somewhere between meursault and a flâneur, this is my new boulevard. am i validated by my encounters with ray bans in the winter, walking urban outfitters models, ugg boots, and awful local bands? should i not drink copious amounts of coffee before noon and look out pensively from windows onto snow drenched streets (probably). anyway, i reread an article (The Political Economy of Public Space by David Harvey) and watched a documentary on Heidegger last night which has left me starring into an existential void thinking about horizons of authenticity, commodity itself as a spectacle, is identity only reified by acknowledgment of the Other and if it is possible to be a truly reflexive spectator. so, more or less, i'm fucked and the day will now be a write off. subsequently, here's a playlist i just made; i'm not sure if it fits in at all to my pretentious rantings but its what im listening to at the moment:- Arthur Russell - This Is How We Walk On The Moon
- Grizzly Bear - While You Wait For The Others
- Beach House - Apple Orchard (4 Track Demo)
- Benoît Pioulard - Triggering Back
- Bon Iver - Re: Stacks
- Fleet Foxes - He Doesn't Know Why
- Here We Go Magic - Tunnelvision
- Karl Blau - Mockingbird Diet
- Passion Pit - Sleepyhead
- Meursault - Pissing On Bonfires/Kissing With Tongues
- The Radio Dept. - Where The Damage Isnt Already Done
- Yeasayer - Tightrope
- The Shakey Hands - The Sleepless
- Vetiver - On A Nerve
(change xx to tt)
That evening, feeling a little tired, you wanted to sit down in front of a new cafe forming the corner of a new boulevard still littered with rubbish but that already displayed proudly its unfinished splendors. The cafe was dazzling. Even the gas burned with all the ardor of a debut, and lighted with all its might the blinding whiteness of the walls, the expanse of mirrors, the gold cornices and moldings..... nymphs and goddesses bearing on their heads piles of fruits, pates and game.....all history and all mythology pandering to gluttony.
On the street directly in front of us, a worthy man of about forty, with tired face and greying beard, was standing holding a small boy by the hand and carrying on his arm another little thing, still too weak to walk. He was playing nurse-maid, taking the children for an evening stroll. They were in rags. The three faces were extraordinarily serious, and those six eyes stared fixedly at the new cafe with admiration, equal in degree but differing in kind according to their ages.
The eyes of the father said: "How beautiful it is! How beautiful it is! All the gold of the poor world must have found its way onto those walls." The eyes of the little boy: "How beautiful it is! How beautiful it is! But it is a house where only people who are not like us can go." As for the baby, he was much too fascinated to express anything but joy-utterly stupid and profound.
Song writers say that pleasure ennobles the soul and softens the heart. The song was right that evening as far as I was concerned. Not only was I touched by this family of eyes, but I was even a little ashamed of our glasses and decanters, too big for our thirst. I turned my eyes to look into yours, dear love, to read my thoughts in them; and as I plunged my eyes into your eyes, so beautiful and so curiously soft, into those green eyes, home of Caprice and governed by the Moon, you said: "Those people are insufferable with their great saucer eyes. Can't you tell the proprietor to send them away?"
So you see how difficult it is to understand one another, my dear angel, how incommunicable thought is, even between two people in love.
-C. Baudelaire, Paris Spleen, edited and translated by 1. Varese (1869; New York:New Directions, 1947).
-image: Jean-Paul Belmondo
On the street directly in front of us, a worthy man of about forty, with tired face and greying beard, was standing holding a small boy by the hand and carrying on his arm another little thing, still too weak to walk. He was playing nurse-maid, taking the children for an evening stroll. They were in rags. The three faces were extraordinarily serious, and those six eyes stared fixedly at the new cafe with admiration, equal in degree but differing in kind according to their ages.
The eyes of the father said: "How beautiful it is! How beautiful it is! All the gold of the poor world must have found its way onto those walls." The eyes of the little boy: "How beautiful it is! How beautiful it is! But it is a house where only people who are not like us can go." As for the baby, he was much too fascinated to express anything but joy-utterly stupid and profound.
Song writers say that pleasure ennobles the soul and softens the heart. The song was right that evening as far as I was concerned. Not only was I touched by this family of eyes, but I was even a little ashamed of our glasses and decanters, too big for our thirst. I turned my eyes to look into yours, dear love, to read my thoughts in them; and as I plunged my eyes into your eyes, so beautiful and so curiously soft, into those green eyes, home of Caprice and governed by the Moon, you said: "Those people are insufferable with their great saucer eyes. Can't you tell the proprietor to send them away?"
So you see how difficult it is to understand one another, my dear angel, how incommunicable thought is, even between two people in love.
-C. Baudelaire, Paris Spleen, edited and translated by 1. Varese (1869; New York:New Directions, 1947).
-image: Jean-Paul Belmondo
