On the Nature of Language, and the Necessity of the Human Stamp

Our words dictate our thoughts. Although many crowds would decry the concept of arrested conception, many philosophers and post-structuralist analyzers realize the gravity of our own diction. Thought does not dictate word, as some would think: some amorphous concept manifesting itself through spoken word. Instead, word dictates and decrees thought.

Let me try to explain. First off, if word was produced from thought—and taking into consideration that humans have averagely uniform systems—then one would expect all words to have direct correlations between languages, and one would expect languages to be in identical order, identical patterning, and identical meaning; however, this is not the case.

For example, consider this sentence in French:

Here we have an excerpt of Alfred de Musset’s “La Confession d’un enfant du siècle” (1836), which was a novel that had a lot to say about the role of Romanticism in post-revolutionary France.

«  . . . le siècle présent, en un mot, qui sépare le passé de l’avenir, qui n’est ni l’un ni l’autre et qui ressemble à tous deux à la fois, et où l’on ne sait, à chaque pas qu’on fait, si l’on marche sur une semence ou sur un débris. Voilà dans quel chaos il fallut choisir alors; voilà ce qui se présentait à des enfants pleins de force et d’audace, fils de l’empire et petit-fils de la Révolution.»

Now a direct translation into English:

“…the century present, in one word, who separates the past from the future, who not is neither the one neither the other and who resembles to all two to the time, and where it one not knows, to each not that one makes,  if it one walks on a seed or on a debris. Here in what chaos it necessitates to choose so; here this who them presented to of the children full of force and of boldness, son of the empire and little-son of the Revolution.”

Now, the meaning here comes across at utterly ridiculous, if it even comes across at all; if the meaning is not completely locked to us. This is because we have presented to us English words, but harnessed to a French conception; to a French way of thinking and ordering. Logically, one would assume the uniformity of man would lead to a simple, easy translation. However, the two are simply not compatible. This small exercise shows how the English and the French have different ways of cognizance. This is also why learning a language is so difficult. It’s more than memorizing flash cards and vocabulary words: it’s reformulating your very thought process. You are not just learning French words, but French thought. Now, some may argue the difference in only syntactical, but is that not perception itself? The French say, “J’ai faim”(I have hunger), whereas the English say “I am hungry,” and true they both infer a similar sense of food lacking, but there is a difference there. Or simply think of the fact that the French have an entirely different subject form for the formal direction of “you” (vous). Thus it is no surprise that there are such vast cultural differences between different languages (i.e. English vs. the Japanese, who, among many other differences, have no future verb tense).  

And so there is a different in thought and perception between language groups, although this is the same even on the English pattern. If you and I were presented a series of blue paint chips, you would most likely be able to differentiate between the different shades, but I, as a painter, would be able to organize and name them off in titles such as cobalt blue, Prussian blue, ultramarine blue, phthalo blue, Yves Klien Blue, etc. Does that necessary divide our perceptions? No, it does distinguish them.  And if you were asked to recall which color(s) you saw, you would be left with simply the vague, all-inclusive, hue-absorbing statement, “I saw blue,” whereas I would be the one to be able to give a calculated name to the exact hue.

Language is symbolic: words are symbols; letters are symbols. Whereas the writing of the letter “t” calls for the tongue to be pressed towards the back of the teeth and unclenched with an aspirated release, a written “m” calls for both the lips to be closed over the front teeth and then lightly burst open with a short breath, and also, let’s take the “s”, which requires the mouth to be barely open, the tongue set to the roof of the mouth, and a breath let slipping around the corners out of the mouth. These letters are small, contoured scribbles that are suggestive of somatic action.

Words are just as complex symbols. For example, “table” conjures the object of an averagely large flat plane (usually rectangular) supported by (usually) four inanimate “legs.” Anything else beyond this glorified, minimalist interpretation of “table” would require an adjective modifier: “broken table,” “miniature table,” etc. Or think of the word “horse”, which encompasses all subspecies of the equine race, including its ancestry and anything that resembles it. To say “horse” is to conjure a beautifully nonspecific, impossible equine-archetype: a symbol that describes all, yet describes none.

Then we have the issue of syntax. Where “bear” is an ursine, mammalian form, but “to bear,” preceded by a grammatical particle to form an infinite verb is suggestive of enduring, supporting, or conducting oneself. Here the exact same noun symbol, placed around certain other English syntactical symbols, can create altogether different meaning and effect.

In the previous examples, we can see how word delineates perception and thought, and we can also understand how the word, or to say, the symbol, is not just important but absolutely necessary for external and internal interpretation. Words, at their most basic and most complex, are at once and for always, specific human inventions: stamps of humanity labeling all.

This is not to say that existence would be impossible without word: after all, childhood amnesia, the inability to remember our pre-word years, has many theories, and even the one based around language development proposes that it’s not that the child cannot remember anything, but that by the time they are adults, their early wordless memories are incomprehensible and inaccessible to the adult symbolic mind.  This could be the same as animals, who no doubt have memory, but who do not have the necessary cognitive strength to create words like humans do.

However, as mature humans, we exist solely through these symbols—these human interpretations: a mountain, what is a mountain? What calculation divides it from a hill, a mound, or between that word and a cliff, or a volcano? What is a mountain? A human invention—as we have differentiated it from hills and mounds. It is a human order. The sky? A division we have made between water and land. There is no external value to any of these words; no inherent concept. A tree, what is a tree? What are the oak, willow, and cottonwood? They are human order externalized onto the quantitative world. We have assigned meanings to them all. We look out to the world and we record what is around us though these symbols and we think because of these symbols:

“The sky [not “a sky” or “the skies”] is [not “was” not “will be”] blue [not “grey” not “black”].”

In addition to that, there is necessity of wordage as a block against the external world. We splice, split, minimize, and compartmentalize in order to simply survive the daily onslaught of stimulus. Imagine if, at any given point in time, you suddenly had to take in (without any sense of order or understanding), every smell, every sound, every image, and every physical sensation around you? One would overload. System failure. It would be like trying to pack a moving truck without using a single cardboard box. Now this of course creates a sense of displacement, where the word acts as a middleman between us and the world, but a necessary one at that, as it holds us to a form, but it gives us form just the same; it holds, it gives; the word is our shackle, the word is our wing. 

Our world permeates with humanness, with the human creation, and not simply permeates with it, but actually rests entirely on it. We cannot exist or function without our own humanness—our word, our neurological organization; our wordage specific to direct human oral physiology and dictation of human cognition: rain, heat, sadness, hunger; all are the human invention: the word; the projection of the human. Without being surrounded by the human, we cease to comprehend, we cease to record. I and you and all of us cannot exist without this, the word, the human stamp, pressed flat against every element, emotion, and sensation. We cannot organize without labels. We cannot comprehend without a tangibility. We, the human, cannot exist without being surrounded and enveloped by ourselves: the human. 

Photography by the Author

It's been a while since I've blogged and I apologize for that. 

To make up for it, I'm posting some of my own work. Like...not a review of someone else's. I know, it's crazy. 

I took these photos the other day when it was overcast and stormy, although the storms here are nothing compared to those of the South. 


I prefer drawing and design, but I enjoy a photo-shoot every now and then. They all have a two-dimensional sort of minimalism that I've really been after lately, as I find it not only intriguing, but also therapeutic...almost mantric. 

Vintage French Advertisements

I've had these images for awhile now--almost a year. I can't exactly remember where I found all (or any) of them. They are absolutely amazing. Vintage advertisements are some of my favorite things ever, and really got me thinking towards graphic design. If any of you know of any good sites for them, please feel free to tell me: I would like it so much. 

Selected Quotes from 'As I Lay Dying,' by William Faulkner

For those of you who have not read As I Lay Dying, I would highly recommend it. William Faulkner is absolutely brilliant, although I have a preference, as he writes primarily about those of the South. Do not be fooled by the title. This is not some macabre, cheap-angst, existential story. This is an incredibly rich, layered, and calculated presentation of the psyche of a family. Not to mentioned its often listed as one of the best works of American fiction. Ever. 

Published in 1930, the book tells the story in a sort of disjunctive fashion, changing viewpoints every chapter to create a quilt of a whopping 59 chapters, and 15 different perspectives. The story traces the journey of the Bundren family after their mother's death, and their attempt to transport her coffin across the county to her intended burial grounds. 

Below are some of my favorite quotes. Some really resonate with me, and others are simply beautiful. I intend to read the book again in the near future so that I can rake the pages for more significance this time, unhindered by a search for plot and cohesiveness. Also, I put the page numbers, which I only just realized is completely useless unless you read the exact edition that I did. Regardless, in any publication, the page number should get you to right around where it would be normally, should you desire to read direct source. I have also put the narrator to each given chapter next to each quote, which would the add to the phrase's intent and comprehension:

p.38, Vardaman: “I am not crying now. I am not anything. Dewey Dell comes to the hill and calls me. Vardaman. I am not anything. I am quiet.”

p.41, Dewey Dell: “I feel my body, my bones and flesh beginning to part and open upon the alone, and the process of coming unalone is terrible.”

p.42, Dewey Dell: “I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.”

p.93, Darl: “…he and I look at one another with long probing looks, looks that plunge unimpeded through one another’s eyes and into the ultimate secret place where for an instant Cash and Darl crouch flagrant and unabashed in all the old terror and the old foreboding, alert and secret and without shame. When we speak our voices are quiet, detached.”

p.117, Addie: “And then he died. He did not know he was dead. I would lie by him in the dark, hearing the dark land talking of God’s love and His beauty and His sin; hearing the dark voicelessness in which the words are the deeds, and the other words that are not deeds, that are just the gaps in people’s lacks, coming down like the cries of geese out of the wild darkness in the old terrible nights, fumbling at the deeds like orphans to whom are pointed out in a crowd two faces and told, That is your father, your mother.”

p.140, Darl: “If you could just ravel out into time. That would be nice. It would be nice if you could just ravel out into time.”

p.153, Darl: “The back of Jewel’s shirt, where it touches him, stains slow and black with grease. Life was created in the valleys. It blew up onto the hills on the old terrors, the old lusts, the old despairs. That’s why you must walk up the hills so you can ride down.”

p.157, Cash: “Sometimes I aint so sho who’s got ere a right to say when a man is crazy and when he aint. Sometimes I think it aint none of us pure crazy and aint none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way. It’s like it aint so much what a fellow does, but it’s the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it.”

"A Man," how to be or how not to be

Ah! What is the significance of being "a man"? What does it mean?


I'll admit that it's a question that I often ask myself--not on the nature of my gender or course, of which I have no doubt, but anyone with a shred of social consciousness is aware of the changing tides of the definition of "man" (and of course also "woman," but that's another post waiting to happen) although the discussion so often degenerates into a pithless debate on tumultuous gender roles and talks on the "feminization" of the male sex. 


Of course, all paradigms are culturally evolutionary--and I mean this metaphorically and to poeticize the action of things building upon themselves, and not (as some would argue) to place any sort of validity upon these roles due to genetics, evolutionary biology, or "natural law."  Regardless, I feel the concept stands. Paradigms evolve. They do. They are fluid, organic, and they act and react and swing back and forth and solidify and weaken. Etc. So rest some of your concern, dear Millennials. The 80's "masculinity" was far different from the 50's "manhood." Things change and will always change. 


Now on that, any dolt with half a brain and a scrotum can feign masculinity--at least at its base, primordial sense. And what is this? Difficult to pin down, but at its rawest and most unleashed capacity, it is merely insatiable appetite: eat everything you see, kill everything you see, screw everything you see. Protect only yourself...meaning both the body and the primitive, territorial extensions (i.e. wife, house, etc), and ignore the rest. Oh and of course we could distract ourselves towards topics of different archetypes like of the self-made man, or the strong-and-silent man, or the strong-but-sensitive man...but I digress. 


But the Modern Man? The Man of the present. Who is he? What is he?
Is he necessarily chic or well groomed? He is socially liberal? Environmentally conscious? A feminist? LGBT activist? Or is he the opposite of those? Or does it ever matter? 


