The Saunterer

Ralph Waldo Emerson on accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative

    Maybe Johnny Mercer had been reading Emerson when he wrote the lines, Accentuate the positive / Eliminate the negative / Latch on to the affirmative / Don't mess with Mister In-Between.

    Ralph Waldo Emerson:

    Do not waste yourself in rejection; do not bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.

    (Quoted from page 319 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001.)
    For a brief biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson, click here. For images of or relating to Ralph Waldo Emerson, click here.

Pablo Picasso on what it means to have finished your work

    If you are a creator, the creations you make are never finished and so you are never in a finished state, for it is by creative work that creators create themselves:

    Have you ever seen a finished picture? A picture or anything else? Woe unto you the day it is said that you are finished! To finish a work? To finish a picture? What nonsense! To finish it means to be through with it, to kill, to rid it of its soul, to give it its final blow: the most unfortunate one for the painter as well as for the picture.

    (Quoted from page 265 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001.)
    For a brief biography of Pablo Picasso, click here. For images of or relating Pablo Picasso, click here.

John Updike on bowel movements

    Poetry is sometimes the best way to preserve an idea. Here the idea to be preserved is a bowel movement. John Updike is the poet, working to preserve it.

    But you be the judge. If what you are about to read lasts for weeks or months or years in your mind, then “poetry as preserver” is true for you:

THE BEAUTIFUL BOWEL MOVEMENT

Though most of them aren’t much
to write about—
mere squibs and nubs, like half-
smoked pale cigars,
the tint and stink recalling
Tuesday’s meal,
the texture loose and soon
dissolved—this one,
struck off in solitude one
afternoon
(that prairie stretch before the
late light fails)
with no distinct sensation, sweet
or pained,
of special inspiration or release,
was yet a masterpiece: a flawless
coil,
unbroken, in the bowl, as if a
potter
who worked in this most frail,
least grateful clay
had set himself to shape a
topaz vase.
O spiral perfection, not seashell
nor
stardust, how can I keep you? With this poem.

    (The poem is quoted from page 74 of the December 17, 2015, The New York Review of Books.)
    For a brief biography of John Updike, click here. For images of or relating to John Updike, click here.

 

David Hockney on reverse perspective

    Painter David Hockney loves reverse perspective, where a painting’s lines converge toward the viewer. He comments:

    Interviewer: Can you talk a little about the use of reverse perspective in these paintings?
    David Hockney: As you know, the tyranny of vanishing-point perspective is something I’ve been obsessed about for years now—what it does to us—it’s gotten so as I can’t even watch television anymore because of the way the box focuses one’s gaze down that narrowing—
    Interviewer: Like a funnel.
    David Hockney: Yes, when all I want to do is just the opposite. Did I every tell you the story about the time when I was in Milan, doing The Magic Flute at La Scala, and I took a drive to Zurich with Ian Falconer? And they’d just built this tunnel under the St. Gotthard Pass. The tunnel is about twenty-three kilometers long, of which about nineteen kilometers are a straight line. And, when we entered it, we were the only car entering. So all you saw was this rectangle ahead of you tapering relentlessly down to a single point in the middle, way up ahead. We were going on and on like this, and I said to Ian, “This is like living in one-point-perspective hell, this tunnel. Never have I experienced anything like this.” One found oneself longing so powerfully for the opposite, which at last one finally got, emerging from the tunnel.
    Interviewer: A sort of opening out.
    David Hockney: Exactly. Oh, I loved it. I love it. I love it, and I’ve never, ever forgotten that.
    (Quoted from page 105 of True to Life: Twenty-five years of conversations with David Hockney, by Lawrence Weschler. University of California Press, 2008.)
    For some images of reverse perspective, click here.
    For a brief biography of David Hockney, click here. For images of or relating to David Hockney, click here.
    For information about Lawrence Weschler, the book’s author and the interviewer, click here.

