tableaux de la mémoire, auxquels maquerait toujours le charme qui leur vient de la mémoire même et de n’être pas perçus par les sens. La réalité que j’avais connue n’existait plus. Il suffisait que Mme Swann n’arrivât pas toute pareille au même moment, pour que l’Avenue fût autre. Les lieux que nous avons connus n’appartiennent pas qu’au monde de l’espace où nous les situons pour plus de facilité. Ils n’étaient qu’une mince tranche au milieu d’impressions contiguës qui formaient notre vie d’alors ; le souvenir d’une certaine image n’est que le regret d’un certaine instant ; et les maisons, les routes, les avenues, sont fugitives, hélas, comme les années.”

- Du côte de chez Swann, Proust

"Who dares?” he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood near him — “who dares..."

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 17:39:26 -0500

“Who dares?” he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood near him — “who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? Seize him and unmask him — that we may know whom we have to hang at sunrise, from the battlements!
…
And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.”

- Edgar Allan Poe, “The Masque of the Red Death”

"There were moments when…you saw the intimation of a dream of love rising up out of death and..."

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 19:04:17 -0500

“There were moments when…you saw the intimation of a dream of love rising up out of death and this carnal body. And out of this worldwide festival of death, this ugly rutting fever that inflames the rainy evening sky all round - will love someday rise up out of this, too?”

- Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

I’m really loving this album by Rocketship right...

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 16:17:46 -0600

I’m really loving this album by Rocketship right now.

Rocketship - We’re Both Alone, from the A Certain Smile, A Certain Sadness LP,1996