“ The rare, succulent crabmeat, picked out of the shell, packed, sealed, refrigerated, jealously hoarded, is like the fragile essence of a person’s being, which the journalist makes away with and turns into some horrid mess of his own while the subject sleeps.
Janet Malcolm, The Journalist and the Murderer. Random House, 1990.
(Notes on) Panic & Plentitude
--Castiglia and Castronovo, A "Hive of Subtlety": Aesthetics and the End(s) of Cultural Criticism
Edvard Munch. Two Human Beings (The Lonely Ones) (1899).
“ The Cuban crisis was a competition in risk taking, involving steps that would have made no sense if they led predictably and ineluctably to a major war, yet would also have made no sense if they were completely without danger … in such a crisis, the danger of inadvertent war goes up. This is why they are called ‘crises.’ The essence of a crisis is its unpredictability.
Thomas Schelling. Arms and Influence. Yale University Press, 2008.
Angel Olsen. “Tiniest Lights” (2011).
“ At the end of every magazine article, before the ‘■,’ is the quote from the general in Afghanistan that ties everything together. The evening news segment concludes by showing the secretary of State getting back onto her helicopter. There’s the kiss, the kicker, the snappy comeback, the defused bomb. The Epiphanator transmits them all. It promises that things are orderly. It insists that life makes sense, that there is an underlying logic.
Paul Ford. “Facebook and the Epiphanator: An End to Endings?” New York, July 18, 2011.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Subway Buskers, pt. viii. 116th street 1 train platform, 12/10/11, 5:51pm. Jorge. Canta con acompanamiento de guitarra.
“ The crowd overflowed from a central city square, forcing stragglers to climb trees or watch from the opposite riverbank. ‘We exist!’ they chanted. ‘We exist!’
Ellen Barry. “Tens of Thousands Protest Against Putin in Moscow.” The New York Times, Dec. 11, 2011.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Nate DiMeo. “Far Below Lake Michigan.” The Memory Palace, Dec 6, 2011.
See also William McNeill on the conservation of catastrophe, in “Control and Catastrophe in Human Affairs.” Daedalus, Winter 1989.
(Source: spacetrek)
Shame (2011).
