Nina Paley

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I've been meaning to post this for some time. Banksy, an underground guerilla artist, has replaced Hilton's CD with his own remixes and has given them titles such as Why am I Famous?, What Have I Done? and What Am I For? Check out the rest of the information here.

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Quotes:

It's easier to be disconnected than connected. I've got a huge hallelujah for all the people who're connected, that's great. But I can't do that. -- Bob Dylan

I will tell you something about stories.

They aren't just entertainment.

Don't be fooled.

They are all we have.

Leslie Marmon Silko

For K

The Painter
John Ashbery

Sitting between the sea and the buildings
He enjoyed painting the sea's portrait.
But just as children imagine a prayer
Is merely silence, he expected his subject
To rush up the sand, and, seizing a brush,
Plaster its own portrait on the canvas.
So there was never any paint on his canvas
Until the people who lived in the buildings
Put him to work: "Try using the brush
As a means to an end. Select, for a portrait,
Something less angry and large, and more subject
To a painter's moods, or, perhaps, to a prayer."

How could he explain to them his prayer
That nature, not art, might usurp the canvas?
He chose his wife for a new subject,
Making her vast, like ruined buildings,
As if forgetting itself, the portrait
Had expressed itself without a brush.

Slightly encouraged, he dipped his brush
In the sea, murmuring a heartfelt prayer:
"My soul, when I paint this next portrait
Let it be you who wrecks the canvas."
The news spread like wildfire through the building
He had gone back to the sea for his subject.

Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!
Too exhausted even to lift his brush,
He provoked some artists leaning from the buildings
To malicious mirth: "We haven't a prayer
Now, of putting ourselves on canvas,
Or getting the sea to sit for a portrait!"

Others declared it a self-portrait.
Finally all indications of a subject
Began to fade, leaving the canvas
Perfectly white. He put down the brush.

At once a howl, that was also a prayer,
Arose from the overcrowded buildings.
They tossed him, the portrait, from the tallest of the buildings;
And the sea devoured the canvas and the brush
As though his subject had decided to remain a prayer.

Someone asked me this question today:

If afterglow had a scent, what would it smell like?

Like the first day of summer - when everything around you smells like the sun, raw and new all at the same time.

something borrowed, something blue

Sister Golden Hair
America

Well, I keep on thinkin' 'bout you, Sister Golden Hair surprise.
And I just can't live without you; can't you see it in my eyes?
I been one poor correspondent, and I been too, too hard to find.
But it doesn't mean you ain't been on my mind.

Will you meet me in the middle, will you meet me in the air?
Will you love me just a little, just enough to show you care?
Well I tried to fake it, I don't mind sayin', I just can't make it.

I'll be Back
Beatles

You know if you break my heart I'll go
But I'll be back again
'Cause I told you once before goodbye
But I came back again

I love you so
I'm the one who wants you
Yes, I'm the one who wants you, oh ho, oh ho, oh

You could find better things to do
Than to break my heart again
This time I will try to show that I'm
Not trying to pretend

I thought that you would realize
That if I ran away from you
That you would want me too
But I got a big surprise Oh ho, oh ho, oh

You could find better things to do
Than to break my heart again
This time I will try to show that I'm
Not trying to pretend

I wanna go but I hate to leave you,
You know I hate to leave you , oh ho, oh ho, oh
You, if you break my heart I'll go
But I'll be back again

forever young

happy birthday!

to what ifs

Just walking around
John Ashbery

What name do I have for you?
Certainly there is not a name for you
In the sense that the stars have names
That somehow fit them. Just walking around,

An object of curiosity to some,
But you are too preoccupied
By the secret smudge in the back of your soul
To say much and wander around,

Smiling to yourself and others.
It gets to be kind of lonely
But at the same time off-putting.
Counterproductive, as you realize once again

That the longest way is the most efficient way,
The one that looped among islands, and
You always seemed to be traveling in a circle.
And now that the end is near

The segments of the trip swing open like an orange.
There is light in there and mystery and food.
Come see it.
Come not for me but it.
But if I am still there, grant that we may see each other.

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from avs, today.