Quote Of The Week

"The faithful of Shiva or Dionysus seek contact with those forces which lead to a refusal of the politics, ambitions and limitations of ordinary social life. This does not involve simply a recognition of world harmony, but also an active participation in an experience which surpasses and upsets the order of material life."

Death Of A Dream Machine

Mick Farren

Rest In Peace

Eyes Filled With Dead Men’s Dirt

Willie Louis

Rest In Peace

"Willie Louis, the man who heard Emmett Till’s ear-piercing screams and the beatings the night he was murdered in Mississippi in 1955 is dead in suburban Chicago." ... Story continues here: Emmett Till Murder Witness Willie Louis Is Dead At 76 (Rolling Out)

Art As Savoir

"In this sense the Dionysian man resembles Hamlet: both have once looked truly into the essence of things, they have gained knowledge, and nausea inhibits action; for their action could not change anything in the eternal nature of things; they feel it to be ridiculous or humiliating that they should be asked to set right a world that is out of joint. Knowledge kills action; action requires the veils of illusion: that is the doctrine of Hamlet, not that cheap wisdom of Jack the Dreamer who reflects too much and, as it were, from an excess of possibilities does not get around to action. Not reflection, no—true knowledge, an insight into the horrible truth, outweighs any motive for action, both in Hamlet and in the Dionysian man.

Now no comfort avails any more; longing transcends a world after death, even the gods; existence is negated along with its glittering reflection in the gods or in an immortal beyond. Conscious of the truth he has once seen, man now sees everywhere only the horror or absurdity of existence; now he understands what is symbolic in Ophelia's fate; now he understands the wisdom of the sylvan god, Silenus: he is nauseated.

Here, when the danger to his will is greatest, art approaches as a saving sorceress, expert at healing. She alone knows how to turn these nauseous thoughts about the horror or absurdity of existence into notions with which one can live: these are the sublime as the artistic taming of the horrible, and the comic as the artistic discharge of the nausea of absurdity. The satyr chorus of the dithyramb is the saving deed of Greek art; faced with the intermediary world of these Dionysian companions, the feelings described here exhausted themselves."

From The Birth Of Tragedy, 1872

Take The A-Train

Keron Thomas

Rest In Peace

"Twenty years ago, as a 16-year-old boy, Keron Thomas made headlines when he commandeered an A train heading to Queens and took passengers on a 85-stop joyride, nobody the wiser that a kid was driving the train." ... Story continues here: Brooklyn Man famous For His A-Train Joyride As Teenager In 1993 Dies At 37 (PIX 11)

Quote Of The Week

"True debauchery is liberating because it creates no obligations. In it you possess only yourself, hence it remains the favorite pastime of the great lovers of their own person."

Quote Of The Week

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

One Becomes What One Is

"My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it — all idealism is mendacity in the face of what is necessary — but love it."

From Ecce Homo, 1888

Circles & Seasons

Toshi-Aline Ohta Seeger

Rest In Peace

"Toshi Seeger, wife of folk music icon Pete Seeger, passed away overnight on July 9th. She was a mother, an organizer, an activist and filmmaker, and an essential part of all of her husband’s work. She was 91." ... Story continues here: Toshi Seeger Passes (Sing Out)

People Goin’ Down To The Ground

Quote Of The Week

"The truth is always an abyss. One must — as in a swimming pool — dare to dive from the quivering springboard of trivial everyday experience and sink into the depths, in order to later rise again — laughing and fighting for breath — to the now doubly illuminated surface of things."

A Coney Island Of My Mind #15

Photograph by Lee Greenfeld © 2013

Quote Of The Week

"There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest."