os sete samurais (1957) - Kurosawa

Lovis Corinth (1858-1925)

Magdalen with Pearls in her Hair  1919
Magdalena mit Perlenkette im Haar

por sugestão de um marcador de livros de 1997 da TateGallery.

"All Praise Be To God To Whom All Praise Is Due" John Coltrane

Jazz on a Summer's Day (1959) - o filme

"There is a parable on film of the changeover of power between jazz and rock and roll, in Jazz on a Summer’s Day — a hugely important film for aspiring rock musicians at the time, mostly because it featured Chuck Berry at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958, playing “Sweet Little Sixteen.” The film had Jimmy Giuffre, Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk, but Mick and I went to see the man. That black coat. He was brought on stage — a very bold move by someone — with Jo Jones on drums, a jazz great.  Jo Jones was, among others, Count Basie’s drummer. I think it was Chuck’s proudest moment, when he got up there. It’s not a particularly good version of “Sweet Little Sixteen,” but it was the attitude of the cats behind him, solid against the way he looked and the way he was moving. They were laughing at him. They were trying to fuck him up. Jo Jones was raising his drumstick after every few beats and grinning as if he were in play school. Chuck knew he was working against the odds. And he wasn’t really doing very well, when you listen to it, but he carried it. He had a band behind him that wanted to toss him, but he still carried the day. Jo Jones blew it, right there. Instead of a knife in the back, he could have given him the shit. But Chuck forced his way through."

Life (Keith Richards and James Fox (Contributor)) - Highlight Loc. 1643-46 

Love Streams - John Cassavetes

So Long Marianne - Bill Callahan

"Quem é contra o suicídio assistido e a eutanásia tem de admitir que há pessoas que, diante do sofrimento físico e da perspectiva de não sobreviverem desligadas de uma máquina, querem pôr fim à vida.

Gostaria de contribuir para que, no meu país, a indefinição que rodeia este assunto terminasse. A actual situação leva a que os que desejam suicidar-se, por motivos compreensíveis, se defrontem com dificuldades inúteis. Note-se que o suicídio, outrora tido como crime, é hoje aceite pelo Código Penal. É aliás o único acto em que alguém que participa num gesto legal é considerado cúmplice de um crime. No fundo, aqueles que precisam de ajuda para se suicidar não estão a pedir mais do que um direito concedido a toda a gente. Uma democracia laica, como é o caso de Portugal, deve respeitar os sentimentos que a fé religiosa faz brotar na alma dos crentes, mas não pode autorizar que seja ela, a fé, a ditar a formulação das leis. Os católicos têm o direito de se abster de actos que consideram pecaminosos, mas não podem impor aos outros os seus valores. (76)

De acordo com J. S. Mill, nenhuma questão, moral ou empírica, pode ser resolvida em absoluto, o que nos obriga a admitir que as nossas respostas deverão ser temporárias, pelo que temos de aceitar a sua revisão. A verdade, ou mais correctamente, a «maior» verdade - uma vez que, segundo ele, a Verdade nunca poderá ser atingida - surge do conflito entre as opiniões falsas e as verdadeiras (ou, seguindo-o, as mais falsas e as mais verdadeiras). Isto leva-o a defender que nunca se deve suprimir uma opinião, por mais chocante que seja, porque, se o fizermos, nunca chegaremos à mais justa. Mais do que noutros campos, é na moral que se torna necessário adoptar uma atitude humilde. (...)

É provável que morra nos próximos dez, quinze anos. Tenho filhos e netos, amei e fui amada, escrevi livros, ouvi música e viajei. Em princípio, poderia dar-me por satisfeita, o que infelizmente não me faz encarar a morte com placidez. Como Montaigne afirmou, com o tempo, o dilema Vida versus Morte vai-se transformando, num outro, Velhice versus Morte. Sei que as minhas células foram morrendo, as minhas articulações se tornaram rígidas e até o meu crânio diminuiu, mas nada disto conta quando se trata de pensar no fim. Se amanhã um médico me disser que sofro de uma doença incurável, terei um ataque de coração, o que, convenhamos, resolveria o problema. Mas, se isso não acontecer, quero ter a lei do meu lado." (80)

Maria Filomena Mónica, A Morte, FFMS, 2011.

