It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellowmen.
— George MacDonald, born in 18244th Estate will publish the "hopeful, humorous and moving" memoir from the Times columnist Melanie Reid.
In her fiction, Jenny Diski preferred self-concealment to baring her soul. Yet her life was her material, and, in the end, she was her writing
Virtually as soon as humans developed the ability to speak and write, somebody somewhere felt the desire to say something to somebody else that could not be understood by others
Noticed this weekend in Chateuabriand's memoirs:
Daniel Halévy's The End of the Notables ends, as I recall, with the refusal in 1871 of the titular Henry V to accept the throne of France unless the tricolor were replaced with the Bourbon lily. Halévy observes that this refusal had no relation to the essentially realistic approach of the French kings; he refers to Henry V as a nostalgist, a reader of Chateaubriand. Certainly Henry V was a nostalgist, and certainly Chateaubriand knew how to sound the nostalgic note; but from all that I can tell, Chateaubriand was far more realistic than that.
Incompetence is a freemasonry that has its lodges in every country; and this brotherhood has dungeons of which it springs the trap doors, and in which it causes governments to disappear.Chateaubriand had just been visiting the court of exiled Bourbons in Prague, and the grand master of this lodge may have been the Baron de Damas or the Prince de Polignac.
Daniel Halévy's The End of the Notables ends, as I recall, with the refusal in 1871 of the titular Henry V to accept the throne of France unless the tricolor were replaced with the Bourbon lily. Halévy observes that this refusal had no relation to the essentially realistic approach of the French kings; he refers to Henry V as a nostalgist, a reader of Chateaubriand. Certainly Henry V was a nostalgist, and certainly Chateaubriand knew how to sound the nostalgic note; but from all that I can tell, Chateaubriand was far more realistic than that.
‘Game Of Thrones’ Tourists Are Devouring Dubrovnik…
"Since 2011, when the show first premiered on HBO, tourism in Dubrovnik has seen an increase of 9 to 12 percent annually" - with numbers up to 10,000 or more a day, over 1 million a year in a town of 43,000 people. "While the show's notoriety is good news for Dubrovnik's economy, 80 percent of which relies on tourism, UNESCO has warned that Old Town Dubrovnik, a World Heritage Site, cannot accommodate this crush of newcomers. Some residents have had enough, too." … [Read More]
The Neuroscience Of Changing Your Mind
"Scientists have long accepted that our ability to abruptly stop or modify a planned behavior is controlled via a single region within the brain's prefrontal cortex, an area involved in planning and other higher mental functions." Now it seems that this consensus among scientists was, if not wrong, greatly oversimplified. … [Read More]
Here’s What Science Fiction Written By Artificial Intelligence Looks Like
Their program can identify dozens of structural and stylistic details in huge chunks of text, and if you give them a collection of great stories—stories that maybe you wished you had written—they are able to identify all the details that those great stories have in common.
Although reason for link remains unclear, data suggests extra care is needed when riding on nights with a full moon ...
“The robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief.
Those that rob you of things, be they material items, love or kindness, expect chaos to consume you; they expect you to be upset and they don’t often care. Though if you are robbed of anything, smile and go about your life as normally as you can. This way you are not letting the thief steal your happiness as well.
“When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.”
When it rains it pours.
“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!” – William Shakespeare
Parents do a lot for their children, and would die for them. To have a child that is thankless is truly painful like the bite of snake.
Malchkeon loved Charleville a place that missed its 150th anniversary by 3 years - we also loved the Observatory
“Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.” – William Shakespeare
Top 4 Media Trends in the Film Industry – Latest Blog on Significant ...
YOU CAN’T TRUST THE MEDIA: Layers Of Deceit: Why do recipe writers lie and lie and lie about how long it takes to caramelize onions?
Vegetarian sausages found to be just as unhealthy as meat sausagesMetro. Healthy sausages, military intelligence, darkness visible…
‘The Shed at Dulwich’ was London’s top-rated restaurant. Just one problem: It didn’t exist. WaPo. Awesome japery.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: The ‘Wandering Eye’ is Just Part of Human Anatomy
ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Should You Pee on Your Lawn?
FOR THE TIMES, THEY ARE ACHANGING: It is No Longer the “Normal World” of Publishing.
- Problem with fractions
- At The Paris Review
- Thanks to Steve Jobs, we no longer have to concern ourselves with taking 10 songs to our desert island. Now, if we feel like it, we can take 10,000. But don’t panic, here are my all-time Top 10 best songs.
10. No Surrender
The Boss plays this fast, he plays it slow, and no matter what the tempo, it still rings true. “I learned more from a 3-minute record than I ever learned in school.” There is also a great line along the lines of “these romantic dreams in our heads”. I love the 'No Surrender' attitude. It’s not too far away from Saatchi & Saatchi’s 'Nothing is Impossible'. This will always be a Top 10 song for me.
9. You Still Believe in Me
From the great Brian Wilson's Pet Sounds album. I’ve seen Brian Wilson at the Roxy in LA and my son, Ben, and a couple of his mates went to see him last month in London. There he was belting out songs from the Pet Sounds album and a medley of Beach Boys greats. Wilson has lived the hard life of an artist, but there is no doubt that some of his writing and arranging will last forever. 'You Still Believe in Me' is a beautiful little song and always reminds me of the many people that have believed in me during my ups and downs.
8. Celluloid Heroes
A song by one of the world’s greatest storytellers, Ray Davies. The front man for The Kinks is still going strong with a new album currently out, but his heyday was in the 60’s and early 70’s. That was when he captured that very English spirit of Bulldogs and Union Jacks in a way no one else ever did. Ray Davies wrote some of the great songs of that era, including 'Well Respected Man', and 'Dedicated Follower of Fashion', which were sound bites for the Carnaby Street of 1967. 'Celluloid Heroes' broke into my consciousness before I had ever been to the US; it made me want to visit Hollywood right there and then. “Everybody's a dreamer and everybody's a star.” You could put me down for dreamer.
7. A Whiter Shade of Pale
At the Oscars a few years back, I was at an after party and bumped into the lead singer of Procol Harum. 'A Whiter Shade of Pale' must be one of the most loved and most difficult to understand set of lyrics the world has ever been given. It’s one of the defining songs of the 60’s and recently has been the subject of a bitter lawsuit between two of the members of Procol Harum. Almost everybody from that generation can sing the first verse, particularly late in the evening after a couple of bottle of Bordeaux with a bunch of mates. And I can still skip the light fandango.
6. Fairytale of New York
'Fairytale of New York' starred The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl. She was tragically killed in a water ski/swimming accident but was a terrific talent. From Croydon to Cuba: An Anthology is a must own. The video showing McColl singing with The Pogues is an experience second to none. Living in New York as I do, this song represents a fairytale story for all the immigrants who hitched up and made their homes in this most vibrant of cities.
5. Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts
How do you represent Bob Dylan in a Top 10 list? My mate, Brian Sweeney, swears by 'Joker Man'. For me, I’ve always loved 'Forever Young', 'Mr. Tambourine Man', 'The Times They Are A Changing', 'Positively 4th Street', 'Desolation Row', 'Tangled Up in Blue' and so many others. One of the great Dylan stories is 'Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts'. I must have half a dozen versions of this on my iPod, ranging from Joan Baez to Tom Russell, with the crème de la crème being an impromptu jam version by Mary Lee’s Corvette. But this is more than a great song, it’s also a movie. Russell Crowe as the Jack of Hearts (now that he’s earned his chops in 3:10 to Yuma, we’ll let him play the good guy), Uma Thurman as Lily, Nicole Kidman as Rosemary, and Al Pacino as Big Jim (personality, not size). There are 17 verses and I’m still waiting for the sequel.
4. Bird on the Wire
Leonard Cohen was instrumental in shaping my youth. It was very fashionable back then at Bohemian dinner parties (and if that isn’t an oxymoron, what is?) to play Leonard’s first 3 albums. I went to see him countless times, bought all his poetry and sucked up his artistic suffering. When I die, I’ve instructed for the words “I have tried in my way to be free” to be inscribed on my tombstone. It comes from perhaps Leonard’s magnum opus 'Bird on the Wire'.
3. In Spite of Ourselves
Time for a love song - but a fresh, realistic, humorous love song. Try John Prine’s 'In Spite of Ourselves'. He wrote a whole album about relationships and duetted with many top female singers. It’s also the subject of a great music video concert he gave at West 54th Street, and you’ve just got to listen to the words of this song. If it doesn’t have you grinning, you’re just not country. And, as a bonus, the wonderful Iris DeMent joins in.
2. The Road Goes On Forever
If you’ve ever been to hear Robert Earl Keen live, you’ll know that everyone there knows all the words to all the songs. The one they really belt out, their Shiner Bocks in hand, is 'The Road Goes On Forever'. It is a classic romance song that should also be made into a movie. It is the story of Sunny, his girl, chivalry, loyalty, impetuosity and pragmatic reality. A great tale, a great idea, and alone is worth a trip to hear Robert Earl Keen. "The road goes on forever and the party never ends."
1. Thunder Road
At number one, leaving off where we came in, is another song from Bruce - 'Thunder Road'. He sings it at different tempos and at different times, and I’ve probably got 20-25 versions of it. I never tire of 'Thunder Road'. It fills me with energy and enthusiasm for the day ahead. - It seems like a good idea, as I near the end of this long journey with Finnegans Wake, to go back to Joseph Campbell’s thoughts about the structure and fluidity of the book:Appropriately, the first word of Finnegans Wake is ‘riverrun’. Opening with a small letter, it starts the book in the middle of a sentence. ‘Riverrun’, however, is not a beginning, but a continuation – a continuation among other things of the ecstatic, swiftly slipping, and abruptly interrupted sentence with which the volume ends. For the book is composed in a circle; the last word flows into the first, Omega merges into Alpha, and the rosary of history begins all over again.‘Riverrun’ is more than a clue to the circling plan of Finnegans Wake; it characterises the essence of the book itself. For in this work, both space and time are fluid; meanings, characters and vocabulary deliquesce in constant fluxion. The hero is everywhere: in the elm that shades the salmon pool, in the shadow that falls upon the stream, in the salmon beneath the ripples, in the sunlight on the ripples, in the sun itself. Three men looking at you through one pair of eyes are not men at all, but a clump of shrubs; not shrubs either, but your own conscience; and finally, not your private conscience, but an incubus of the universal nightmare from which the sublime dreamer of cosmic history will awaken, only to dream once more. (Campbell, p.23)Someone must have done a diagram of this, I thought, and indeed someone has:
Structure of Finnegans Wake by László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946). Click the image to visit the source.Unfortunately Signal v Noise where I found this doesn’t say where the original diagram is to be found, and comments are closed so I can’t ask. In the absence of any attribution, I’ve assumed that it’s out of copyright. It’s very clever: even with my limited grasp of what’s going on in FW I can see genius in the way that Moholy has shown the four Viconian Ages and the shifting identities of the main characters.