Teach me to care and not to care.
In his well known speech on order from Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, Ulysses claims that the sun sits “amidst” the other planets and “corrects the ill aspects of planets evil.”
While Ulysses does not believe the sun is at the center of the solar system, the geocentrist does believe the sun is at the center of the spheres, because the sun is in the fourth heaven of seven.
“Wellness is a state quite beyond health; a state of being completely free from aches, pains, irritations, stress, anxiety, inflammation, fear, distress, or disquiet. Wellness is not only a condition of bodily perfection, but spiritual perfection, as well, high energy, perfect mental acuity, peace, sexual fulfillment, empowerment, control, contentment.
Wellness is a divine state. Wellness is a state of being which can realistically only be achieved beyond death, which is to say that the search for wellness in this life is the search for a deathlike state. Wellness is death.”
The latest episode of Proverbial is dedicated to Davila’s claim, “Dying societies accumulate laws like dying men accumulate remedies.”
“Because so many billion-dollar corporations now use mindfulness, leadership, community, passion, and teamwork to describe themselves and their reasons for existing, many Christians now tacitly understand the monetary value which attends an ability to speak of corporate values with familiarity. The more often a classical community hears these words, the more parents believe the point of a classical education is getting ahead in the world—which will eventually lead them ask for the removal of Milton and Shakespeare from the classroom and to add laptops, at which point a classical school has no reason to carry on.”
-From “Mindfulness Is A Waste Of Time, Not A Virtue,” my latest for CiRCE
My review of Nomadland is just the entirety of Sullivan’s Travels (1941).
Some tool called Beeple sold a jpeg for $70 million last week thus making him the third-highest-paid artist alive.
You have to be rather oblivious to the contours of modern life to pay $70 million for a piece of art made by someone who is still alive. If I were Beeple, I would contact the person who bought the jpeg and make an offer like, “Give me another $25 million or I’ll go and get myself cancelled, in which case your original investment will be worthless.”
I have lately begun rethinking whether I can continue blithely writing letters of recommendation for just any student to attend just any college.
My latest for CiRCE is a dialogue in which I mull the matter over.
What I listen to when the winter is over.
Evening Star, Fripp & Eno
Late Night Tales, Air
Lost in Translation, Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Seventh Tree, Goldfrapp
Four Last Songs, Richard Strauss (Jessye Norman recording)
Kill For Love, Chromatics
You Must Believe in Spring, Bill Evans
Pocket Symphony, Air
Jukebox, Cat Power
Venice, Fennesz
Radio Amor, Tim Hecker
Vampire Weekend (eponymous)
Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, Claude Debussy
“I spent three hours on Tik-Tok and made a list of all the perverse things that your child knows about if your child also has a Tik-Tok account.”
There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity.