Author Archives: JMN

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About JMN

I live in Texas and devote much of my time to easel painting on an amateur basis. I stream a lot of music, mostly jazz, throughout the day. I like to read and memorize poetry.

Hello, Non-America

Posted on December 6, 2018 by JMN

nyti.ms/2DZufmq The WASP virtues … included a cosmopolitanism that was often more authentic than our own performative variety — a cosmopolitanism that coexisted with white man’s burden racism but also sometimes transcended it, because for every Brahmin bigot there was … Continue reading →

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Slumber

Posted on December 6, 2018 by JMN

http://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/05/opinion/shirin-neshat-political-art.html The art world seems to have closely adopted and followed the ideological footprints of the larger global economy of the past three decades, increasingly participating in the orgy of the creation of wealth and its narrow distribution. But now … Continue reading →

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Lineman’s Whine (audio)

Posted on December 5, 2018 by JMN
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The Dry Heaves

Posted on December 5, 2018 by JMN

I picked up a colored marker, a sketchpad, and sat down. I looked around the room for a shape, a blade of light, a shadow, an assonance, a blur, something to trigger a spasm in my drawing hand and stain … Continue reading →

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Lexicomania at the Table

Posted on December 4, 2018 by JMN

ABOVE: My first vocab list for Helena (age 10) made at her mother Eva’s request. I’m on pins and needles to show it. Each time I expose Helena to my fetish for coloring the enclosed spaces of letters, I detect … Continue reading →

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The Twombly Effect

Posted on December 3, 2018 by JMN

hereelsewhere.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/0aTwombgal-500×333.jpg Poetic ardor can be exhausting. (As the many quotes from art critics that pepper [Joshua] Rivkin’s book demonstrate, Twombly tends to send writers into lyric overdrive.) (Holland Carter, “A Life of Cy Twombly Brings a Poet’s Eye to the … Continue reading →

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Accents

Posted on December 3, 2018 by JMN

. Nuria spent three weeks in Bristol, UK, to further her study of English. She told me one of her teachers had an especially clear manner of speaking. Asked by a student if his accent was American, he replied vigorously … Continue reading →

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Whatchamacallits & Dingleberries

Posted on December 3, 2018 by JMN

http://www.artfixdaily.com/images/pr/Bonhams_Calder_Maripose.jpg Frank Zappa … compared his music to Calder’s sculptures, describing his cerebral, often atonal songs as “a multicolored whatchamacallit, dangling in space, that has big blobs of metal connected to pieces of wire, balanced ingeniously against little metal dingleberries … Continue reading →

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Hannah Arendt on W. H. Auden

Posted on November 30, 2018 by JMN

http://www.gstatic.com/tv/thumb/persons/509349/509349_v9_ba.jpg [… Auden] was blessed with that rare self-confidence which does not need admiration and the good opinion of others, and can even withstand self-criticism and self-examination without falling into the trap of self-doubt. This has nothing to do with … Continue reading →

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Rhinovirus

Posted on November 30, 2018 by JMN

A winter rhinovirus has bivouacked among the family like the Russian army this week. This blogger’s immune system has declared chest-cold war on it. Nights of bronchial bull-riding ensue, making for flat days. The only projects I can limp with … Continue reading →

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