urban_paranoia

Damning God and the state, work and leisure, home and family, sex and play, the audience and itself, the music briefly made it possible to experience all those things as if they were not natural facts but ideological constructs: things that had been made and therefore could be altered, or done away with altogether. It became possible to see those things as bad jokes, and for the music to come forth as a better joke. The music came forth as a no that became a yes, then a no again, then again a yes: nothing is true except our conviction that the world we are asked to accept is false. If nothing was true, everything was possible. Lipstick Traces Greil Marcus.
With an inked brush he marked everything with its name: table, chair, clock, door, wall, bed, pan. He went to the corral and marked the animals and plants: cow, goat, pig, hen, cassava, caladium, banana. Little by little, studying the infinite possibilities of a loss of memory, he realized that the day might come when things would be recognized by their inscriptions but that no one would remember their use. Then he was more explicit. The sign that he hung on the neck of the cow was an exemplary proof of the way in which the inhabitants of Macondo were prepared to fight against loss of memory: This is the cow. She must be milked every morning so that she will produce milk, and the milk must be boiled in order to be mixed with coffee to make coffee and milk. Thus they went on living in a reality that was slipping away, momentarily captured by words, but which would escape irremediably when they forgot the values of the written letters.
One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez
In a minute, in a second, he thought. The ascent stopped. And stone among the stones, he returned in the joy of his heart to the truth of the motionless worlds.
A Happy Death Albert Camus.
There is a light, blown out by the wind.
There is an inn, which a drunkard leaves in the afternoon.
There is a vineyard, burned and black with holes full of spiders.
There is a room, whitewashed with milk.
The madman has died.
Psalm Georg Trakl
"Won't do. Sorry. I've remembered what I am.
Found the bits they tucked away in the slots for Shakespeare and Thackeray and Blake".
Mona Lisa Overdrive William Gibson
It's like you fail to make the connection
You know how vital it is
Or when something slips through your fingers
You know how precious it is
Well you reach the point where you know
It's only your second skin
Second Skin The Chameleons
"Oh, this won't take a minute. I'm the official Senses Taker, and I must have some information before I can take your senses. Now, if you'll just tell me when you were born, where you were born, why you were born, how old you are now, how old you were then, how old you'll be in a little while, your mother's name, your father's name, your aunt's name, your uncle's name, your cousin's name, where you live, how long you've lived there, the schools you've attended, the schools you haven't attended, your hobbies, your telephone number, your shoe size, shirt size, collar size, hat size, and the names and addresses of six people who can verify all this information, we'll get started."
The Phantom Tollbooth Norton Juster
I've been waiting for a guide to come and take me by the hand
Could these sensations make me feel the pleasures of a normal man?
These sensations barely interest me for another day
I've got the spirit, lose the feeling, take the shock away.
Disorder Joy Division
1 August 1942. I spent the whole morning painting round the bottom of one of the Nissen huts which face onto the road and I got up to stretch my back at the moment when a boy was passing down the road on his bicycle. There was nothing else moving in sight at the moment and I watched him pass the short length of the street, approaching, receding, and finally disappear round the corner. I experienced what I can only describe as the reality of the situation: of becoming absorbed in, and finally identified with, the passage of that cyclist. I was aware simultaneously of his independence and his basic similarity to myself: of his strangeness and the fact of non-recognition and the fact that I alone of all living people was observing him at that moment. I was aware of a purpose before him and an impulse behind him which had combined to set him in motion. I was aware of his existence subjectively in the strain and flexing of his muscles, the hardness of the saddle and the coolness of the handlebars: objectively as a figure in movement against the row of stationary houses: aesthetically as the pattern of his limbs against the geometrical framework of his bicycle. I was aware of his existence in time – about ten seconds, and in space, about fifty yards. If one could sustain the welded sensations of that complex moment throughout the time necessary for painting, one might succeed in painting the subject of a boy on a bicycle.
Journals Keith Vaughan
Sous les pavés, la plage!
Anonymous graffiti Paris 1968
"...and as the meaning of all things shone through their shapes, many ideas and events which had seemed of the utmost importance dwindled not to insignificance, for nothing could be insignificant now, but to the same size which other ideas and events, once denied any importance, now attained.” Thus, such shining giants of our brain as science, art or religion fell out of the familiar scheme of classification, and joining hands, were mixed and joyfully levelled. Thus, a cherry stone and it’s tiny shadow which lay on the painted wood of a tired bench, or a bit of torn paper, or any such trifle out of millions and millions of trifles grew to a wonderful size.
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight Vladimir Nabokov
"Fear is the most elegant weapon. Your hands are never messy. Threatening bodily harm is crude. Work instead on minds and beliefs. Play insecurities like a piano. Be creative in approach. Force anxiety to excruciating levels or gently undermine the public confidence. Panic drives human herds over cliffs; an alternative is terror-induced immobilization. Fear feeds on fear. Put this efficient process in motion. Manipulation is not limited to people. Economic, social and democratic institutions can be shaken. It will be demonstrated that nothing is safe, sacred or sane. There is no respite from horror. Absolutes are quicksilver. Results are spectacular."
The Inflammatory Essays Jenny Holzer
Oh how I wish that I could be
As content as the next boy
Downing his bitter
Discussing the snooker
The Speed Of Life The Sun and the Moon
Suddenly an experience of disinterested observation opens in its center and gives birth to a happiness which is instantly recognizable as your own…The field that your are standing before appears to have the same proportions as your own life.
Field John Berger
Whoever puts a hand on me to govern me is an usurper and a tyrant; I declare him my enemy.
Les Confessions d'un Revolutionnaire Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Yet, as he stood for the last time by the angels of his father's porch, it seemed as if the Square already were far and lost; or, I should say, he was like a man who stands upon a hill above the town he has left, yet does not say "The town is near," but turns his eyes upon the distant soaring ranges.
Look Homeward, Angel Thomas Wolfe
Interviewer: Do you think of the man on the street when you write your songs?
Sid Vicious: I've met the man on the street and he's a c*nt.
NB. While this is probably one of the very few truly amusing things Mr. Vicious ever said, it is certainly the most erudite.
The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe.
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency Douglas Adams
And slowly answered Arthur from the barge: ‘The old order changeth, yielding place to new, And God fulfils Himself in many ways, Lest one good custom should corrupt the world'.
Morte d’Arthur Alfred Tennyson
It always strikes me as an odd complaint that modern art is difficult to understand. Why should anyone expect anything else? I have never heard the same charge levelled against science, mathematics, mechanics or dentistry. It is accepted (if not welcomed) that these subjects are 'difficult'; that in order to understand them it is necessary to read some books, go to some lectures, learn the language, and so on. When art is 'difficult', abstract, not-immediately-accessible, it is labelled 'elitist'.
Unpopular Culture (Frieze 20, Jan/Feb 1995) David Batchelor
Madam Life's a piece in bloom
Death goes dogging everywhere:
She's the tenant of the room
He's the ruffian on the stair.
Echoes IX "To W.R." William Ernest Henley
She would live in his memory, and as long as he remembered her, he would live inside her.
They were inextricably linked.
He was the God of Forgotten Things.
The God of Forgotten Things Steven Savile
"...So where is Harry now? Harry is in the tears of is bereaved. He can be found in the wounds of his severed relationships, where the grief felt at his going out crystallises him in the interstices of the relationships he's left behind. Harry remains in his dog, or his wife, or his children. But what if he died lonely in some untended bedsit, amongst half-opened cans of beans, unemptied chamber pots and twisted sheets? What if Harry had to tend the dwindling fire at his centre all on his own, a slow retreat into the centre of himself away from the cold lonliness of his extremities? What if he'd gone out slowly, a forgotten old man, staring up at the sagging ceiling, half-dememnted and utterly alone, bar the fortnightly hammering of the social worker on his council flat door? Then where would Harry be? In the cement of the walls I imagined he had built, the gait of a nail he had hammered years before?"
The Real Me. Post-Modernism and the Question of Identity, ICA Documents 6 Christopher Rawlinson
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Ozymandias Percy Bysshe Shelley
"This much is already known: for every sensible line of straightforward statement, there are leagues of senseless cacophonies, verbal jumbles and incoherences."
The Library of Babel Jorge Luis Borges
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.
The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower
Dylan Thomas
The ideal viewer is a kid with a laptop, an iPod, a full complement of cable/satellite TV options, a NetFlix subscription, a TiVo hard drive packed with recorded shows, a taste for online gaming within ridiculously detailed game-universes and open-ended game narratives, a demon for channel-surfing and an encyclopedic knowledge of pop-culture. In that kids mind - and really, in all of our minds these days - narratives are not confined to the medium they were born in; they are part of the larger collage that we all construct from the fragments of everything we watch, read, hear and surf.
You've lost the plot! John Patterson
I save things.
The lost, the found, flotsam, jetsam, residuum: sifting through the dust to find a pearl in the mouth of a corpse.
I remember things.
The small, the insignificant, the incidental: that which has been forgotten through time and inattention.
I treasure things.
The everyday, the unremarked-upon, the taken-for-granted: careful maintenance of the elided, the attrided and the overlooked.
I value things.
The unexpected, the serendipitous, the polarised, the unlooked-for: the shock of recognition and the thrill of the chase.
I am...
Full of binary opposites.
Healthily irreverent.
Excited by everything.
A jaded, cynical bitch.
A lazy, selfish, energetic, generous, jealous god.
I need...
Other people to fire my imagination otherwise inertia takes over.
More space.
More time.
I get...
Bored easily.
I worry about...
Ennui.
Popular culture.
The choices I've made.
Why I care.
Why I bother.
What's around the corner.
What I'm doing.
Celebrity tabloid trash
Fact is...
If you want to understand me, start with the things I hate.
I stopped making music because it pissed me off so much.
I need to start making music again because I'm so pissed off.
The world is the wrong shape.
The notion of Postmodernity is overrated.
Time is running out.
You need to ask yourself: "What am I doing? And why am I doing it?"
Stereotypes are tiresome.
I need fixed referents.
I'm dying slowly and I need a past that didn't exist.
If you want to see civilisation in decline, watch Saturday-night TV.
F*ck the lowest common denominator.
I love music, but I hate more music than I love.
I don't have your agenda.
I am not cool.
You will not like me.