I flip through a notebook from last year and, having half-forgotten the contexts in which I wrote a lot of quotes down, I find charming, fascinating, or perplexing aphorisms:
"In contrast to Nietzsche, the Dionysian impulse for Warburg is not opposed to a lack of artistry so much as to its hypertrophy--a self-conscious use of symbolic forms emphasizing the intervention of human artifice." (Hans Belting)
"Descriptions of aerial vistas in Evelyn Waugh's novel Vile Bodies (1930) draw on his accounts of abstract paintings he had seen the previous year at the Parisian Panorama de l'art contemporain." (George McCartney; part of the context for this quote and my reading the article it's from have to do with Paul Virilio's War and Cinema, specifically the chapter, "Cinema Isn't I See, It's I Fly.")
4 comments:
thanks for that Zach, "memories that don't seem mine, like half eaten cake and rabbit skins stretched on the backyard fences..." (killer of sheep). I found this among some loose papers, about an silent Ozu film the title of which escapes me: "Flamboyant asynchronized gangsters. In the flat a long scene where out of nowhere the attitude changes -- like LE MEPRIS".
Thanks for these leaves, Zach. I like the idea of posting from our notebooks.
I keep a running notebook and scribble in it (usually quotes, references, memos to myself, stray ideas) every day. Occasionally, I get the urge to post some of them, but the way I've set up and chosen to run my blog now isn't quite conducive to that. I'm flirting with the idea of starting a small second blog for notebook bric-a-brac and other miscellania...
"Flamboyant asynchronized gangsters. In the flat a long scene where out of nowhere the attitude changes -- like LE MEPRIS"
The first sentence sounds like WALK CHEERFULLY, the second, THAT NIGHT'S WIFE (1930)..........
I wish retrospectives would play annually, rather than once every 20-25 yrs. Will I die before I see Naruse's WANDERER'S NOTEBOOK again?
Jaime
I find that, rooting through my old notebooks, they are almost always interesting for what I've written down by other people. My own words are helpful to me only when they remind me of a writer, a film, a project I wanted to work on ...
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