Prudence Heward - "Portrait (Mrs. Zimmerman)" - 1943
Elizabeth Cotten - "Shake Sugaree"
From "A Balthus Notebook" - Guy Davenport
“It is precisely those harmonies which have become dissonant we want to study in every way we can, for they had a harmonic origin. They changed. We changed. We need to know why.”
- Guy Davenport
Thérèse Dreaming
The Waterboys - "December"
At Tippet Rise Art Center - Photo by Will Warasila
Rabbi Edward Feinstein, on The Book of Jonah
Jonah inverts God’s world. Death becomes life. Curse becomes blessing. The attributes of God—reverently celebrated in the Torah, and recited again and again on these holidays, Adonai, Adonai—El rachum v’hanun (God—compassionate, kind, forgiving), the attributes of God’s love—are derisively and sarcastically dismissed. They are rejected. He’d rather die than live in a world governed by a loving God.
God is astonished and asks him, “Are you so angry?” The Hebrew is more powerful. “Haheiteiv charah lach—Is your anger so dear to you?” Heiteiv comes from tov. Literally, the question is: Has anger become your goodness? Has hate displaced the good in you?…
The book ends with God’s frustration, God’s distress. It ends with God’s question. But it isn’t God’s question to Jonah anymore. It is God’s question to us. Why can’t you love?
The question isn’t asked out of rage, or disapproval. It is asked in tears, in divine tears of sadness—when God looks into the world and sees what we do to one another.
Vagabon - "The Embers"
Gustave Courbet - "The Source" (1868)
The Walkmen - "Postcards From Tiny Islands"
Military Training Exercise, Grafenwoehr Training Area, Germany
photo by Army Capt. Khalil Kimble
Edgar Degas - "Woman Drying Herself" (1905)
Incubus - "Wish You Were Here"
Henri Rousseau - "The Sleeping Gypsy" (1897)
From Walt Whitman's "A Song for Occupations"
“…The panes of the windows and all that appears through
them….the going forth in the morning and the aimless
spending of the day;
(What is it that you made money? what is it that you
got what you wanted?)…”
Roxy Music - "Running Wild"
From Walt Whitman's "A Song for Occupations"
“…The light and shade—the curious sense of body and
identity—the greed that with perfect complaisance
devours all things—the endless pride and outstretching
of man—unspeakable joys and sorrows,
The wonder every one sees in every one else he sees….
and the wonders that fill each minute of time forever
and each acre of surface and space forever…“
Shortstack - "Vietnam War Movie"
From Acts 3:22
“…him shall ye hear in all things
whatsoever he shall say unto you.”
From "Gilead" - Marilynne Robinson
“…I lay there against my father’s side with my head pillowed on his arm, hearing the wind, and feeling a pity that was far too deep to have any particular object. I pitied my mother, who might have to come looking for us and would never, never find us. I pitied the bats and the mice. I pitied the earth and the moon. I pitied the Lord.”