And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

An extract from Part V of East Coker (1940), T.S. Eliot’s second of his Four Quartets. Photo taken by his wife Valerie—this and other photos from Eliot’s estate available to view here.

Still thinking about Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once: a strong anti-FOMO, anti-deconstructive-nihilist remonstrance. Through Yeoh’s character, Evelyn, we learn that to apprehend the absurd smallness of ourselves and the immeasurable granularity of the noisy infinite is not an equalizer or a devaluation of it all; but a high ceiling under which we can all continue to love, to play, and to seek the joyful specks of sense adhered to the mundane. ⦿⦿

During my personal geeking out about the film, I was happy to find these five promotional ‘verse posters shared by production company A24.

Keeping true to the stylistic influences of each ‘verse—from the Wong Kar-Waymond step-printing, to Kechiche with a side of ketchup—these posters, like the film, really take you [to preposterous, wonderfully-earnest] places. Mend your clay, and be kind out there.

In the seed of the city of the just, a malignant seed is hidden, in its turn: the certainty and pride of being in the right—and of being more just than many others who call themselves more just than the just. This seed ferments in bitterness, rivalry, resentment; and the natural desire of revenge on the unjust is coloured by a yearning to be in their place and to act as they do. Another unjust city, though different from the first, is digging out its space within the double sheath of the unjust and just.

From Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities (Chapter 9: Hidden Cities 5).

The painting, Spiral Transit, by Remedios Varo.

The mortal, intricate work of Edinburgh 3D illustrator, digital artist, & art director Billelis is truly something. Again and again, symbolism of the spiritual sublime collides with the blunt, austere archetypes of death and deterioration in his work, yet the intensity between never dilutes.

With each piece that drifts between the sacred and the irreverent, Billelis creates scenes of such elegant detail, that to myopically dismiss his work as simply macabre or dark or metal seems to permit so very much to be missed, if only in the masterly digital craftsmanship of these devils, saints, and scarabs. Every golden mandala and nimbus-fitted skull provides a new icon beckoning to some deep, existential awareness within each of us: that the beautiful Wholeness of human existence must inevitably include the inescapable deliquescence of the self. With corporeal decay knitted so tightly to such etherial beauty and ornament, Billelis’ works succeed as mementos both mori and vivere.

To witness and absorb this work is to live—and live we must, right now, for there is no doing nor reckoning nor knowledge nor wisdom [nor witnessing of art] in Sheol where you are going.

Sanctuary, photographed at the Grand Canyon circa 1910 by American poet, voyager, and photo-secessionist, Anne Brigman. As seen in her 1948 book, Songs of a Pagan, p. 28.

“Life is fantastic. I like life, man. Oh my god, people are complaining about it? First of all, you’re lucky enough to be alive, when you think about it. Your mother had to have sex with your father. Your grandparents had to have sex. Great-grandparents had to have sex. It’s lucky you’re alive, my god! And I’m so happy every day that I’m alive, because it’s just a fluke! There’s so many more people that never got to be alive, you know? And when people talk about it, I’m like, man, it’s the greatest gig in the world, being alive. You get to eat at Denny’s. Wear a hat. Whatever you want to do!”

Norm Macdonald during a 2006 interview on Last Call with Carson Daly. RIP.

“Our problem is that we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology, and it is terrifically dangerous. It is now approaching a point of crisis overall, and until we understand ourselves—until we answer those huge questions of philosophy that the philosophers abandoned…we are running a very dangerous course.”

E.O. Wilson, biologist and “father” of Sociobiology, regarding the real problem of humanity; as quoted during Looking Back Looking Forward, an event hosted on September 9, 2009 at Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre, which included an on-stage conversation between former academic rivals Wilson and Nobel-Prize-winning pioneer of the double-helix, molecular biologist James Watson.

Photo of Wilson in Puerto Rico by NOVA production manager, Jason Hendriksen during filming of the 2008 E.O. Wilson documentary, Lord of The Ants.

via Harvard Magazine

As COVID-19 and its ensuing lockdowns began to spread across North America last spring, Canadian potter and ceramics teacher Isabelle Bisnaire found wheel throwing to be a source of calm and focus. During this period of self-isolation, she created A Stone’s Throw, a series of work that appears to be a meditation on relationships and one’s seclusion from them. The series seems to contemplate fractures and emptiness absorbed in quarantine life and the healing and strength we find within our lonely selves, right when we might need it most, and the anticipated reunification with our loved ones.

Using a dark granite clay mix for that handsome color and grain, Bisnaire creates a striking, monotonal faux-repair effect similar to kintsugi for several of the pieces, where the wounds accumulated give the impression of being mended and closed, with grace not just intact but reinforced. The few lighter pieces in the series contrast with the dark granite wonderfully, and seem to bear weight of Bisnaire’s sculpted stones and pebbles with poise and hardiness—there is beauty found in the burden.

Despite the rough go our dear planet has had this past year, Bisnaire continues to run her Hamilton, Ontario pottery studio, Play With Clay; currently providing take-home pottery & clay kits for order and pickup while public health restrictions remain active in her area. She mentioned, in the Imgur post where I found her work, that she was considering opening an Etsy shop to sell her pieces, but as of writing this, no such shop yet exists.

A Stone’s Throw is a nudge for us all to continue to pull strength from within, and to wear our scars with all the aesthetic knack of Bisnaire’s beautiful ceramics.

Combining the romance of a candle with the utility of a flashlight, Wick is a lovely portable table light created by Graypants, a design firm straddling oceans with studios in both Seattle and Amsterdam.

The skill of Wick’s design is seen in how elegantly it makes the new-tech-in-antiquated-clothes leap without enkindling (haha) any impostor-averse gimmick cynicism in the brain. As a design piece that provides honest, useful function, it’s quite a successful leap, in my opinion. No sharks jumped. Wick maintains a classy, unobtrusive appearance—landing square on the sweet Schrödinger spot, where it isn’t a statement piece until you look—that allows for all the ambiance and mood yielded by candlelight, without the worry of any Miss Havisham mishaps.

Wick has three steady brightness levels—adjusted by touch controls at the neck—and a pulse mode, which creates a soft candle-like flicker. The lithium battery is rechargeable via the discreet USB-C port below the handle, and is said to last up to 115 hours (in pulse mode) on one charge.

With a body of plated aluminum and an acrylic enclosure for the 1W LED light source, Wick is offered in the original Brass seen above, as well as a Graphite model.

Belgium-based French artist Valentin Pavageau creates digital illustrations terrifically suffused with elements that appear plucked from 70s–80s-era publications and collaged with surreal environments and saccade-coaxing geometries.

His Instagram account looks to be a consistent way to follow his work as he builds it.

via Reddit