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March 24, 2007
* Watched Breathless for the fifth time. This time with Ali.
* Read sixty pages of The Idiot.
* Bought the latest issue of foto8. It was very expensive, $14.
* Went to a Kashmiri restaurant with Zary, Shahriar, and Ali. Food was great.
* Listening to Tom Waits...I like his voice and lyrics...
* Going to talk with my mom and grandfather tomorrow. Same old song and dance. Same sad song and dance.
* Read a poem by Dylan Thomas and really liked it.
And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
Posted by amin at 3:44 AM | Comments (0)
March 22, 2007
Back from California. What a horrible place. Complete lack of culture. Not only that but nature has also been destroyed so that it can serve the interests of the greedy and stupid capitalist. Godard was right when he called Los Angles a big garage.
Finished Nietzsche's Untimely Meditations. It's one of the best books I've read.
Every great work of art has two qualities: simplicity + intensity.
Every great artist is: self-sacrificing and full of love.
Posted by amin at 11:29 PM | Comments (0)
March 18, 2007
One must not be in love with life. As every wise and virtuous person has observed: “Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity.” But at the same time that one must not cling to “life” one must be in love with “living.” How joyous is this living and process of becoming!
Going to California tomorrow for Ali’s citizenship. Have not seen my father for five years. Excited? No. Any hate or resentment? Not at all.
Posted by amin at 11:05 PM | Comments (0)
March 12, 2007
I know that it’s very ambitious of me but I want to read all the following books by the end of this year.
* The Metamorphosis by Kafka
* Death In Venice by Thomas Mann
* A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by Joyce
* Fear and Trembling by Kierkegaard
* On the Basis of Morality by Schopenhauer
* The Symposium by Plato
* Italian Journey by Goethe
* The Confessions by Rousseau
* Holderlin: Selected Poems and Fragments
* Meister Eckhart’s Selected Writings
* Saint Augustine’s Confessions
* Poetry, Language, Thought by Martin Heidegger
* The Letters of Vincent van Gogh
* Notes on the Cinematographer by Robert Bresson
* Camera Lucida by Barthes
* Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Biography
Posted by amin at 2:54 AM | Comments (0)
March 9, 2007
I have aesthetic thoughts whenever I’m fulfilled, complete, and selfless; metaphysical thoughts when I’m empty, sad, and helpless. Today was a metaphysical day!
Went to a talk by Professor Levingston on philosophy of music. Aestheticians, professors of aesthetics, distinguished professors of aesthetics! Fuck them all! They over-intellectualize art. They want to define terms. Art is about feeling; philosophy about thinking. One should not mix them together. I would much rather want to feel beauty than to define it.
Posted by amin at 1:23 AM | Comments (0)
March 7, 2007
Total Eclipse-
It follows Rimbaud’s life from the time when he started to write poetry at 16 to the moment of his death at 37. What an artist! What a poet! What a man! He started and abandoned poetry only for one reason: He wanted “to help people” through poetry and it was for this sacred passion that he decided to become the “first poet” of his century. At 19 he realized that by poetry alone you can’t improve the world. Thus, he put writing aside and went to Africa. And it was in this abandoning of poetry “for its own sake” that his life became a poem for humanity. A poem written by light and blood.
Posted by amin at 12:56 AM | Comments (0)