Pelican: Lost in the Headlights

Photograph by Nele Dierick [Pelican | Facebook]

Pelican

Everlasting summer: Antonio Vivaldi

[Wikimedia Commons]

Antonio Vivaldi  | The Four Seasons

Dream Odyssey, by Mono

[Last.fm]

Mono

Film quotes, #13: 25th Hour

[IMDb]

25th Hour
       Spike Lee | David Benioff

You'll get a job somewhere, a job that pays cash, a boss who doesn't ask questions, and you make a new life and you never come back. Monty, people like you, it's a gift, you'll make friends wherever you go. You're going to work hard, you're going to keep your head down and your mouth shut. You're going to make yourself a new home out there. You're a New Yorker, that won't ever change. You got New York in your bones. Spend the rest of your life out west but you're still a New Yorker. You'll miss your friends, you'll miss your dog, but you're strong. You got your mother's backbone in you, you're strong like she was. You find the right people, and you get yourself papers, a driver's license. You forget your old life, you can't come back, you can't call, you can't write. You never look back. You make a new life for yourself and you live it, you hear me? You live your live the way it should have been. But maybe, this is dangerous, but maybe after a few years you send word to Naturelle. You get yourself a new family and you raise them right, you hear me? Give them a good life, Monty. Give them what they need. You have a son, maybe you name him James, it's a good strong name, and maybe one day years from now years after I'm dead and gone reunited with your dear ma, you gather your whole family around and tell them the truth, who you are, where you come from, you tell them the whole story. Then you ask them if they know how lucky there are to be there. It all came so close to never happening. This life came so close to never happening.

[IMDb]

The revolutionary legacy of Cecil Taylor

Photograph by Frans Schellekens [The New Yorker]

Cecil Taylor
1929 - 2018

John Steinbeck: The Pearl

Art by Jose Clemente Orozco [The Pearl]

John Steinbeck

Excerpts from The Pearl, 1945/1994 New York: Penguin, pp. 25, 27-28

All manner of people grew interested in Kino-people with things to sell and people with favors to ask. Kino had found the Pearl of the World. The essence of pearl mixed with essence of men and a curious dark residue was precipitated. Every man suddenly became related to Kino's pearl, and Kino's pearl went into the dreams, the speculations, the schemes, the plans, the futures, the wishes, the needs, the lusts, the hungers, of everyone, and only one person stood in the way and that was Kino, so that he became curiously every man's enemy. The news stirred up something infinitely black and evil in the town; the black distillate was like the scorpion, or like hunger in the smell of food, or like loneliness when when love is withheld. The poison sacs of the town began to manufacture venom, and the town swelled and puffed with the pressure of it. 

[...]

But Kino's face shone with prophesy. "My son will read and open the books, and my son will write and will know writing. And my son will make numbers, and these things will make us free because he will know-he will know and through him we will know." And in the pearl Kino saw himself and Juana squatting by the little fire in the brush hut while Coyotito red from a great book. "This is what the pearl will do," said Kino. And he had never said so many words together in his life. And suddenly he was afraid of his talking. His hand closed down over the pearl and cut the light away from it. Kino was afraid as a man is afraid who says, "I will," without knowing.

Now the neighbors knew they had witnessed a great marvel They knew that time would now date from Kino's pearl, and that they would discuss this moment for many years to come. If these things came to pass, they would recount how Kino looked and what he said and how his eyes shone, and they would say, "He was a man transfigured. Some power was given to him, and there it started. You see what a great man he has beome, starting from that moment. And I myself saw it." 

And if Kino's planning came to nothing, those same neighbors would say, "There it started. A foolish madness came over him so that he spoke foolish words. God keep us from such things. Yes, God punished Kino because he rebelled against the way things are. You see what has become of him. And I myself saw the moment when his reason left him."

See also:

Bruce Springsteen and Tom Morello: The Ghost of Tom Joad returns

A day in the life: Peter de Francia

[Tate]

Peter de Francia
Disparates (A Little Night Music), 1969

Peter de Francia quoted in gallery label, Tate:

Terrible things happen and no one takes any notice.

The Guardian | The Independent | Art UK | James Hyman Gallery