valeu . . .

ontem morreu

um puto poeta

desgraçado

. . .

valeu

! ? !

Copyright © 2006 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

On I-CON . . .

The “I” (re)presents a presence as the (re)presentation of an absence. Being is (re)presented as being present being absent. The presence of absence (re)presents an identity of difference, a being different being identical to oneself . . .

Indifferent in difference or indifference, “I” is (not) a self contra other, a self contra itself. Itself a self in itself, the other is the selfless other self. Or in other words of another:

I “cannot be itself unless it stands against what is not” I; not-I “is needed to make” I I, “which means that” not-I “is in” I. “When” I “wants to be itself, it is already outside itself, that is,” not-I. “If” I “did not contain in itself what is not itself,” not-I “could not come out of” I “so as to make” I “what it is.” I “is” I “because of this contradiction . . .”

The “I” is thereby a con for a conartist self. Autopoiesis: auto (self) creation. You see, I see a self itself as being other than itself being itself. We see “I see” as a seeing itself unseen. While, meanwhile, the blind “I” (eye) sees a prism (prison) of colors. Unseen colors are seen. The “I” is bound beyond bounds beforeverafterwords, and free . . .

“I” is a vision. “I” is an illusion. “I” is illusivision . . .

“I” is the “I-con.”

(gringocarioca, “On I-con”)

I-con . . .

Copyright © 2006 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

The Art of Success and Failure . . .

“Nothing is more strange in art than the way that chance and materials seem to favour you, when once you have thoroughly conquered them. Make yourself quite independent of chance, get your result in spite of it, and from that day forward all things will somehow fall as you would have them.”

“Still, do not be discouraged if you find that you have chosen ill, and that the subject overmasters you. It is much better that it should, than that you should think you had entirely mastered it. But at first, and even for some time, you must be prepared for very discomfortable failure; which, nevertheless, will not be without some wholesome result.”

“When you have practised for a little time from such of these subjects as may be accessible to you, you will certainly find difficulties arising which will make you wish more than ever for a master’s help: these difficulties will vary according to the character of your own mind (one question occurring to one person, and one to another), so that it is impossible to anticipate them all . . . you must be content to work on, in good hope that Nature will, in her own time, interpret to you much for herself; that farther experience on your own part will make some difficulties disappear; and that others will be removed by the occasional observation of such artists’ work as may come in your way.”

(John Ruskin, The Elements of Drawing)

On Handling, Handbooks, and Hands . . .

“But no natural object exists which does not involve in some part or parts of it this inimitableness, this mystery of quantity, which needs the peculiarity of handling and trick of touch to express it completely . . . although methods and dexterities of handling are wholly useless if you have not gained first the thorough knowledge of the thing . . . yet having once got this power over decisive form, you may safely – and must, in order to perfection of work – carry out your knowledge by every aid of method and dexterity of hand”

“It is one of the worst errors of this age to try to know and to see too much: the men who seem to know everything, never in reality know anything rightly. Beware of handbook knowledge.”

“You must stop that hand of yours, however painfully; make it understand that it is not to have its own way anymore, that it shall never more slip from one touch to another without orders; otherwise it is not you who are the master, but your fingers.”

(John Ruskin, The Elements of Drawing)

Why? Because!

“the aspects of things are so subtle and confused that they cannot in general be explained; and in the endeavor to explain some, we are sure to lose sight of others, while the natural over-estimate of the importance of those on which the attention is fixed causes us to exaggerate them . . . The best scholar is he whose eye is so keen as to see at once how the thing looks, and who need not therefore trouble himself with any reasons why it looks so”

(John Ruskin, The Elements of Drawing)

An old haiku/ Um velho haicai . . .

an old haiku –

a frog leaps

the sound of Bashô

ai! velho haicai –

uma solta rã salta

o som de Bashô

Copyright © 2006 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

The Bible According to Proust . . .

“It is only when certain periods of our lives have come to a close forever, when, even during the hours in which power and freedom seem to have been given to us, we are forbidden to reopen their doors furtively, it is when we are incapable of placing ourselves again, even for an instant, in our former state, it is only then that we refuse to believe that such things might have been entirely abolished. We can no longer sing of them, having ignored the wise warning of Goethe that there is poetry only in those things which one still feels. But unable to rekindle the flames of the past, we want at least to gather its ashes. Lacking a resurrection we can no longer bring about, with the cold memory we have kept of those things – the memory of facts telling us, ‘you were thus,’ without permitting us to become thus again, affirming to us the reality of a lost paradise instead of giving it back to us through recollection – we wish at least to describe it and to establish its knowledge.”

(Marcel Proust, “Preface to La Bible d’Amiens”)

retro-garde . . .

retro-garde

retro-garde, avant-passé:

nay! a place to play today

Copyright © 2006 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

Remembrance of Things Past . . .

“I feel that there is much to be said for the Celtic belief that the souls of those whom we have lost are held captive in some inferior being, in an animal, in a plant, in some inanimate object, and thus effectively lost to us until the day (which to many never comes) when we happen to pass by the tree or to obtain possession of the object which forms their prison. Then they start and tremble, they call us by our name, and as soon as we have recognised their voice the spell is broken. Delivered by us, they have overcome death and return to share our life.

And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) of which we have no inkling. And it depends on chance whether or not we come upon this object before we ourselves must die.”

(Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu. Trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin)

On Conceptions and Compositions . . .

"Perhaps the immobility of the things that surround us is forced upon them by our conviction that they are themselves and not anything else, by the immobility of our conception of them."

"But then, even in the most insignificant details of our daily life, none of us can be said to constitute a material whole, which is identical for everyone, and need only be turned up like a page in an account-book or the record of a will; our social personality is a creation of the thoughts of other people. Even the simple act which we describe as 'seeing someone we know' is to some extent an intellectual process. We pack the physical outline of the person we see with all the notions we have already formed about him, and in the total picture of him which we compose in our minds those notions have certainly the principal place. In the end they come to fill out so completely the curve of his cheeks, to follow so exactly the line of his nose, they blend so harmoniously in the sound of his voice as if it were no more than a transparent envelope, that each time we see the face or hear the voice it is these notions which we recognise and to which we listen."


(Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu. Trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin)

In Search of Lost Identity . . .

". . . it seemed to me that I myself was the immediate subject of my book: a church, a quartet . . . This impression would persist for some moments after I awoke . . . Then it would begin to seem unintelligible, as the thoughts of a former existence must be to a reincarnate spirit; the subject of my book would separate itself from me, leaving me free to apply myself to it or not"

". . . when I awoke in the middle of the night, not knowing where I was, I could not even be sure at first who I was; I had only the most rudimentary sense of existence . . . I was more destitute than the cave-dweller; but then the memory . . . would come like a rope let down from heaven to draw me up out of the abyss of not-being, from which I should have never escaped by myself"

"I . . . examine my own mind. It alone can discover the truth. But how? What an abyss of uncertainty, whenever the mind feels overtaken by itself; when it, the seeker, is at the same time the dark region through which it must go seeking and where all its equipment will avail it nothing. Seek? More than that: create. It is face to face with something which does not yet exist, to which it alone can give reality and substance, which it alone can bring into the light of day."


(Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu. Trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin)