A friend writes from the French countryside: The invisible threat casts a shadow over an otherwise idyllic springtime. When normally one’s own sorrows are cast aside, albeit temporarily, by the blossoming of nature and its infectious sense of hope, this year comes with a malaise which seems to leach all sense of renewal; and so I find myself hesitant in all I do.
Coping With the Shitstorm #2
A friend writes from Berlin: Good news … I received 5000 euros from the city. I could hardly believe it when I looked at my bank account. That will come in handy. Now we simply have to survive. It was very generous to artists who live here, many of whom are wiped out by what has happened. The decisions were made quickly, based simply upon the evidence that an artist truly has been living and working on their art here. It all seems unreal…everything does now.
GC CUNY Keeps the Conversation Going:
Milanovic, Piketty, Stiglitz, and Krugman
While events are postponed at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York in the heart of Manhattan, videos of recent public programs will be featured from its archive for your enjoyment. The videos provide illuminating discussions in two main categories: insights into current events and conversations with leading writers and artists. (Courtesy of GC CUNY’s Public Programs archive.)
Twitter Fingers Has It ‘Totally Under Control’—Oh Yeah.
As of two weeks ago, about a million people saw this. Some three hundred million more need to see it. Now he’s trying to kill ads that use his own words against him.
Virus Cooking: Some People Go Stir Crazy
Guillaume Robert goes salad crazy.
Trump to the Rest of Us: Drop Dead
President Twitter Fingers had the Center for Disease Control send a mailer to promote himself of course. It showed up in my mailbox yesterday touting his “coronavirus guidelines for America.” But we know what he really means. The caricature is by Donkey Hotey.
Modern Life
This 13-second video has been making the rounds. I nearly fell down laughing.
In a Time of Crisis . . .
. . . here’s a tune to calm the nerves. It’s called “My Fate Is in Your Hands,” composed by Fats Waller and played by Dick Hyman. An anecdote goes with it. But first the tune.
Artaud for Our Time
“And I told you: no works of art, no language, no words, no thought, nothing. Nothing except a sort of incomprehensible and totally erect stance in the midst of everything in the mind. And don’t expect me to tell you what all this is called, and how many parts it can be divided into; don’t expect me to tell you its weight; or to get back in step and start discussing all this so that I may, without even realizing it, start THINKING.”
‘Where the Press Is Free . . .
. . . and every man able to read, all is safe.’ — Thomas Jefferson
‘Would that it were so.’ — Straight Up | Staff of Thousands
What . ? . No Patti Smith?
Just kidding . . .
Last Breath, Memorialized
Cold Turkey Press has printed a card of this photo and poem in a limited edition.
‘I Do Not Think. I Am Thought. I Am Thought in Action.’
I am that I am that I happen. /
I am a resultant. /
—a coincidence of fields. /
Am is my here. /
That is I there. /
What am I here for? . . . /
I am here to go. /
When the magnetic fields shift / There / is no here. / I am gone.
King’s Dream Deferred
Whatever the blowhard president of Trumpistan says in his official proclamation to honor Martin Luther King Jr., rest assured it is phony to the last pixel and not worth the time to read it. (To save you the trouble, here’s a sample: “My Administration works each day to ensure that all Americans have every opportunity to realize a better life for themselves and their families regardless of race, class, gender, or any other barriers that have arbitrarily stood in their way.”) And for the record let’s not forget that when King made his historic “I have a dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, it was hardly noticed by the nation’s most widely circulated newspapers. Have a look at King delivering that speech and be reminded of what they missed.
Kurt Wold: ‘Stradoferous’
“I dreamt I could play the bicycle. This performance artwork plays with a number of themes, not the least of which is the continual contemporary pressure to present oneself as larger-than-life, in the hope that one might be noticed in a distracted culture. Of course the work also revels in those distractions.” — Kurt Wold
If This Was an Actual Real-Time Photo . . .
. . . which it was . . . You have to wonder what floor can I get out? [Insert punchline, pls.]
A Poem and Its Genesis: Malcolm Ritchie’s ‘Writing It’
… and my hand held up against the sky / as if a naked bird singing in sign language / to an empty page lying somewhere / in an uninhabited house where / only dust is moving / from room to room … — from “Writing It”