Maria Filomena Mónica (MFM) é uma mulher que admiro. Aprecio a sua frontalidade, a sua sinceridade e o seu sentido de justiça. Identifico-me com ela quando diz que é liberal, anglo-saxónica e de esquerda por não ser de direita. 

Acontece que o livrinho que ela escreveu sobre o tema da morte assistida e da eutanásia está muito bem escrito. Coisa que, embora possa parecer fácil, não o é. Em poucas páginas, num tom descontraído e, muitas vezes, pessoal, é-nos dada uma visão cuidada das principais posições a ter em conta no debate sobre o complexo problema da eutanásia. Em Portugal são raros os ensaios sobre temas éticos que resultam bem. Recordo um outro texto bem intencionado, no caso sobre o aborto, escrito por Miguel Oliveira da Silva e intitulado Sete Teses Sobre o Aborto (Caminho, 2005). Apesar de esclarecedor nas questões médicas relacionadas com o aborto, acaba por resultar num texto confuso, de leitura arrastada e, ainda que não seja esse o seu propósito, pouco recomendável para ser trabalhado em aulas de ética. O contrário daquilo que se passa com o livro de MFM. Lê-se num ápice, é de uma clareza exemplar e é muito recomendável para ser lido por alunos de ética aplicada.

(LFB)

Master Song - Emily Barker & The Red Clay Halo, from the album The Songs of Leonard Cohen Covered.

Ophelia, John E. Millais (1829-1896)

 

Por sugestão de Hélia Correia, hoje no Câmara Clara.

Saímos de casa para dar conta de que o mundo é sofrimento, tristeza, dor e morte!

Escola caverna

As escolas são cada vez mais como a caverna de Platão. Janelas fechadas, cortinas corridas e Powerpoints projectados. Se aceitarmos a analogia do sol/ conhecimento então estamos cada vez mais na escuridão/ignorância e adoramos as sombras projectadas. Acender a luz, abrir a janela e receber a luz do sol, ou até mesmo querer sair da sala, provoca dor e qualquer movimento nessa direcção merece reprovação imediata dos espectadores. Agrilhoados mas felizes.
É assustador pensar que todos os dias, à mesma hora e nos mesmos locais, milhares de crianças são lançadas na caverna da ignorância.

A imagem foi retirada daqui.

NY, NY

Nada como um bom prisma para libertar os olhos. (DO)

The Chomsky Reader

"There are things that I resonate to when I read, but I have a feeling that my feelings and attitudes were largely formed prior to reading literature. In fact, I’ve been always resistant consciously to allowing literature to influence my beliefs and attitudes with regard to society and history.

Loc. 324-26 

If I think back about my experience, there’s a dark spot there. That’s what schooling generally is, I suppose. It’s a period of regimentation and control, part of which involves direct indoctrination, providing a system of false beliefs. But more importantly, I think, is the manner and style of preventing and blocking independent and creative thinking and imposing hierarchies and competitiveness and the need to excel, not in the sense of doing as well as you can, but doing better than the next person. Schools vary, of course, but I think that those features are commonplace. I know that they’re not necessary, because, for example, the school that I went to as a child wasn’t like that at all.

Loc. 361-66

I think schools could be run quite differently. That would be very important, but I really don’t think that any society based on authoritarian hierarchic institutions would tolerate such a school system for very long. As Sam Bowles and Herb Gintis have pointed out, it might be tolerated for the elite, because they would have to learn how to think and create and so on, but not for the mass of the population.

Loc. 366-69

I was planning to drop out to pursue my own interests, which were then largely political. This was 1947, and I had just turned eighteen. I was deeply interested, as I had been for some years, in radical politics with an anarchist or left-wing (anti-Leninist) Marxist flavor, and even more deeply involved in Zionist affairs and activities—or what was then called “Zionist,” though the same ideas and concerns are now called “anti-Zionist.” I was interested in socialist, binationalist options for Palestine, and in the kibbutzim and the whole cooperative labor system that had developed in the Jewish settlement there (the Yishuv), but had never been able to become close to the Zionist youth groups that shared these interests because they were either Stalinist or Trotskyite and I had always been strongly anti-Bolshevik. We should bear in mind that in the latter stages of the Depression, when I was growing up, and even in subsequent years to an extent, these were very lively issues.

