Log24

From The Hollywood Reporter  today —

" Jeremy Irons' dry Alfred Pennyworth:
'One misses the days when one's biggest concerns
were exploding wind-up penguins.' "

See as well the today's 9 AM (ET) post and …

The author —

In memory of Doris Lessing and Clancy Sigal —

". . . along with [R. D.] Laing they formed 'a circle
of almost incestuous mutual influence . . . .' "

— Sam Roberts, The New York Times , July 21 obituary of Sigal

"Thus I would wish to emphasize that
our 'normal' 'adjusted' state is too often
the abdication of ecstasy,
the betrayal of our true potentialities,
that many of us are only too successful
in acquiring a false self
to adapt to false realities.

But let it stand.
This was the work of an old young man.
If I am older, I am now also younger."

— R. D. Laing, London, September 1964,
preface to the Pelican edition of 
The Divided Self: An Existential Study
in Sanity and Madness  (Penguin Books, 1965)
 

"My Back Pages," by Bob Dylan, Verse 3 —

Girls’ faces formed the forward path
From phony jealousy
To memorizing politics
Of ancient history
Flung down by corpse evangelists
Un-thought of, though, somehow

[Refrain]
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

— From an album released August 8, 1964

From Chapter 1 of R. D. Laing's The Politics of Experience —

"An activity has to be understood in terms of the experience
from which it emerges. These arabesques that mysteriously
embody mathematical truths only glimpsed by a very few —
how beautiful, how exquisite — no matter that they were
the threshing and thrashing of a drowning man.

We are here beyond all questions except those of being
and nonbeing, incarnation, birth, life and death.

Creation ex nihilo  has been pronounced impossible even for
God. But we are concerned with miracles. We must hear the
music of those Braque guitars (Lorca*)."

See also Christmas Day, 2009.

*  Update of Sunday afternoon: A search for the Lorca quote yields
   no result, but Cocteau wrote that "Mon rêve, en musique, serait
   d'entendre la musique des guitares de Picasso. "
   (Oeuvres complètes , Vol. 10, p. 107)

   See also Stevens + "Blue Guitar" in this journal.

 Best Wishes for a
C. S. Lewis
Christmas

 

Image of Lewis from Into the Wardrobe

“What on earth   is a concrete   universal?” — Robert M. Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance For one approach to an answer, click on the picture at left.

Update of 4:23 PM:

The Lewis link above deals with the separation of Heaven from Hell.  The emphasis is on Heaven.  A mysterious visitor to this website, “United States,” seems to be seeking equal time for Hell.  And so…

Music for R.D. Laing

thepiano

In honor of the birth in Scotland on this date in 1927 of R. D. Laing, author of The Facts of Life, this site's music is today taken from the classic film "The Piano."