Patti Smith: Advice to the young from Louisiana Channel on Vimeo.
Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don’t make compromises, don’t worry about making a bunch of money or being successful. Be concerned about doing good work. Protect your work and if you build a good name, eventually that name will be its own currency.
Pallas Athene was the Greek goddess of war. At her birth, she sprang from Zeus's head, with, as Kerényi says, "a far-echoing battle-cry," in "armour of gleaming gold," and "brandishing her sharp javelin." According to Kerényi, Pallas Athene was "a warlike virgin." He notes that the epithet "Pallas" means "a strong virgin, a virago, as she would be called in Latin."I immediately thought of the video I posted yesterday, the trailer for RuPaul's upcoming Drag Race (season 4):
Even when one is no longer attached to things, it's still something to have been attached to them; because it was always for reasons which other people didn't grasp... Well, now that I'm a little too weary to live with other people, these old feelings, so personal and individual, that I had in the past, seem to me - it's the mania of all collectors - very precious. I open my heart to myself like a sort of vitrine, and examine one by one all those love affairs of which the world can know nothing. And of this collection to which I'm now much more attached than to my others, I say to myself, rather as Mazarin said of his books, but in fact without the least distress, that it will be very tiresome to have to leave it all.
Charles Swann
There are certain technical words in the vocabulary of every academic discipline which tend to become stereotypes and cliches. Psychologists have a word which is probably used more frequently than any other word in modern psychology. It is the word “maladjusted.” This word is the ringing cry of the new child psychology.
Now in a sense all of us must live the well adjusted life in order to avoid neurotic and schizophemic personalities. But there are some things in our social system to which I am proud to be maladjusted and to which I suggest that you too ought to be maladjusted.
I never intend to adjust myself to the viciousness of mob-rule. I never intend to adjust myself to the evils of segregation and the crippling effects of discrimination. I never intend to adjust myself to the tragic inequalities of an economic system which take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. I never intend to become adjusted to the madness of militarism and the self-defeating method of physical violence.
I call upon you to be maladjusted. The challenge to you is to be maladjusted—as maladjusted as the prophet Amos, who in the midst of the injustices of his day, could cry out in words that echo across the centuries, “Let judgment run down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream;” as maladjusted as Lincoln, who had the vision to see that this nation could not survive half slave and half free; as maladjusted as Jefferson, who in the midst of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery could cry out, in words lifted to cosmic proportions, “All men are created equal, and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the persuit of Happiness.” As maladjusted as Jesus who dared to dream a dream of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men. The world is in desperate need of such maladjustment.
Morrissey is for life, not just for Christmas. I liken being a Moz fan to finding yourself in an intense relationship with someone you totally fancy and adore, but who is just a teeny bit embarrassing when you take them down the pub to meet your mates. You don't stop loving them, but every time you go out together you say a silent prayer hoping they won't do or say anything too weird.
I’m past the age when things scare me. But if I were younger, I would be looking down the line with some apprehension. A world with more than 9 billion people is not going to be very habitable. We’ve already used 90% of the fish in the sea. Global warming will make it worse: more droughts, more extreme weather and limited harvests. People think they will fix the problem with technology, but famine may fix it for us. Either way it will be a pretty miserable life. The infinite inventiveness of humans sometimes makes me feel hopeful, but we’re just as capable of inventing horrible things as good things.
Poppers are the only drug I still take. I used to take them on rollercoasters which was insane. I tried heroin, but itching and puking isn't my idea of fun.
This Much I Know: John Waters
"On Facebook and Twitter, you are performing to attract people – you are dancing emotionally, on a platform created by a large corporation. People's feelings bounce back and forth – happy Stakhanovites, ignoring and denying the system of power. It's like Stalin's socialist realism. Both Twitter and socialist realism are innocent expressions of the ideology of the time, which don't pull back and show the wider thing they are part of. We look back on socialist realism not as innocent but as a dramatic expression of power; it expresses the superiority of the state, which was the guiding belief at the time. I think sometime in the future people will look back at the millions and millions of descriptions of personal feelings on the internet and see them in similar ways. This is the driving belief of our time: that 'me' and what I feel minute by minute is the natural centre of the world. Far from revealing that this is an ideology – and that there are other ways of looking at human society – what Twitter and Facebook do is reinforce the feeling that this is the natural way to be."Adam Curtis, Have computers taken away our power?
The world always looks straight ahead; as for me, I turn my gaze inward, I fix it there and keep it busy. Everyone looks in front of him: as for me, I look inside me: I have no business but with myself; I continually observe myself, I take stock of myself, I taste myself. Others…they always go forward; as for me, I roll about in myself.
- Montaigne
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wink_martindale told me someone related to a job application I'd made recently had rung for me. She sounded nice on the phone, he said, and she would e-mail me. Wednesday 28 December 1966
Leonie rang at about six. I'd sent a telegram earlier today. She'd just got in from work. She said that Dad has gone back home. Sleeps in my mother's bed downstairs with the corpse. After his accident he can't piss straight and floods the lavatory with it whenever he goes. She said, 'Well, I'm shocked by our Marilyn, you know.' I said, 'Why, what's she done?' Leonie said, 'Oh, you know, she behaves very ignorantly all round. And when I told her Mum was dead all she said was - "I'm not surprised". Well, you know, what kind of remark is that?' Dougie was upset. Remarkable how those without hearts when young suddenly develop them in later life.
I promised to go home tomorrow. Leonie and George will come round in the evening. As the corpse is downstairs in the main living-room it means going out or watching television with death at one's elbow. My father, fumbling out of bed in the middle of the night, bumped into the coffin and almost had the corpse on the floor.
Peggy said how dreadfully reminiscent of Loot it all was.
From The Orton Diaries, edited by John Lahr
wink_martindale freaked out at one point. 
The spectacle before me was strangely moving. Personal anxiety was blotted out by wonder and admiration; for the sheer beauty of our planet surprised me. It was a huge pearl, set in spangled ebony. It was nacrous, it was an opal. No, it was far more lovely than any jewel. Its patterned colouring was more subtle, more ethereal. It displayed the delicacy and brilliance, the intricacy and harmony of a live thing. Strange that in my remoteness I seemed to feel, as never before, the vital presence of Earth as of a creature alive but tranced and obscurely yearning to wake.
I reflected that not one of the visible features of this celestial and living gem revealed the presence of man. Displayed before me, though invisible, were some of the most congested centres of human population. There below me lay huge industrial regions, blackening the air with smoke. Yet all this thronging life and humanly momentous enterprise had made no mark whatever on the features of the planet. From this high lookout the Earth would have appeared no different before the dawn of man. No visiting angel, or explorer from another planet, could have guessed that this bland orb teemed with vermin, with world-mastering, self-torturing, incipiently angelic beasts.
Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker, 1937
naturalbornkaos's snowmanandroktonebeeorkendurkeyzaubinsaint_narcissusdesayuno_inglesbluehelendenalyiarosamiculajellyfish93
yearning for being a wonderful friend - our eyes, feet and mouth in Paris. Thank you for making our Two Days in Paris so special. We have returned home with many good memories. Remember that you always have a room with us if you happen to be in London. And if you ask me to go to the theatres... I'll say yes! 
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timeasmymeasure
