Quiet Bubble

Commonplace

“Beyond this hegemony of corporate and institutional consensus, however, beyond the purview of uncannily lifelike blockbusters like Jurassic Park and the Whitney Biennial, everything that grows in the domain of culture, that acquires constituencies and enters the realm of public esteem, does so through the accumulation of participatory investment by people who show up. No painting is ever sold nor essay written nor band booked nor exhibition scheduled that is not the consequence of previous social interaction, of gossip, body language, fashion dish, and telephone chatter—nothing transpires that does not float upon the ephemeral substrata of ‘word of mouth’—on the validation of schmooze. Everyone who participates knows this, and knows, as well, that it doesn’t cost a dime. You just show up, behave as you wish, say what you will, and live with the fleeting, often unexpected consequences of your behavior. At this bedrock level, the process through which works of art are socialized looks less like a conspiracy than a slumber party.”

—Dave Hickey, “Romancing the Looky-Loos,” Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy (1997)

Commonplace

“Dialect aint a zack science, baby.

You do dialect and you think you got it just right, reppazent it percisely, and twenty years later it all seems quaint and cute and unbearable, like reading The Emperor Jones aloud.

Because people don’t speak dialect, they speak at and around and toward and with it, sliding from level to level as they understand speech and as need dictates.”

—Jack Butler, Living in Little Rock with Miss Little Rock (1993)

Commonplace

“I think we’re developing a society now whose dominant effort is to get out of work. It’s probably a measure of our decadence that we can talk about a ‘work ethic.’ Work isn’t an ethic; work’s a necessity.”

—Wendell Berry, in a 1973 Mother Earth News interview

Commonplace

Broadmeadow United Methodist Church, Jackson, MS. Photo taken by Quiet Bubble on 17 February 2008.

“Christians cannot speak of Christ as exclusive, but perhaps we can speak of commitment as exclusive. While we can recognize both the truth of other glimpses of the Divine and the power of other communities of faith, we cannot be seriously committed to multiple centers, as much as we may appreciate them. The language of faith is the language of affection, of affirmation and commitment. It is, as we have seen, the language of mahatmya, of untrammeled praise. It is, as Bishop Krister Stendahl puts it, ‘love language,’ analogous to the language we use when we say to someone we love, ‘You’re the only one in the world for me.’ It does not mean, ‘I have systematically surveyed everyone in the world and have chosen you.’ It means, simply and powerfully, ‘I love you.’ Faith requires the cherishing and deepening of commitment that is fundamental to any relationship. And the language of faith is the language of love, not of judgment.”

—Diana L. Eck, Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras

Commonplace (MLK Day)

“But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.’ Was not Amos an extremist for justice: ‘Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.’ Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: ‘I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.’ Was not Martin Luther an extremist: ‘Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God.’ And John Bunyan: ‘I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.’ And Abraham Lincoln: ‘This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.’ And Thomas Jefferson: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that an men are created equal …’ So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary’s hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime—the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.”

—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail”

New Year's Commonplace

“Perhaps, Norman thought, if we all reach our last day of life at the very same time, it will be something like this. He stole glances at the heathen faces of Bodien and Gaylord, the suffering, yet oddly consoled, eyes and mouth of Basellecci, noting the brave enthusiasm of men who had never dreamed of anything very definite, and it occurred to him through the reek of his person that there was only one hope for him, and for all people who had lost, through intelligence, the hope of immortality. ‘We must love and delight in each other and in ourselves!’ he cried.”

—Edward Lewis Wallant, The Tenants of Moonbloom (1963)

Commonplace

“What follows may seem narcissistic nostalgia, but I do have a general point. It’s the Law of the Adolescent Window:

Between the ages of 13 and 18, a window opens for each of us. The cultural pastimes that attract us then, the ones we find ourselves drawn to and even obsessive about, will always have a powerful hold. We may broaden our tastes as we grow out of those years—we should, anyhow—but the sports, hobbies, books, TV, movies, and music that we loved then we will always love.

The corollary is the Law of the Midlife/ Latelife Return:

As we age, and especially after we hit 40, we find it worthwhile to return to the adolescent window. Despite all the changes you’ve undergone, those things are usually as enjoyable as they were then. You may even see more in them than you realized was there. Just as important, you start to realize how the ways you passed your idle hours shaped your view of the world—the way you think and feel, important parts of your very identity.”

—David Bordwell, “The Adolescent Window”

Commonplace

“Tess tried to envision what the world might be like today if [Al] Capone had fallen in love with his life here [in Baltimore] and decided to go straight. But the one thing she knew about history is that there is no shortage or men—or women—willing to step forward and play the role of villain. It’s not unlike the NCAA tournament: The top seed may not win, but someone has to. That’s why she could never warm up to science-fiction plots where people traveled back in time, intent on assassinating Hitler or Stalin, John Wilkes Booth or Timothy McVeigh. There would have been another Capone or McVeigh, another St. Valentine’s Day massacre or Oklahoma City bombing. Evil isn’t particular about its personnel.”

—Laura Lippman, In A Strange City (2001)

Commonplace

“The best part of writing [criticism] is where you have a good deal of copy and can think about it, figure it out. The best part is the tactics: you can bring all these tactics to bear on what you’re doing, and get the kind of aura where you surround the subject. But you have to make the reader pursue it without realizing it, so that he’s getting further into the corners of a movie. I do a lot of that; I always have. I do a ton of examining what’s been written, then inserting things to build up the room of a sentence or of a paragraph so that it’s not localized on one spot. We [Manny Farber and Patricia Patterson] use a lot of dialogue to bring the aura of a movie back into the reader’s feeling.”

—Manny Farber, in a 1977 interview with Richard Thompson

Commonplace

“American criticism doesn’t take cognizance of the crossover of arts, and American painting doesn’t take cognizance of it either. It’s always very provincial. I don’t get why other critics don’t pay more attention to what’s going on in the other arts, because I think the Godard-Straub-Herzog-Fassbinder moviemakers do; the styles are so pertinent. The kind of photography you see at any point is that way because of what’s being written in novels and painted in pictures. Like the crossover from Hopper into writers like McCoy and Cain, the film noir movies—scripters like Furthman and Mainwaring—all over the place at the same moment. You couldn’t have had that kind of imagery that directors and screenwriters were trying for, unless it were the most important thing for painters to be doing. It’s as if there were a law in film criticism that you’re not supposed to get involved in the other art forms.”

—Manny Farber, in a 1977 interview with Richard Thompson