Guy de Maupassant on escape from the fast-paced world

    Being alone is freedom, and we all need regular means of it. Compare yours with his and we bet you’d jump for his, sailing his yacht Bel-Ami along the French coast:

    Calm reigns everywhere, the warm, gentle calm of the Midi and it seems weeks and months and years since I’ve had anything to do with people who dash around and never stop talking. I can enjoy the thrill of being alone, the quiet thrill of being able to rest and never be disturbed by a letter or a telegram, the sound of a doorbell, or even the barking of my dog. Nobody can call on me, invite me out, depress me with smiles, harass me with flattery. I’m alone, really alone, and I’m free. The train may be dashing along the coast but I’m in my floating home which has wings, swaying to and fro like a pretty little nest, more comfortable than a hammock and which is drifting here and there on the water, following the whims of the wind, going wherever it chooses.

    (Quoted from page 36 of Impressionists on the Water. Skira, 2013.)
    For a brief biography of Guy de Maupassant, click here. For images of or relating to Guy de Maupassant, click here.

John Herschel on the mind of natural philosophers

    Think of the polar opposite of the businessperson’s mind and you’ve got it. John Herschel:

    To the natural philosopher there is no natural object unimportant or trifling . . . a soap bubble . . . an apple . . . a pebble . . . He walks in the midst of wonders.

    (Quoted from page xiii of The Age of Wonder, by Richard Holmes. Pantheon Books, 2008.)
    For a brief biography of John Herschel, click here. For images of or relating to John Herschel, click here.
    For a brief biography of Richard Holmes, click here. For images of or relating to Richard Holmes, click here.

Arthur Shimamura on body language and art

    In paintings of people, it’s their body language that reveals:

    We communicate our moods and thoughts often without uttering a word. Consider Mary Cassatt’s Little Girl in a Blue Armchair. The signals sent by this girl’s body language is well understood. We can almost hear her whine, “I’m bored. There’s nothing to do.” Evolutionarily speaking, body language is essential to survival. It can determine the chances of having a main course for dinner or being one. It also increases the chances of mating, thus affording more opportunities to transmit one’s genes to the next generation. In art, the body is the most frequently depicted object and has thus been represented and positioned in a multitude of ways.

    (Quoted from page 211 of Experiencing Art, by Arthur P. Shimamura. Oxford University Press, 2013.)
    To see an image of Mary Cassatt’s Little Girl in a Blue Armchair, click HERE.
    For a brief biography of Arthur P. Shimamura, click here. For images of or relating Arthur P. Shimamura, click here.

Camille Paglia on her system of writing

    Camille Paglia is widely read both for what she has to say and for the way she says it. Here she explains her how she arrives at saying it:

    My system of composition has four parts. There’s a long period of very enjoyable rumination, where I assemble information and jot ideas and phrases at random on legal-size notepaper—pages upon pages. Then as the deadline approaches, I study my notes and bracket or underline principal themes in colored ink to map out a skeletal general outline. Third comes the dreaded moment of writing—which is total torture! It’s a terrible strain, and I’m literally tied up in knots of anxiety as I toil over it. Once a draft is blessedly complete, my fourth stage of reviewing and tweaking the text (which can go on for days, if there’s time) is pure, serene pleasure—there’s nothing I love more!

    (Quoted from page A26 of the 4 December 2015 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Scholars Talk Writing: Camille Paglia," by Rachel Toor.)
    For a brief biography of Camille Paglia, click here. For images of or relating to Camille Paglia click here.
    For a brief biography of Rachel Toor, click here. For images of or relating to Rachel Toor, click here.

Rainer Maria Rilke on finding the center of your life

    Why find the center? So you will know where to grow from:

    Everyone must be able to find in his work the center of his life and from there be able to grow out in radiate form as far as he can.

    (Quoted from page 181 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001.)
    For a brief biography of Rainer Maria Rilke, click here. For images of or relating Rainer Maria Rilke, click here.

Tom Bartlett on how the selfishness of begetting large families wrecks the planet

    Here we quote from Tom Bartlett’s “Why Two Kids is Too Many” (November 27, 2015, The Chronicle Review):

      Take two couples. One—Lauren and Louis—are religious about recycling, install solar panels on their roof, and never forget to bring cloth bags to Whole Foods. The other couple—Gail and Gary—run the AC with the windows open and fling their empty Dasani bottles into burbling mountain streams. Lauren and Louis have a couple of cute kids. Gail and Gary did not procreate. Long term, when you factor in the impact of multiple generations of resource-sucking bipeds, who is being a better buddy to Mother Nature?   

    For a brief biography of Tom Bartlett, click here. For images of or relating to Tom Bartlett, click here.