Happy Clouds, redux

Stuart Semple: HappyCloud. Soap + helium smiley faces released over London last Wednesday.

"I just wanted to make a piece of work that would cheer people up a bit. I've had enough of the doom and gloom in the air and I wanted to show something completely positive floating up to the sky. This was the most straight forward way I could think of to literally contribute something happy to the atmosphere. I'm hoping it might put a smile on a few people's faces as they go through their day. I'm also keen to help people remember that the success of British cultural industries is relatively new, the Tate itself wasn't there a decade ago. I believe these cultural industries have been hugely important in the re-juvination of parts of the city, and a very wholesome and important contributor to the economy. I know at times like this it's easy to make creativity a low priority but I want to show that on a very human level an artistic idea might be able to do something important even for a fleeting moment."

: posted on the awesome blog even cleveland

Distorting mirror

You imagine the carefully pruned, shaped thing that is presented to you is truth.
That is just what it isn't. The truth is improbable, the truth is fantastic;
it's in what you think is a distorting mirror that you see the truth. Jean Rhys

Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century A 1972 photo of a Georgian family picnicking near
a medieval monastery, part of a series taken in this retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.
Slideshow

howl

Luke Sharrett/The New York Times "I try not to let it get to me in any way. Try not to think about it. Say a prayer before I go in." - JAMES SONGER, 21, a coal miner, on dealing with the dangers of the job. Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb! Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovas! Moloch whose factories dream and choke in the fog! Moloch whose smokestacks and antennae crown the cities! Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind! from Howl, Allen Ginsberg :NY Times

Spring fever

“Why should the feelings of love experienced in a dream not be genuine? Are there not quite a few people in this world living in a dream?
The things that happen in a human life cannot all happen in a single lifetime...when we say something cannot happen rationally, how do we know that it might not be inevitable through the feeling of love?"

The Peony Pavilion

one moment

one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.

for Jane, Ill Seen Ill Said
image
Rilke