portraits – autoportraits – le projet
Children’s drawings have always fascinated me. ‘Autoportraits’ is a little project of Arte and TV5 Monde where children from all around the world paint how they see themselves. A simple but lovely idea in one minute time.
Image by Louviere and Vanessa.
Arve Henriksen – Opening Image
In Blanchot’s “The Unavowable Community”, he said, there is an effort to separate the term of communism from the politic use of it, this term so wrongly used (and abused) in history. Communism comes from community and the idea that a man finds a meaning only when in touch with the community, whenever a man shares a common space with someone else. Sometimes this shared common will have to remain quiet, far from speeches or intellectualisations, to be fully preserved. Because once you start talking about it, you are simplifying the truth of it and stealing its real meaning.
Blanchot uses a beautiful example: the language of lovers, that is created in a silent complicity between two bodies who learn one from another without having to say much. And how whenever someone tries to translate this into verbal language it loses its beauty, it sterilises its meaning, turning something unique into something vague.
And so that’s why I love silence, because it can only contain truths. Words can translate our world but there’s a point where it reaches an end. Yet it’s not sad to meet these limits, because it’s only in this way that mistery will be safe.
Photo project by iamaustin
Billie Holiday & Lester Young – When You’re Smiling
My grandmother is saying goodbye. She’s as strong as all her family put together but she’s already 92 and thinks life’s counting down. So she’s trying to smile. And to give back to life all that she’s learnt and fight. Because, she says, there’s no need in taking all the wisdom to the grave. So she’s becoming a real life activist. Among her 22 grandchildren and 15 grandgrand children, I’m one of her main targets, to spread her words on useless sadness and the benefits of optimism. So she touches my legs, in disguise, whenever I argue with my dad, or makes a fake smile to turn my blank face into something else. Sometimes she holds my hand and talks talks talks, while growing deaf. And so I get to like old people more than those of my age. It’s only that this sense of finiteness makes them more fragile and, at the same time, deeply alive.
Shirley MacLaine and her daughter by Allan Grant, 1959
sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc cursi sóc
Image by Ananda Serné.
Today I feel the presence of a few, some closer than others in reality but so dearing to me, in one way or another.
Thank You so much. There’s no need to say names, You already know it.
Today I dived into John Cage’s world.
Without help of any explanation and too many misteries unsolved.
Dreams that money can buy, by Hans Richter and music by John Cage.
Ani DiFranco (Pete Seeger’s cover) – My name is Lisa Kalvelage
“My name is lisa kalvelage, i was born in nuremberg
and when the trials were held there 19 years ago
it seemed to me ridiculous to hold a nation all to blame
for the horrors that the world did undergo
a short while later when i applied to be a gi bride
an american councilor official questioned me
he refused my exit permit, said my answer did not show
that i learned my lesson about responsibility
then suddenly i was forced to start thinking on this theme
and later when i was permitted to immigrate
i must have been asked a 100 times where i was, what i did
in those years when hitler ruled our state
i said i was a child, or at most a teenager
but that only continued the questioning
they’d ask where were my parents, my father, my mother
and to this i could not answer a thing
a seed planted there in neurenberg ‘47
started to sprout and grow
gradually i understood what that verdict meant to me
when there are crimes that i can see and know
and now i also know what it is to be charged with mass guilt
once in a life time is enough for me
no i couldn’t take it for a second time
and that’s why i’m here today
the events of may 25th, the day of our protest
put a small balance weight on the other side
and hopefully some day my contribution to peace
will help just a bit to turn the tide
perhaps i can tell it to my children 6
and later on, their own children
and at least in the future they need not be silent
when they’re asked, where was your mother when
my name is lisa kalvelage
(i wonder, where was my mother then)”
Lyrics by Pete Seeger,
inspired on anti-Vietnam activist Lisa Kalvelage.
_______________________________________________
“Lisa Kalvelage was a German immigrant from Nuremberg who moved to the United States when she was 22, just after theSecond World War. Upon her arrival, she was repeatedly asked what her parents, friends, and teachers had done tostop the atrocities of the Nazi regime. The questioning had an effect on her: when she began to see atrocities beingcommitted again, this time during the Vietnam War, she took action. She and her friends engaged in civildisobedience to try to stop a shipment of napalm and to raise consciousness about the issue.” [Democracy Now]
Picture: Chadwick Tyler.
Red House Painters – Katy Song
You always meet someone twice, he said. How beautiful to believe it may be true. Cos tonight I’ve missed you and you came to embrace me like the first time you did. Out of the blue, your strong body and your gentle hands. Tonight it wasn’t so, but I know if I saw you for a second time, oh, I’d cry, cry, cry. And I’d smile.
This afternoon, I saw little black spots in the sky. They were all over, flickering in black and white. Round, all round. Dancing, fading in and out. As if old celluloid was being burnt.
Almost not-there bedroom folk-pop from a Japanese singer-songwriter who makes Vashti Bunyan sound like Lemmy. So fragile you would think you’ve dreamt it. [Sloow Tapes]
Patrick Watson – The Great Escape
Hey child, things are looking down.
That’s okay, you don’t need to win anyways.
Don’t be afraid, just eat up all the gray
and it will fade all away.
Don’t let yourself fall down.
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