Category Archives: Quotations

Things people said.

The Troubling Arousal

Posted on May 11, 2020 by JMN

While I resist drawing lines between pornography and art, if forced to offer a distinction I might say that pornography, like propaganda, wants us to feel a single thing. Art is made of contraries, of ambivalence and ambiguity; it never … Continue reading →

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When Less Is More

Posted on May 10, 2020 by JMN

I’m glad to know about tengujo, the thinnest paper in the world, and to learn a bit about how it’s made. One of its numerous uses is in repairing and preserving old documents in places such as the Library of … Continue reading →

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“Play Like You Don’t Know How”

Posted on May 9, 2020 by JMN

“… Play like you don’t know how to play guitar.” That’s the instruction that John McLaughlin recalls Miles Davis giving him. It was on the occasion of his being pressed precipitately into service to collaborate in Davis’s milestone album “Bitches … Continue reading →

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The Texas Proviso

Posted on May 8, 2020 by JMN

Along with other farmers, [Joe Del Bosque] has been pleading with Congress for the past few years to legalize farmworkers… because “you need these workers today, tomorrow and for a long time.” The boys from Mexico worked so hard, Texas … Continue reading →

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So Playfully Valorized Seriousness

Posted on May 6, 2020 by JMN

[Wayne Koestenbaum] valorizes the intellectual seriousness of Sontag, and of the poet and translator Richard Howard, but also confesses his attraction to idleness and lassitude. Books are fine and good, but have you tried sex, or doughnuts? So this review … Continue reading →

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Alphabeticalism

Posted on May 5, 2020 by JMN

I once had to choose Arabic or Greek, the sole elective, in a course of study. It made a lot of difference in what I did next. I enthuse time and again over instances of letters lateraled into graven imagery … Continue reading →

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Holes for the Pigeons

Posted on April 30, 2020 by JMN

This article is summative and conclusivist in broad spectrum, but its immediate service is the convenient running to ground of generation labels. A national poll conducted in mid-March by the data intelligence company Morning Consult, which has been tracking public … Continue reading →

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Acting SECNAV Wants More Fulsome Report

Posted on April 30, 2020 by JMN

Acting SECNAV Thomas B. Modly fired Capt. Bret E. Crozier, commander of the Theodore Roosevelt, when his plea on behalf of his crew after a coronavirus outbreak on the carrier went public. Adm. Michael M. Gilday, chief of naval operations, … Continue reading →

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Homemade Hope

Posted on April 28, 2020 by JMN

George Condo alludes to the pandemic as a species of “microbiological warfare” created to get someone re-elected. Then he gets down to art: As to what I’m doing as an artist, I’m just exploring the psychological impact of… how fear, … Continue reading →

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The Naked and the Fungible

Posted on April 27, 2020 by JMN

In 2008, an IBM study that sought to identify “workers who are “virtually indistinguishable from others’ in terms of the value of their contributions to the workplace” was reported. (www.workitdaily.com). It’s pointed to when you Google “fungible.” In 2020, Kara … Continue reading →

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