Geez, if it were that easy, I’d already know what the Cappy’s baby smelled like and have kissed his wife with embarassing effusion on both cheeks in person.
Hippo birdie, old friendoh and brotha from anotha motha. I hope it was full of everything you deserve. Just wish I could’ve been there to wish you happy birthday in person. It’s like, where is this button??
Long is the way
And hard, that out of Hell leads up to Light.
(John Milton. Paradise Lost, Book 2, 432-3.)
The afore-promised celebrity criticisms of the Farbenlehre.
“Wake up, Dr. S — there is science afoot!” via.
Goethe delivered in full measure what was promised by the title of his excellent work: data toward a theory of colour. They are important, complete, and significant data, rich material for a future theory of colour. He has not, however, undertaken to furnish the theory itself … but really postulates it as a phenomenon, and merely tells us how it originates, not what it is.
(Arthur Schopenhauer, Über das Sehn und die Farben/On Vision and Colors. 1810.)
Which fact we have already seen well-defended by my b’loved Werner H. so I will not dwell on Schopenhauer’s criticism other than to say I generally like the things he has to say on just about any subject and agree with him here as usual.
“One of the most important works.”
(Wassily Kandinsky, qtd. in Rowley, Allison. “Kandinskii’s theory of colour and Olesha’s Envy.” Canadian Slavonic Papers. September-December 2002.)
A Russian artist and one of the famous Blue Four, Kandinsky is the father of abstract painting and was an instrumental theorist and professor for the Bauhaus before the National Socialists destroyed a bunch of their compositions. Kandinsky taught the most basic design courses at Bauhaus and used Goethe’s color wheel in his avant-garde art theory lectures. Also, note the hotness. Girls Like a Boy Who Reads [scathing criticisms of Nazis and protests against the public destruction of his art which eventually lead him to flee to Paris ahead of persecution by said Nazis]!
“Farbenkreis zur Symbolisierung des Menschlichen Geistes und Seelenlebens,” Goethe, 1809. This is the aforementioned color wheel that art rebel hottie Wassily Kandinsky would use in lecture.
Can you lend me the Theory of Colours for a few weeks? It is an important work. His last things are insipid.
(Ludwig van Beethoven, Conversation-book, 1820.)
Love how he goes from wanting to read Goethe because he considers his work important to “His last things are insipid.” Man, Beethoven had such an attitude.
He was such a crazy deaf grump by the time he died. Amazing and bittersweetly comical that a creative genius was also so churlish and curmudgeonly — like he genuinely made other peoples’ lives hard despite bringing beautiful music in to our world. The generosity of his composition and fame in the wide world is so jarring in juxtaposition with his infliction of discomfort and temper on the people close to him. The complexity intrigues me and also amuses me somehow but makes me sad too. That reminds me: I need to plan an Immortal Beloved Movie Moment.
Shit, now I’ve given over most of the last entry on Theory of Colours to talking about Beethoven. What can you do. Thoughts happen.
Fin!
If we keep the eyes open in a totally dark place, a certain sense of privation is experienced. The organ is abandoned to itself; it retires into itself.
If we pass from a totally dark place to one illumined by the sun, we are dazzled.
(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Zur Farbenlehre/Theory of Colours, 1810 transl. Charles Eastlake. John Murray Publishing: 1840. pp. 3-5.)
The gold moth did not love him
So, gorgeous, she flew away.
But the gray moth circled the flame
Until the break of day.
And then, with wings like a dead desire,
She fell, fire-caught, into the flame.
— “Fire-caught,” Langston Hughes.
Et tu, Jane?
This is a really beautiful cover in three-part harmony. Even if you don’t normally listen to the Music Moments, give it a whirl, for reals.
Kina Grannis — I Will Follow You Into the Dark (Death Cab for Cutie cover)
All that uplifting, all-god’s-chillun-got-hands, tree-hugging hippie crap* to do with art and tunnels that I wrote about in today’s Liberated Negative Space entry made me think of this song, which is one of my favorite songs out there. I’ve posted the original before.
*I try to race and pick on myself before others can. It’s a hard-knock sort of a game. There really are no winners in it.
“I will follow you in to the dark.” That’s a beautiful sentiment. I think it’s exactly love, it’s exactly what we seek: that in the face of the greatest unknown, at the moment of deepest fear, we will not have to face death alone. That’s heavy. When I stop and deeply consider it, the magnitude of that idea takes my breath away.
Love of mine some day you will die
But I’ll be close behind
I’ll follow you into the dark
No blinding light or tunnels to gates of white
Just our hands clasped so tight
Waiting for the hint of a spark
If Heaven and Hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the NOs on their vacancy signs
If there’s no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I’ll follow you into the dark
In Catholic school as vicious as Roman rule
I got my knuckles bruised by a lady in black
And I held my tongue as she told me
“Son fear is the heart of love”
So I never went back
If Heaven and Hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the NOs on their vacancy signs
If there’s no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I’ll follow you into the dark
You and me have seen everything to see
From Bangkok to Calgary
And the soles of your shoes are all worn down
The time for sleep is now
It’s nothing to cry about
’cause we’ll hold each other soon
In the blackest of rooms
If Heaven and Hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the No’s on their vacancy signs
If there’s no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I’ll follow you into the dark
Then I’ll follow you into the dark
I was shocked by the number of covers of this song on the YouTube (in fact, here is a link to the shitloads of search returns). Check it out. Over 12,000 people have posted videos covering this song. Holy cannoli.
I think that speaks to what I just said about the universality of the theme, the fact that this song is about the essential thing that we are seeking in this life when we look for love. A partner, a person to love and be loved in return, someone to have our back and stand beside us and hold our hand when “our souls embark.” All these people are touched by this song and choose to cover it, and what’s more, they are probably each singing it with all their heart dedicated to a certain person they have in mind, and just that idea … is overwhelmingly beautiful.
Maybe I was wrong about being meant to be alone. A thing like this makes me think that it can’t possibly be that anyone is meant to be alone, can it? I need to think more about this.
By the way, please do visit Kina’s site and consider buying her new album, “Stairwells.” She is an excellent musician and a beautiful, soulful girl. I hope great things for her. In this song, which she recorded in 2007, she harmonizes with her friends(?), or relatives(?), Emi and Misa.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. The chain reaction of evil — hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars — must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation. (Strength to Love, 1963)
The Thought Experiment 