sometimes a great notion.

Vinegar and Oil, Jane Hirschfield

Sun, 19 May 2013 15:12:18 -0400

Wrong solitude vinegars the soul,
right solitude oils it.

How fragile we are, between the few good moments.

Coming and going unfinished,
puzzled by fate,

like the half-carved relief
of a fallen donkey, above a church door in Finland.

The Great Gatsby (2013)

Fri, 17 May 2013 14:05:35 -0400

The Great Gatsby (2013):

brightwalldarkroom:

AMONG THE WHISPERINGS AND THE CHAMPAGNE AND THE STARS.

by Chad Perman

I can’t handle how quickly modern culture moves. Mostly, I’m simply ill-equipped—needing time to think and reflect and sort out one’s thoughts feels dangerously close to being a handicap in the digital age. But at the…

My Gatsby thoughts, yo.

Yahoo in Talks to Acquire Tumblr - Adweek

Fri, 17 May 2013 01:59:46 -0400

Yahoo in Talks to Acquire Tumblr - Adweek:

No no no no. Me no like. No no.

"What’s the impulse behind art? It’s saying in whatever language is the language of your work, “If I..."

Thu, 16 May 2013 11:21:58 -0400

“What’s the impulse behind art? It’s saying in whatever language is the language of your work, “If I could move you as much as it moved me … if I can move anyone a tenth as much as that moved me, if I can spark the same sense of mystery and awe and surprise as that sparked in me, well that’s why I do what I do.”

- Greil Marcus, 2013 commencement address at New York’s School of Visual Arts

Yes, the girl who played Jordan Baker was amazing. There were...

Wed, 15 May 2013 17:46:57 -0400

Yes, the girl who played Jordan Baker was amazing. There were times when all the other lead actors in Gatsby looked like they were in costume, performing the 1920s. But she seemed, at all times, as if she had somehow time-travelled directly from that era.

Marlon Brando, laying down some beats.

Wed, 15 May 2013 13:27:56 -0400

Marlon Brando, laying down some beats.

thedailywhat: Coming Soon of the Day: Neil Degrasse Tyson Will...

Wed, 15 May 2013 12:57:35 -0400

thedailywhat:

Coming Soon of the Day: Neil Degrasse Tyson Will Host the Sequel of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos

Though it’s been quietly in the works since 2011, Fox has officially confirmed that Carl Sagan’s monumental 1970 sci-ed miniseries Cosmos: A Personal Voyage will be getting an updated sequel next year, which will consist of 13 episodes produced by Family Guy’s Seth MacFarlane and hosted by one of the Internet’s most celebrated astrophysicists, Neil Degrasse Tyson. Fox is hoping the show will have as much as of cultural impact as Carl Sagan’s original series, which still remains one of the most watched PBS series in the world to this day.

(Image by Richard Davies)

BEST NEWS OF THE YEAR.

A Great Gatsby Book Report by a Kid Who Only Saw the Movie

Tue, 14 May 2013 14:05:06 -0400

A Great Gatsby Book Report by a Kid Who Only Saw the Movie:

By Jordan Asher Major Brogan III, age 16

The Great Gatsby is a very important and famous book which tells its story through many pages, all of which I enjoyed reading very much. It was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, who lived from 1896 to 1940 and truly wrote many books. Through its use of characters, garbage falling from the sky all the time, and black people constantly playing the trumpet on a fire escape, The Great Gatsby is truly a book by F. Scott Fitzgerald about how you shouldn’t just buy a castle near your ex-girlfriend in the 1920s and then wait for her to fall back in love with you, because eventually you might get murdered by a poor person.

The main guy in the book is Nick Carraway, who seems like he probably has brown hair and blue eyes, not that I would know, as I only read about him in a book and haven’t seen what he looks like. Nick Carraway went to college and then moved to a dirty shack on Long Island, where he tries to make money using finance and mainly just follows his neighbors around staring like a weirdo. He is currently in a mental institution because he used to drink too much because of the ’20s, so he spends his time typing his recollections of Long Island on a magic typewriter that makes his words float up into the air like cheap visual effects in a movie. (Not that I watch movies. I prefer books.)