There was such a hype to the metrosexual rise (which is incredibly misunderstood) and its subsequent backlash--which I would give to label as some of the roots of the hipster movement: thrift store shopping, folk music, smoking, beards, etc; far from the flâneur typique that had become the more mainstreamed man. We have now men in reaction: men who seethe at the talk of metros (or worse, homos) and believe that being a man means smoking cigars, not shaving your chest, and going to strip clubs. One can devolve further to the most extremists levels of men who believe that "manhood"  consists of pointless aggression, chauvinism (if not misogyny), and laughing at their own farts. 


I present to argue that that none of these at either spectrum should or could encapsulate what it means to truly be a "man."


Now, first off it must be established that when I talk of the "man," I am talking in fact of the ideal--of the standard and bar--and not (fortunately) on the current state of manhood or the masculine gender.  


For me, I believe the real meaning of what it means to be "a man," is not so much "man" from the direction of gender, but more so a "man" from the angle of maturity--something that is truly in danger of modernity. And so the debate should not really be man vs. woman (or rather, masculine man vs. feminine man), but more importantly, man vs. boy (or rather, mature man vs. immature man). What is a man? Not a boy. 


The generation of the present and the generations to come are indeed in danger and also aware of this, at least subconsciously. There is a decline in manhood. And no, this has absolutely no ridiculous correlation with the number of men buying patent leather shoes or actually combing their hair. This has to do with the the trends of modernity leaning towards flashiness, instant possession, instant satisfaction, a lack of attention, a lack of integrity, etc. Our men are not in danger of becoming women. They are in danger of never becoming men in the first place. 


This is of course an element that has always been present in human culture, an immaturity of sorts, but now more  especially, our culture fosters a state of perpetual infancy and immaturity. The way we act, react, and interact is often infantile. Becoming a man in the present day is much more difficult than before (or so I believe) because growth is so evitable. Like a child behind our mothers, we can peer out on the world infinitely and indefinitely from behind the screens of our televisions and computers: voiceless voyeurs. When we do act, we can do so under the guise of anonymity. We are no longer humans but digital avatars, complete with an uploaded photo and a username (if even). The face-to-face contact plummets, and so rise the new tendencies of internet debates, cyber-bulling, facebook stalking, trolling, etc. With the click of a button or the swipe of a card, we can instantly receive food, clothes, cars, or even houses. The rise of television and internet has all but shot our attention spans, and again like children we browse aimlessly through web pages and television shows until something can manage to entertain us.  Something. Entertain us. Where we become the passive agent; the squabbling babe flailing for attention. 


Now, to simply attribute this to the rise of technology is naively misleading and over-simplistic, as there are many other realms this is acting in. There is the increasing drug usage among all, which, argue as you may, is nothing more than escapist tendencies: a quick fixing flee from the inability of enduring or improving reality, like a young boy running from whatever is insurmountable. Replace "drugs" with any sort of escapist addiction. 


Mass-audience music is degenerating as well. Note that this is not simply "modern music," as there are many brilliant music artist producing things today. No, I speak of the difficult and distasteful topic of sleazy radio-hits and their identicals, which so often promote lifestyles of perpetual sex and perpetual parties. Fantastical imaginings of the impossible. Is it really any different than the childhood euphoria at the idea of no more school and everything made of chocolate?  


Think of our politicians if you can, and of the embarrassing tantrums that are becoming increasingly popular; how compromise has become almost a curse word in the realm of politics, and how to be negotiable means to somehow be perceived as weak and spineless. They yell and point fingers and stomp their feet. Often now I look at the news and think, 'Why, there is no man in the seat of the Senate. That is a boy. A child.'  An indeed they are. They are children who do not know how to communicate, do not know how to compromise, and who are vain, proud, and fearful. 


Added to this there our culture's obsession with creams, lotions, and surgeries that promise us the fountain of youth. It would be a lie to pretend that this is a sole preoccupation of women, as men are equally inclined to lean towards youth (and the fashion trend of hairless men, could that be seen as a drive to the prepubescent?)


Where are the men? To the right, to the left: all I see is boys, boys. 


Surely in them modern realm, to be a man is to be something beyond which society expects and prepares us for. To be a man is to transcend what is given us. To be a man means to possess a capacity of conscious and controllable action; to be able weigh and measure one thing against another critically. One must be capable of self-control, and abstain in all necessary predicaments. To hold back from the allure of fast-food, fast-pleasure, fast-entertainment, and fast-money. They must be able to endure the world and not flee from it (via drugs, music, etc).  To be a man one must have an urge for self-improvement, and building upon their past character; they must have a integrity of work and action, and expect nothing that they have not earned completely. And then, to be a man and to stay a man, one must be and stay adaptable; malleable. The world is changing, and we must change with it. To not change is to be stagnant, and to not grow means to become a relic of sorts. And to not mature with the world is to be, for all intensive purposes, immature. 


So be debonair. Or be blasé. Manscape. Or don't. It doesn't matter. But be a man. Not a child.   

Poem: "Sex Without Love" by Sharon Olds

This a is poem that was shown to me a little over a year ago by one of my English teachers, Mr. Thompson.  It was a part of our “love” (--and the lack of) poetry set, if I remember correctly, right around Valentine’s Day.  I was instantly drawn to the poem, which comes to no surprise as I relate well with nearly all of the poems of Sharon Olds. I am no poetry technician, and I honestly have no desire to count rhyme and meter, as I tend to focus on the effects the art piece creates.


Honestly, I will admit to bias. Her style is similar to mine, and so perhaps my love for her poetry is some twisted form of narcissism? But I digress. I present her to you now.  Her work is full of simile, sensual (not to be mistaken for sexual) imagery, and mantic meditations on quotidian concepts: sex, a scar, a birthday party, etc. Part of the beauty of Olds' style is its very own unfolding, as it starts with something and augments it; giving a fuller and richer meaning and weight. 


"Sex Without Love" 

How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other's bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health--just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.

Also, I subscribed to this YouTube channel months ago. I am in love with this man's voice. Also, the Bernini sculptures are an ingenious idea (this stoic ecstasy). They fit perfectly. 

 

 This poem communicates to me on so very many different levels, and happens to change its application every time that I read it: each day of experience enhancing the reading, and each reading adding a layer of understanding.

If I were to select a single word to describe the words of Olds, I would pick “life,” which would describe her content, form, and style: paradoxical, imagery galore, and cerebral to point of abstraction. To simply highlight the beauty of her work:

John Stezaker, "Pair IV",  2007

"Beautiful…dancers… ice-skaters…fingers hooked inside…faces red as steak, wine, wet as the children …to the God…to the still waters…light rising slowly as steam… the true religious..." Not to mention her beautiful, repetitive, nominative phrases, "...like ice-skaters over the ice...come to the come to the come God come to the still waters...the true religions, the purists, the pros..." And of course the last phrase, "...and not truth, which is the single body alone in the universe against its own best time"—Her very psyche seeps though her words--as it should, being a poet and all--and it is not difficult to glean portraits of the both  the internal and the universal Sharon Olds. 

Discovery: Alexey Titarenko, photographer

À La Boite Verte, I have made another uncovering: Alexey Titarenko.

The photographer has a fascinating history, having grown up and tried to pursue a career as an artist in Soviet Russia. He was receiving worldwide recognition by the 90’s for his photography, and his work as only spread since. Here's his website. You can also find an amazing three-part documentary about him on YouTube, "l'Art et La Maniere": Part One, Two, and Three, which all talk about his history, inspiration, and process. 

His images are characterized by more or less crisp cityscapes, with smokey brushstrokes of people in the foreground and background. Nearly all of his work is centered in St. Petersburg, and in the documentary he speaks of how he seeks to grasp the city’s “eternal” elements: water, ice, canals, so that “one may approach the soul of the city.”  One of the commentators in the documentary says how Titarenko works posses a rare "articulate light," which I though to be a brilliant way of putting it. Titarenko claims that his inspiration for his work includes the short stories and novels of Dostoyevsky, and also the music of Soviet composer, Shostakovich; especially the  13^th Symphony and its third movement, “In the Store.”  The music is deep, harrowing, and Titarenko reflects it beautifully.

Titarenko's photographs are full of poetic richness and tragedy. There is such a heaviness there, one that is also made manifest in the music of Shostakovich. His photography is so empty; so minimalist; which is ironic as the documentary shows the amount of time he puts into every image. Also, it's interesting to remember that these somber, empty fogs of shadow are in fact crowds; that his photos wouldn't exist without hordes of people. However, instead of highlighting the presence of the people, the blurs emphasize their lack; saying not so much, "Here are people," but rather, "here are their traces": Life, and all its elements and manifestations, becomes a transient wisp; a sort of holistic nothingness. 

Also interesting to note, Titarenko's work transcends some very basic rules of photography, which is prided by the fact that it freezes time. However, the images of Titarenko are a selection of movement, completely “atemporal”--being without definite time. I think this is what helps to lend a quality of eternal musicality to these photos. The whole concept of his is to depict the passing of time, which is something that I find really fascinating, as we the photography-viewer, tend to relish the eternal sunset and the off-beat miracle snapshot of chance. His photography, however, instead of presenting itself as an image of "here it is," is more rather a "there it was." 

Homesickness

I’ve been full of ennui today, likely due to my lack of sleep and stress from school. I bought a Lindt chocolate bar and ate the whole thing while walking home and listening to Billie Holiday on my iPod.   I couldn’t quite name the emotion I was feeling, but I knew that I was longing for the South. Utah just isn't the same. I miss the South. I miss it all.

While writing this, I had a remembrance and I rummaged around until I found this: “O Magnet-South”, by Walt Whitman, the very master of American word and human spirit. 

"O Magnet-South"

O magnet-south! O glistening perfumed South! my South!
O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse and love! good and evil! O all
    dear to me!
O dear to me my birth-things--all moving things and the trees where
    I was born--the grains, plants, rivers,
Dear to me my own slow sluggish rivers where they flow, distant,
    over flats of slivery sands or through swamps,
Dear to me the Roanoke, the Savannah, the Altamahaw, the Pedee, the
    Tombigbee, the Santee, the Coosa and the Sabine,
O pensive, far away wandering, I return with my soul to haunt their
    banks again,
Again in Florida I float on transparent lakes, I float on the
    Okeechobee, I cross the hummock-land or through pleasant openings
    or dense forests,
I see the parrots in the woods, I see the papaw-tree and the
    blossoming titi;
Again, sailing in my coaster on deck, I coast off Georgia, I coast
    up the Carolinas,
I see where the live-oak is growing, I see where the yellow-pine,
    the scented bay-tree, the lemon and orange, the cypress, the
    graceful palmetto,
I pass rude sea-headlands and enter Pamlico sound through an inlet,
    and dart my vision inland;
O the cotton plant! the growing fields of rice, sugar, hemp!
The cactus guarded with thorns, the laurel-tree with large white flowers,
The range afar, the richness and barrenness, the old woods charged
    with mistletoe and trailing moss,
The piney odor and the gloom, the awful natural stillness, (here in
    these dense swamps the freebooter carries his gun, and the
    fugitive has his conceal'd hut)
O the strange fascination of these half-known half-impassable
    swamps, infested by reptiles, resounding with the bellow of the
    alligator, the sad noises of the night-owl and the wild-cat, and
    the whirr of the rattlesnake,
The mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing all the forenoon,
    singing through the moon-lit night,
The humming-bird, the wild turkey, the raccoon, the opossum;
A Kentucky corn-field, the tall, graceful, long-leav'd corn,
    slender, flapping, bright green, with tassels, with beautiful
    ears each well-sheath'd in its husk;
O my heart! O tender and fierce pangs, I can stand them not, I will depart;
O to be a Virginian where I grew up! O to be a Carolinian!
O longings irrepressible! O I will go back to old Tennessee and
    never wander more.

Obviously I could never compare to his greatness, but Whitman is also a voice of empowerment, giving tone to all those emotions which we do not know that we do not know. I would press all of you to read him as much as you could. His work is the zenith of beauty and the very essence of existence. Every word he writes perfectly captures what it is I'm still trying to think out, much less actaully say.  Not only are his imagery and references spot on; he also decribes my emotions perfectly--this sort of ambivalent longing:

"...O dear to me my birth-things--all moving things and the trees where
    I was born--the grains, plants, rivers..."
[mentioning also] 
"...The piney odor and the gloom, the awful natural stillness...the sad noises of the night-owl and the wild-cat, and the whirr of the rattlesnake..."

"...O to be a Virginian where I grew up!...O longings irrepressible!..."

Discovery: Chad Hagen, graphic designer

Ah, another discovery:

I found him here, which is probably my newest most favorite site: La Boite Verte (which has got so much amazing imagery and other content. Makes me wish I had time for a tumblr). I also dug around for his own personal website.  And his flickr. All I can tell about him is that he's living in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

All of his work has that subtle minimalist that I just lust after in my own work. It's all very definite, diverse, and concise, as his work tend to be religiously geometric and clear-cut. It is definitely modern, but still has strong (under?)tones of archetypal 60's design, as well as even more vintage visual aspects: there's just a hint of nostalgia there. His work really encapsulates the way I think and feel, and so maybe that's another reason why I like it so much; it's just resonates so much in me.

It's funny, I've been seeing his work floating all around the internet for years now, and it's only today that I finally found out about him; this source of ubiquitous graphic genius. Honestly, it's his work that is really turning my eyes to graphic design as a career possibility. I've got half-a-mind to switch majors soon, and if not that, at least seriously consider pursuing it for grad school.



More of his work found from his website after the jump:

Discovery: Ryan McGinley, photgrapher

Well, in my daily pilgrimage across the wilds of the internet, I stumbled across a facebook profile, which took me to blog, which took me to a fashion website, which took me another blog, which took me to a tumblr account, where I ran upon this fellow:  Ryan McGinley.

American photography. Born 1977. Photographer of the Year 2003. Recipient of Young Photographer Infinity Award, 2007. Etc.

Here’s his website, as well as his Wikipedia page…

I find his work to be incredible: it’s all so very much alive, and each of his photos has such a vivid aspect of breath to them. Compositions are strong, his palettes are stunning, and allegedly he uses his close friends for models for his situational/documentary-style photography, which explains the casual, effortlessly candid nature of his photos.

There’s a lot of nudity in his phography (some photos being more graphic than others), and so it maybe isn’t the best option for web-browsing while at work, or at a public computer. Regardless though, his work is beautiful, raw, and uninhibited.  

More pics beyond the the jump:

Movie Review: The Children of Paradise (Les Enfants du Paradis)

Consistently voted as one of the best movies in history, this film is indeed an amazing feat. Despite its arduous length—almost three hours—I never once felt like the plot was languished or beaten thin. When the film was finished, I marveled that Carné was even able to cut it down to that length. The story was told with an ironic brevity: three hours, but what a three hours. It was a monumental feat of breathtaking imagery and scripting: I was absolutely astounded by it.

In the most simplistic terms, the film was the story about love—its starting, its ending; its being and its very lack of being, mostly its lack.  The whole mise-en-scène is startlingly rich with metaphor and symbolism—and also rampant with socio-political undertones that cried out during the years of the film’s production, during the Nazi Occupation.

The story revolves around (and this is an understatement) a woman called Garance—aptly named after a type of flower, properly alluding to her ephemeral nature—who is loved enormously and simultaneously by four separate men: an actor, a mime, a writer/murderer, and an aristocrat; each man loving her in a unique way, and she responding to each of them in her own unique way; creating a beautifully delicate summary of life and love. 

The Beginning of My Blog, and "De la Solitude"

Well, as a first step in what is hopefully to be a long and pleasant journey with the blogging world, I open. 


For today, as it’s already past midnight (impulsivity knows no bounds), I will keep things brief. More posts will ensue as I talk about life, love, food, fashion, France, etc.--basically just whatever interests me at the moment.


I start this blog with an essay for my French class: a composition loosely based on the one by Michel de Montaigne on the nature of Solitude. Voilà.


[Also, for those of you who will read this who don’t know French and use Google-translate, know that this is actually decent French writing, and that, I assure you, I write perfectly coherently in English.]