Quotes

I used to think it was silly that Haynes, in the 1984 scenes, outlined a vague conspiracy about bland corporate rock and its complicity with the security state. Now I’m not so sure—not when the much-heralded future of the entertainment industry is algorithmically generated home broadband sweeteners masquerading as art, and the act of consumption is beginning to resemble another British dystopia about aesthetic conformity, the one about being immobilized in a chair and subjected to an unrelenting torrent of brain-bleaching Content. Seen from the vantage of the endless 2020, Velvet Goldmine comes back around to universality. It inspires you to be not just a consumer, but an aesthete, curator, explorer, and invests those identities with life-or-death urgency.

That’s Me!
Mark Asch on Velvet Goldmine
 (via alwaysalreadyangry)

I used to think it was silly that Haynes, in the 1984 scenes, outlined a vague conspiracy about bland corporate rock and its complicity with the security state. Now I’m not so sure—not when the much-heralded future of the entertainment industry is algorithmically generated home broadband sweeteners masquerading as art, and the act of consumption is beginning to resemble another British dystopia about aesthetic conformity, the one about being immobilized in a chair and subjected to an unrelenting torrent of brain-bleaching Content. Seen from the vantage of the endless 2020, Velvet Goldmine comes back around to universality. It inspires you to be not just a consumer, but an aesthete, curator, explorer, and invests those identities with life-or-death urgency.

That’s Me!
Mark Asch on Velvet Goldmine
 (via alwaysalreadyangry)

Toward the end of Gröning’s stay at the Grande Chartreuse, the monks asked him (in notes, probably) what he had learned from them. The question came as a surprise to Gröning, who had “drifted away from speech by then” that he hadn’t worked out his ideas in words.

Eventually, he said, “I realized that what I had actually learned was that it is possible to live very much without fear, because this is what they do. They live without fear. I wanted the audience to be able to share this.”

http://www.decentfilms.com/articles/groning

Toward the end of Gröning’s stay at the Grande Chartreuse, the monks asked him (in notes, probably) what he had learned from them. The question came as a surprise to Gröning, who had “drifted away from speech by then” that he hadn’t worked out his ideas in words.

Eventually, he said, “I realized that what I had actually learned was that it is possible to live very much without fear, because this is what they do. They live without fear. I wanted the audience to be able to share this.”

http://www.decentfilms.com/articles/groning

Tim Ferriss always seems to ask the best questions: What would this look like if it were easy? How will you know if you don’t experiment? What would less be like? The one that hit me the hardest, when I was maybe 25, was “What do you do with your money?” The answer was “Nothing, really.” Ok, so why try so hard to earn lots more of it?

https://ryanholiday.net/33-things/

Pet peeve time: for the contingent out there who sneer at heroes like Superman and Wonder Woman and Captain America, those icons who still, at their core, represent selfless sacrifice for the greater good, and who justify their contempt by saying, oh, it’s so unrealistic, no one would ever be so noble… grow up. Seriously. Cynicism is not maturity, do not mistake the one for the other. If you truly cannot accept a story where someone does the right thing because it’s the right thing to do, that says far more about who you are than these characters.

Greg Rucka (via unicornicopia)

Pet peeve time: for the contingent out there who sneer at heroes like Superman and Wonder Woman and Captain America, those icons who still, at their core, represent selfless sacrifice for the greater good, and who justify their contempt by saying, oh, it’s so unrealistic, no one would ever be so noble… grow up. Seriously. Cynicism is not maturity, do not mistake the one for the other. If you truly cannot accept a story where someone does the right thing because it’s the right thing to do, that says far more about who you are than these characters.

Greg Rucka (via unicornicopia)

In the spring of 1822 an employee in one of the world’s first offices – that of the East India Company in London – sat down to write a letter to a friend. If the man was excited to be working in a building that was revolutionary, or thrilled to be part of a novel institution which would transform the world in the centuries that followed, he showed little sign of it. “You don’t know how wearisome it is”, wrote Charles Lamb, “to breathe the air of four pent walls, without relief, day after day, all the golden hours of the day between ten and four.” His letter grew ever-less enthusiastic, as he wished for “a few years between the grave and the desk”. No matter, he concluded, “they are the same.”

https://www.1843magazine.com/features/death-of-the-office

In the spring of 1822 an employee in one of the world’s first offices – that of the East India Company in London – sat down to write a letter to a friend. If the man was excited to be working in a building that was revolutionary, or thrilled to be part of a novel institution which would transform the world in the centuries that followed, he showed little sign of it. “You don’t know how wearisome it is”, wrote Charles Lamb, “to breathe the air of four pent walls, without relief, day after day, all the golden hours of the day between ten and four.” His letter grew ever-less enthusiastic, as he wished for “a few years between the grave and the desk”. No matter, he concluded, “they are the same.”

https://www.1843magazine.com/features/death-of-the-office