To be abstracted is to be at some distance from the material world. It is a form of local exaltation but also, sometime, of disorientation, even disturbance. Art at its most powerful can induce such a state, perhaps most potently. - Nancy Princenthal, New York art critique - Reductionism in Art and Brain Science page 185, Zettel 143
The New York Times Opinion Essay, Take a Bow. Madonna - by Mary Gabriel 8/15/2023, Zettel 141
Madonna is a cultural wrecking ball who has dared to be everything - performer, songwriter, producer, actor, director, children’s book author, muse - at a time when women were encouraged to stick to one lane. She has broken through social barriers, too, using her words and her work to confront the music industry, Hollywood, the Taliban, the Putin regime and the Vatican, to name just a few of her adversaries, over sexisum, misogyny, racism, homophobia, and hypocrisy. Because she is a woman and a popstar, critics generally dismiss her political statements as opportunistic grandstanding. But young people looking toward a future that seems closed to them see past that criticism. The novelist Sonich Kamal was introduced to Madonna’s music as a child while living in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. She said Madonna represented “pure, unadulterated, raw, sextual liberation” and hope: “hope that sexy girls did not necessarily die bad deaths, hope that sexy girls could rule the world. And do.” - The New York Times Opinion Essay, Take a Bow. Madonna - by Mary Gabriel 8/15/2023, Zettel 141
Dr. Akira Miyawaki, New York Times, Sunday 8/27/2023, Planting Tiny Forests and Yielding Big Benefits, by Cara Buckley, Zettel 145
The forest is the root of all life, it is the womb that revives our biological instincts, that deepens our intelligence and increases our sensitivity as human beings - Dr. Akira Miyawaki, New York Times, Sunday 8/27/2023, Planting Tiny Forests and Yielding Big Benefits, by Cara Buckley, Zettel 145
New York Times Arts, July 18, 2023. For Some Films, Go Big or Go Home, Many fans will be doing whatever it takes to see ‘Oppenheimer’ projected in IMAX 70 mm, by Marc Tracy, Zettel 131
“I have to believe I wouldn’t care about as much if it didn’t have an emotional effect,” (Christopher) Nolan said. “There’s a favorite tactic of studio executives, he added, “which is to say, Well, at the end of the day, isn’t it all about story? To which you say, Well, no, otherwise we would be distributing audio books or radio plays. In the last analysis, it is not all about story. It’s about the moving image, it’s about cinematic storytelling, and the greatest movies made could only be films” - New York Times Arts, July 18, 2023. For Some Films, Go Big or Go Home, Many fans will be doing whatever it takes to see ‘Oppenheimer’ projected in IMAX 70 mm, by Marc Tracy, Zettel 131
Chaz Firestone, cognitive scientist, Johns Hopkins University. The New York Times, July 18, 2023. Silence Is a ‘Sound’ that can be heard, by Bethany Brookshire, Zettel 130
… People perceive silence as its own type of “sound”, not just as a gap between noises…”silence is the experience of time passing…an auditory experience of pure time”...”if silence is “not really a sound, and yet it turns out that we can hear it, then evidently, hearing is about more than just sounds.” - Chaz Firestone, cognitive scientist, Johns Hopkins University. The New York Times, July 18, 2023. Silence Is a ‘Sound’ that can be heard, by Bethany Brookshire, Zettel 130
Daniel Lewis, The New York Times, Thursday, July 2023 on MILAN KUNDERA, 1929 - 2023
Milan Kundera was born on April 1, 1929, in Brno, in what is now the Czech Republic, the son of Milada Janosikova and Ludvik Kundera. His father, a noted concert pianist and and musicologist, taught him piano, and he considered a career in music before his interests shifted to literature, particularly French.
“From an early age ,” he told an interviewer for the literary journal Salmagundi in 1987, “I read Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Apollinaire, Breton, Cocteau, Bataille, Ionesco, and admired French surrealism.” - Daniel Lewis, The New York Times, Thursday, July 2023 on MILAN KUNDERA, 1929 - 2023
Daniel Lewis, The New York Times, Thursday, July 2023 on MILAN KUNDERA, 1929 - 2023
Mr. Kundera told The Paris Review in 1983: “My lifetime ambition has been to unite the utmost seriousness of question with utmost lightness of form. The combination of a frivolous form and a serious subject immediately unmasks the truth about our dramas (those that occur in our beds as well as those that we play out on the great stage of History) and their awful insignificance. We experience the unbearable lightness of being. “ - Daniel Lewis, The New York Times, Thursday, July 2023 on MILAN KUNDERA, 1929 - 2023