Herr Keuner hatte wenig Menschenkenntnis, er sagte: “Menschenkenntnis ist nur nötig, wo Ausbeutung im Spiel ist. Denken heißt verändern. Wenn ich an einen Menschen denke, dann verändere ich ihn, beinahe kommt mir vor, er sei gar nicht so, wie er ist, sondern er sei nur so gewesen, als ich über ihn zu denken anfing.
Sobald man allein lebt, quälen einen die Fragen nach dem ganzen eigenen Leben. Das macht einen schier fertig. Um es loszuwerden, bekleckert man alle Leute damit, die einen besuchen, und geht ihnen auf die Nerven. Allein sein heißt sich im Sterben üben.
missfolly:
Men Smoking Opium, 1800s, by an unknown artist
“the competition of isolated individuals means some feel free in their identity and others get lost in the process. to dissolve the identities into post-individual collectivity is not the only negation of these competitive processes. there also remains a space between, not collaborating and not competing, to denounce the idea of productivity and to claim an agile association with the association itself as the only aim. to have a collaborative existence not for having a profit, but for having existences and collaborations outside the idea of profit.” - “gemütlichkeit”
zu gemütliches beisammensein / togetherness, nr. 68
Um verstehen zu können, habe ich mich zerstört. Verstehen heißt das Lieben vergessen. Ich kenne nichts, was gleichzeitig falscher und bedeutungsvoller wäre als der Anspruch Leonardo da Vincis, wonach man etwas nur lieben oder hassen kann, nachdem man es verstanden hat.
Die Einsamkeit verwüstet mich; die Geselligkeit bedrückt mich. Die Gegenwart einer anderen Person wirft meine Gedanken aus der Bahn; ich träume von ihrer Gegenwart mit einer besonderen Zerstreutheit, die meine analytische Aufmerksamkeit nicht zu definieren mag.
currentinspiration:
“Tehching Hsieh and Linda Montano spent one year tied to each other with an 8-foot-long (2.4 m) rope from 1983-1984. They had to stay in a same room while not allowed to touch each other until the end of the one year period. “
from an interview:
Tehching Hsieh: On a philosophical level, I feel that the piece is not nearing an end. It’s just that we are tied to each other psychologically. When we die it ends. Until then we are all tied up.
zu gemütliches beisammensein / togetherness, nr. 65
To happiness the same applies as to truth: one does not have it, but is in it. Indeed, happiness is nothing other than being encompassed, an after-image of the original shelter within the mother. But for this reason no one who is happy can know he is so. To see happiness, he would have to pass out of it: to be as if already born. He who says he is happy lies, and in invoking happiness, sins against it. He alone keeps faith who says: I was happy. The only relationship of consciousness to happiness is gratitude: in which lies its incomparable dignity.
art-history:
William Sidney Mount
The Power of Music 1847
Oil on canvas 17 x 21 in
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio
Set in rural Long Island before the Civil War, this scene of an African American laborer eavesdropping on a fiddle tune suggests the divisive race relations in America at the time. While a love of music connects the men and acknowledges their common humanity, they nevertheless occupy different spaces. The barn door that separates the laborer likely serves as a symbolic reminder that he lacked the political rights and social privileges of the group of white men inside.
—Cleveland Museum of Art