Nick Carraway has a cousin named Daisy. She’s married to Tom Buchanan, who is a really good actor. I mean character. He has a small mustache, probably. Daisy hates shirts, Tom Buchanan, and having a personality, but everyone seems to think she is a lot of fun to be around anyway. She’s pretty cute, I guess.

Next door to Nick Carraway is a big castle where a mysterious man named Gatsby lives. Gatsby is the most important man in town (and in the book—hence the title!!!), except that none of his friends or acquaintances has ever met or seen him, even though he is literally on the cover of the newspaper every day. Any time someone says “Gatsby,” everyone else is like, “Gatsby? Gatsby? What Gatsby? Where Gatsby? Show me the Gatsby!” but no one knows who he is. Gatsby is so mysterious, in fact, that even the drunk guy who lives in his library has never seen him! Until that stops being a convenient plot point, after which everyone is just like, “Oh, hey Gatsby, could you move, you’re blocking the polo game or whatever.”

So, Gatsby and Daisy used to date, before Gatsby had to go be in World War I and then hide so nobody would find out he was a secret poor. Now that he’s not poor anymore (because of alcohol crime) Gatsby throws a lot of parties hoping that Daisy will come over. The main thing you need to understand about life in the “roaring 1920s” is that it mainly consisted of a bunch of people standing in a fountain while a drunk guy played the pipe organ and servants dumped garbage all over the place and everyone is just screaming and screaming. The 1920s people loved it. As history shows, there were nine main people in New York at that time: Gatsby, Nick Carraway, Daisy, Tom Buchanan, a black guy playing the trumpet on a fire escape, Daisy’s friend, a dirty mechanic, his wife who is amorous, and her sister who is also amorous. After some events, life would never be the same.

Gatsby is obsessed with this green light across the water from his house. The green light represents Daisy, because Gatsby is “green” with envy that Tom Buchanan gets to hang out with her all the time, and also because green is the color of “go” and Gatsby would like to “go” over there.

Eventually Daisy comes over and says she would like to break up with Tom Buchanan and marry Gatsby instead, because of shirts. Everyone has a fight and eventually Gatsby dies, which represents death. The most important metaphor in The Great Gatsby is the shooting stars, which happen in the sky at least twice in every scene. The shooting stars represent the fact that Gatsby is the “star” of the book and somebody “shoots” him at the end. Aren’t we all a little bit like Gatsby in this modern world?

The Merriam-Webster English Dictionary defines “conclusion” as “the last part of something.” In conclusion, this is the last part of my report on The Great Gatsby, which is a very expensive book about confetti. It is truly the best book I have ever read all the way through.

BACK THEN? I couldn’t get anybody to watch it, for the...

Tue, 14 May 2013 12:58:19 -0400

BACK THEN? I couldn’t get anybody to watch it, for the life of me. I think livejournal was like the only place I could even find anybody to talk about it with!

It just seems like this weird foregone conclusion nowadays that the show was always this thing everybody loved. But it wasn’t. A few of us loved it, hard. But it was a hard show to love if you jumped in mid-way through, because so much of its genius and hilarity came from the way it built on previous episodes, jokes, and throughlines, rewarding those of us who showed up each and every week a thousands times over.

Anyway, yeah, I’m being the TV equivalent of the I Liked that Band Before They Were Famous guy, and I don’t like that guy either, so I’ll stop. But still! (And also, long live Netflix, seriously. They had already changed my life in so many ways, and now they’ve actually managed to resurrect one of my very favorite shows of all time, and in a whole new, intricate and intriguing all-episodes-at-once way that could be a game-changer all over again. I officially forgive you for Quikster, dudes.)

"Going through a drawer I found the submissions/applications log I’ve kept off and on over the years...."

Tue, 14 May 2013 11:06:23 -0400

“Going through a drawer I found the submissions/applications log I’ve kept off and on over the years. Just in case you think it’s all been roses I’d like to report that Yaddo rejected me (as recently as 2011). McDowell rejected me. Hedgebrook rejected me twice. The Georgia Review rejected me and Ploughshares rejected me and Tin House rejected me, as did about twenty other journals and magazines. Both The Sun and The Missouri Review rejected me before I appeared in their pages. Literary Arts declined to give me a fellowship three times before I won one. I’ve applied for an NEA five times and it’s always been a no. Harper’s magazine never even bothered to reply. I say it all the time but I’ll say it again: keep on writing. Never give up. Rejection is part of a writer’s life. Then, now, always.”