Loc. 379-86

I was very strongly opposed to the idea of a Jewish state back in 1947–48. I felt sure that the socialist institutions of the Yishuv—the pre-state Jewish settlement in Palestine—would not survive the state system, as they would become integrated into a sort of state management and that would destroy the aspects of the Yishuv that I found most attractive.

Loc. 423-26

I didn’t have any affiliation to any group, the Zionist left or elsewhere. Partly it was that I’m not much of a “joiner,” I guess. Furthermore, every organization that I knew of, on the left at least, was Leninist, either Stalinist or Trotskyite. I was always very anti-Leninist, and I simply didn’t know of any group at all that shared my views. This was true of the Zionist left, and of much of the American left at the time, as far as I knew. This was the early forties that we’re talking about. Quite frankly I didn’t see any significant difference between the Trotskyites and the Stalinists, except that the Trotskyites had lost.

Loc. 442-47

The Jewish working-class culture in New York was very unusual. It was highly intellectual, very poor; a lot of people had no jobs at all and others lived in slums and so on. But it was a rich and lively intellectual culture: Freud, Marx, the Budapest String Quartet, literature, and so forth, That was, I think, the most influential intellectual culture during my early teens."

Loc. 462-65

Nunca me revi nas teorias políticas de Noam Chomsky. Depois de ler a entrevista aqui citada fiquei a perceber melhor porquê. LFB

Teenagers

"The record wormed its way into the top twenty, and suddenly, in a matter of a week or so, we’d been transformed into pop stars. This is very difficult with a bunch of guys that are really like “get outta here,” you know, “fuck off.” And suddenly they’re dressing us up in dogtooth-check fucking suits and we’re rushed along on the tide. It was like a tsunami. One minute, hey, you wanted to make a record, you’ve made a record and it’s in the goddamn top twenty, and now you’ve got to do Thank Your Lucky Stars. TV you’d never thought about. We were propelled into show business. Because we were so anti-showbiz, it was the cold shoulder to us, enough already. But then we realized that we did have to make certain concessions.

Loc. 1923-28

We don’t want to be some fucking ersatz Beatles. Shit, we’ve worked this hard to be a very, very good blues band. But the money’s better, and suddenly with the size of the audience, like it or not, you’re no longer just a blues band, you’re now what they’re going to call a pop band, which we despised.

Loc. 2006-8 

I’d say, we never finished a show. The only question was how it would end, with a riot, with the cops breaking it up, with too many medical cases, and how the hell to get out of there. The biggest part of the day was planning the in and the out. The actual gig you didn’t even get to know much about. It was just mayhem. We came there to listen to the audience! Nothing like a good ten, fifteen minutes of pubescent female shrieking to cover up all your mistakes. Or three thousand teenage chicks throwing themselves at you. Or being carried out on stretchers. All the bouffants awry, skirts up to their waists, sweating, red, eyes rolling. That’s the spirit, girl. That’s the way we like ’em. On the set list, for what it was worth, we had “Not Fade Away,” “Walking the Dog,” “Around and Around,” “I’m a King Bee.”

Loc. 2017-23

We used to play “Popeye the Sailor Man” some nights, and the audience didn’t know any different because they couldn’t hear us. So they weren’t reacting to the music. The beat maybe, because you’d always hear the drums, just the rhythm, but the rest of it, no, you couldn’t hear the voices, you couldn’t hear the guitars, totally out of the question. What they were reacting to was being in this enclosed space with us—this illusion, me, Mick and Brian. The music might be the trigger, but the bullet, nobody knows what that is. Usually it was harmless, for them, though not always for us. Amongst the many thousands a few did get hurt, and a few died. Some chick third balcony up flung herself off and severely hurt the person she landed on underneath, and she herself broke her neck and died. Now and again shit happened. But the limp and fainted bodies going by us after the first ten minutes of playing, that happened every night. Or sometimes they’d stack them up on the side of the stage because there were so many of them. It was like the western front. And it got nasty in the provinces—new territory for us.

 Loc. 2030-37

Hamilton in Scotland, just outside of Glasgow. They put a chicken wire fence in front of us because of the sharpened pennies and beer bottles they flung at us—the guys that didn’t like the chicks screaming at us. They had dogs parading inside the wire. The wire mesh was quite common in certain areas, especially around Glasgow at that time.

Loc. 2037-40 

“Very good show. Not a dry seat in the house.”

 Loc. 2046

The ’50s chicks being brought up all very jolly hockey sticks, and then somewhere there seemed to be a moment when they just decided they wanted to let themselves go. The opportunity arose for them to do that, and who’s going to stop them? It was all dripping with sexual lust, though they didn’t know what to do about it. But suddenly you’re on the end of it. It’s a frenzy. Once it’s let out, it’s an incredible force. You stood as much chance in a fucking river full of piranhas. They were beyond what they wanted to be. They’d lost themselves. These chicks were coming out there, bleeding, clothes torn off, pissed panties, and you took that for granted every night. That was the gig. It could have been anybody, quite honestly. They didn’t give a shit that I was trying to be a blues player.

Loc. 2048-53

One minute no chick in the world. No fucking way, and they’re going la la la la la. And the next they’re sniffing around. And you’re going wow, when I changed from Old Spice to Habit Rouge, things definitely got better. So what is it they want? Fame? The money? Or is it for real? And of course when you’ve not had much chance with beautiful women, you start to get suspicious. I’ve been saved by chicks more times than by guys. Sometimes just that little hug and kiss and nothing else happens. Just keep me warm for the night, just hold on to each other when times are hard, times are rough. And I’d say, “Fuck, why are you bothering with me when you know I’m an asshole and I’ll be gone tomorrow?” “I don’t know. I guess you’re worth it.” “Well, I’m not going to argue.”

Loc. 2058-64

The first time I encountered that was with these little English chicks up in the north, on that first tour. You end up, after the show, at a pub or the bar of the hotel, and suddenly you’re in the room with some very sweet chick who’s going to Sheffield University and studying sociology who decides to be really nice to you. “I thought you were a smart chick. I’m a guitar player. I’m just going through town.” “Yeah, but I like you.” Liking is sometimes better than loving.

Loc. 2064-67 

By the late ’50s, teenagers were a targeted new market, an advertising windup. “Teenager” comes from advertising; it’s quite cold-blooded. Calling them teenagers created a whole thing amongst teenagers themselves, a self-consciousness. It created a market not just for clothes and cosmetics, but also for music and literature and everything else; it put that age group in a separate bag. And there was an explosion, a big hatch of pubescents around that time. Beatlemania and Stone mania. These were chicks that were just dying for something else. Four or five skinny blokes provided the outlet, but they would have found it somewhere else.

Loc. 2067-72

The power of the teenage females of thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, when they’re in a gang, has never left me. They nearly killed me. I was never more in fear for my life than I was from teenage girls. The ones that choked me, tore me to shreds, if you got caught in a frenzied crowd of them—it’s hard to express how frightening they could be. You’d rather be in a trench fighting the enemy than to be faced with this unstoppable, killer wave of lust and desire, or whatever it is—it’s unknown even to them. The cops are running away, and you’re faced with this savagery of unleashed emotions.

Loc. 2072-76

I think it was Middlesbrough. And I couldn’t get in the car. It was an Austin Princess, and I’m trying to get in the car and these bitches are ripping me apart. The problem is if they get their hands on you, they don’t know what to do with you. They nearly strangled me with a necklace, one grabbed one side of it, the other grabbed the other, and they’re going, “Keith, Keith,” and meanwhile they’re choking me. I get hold of the handle and it comes off in my hand, and the car goes zooming off, and I’m left with this goddamn handle in my hand. I got left in the lurch that day. The driver panicked. The rest of the guys had gotten in the car, and he just wasn’t going to stick around any longer. So I was left in this pack of female hyenas. Next thing, I woke up in this back alley stage door entrance, because the cops had obviously moved everyone on. I’d passed out, I’d suffocated, they were all over me. What are you going to do with me now you’ve got me?

Loc. 2077-83

Keith Richards and James Fox (Contributor), Life, kindle.

black motherfuckers

"And we didn’t want to make money. We despised money, we despised cleanliness, we just wanted to be black motherfuckers. Fortunately we got plucked out of that. But that was the school; that’s where the band was born.

