Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Books: Verisimilitude and veracity

Two excerpts from an article on Arts Journal by Jack Miles - The Da Vinci Coda: Retrospective Reflections on a Pop Culture Phenomenon

A related phenomenon, I would suggest, is the blurring in public discourse of verisimilitude and veracity. Comedian Stephen Colbert’s truthiness, a coinage intended to mock presidential rhetoric, was recently declared “The Word of the Year” by an association of semanticists. But truthiness is a fair synonym for verisimilitude, the “truthlikeness” that novelists have long cultivated in realistic fiction. What strikes me is how large an American political constituency seems fully prepared to accept presidential verisimilitude as a fair substitute for presidential veracity. This willingness to accept plausible official fiction where verified fact would once have been required seems to me to be of a piece with the widespread inclination, in the case of The Da Vinci Code, to read undisguised but only barely plausible historical fiction as settled fact. The same gullibility seems to operate in both cases.
....
Obviously, The Da Vinci Code is not literally about any of that. But the dream history at its center, the history that has attracted all the attention, is a story of how “we” once had something pretty wonderful and “they” took it away from us. In fact, we never had it, and they never took it; but at a time when real peril is mounting and when the line between history and fiction is progressively disappearing, the myth of a past suppression may easily enough made to stand in for the dream of a future restoration. That dream—whether encoded by accident or by design—may be the secret ingredient that has turned this ingenious novel into so gigantic a cultural phenomenon.

Monday, August 21, 2006

Art: Attention is vitality

A quote by Susan Sontag from an article about her in last Friday's NY Times by Holland Cotter - On Sontag: Essayist as Metaphor and Muse
“Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.”

Sunday, August 20, 2006

Fruit seller, B. Desai Road, Bombay. December 2005

Saturday, August 19, 2006

Quote: Talent

Talent is nothing but a prolonged period of attention and a shortened period of mental assimilation. - Konstantin Stanislavsky

Friday, August 18, 2006

Books: So you want to be a writer

A good excerpt from an Atlantic article: So You Want to be a Writer

Galbraith's first suggestion was to resist the fantasy that good writing can only be accomplished during moments of inspiration:
All writers know that on some golden mornings they are touched by the wand—are on intimate terms with poetry and cosmic truth. I have experienced those moments myself. Their lesson is simple: It's a total illusion. And the danger in the illusion is that you will wait for those moments. Such is the horror of having to face the typewriter that you will spend all your time waiting. I am persuaded that most writers, like most shoemakers, are about as good one day as the next (a point which Trollope made), hangovers apart. The difference is the result of euphoria, alcohol, or imagination. The meaning is that one had better go to his or her typewriter every morning and stay there regardless of the seeming result. It will be much the same.
He also emphasized the importance of revision. "Anyone who is not certifiably a Milton," he wrote, "had better assume that the first draft is a very primitive thing. The reason is simple: writing is difficult work."

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Art: Vigilance, self-awareness, self-criticism

A good article from the NY Times by Holland Cotter about a summer group show in Chelsea: At a Group Show in Chelsea, the Art Is Sharp but the Categories Blurry
Excerpt:
Ms. Backstrom’s contribution to this show is political in a very different way. Rather than address specific in-the-news issues, it poses skeptical questions about the very concept of group behavior, whether in the macrocosmic form of wars, politics movements and global markets, of which the art industry is one; or in the microcosmic form of artists’ communities, collaboratives and collectives, like those included in the show.
No group, she suggests, is beyond making a compromise. And Mr. Heitzler is clearly aware that his show keeps one foot in the commercial world at the same time that it is trying to feel out firm ground in an alternative sphere. The necessary ingredients are vigilance, self-awareness, self-criticism — resistance to the passivity that holds the present art world in its grip. Mr. Heitzler brings this message home to Chelsea. May it continue to be brought home in a hundred ways this fall.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Design: User experience publisher

A new publisher of books on user experience: Rosenfeld Media
"Founded in late 2005, Rosenfeld Media is a publishing house dedicated to developing short, practical, and useful books on user experience design. Our books will explain the design and research methods that web professionals need to make informed design decisions."

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Colaba Market, Bombay. July 2006

Monday, August 14, 2006

Music: New tunes - Kanye


Downloaded a bunch of Kanye West songs from iTunes. I love the soul/r&b samples - addictively sweet. I played Through the Wire constantly over the weekend.