A Mental Map

August 4

Tue

Being able to listen to the Kinks is sort of my only reason for living at this exact moment in time.

July 29

Wed

nineteeneightysix:

Came across this fancy little site that casts you as a man with an impressive beard who wants to know what book you should read next, based on what you’ve just read.

A cure for my abibliophobia (the fear of running out of books to read) at last?

July 24

Fri

Damon Albarn rides a bicycle partly because he likes riding a bicycle, and partly because he doesn’t have a driving licence. After several attempts he did finally pass his test when he was 30, but in his first, and only, year on the road he was caught three times by speed cameras and had his licence taken away. That was when he learned that, even if you’re 30 years old, when you lose a new licence you have to take your test again. Meanwhile, in the interim, the powers-that-be had introduced the multiple choice theory test. Damon has now failed the multiple choice theory test five times.

— Article from Q magazine I’m reading instead of working

July 14

Tue

(via breannetrammell)

I am a completely horizontal author. I can’t think unless I’m lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy. I’ve got to be puffing and sipping. As the afternoon wears on, I shift from coffee to mint tea to sherry to martinis.

— Truman Capote

June 24

Wed

yvynyl:

The Unfolding: How To Blow Your Mind And Have A Freak Out Party (1967)

(via hatchetentry)

June 15

Mon

I said a moment ago that the group which had just taken me so generously to its bosom was incapable of teaching me anything, and even as I said this I knew that it was not altogether true, since the group nevertheless taught me one thing, and it was precisely because of this thing that I remained in the group, and that I was going to continue to remain. They taught me how to go on a bender.

— Salvador Dali

June 10

Wed

Talking with young people was an easier way to find myself than talking with adults. I have the impression that, if a person is young, he must give of himself, and he does so willingly, without ulterior motives, and if he gives himself away, he’s not unhappy.

— Jean-Luc Godard

May 28

Thu

In 1928 I was giving a lecture on modern art in my native town of Figueras, with the mayor acting as chairman and a number of local notables in attendance. An unusual crowd had gathered to hear me. I had come to the end of my speech, which had apparently been followed with polite puzzlement, and there was no indication from the audience that the conclusive nature of my last paragraph had been grasped. In a sudden hysterical rage, I shouted, at the top of my lungs: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the lecture is FINISHED!’

At this moment the mayor, who was very popular, who was indeed loved by the whole town, fell dead at my feet. The emotion was indescribable and the event had considerable repercussions. The comic papers claimed that the enormities expressed in the course of my lecture had killed him. It was in fact simply a case of sudden death - angina pectoris, I believe - fortuitously occurring exactly at the end of my speech.

—

Salvador Dali, from The Secret Life of Salvador Dali

For Brooke

May 26

Tue

Things I wrote in my notebook in Los Angeles:

It is often far sweeter and more rewarding to do something kind only for oneself, rather than having another do something kind for you. Or, for that matter, doing something kind for someone else.
Buying Us Weekly REALLY paid off.
I’m standing under a palm tree! I knew there were palm trees, I just didn’t know there were this many palm trees!
The west coast is the best coast??????
Evidence that I am truly, deeply a lone wolf (so to speak): “I’m glad we never got a chance to go to the movies; that would’ve robbed me of the immense joy I’m going to get out of going to see this movie by myself.”
Could live here, I think.

May 19

Tue

Marianne Faithfull w/ dog

May 7

Thu

Dear Readers

“Am I a pop cultural masochist?” and other very relevant questions over at Tiny Gems.