Jimmy Reed was a very big model for us. That was always two-guitar stuff. Almost a study in monotony in many ways, unless you got in there. But then Jimmy Reed had something like twenty hits in the charts with basically the same song. He had two tempos. But he understood the magic of repetition, of monotony, transforming itself to become this sort of hypnotic, trancelike thing.

Minimalism has a certain charm. You say, that’s a bit monotonous, but by the time it’s finished, you’re wishing it hadn’t. There’s nothing bad about monotony; everyone’s got to live with it."

Keith Richards and James Fox (Contributor), Life, kindle.

Cyclops, Odilon Redon

 Por sugestão de Bolaño, 2666, "A parte dos críticos".

Ortografia

A palavra «ata» para referir uma acta é uma palavra muito feita.

E sabiam que Angola e Moçambique não assinaram o acordo?

E como ler as palavras  folheto, amuleto, esqueleto?

quem sou eu?

"(...) Agora os cientistas querem conduzir um teste final.

Querem duplicar um ser humano e escolheram-nos para essa honra. Se concordarmos, será feita uma cópia nossa que terá as nossas memórias, crenças, desejos e personalidade. Ela acreditará que somos nós e ninguém - nem mesmo os nossos amigos e familiares mais próximos - será capaz de notar a diferença. Para todos os efeitos práticos, ela será nós. Há apenas um senão: não podemos ter dois nós por aí, pelo que, depois de o procedimento estar concluído, o «eu» original será destruído e o novo «eu» continuará a viver como antes. Pagar-nos-ão um milhão de euros pelo incómodo.

Aceitaríamos a proposta? (...)

(Rachels, J., Problemas da Filosofia, Gradiva, p. 94)

Ícaro

Para quem gosta de comer comida americana, também pode ver aqui.

Se não mudamos por razões éticas pode ser que mudemos pela nossa saúde, enquanto a tivermos.

NOSFERATU

2081

a música e a existência de Deus

"Se eu alguma vez morrer, queira Deus que não, que seja este o meu epitáfio:

A ÚNICA PROVA DA EXISTÊNCIA DE DEUS 

DE QUE ELE PRECISAVA 

ERA A MÚSICA

(...)

A música faz quase toda a gente gostar mais da vida do que seria possível sem ela. Até as bandas militares, embora eu seja um pacifista, conseguem sempre animar-me. Eu gosto realmente de Strauss e de Mozart  e disso tudo, mas a dádiva inestimável que os afro-americanos deram ao mundo quando ainda eram escravos foi uma dádiva  tão grande que é hoje praticamente a única razão pela qual muitos estrangeiros ainda gostam de nós, pelo menos um bocadinho. Esse remédio específico para a epidemia mundial da depressão é uma dádiva chamada blues."

(Kurt Vonnegut, Um Homem sem Pátria, 76-77)

A propósito de muitas outras coisas e do filme  2081. Uma adaptação do conto "Harrison Bergeron" de Vonnegut. 

todos os sons do universo

"Se tentássemos escutar todos os sons do universo de uma só vez isso seria ensurdecedor. Todos os múltiplos significados se anulariam mutuamente. Ouviríamos o caos do ruído branco em vez da única verdade escondida de um universo racional. Isto é em tudo semelhante àquilo que aconteceria se tentássemos ver todas as cores do mundo de uma só vez. Pareceria uma coisa com sentido, seríamos levados a averiguar qual era esse sentido, mas enlouqueceríamos durante a busca. Porque, quando é universal, é ensurdecedor, é um caos; e embora este caos seja a natureza derradeira do universo, nós só podemos sondá-lo olhando de uma perspectiva de cada vez."

Um mundo iluminado, de H. Dreyfus e S. D. Kelly (194)

A queda

"Dear Doktor Professor Heidegger, I should like to know what you mean by the expression "the fall into the quotidian". When did this fall occur? Where were we standing when it happened?"

Saul Bellow, Herzog.

La vida es sueño, Calderon de la Barca

Damon Horowitz: Filosofia na prisão

cartazes dos artistas de Terezin

 Copiado daqui.