INTELLIGENT DISCUSSIONS ABOUT ART’S ROLE in shaping cultures and individuals have to recognize the difference between censorship (an external restraint based on fear and loathing) and self-control (an internal restraint arising from the artist’s desire to communicate).
Tag: creating
Making stuff: up, real, and nicely.
NextWave SF: “Retropunk”
FIRST CAME CYBERPUNK. THEN STEAMPUNK. And by 2021, … RETROPUNK. Shiny robots. Gleaming atom-powered spaceships. Martian canal races. Alien arcologies in the jungles of Venus. Male pronouns. All the glory of a big exploitable universe sans angst or post-apocalypse modernism.…
Dorothy Parker Nailed It
(From the should-be-better-known blog Letters of Note, here’s a desperate telegram dispatched by a wall-stuck author to her (apparently, or at least in Ms. Parker’s mind) neck-breathing editor. Between this and the previous post my own writer’s block should be…
And Now, A “Word To Bring Back”
PERFORCE. – Definition: “1 (obsolete) by physical coercion 2 by force of circumstances.” – Used in a sentence: “As the VCR is currently recording Deep Space Nine, we must perforce view Firefly on DVD.” – Why: Because sometimes, “really really…
Consensual Art: Do Not Screen
THE LAST MAIL-ART PROJECT I “did” was a series of one or two audiocassette collages with (sub)genius co-conspirators Alan K. Lipton and David Wilson circa 198x-199x. We’d record a bunch of weird stuff and send it on to the next…
Paleostyle Question
I UNDERSTAND WHY CARTOON DEPICTIONS of “cavemen” show them dressed in fur. But why does the fur usually drape over one shoulder?
21st Century Magritte
Fig. 1.
April is National Words Month
(PASS IT ON.) AND USE yours with care — they’re a non-renewable resource.
Free Metaphor: “Don’t Poke The Squid”
STUCK FOR AN ANALOGY WHEN your well-intendeds provoke a horrible mess that you should have known better than to bother with? Then “Don’t Poke The Squid.” Squid are lovely, largely inoffensive creatures who flash and lurk throughout the ocean’s vasty…
Question of Essence
DO YOU PRACTICE AN ART form, or a life form?
Seeing Her
ALL I REMEMBER NOW ARE images, and the intimate passion of an infinite love. I remember the room of globes, of maps of worlds and wonders, soft with pillows and draped scarves. And She was there. And She knew me.…
Pithyism #xxiii
ONCE YOU REALIZE THAT YOU’RE not (insert your favorite author here), you can begin to make your own good things.