- Cheryl Strayed | Facebook

Cheryl knows.

(via therumpus)

Here is Today

Mon, 13 May 2013 23:35:00 -0400

Here is Today:

I can look at something like this for hours.

David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”, recorded by...

Mon, 13 May 2013 17:56:04 -0400

David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”, recorded by Commander Chris Hadfield on board the International Space Station.

"I think we all have this little theatre on top of our shoulders, where the past and the present and..."

Mon, 13 May 2013 12:20:51 -0400

“I think we all have this little theatre on top of our shoulders, where the past and the present and our aspirations and our memories are simply and inevitably mixed. What makes each one of us unique, is the potency of the individual mix.”

- Dennis Potter

Millsin' About: An Important Fact About Your Parents

Sun, 12 May 2013 14:58:13 -0400

Millsin' About: An Important Fact About Your Parents:

millsinabout:

Although he’s viewed with much contempt and many of his ideas are now considered at best “interesting metaphors to ponder while thinking about yourself,” Freud continues to inform how many people think of the processes that produce selves and personalities. That is: the form of his ideas —which…

At a movie theater for the first time in months, watching Gatsby...

Sat, 11 May 2013 19:12:39 -0400

At a movie theater for the first time in months, watching Gatsby with my mom for our Mother’s Day date.

(the previews and critics made me think I would hate this movie—especially since it’s one if my very favorite books—but I actually liked it quite a bit!)

brightwalldarkroom: Our new logo, for BW/DR Magazine, designed...

Fri, 10 May 2013 13:41:37 -0400

brightwalldarkroom:

Our new logo, for BW/DR Magazine, designed by Brianna Ashby.

How To Correspond With A Writer

Fri, 10 May 2013 13:12:29 -0400

How To Correspond With A Writer:

ecantwell:

Like many other writers on Tumblr and on the Internet in general, my inbox is full of messages like this:

“Hey can you look at my writing when you get a chance?”

“When are you going to respond to my email?”

“I write poems and it would be great if you could look at them when you have time!”

IMPORTANT IMPORTANT IMPORTANT.

Read this whole thing. Listen to Elizabeth. Seriously.

apoetreflects: “It’s a most distressing affliction to have a sentimental heart and a skeptical...

Thu, 09 May 2013 21:35:17 -0400

apoetreflects:

“It’s a most distressing affliction to have a sentimental heart and a skeptical mind.”

—Naguib Mahfouz, from Sugar Street: The Cairo Trilogy, Volume 3 (Anchor, 2011)

The Loop Magazine

Thu, 09 May 2013 16:22:16 -0400

The Loop Magazine:

parislemon:

Following in Marco Arment’s footsteps, Jim Dalrymple has released a bi-monthly magazine on Apple’s Newsstand.

I really like the movement towards self-publishing of original content that is paid for by the readers (The Loop Magazine is $1.99 per month). And I love the move away from the bloated 700 MB magazine downloads that big publishers puke up once a month.

Here’s more in Dalrymple’s own words.

Psst: This is what we’re doing with the new Bright Wall/Dark Room Magazine, in case you were wondering. Type Engine, the designers/publishers behind The Loop, are currently at work putting the finishing touches on our first issue. If you want some idea how ours will look, take a look at The Loop (out today!). Hopefully we’ll be submitting BWDR to apple within the week…

"Oh we’re a mess, poor humans, poor flesh—hybrids of angels and animals, dolls with diamonds stuffed..."

Thu, 09 May 2013 14:25:56 -0400

“Oh we’re a mess, poor humans, poor flesh—hybrids of angels and animals, dolls with diamonds stuffed inside them We’ve been to the moon and we’re still fighting over Jerusalem. Let me tell you what I do know: I am more than one thing, and not all of those things are good. The truth is complicated. It’s two-toned, multi-vocal, bittersweet. I used to think that if I dug deep enough to discover something sad and ugly, I’d know it was something true. Now I’m trying to dig deeper.”

- Richard Siken, Black Telephone (Spork Editor’s Page)