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“I think it’s terribly dangerous for an artist to fulfill other people’s expectations. If you feel safe in the area that you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being. Go a little bit out of your depth and when you don’t feel your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.”

— David Bowie

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”The wisdom of the journeyman is to work one day at a time and he always said that any job even if it took years was made up out of a day’s work. Nothing more. Nothing less… In the concept of a day’s work is rhythm and pace and wholeness.”

— Cormac McCarthy, THE STONEMASON

isolarii 6: ARCHIPELAGO

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Finished the sixth volume of isolarri, ARCHIPELAGO, featuring conversations between Éduoard Glissant and Hans Ulrich Obrist and this, from Glissant (on page 103 of ARCHIPELAGO), has been at the top of mind:

"... different landscapes gives us another idea of what the unity of a whole can be and how a whole can be considered as a series of ruptures and not as harmony of aligning forms. And, of course, this idea leads us to a new idea of how to tell a story." 

This "series of ruptures" being in line with how I think and how I work: all I'm doing in shifting to a single post here is lessening the space between "ruptures" and "landscapes" and making the whole more rupturous(?) and landscape-y. I have invented new words. Maybe.

You can subscribe to isolarii via their site for $15.00/book – and you should: it’s very, very much worth it; my complete reading list, from 2013 to the present, lives here.

ÁGUA VIVA

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I'm being antimelodic. I take pleasure in the difficult harmony of the harsh opposites. Where am I going? And the answer is: I'm going.
What beautiful music I can hear in the depths of me. It is made of geometric lines crossing in the air. It is chamber music. Chamber music has no melody. It is a way of expressing the silence. I am sending you chamber writing.
A shame that the word 'nerves' is related to painful vibrations, otherwise it would be a quartet of nerves. Dark strings that, when plucked, do not speak of 'other things,' they don't change the topic – they are, in and of themselves, they surrender just as they are, without lie or fantasy.