Thursday, 18 February 2016
‘Trump ripped the Pope for having no right “to question another man’s religion or faith,” and accused the Mexican government of “using the Pope as a pawn and they should be ashamed of themselves for doing so.” Dan Scavino, a social media director and adviser to the Trump campaign, followed up by tweeting: “Amazing comments from the Pope—considering Vatican City is 100% surrounded by massive walls.”’
Wednesday, 17 February 2016
James Gallant: ‘But when I delivered my little melody to him this afternoon I learned that the new song was, in fact, to serve a similar purpose. I was informed that my guitar and I were to participate tonight in a serenade of “La Belle Lily,” the Queen’s new maid of honor who has arrived from Paris to considerable éclat. She is fifteen or sixteen, tall and straight, delicate Roman nose, alabaster complexion, violet eyes, chestnut curls falling to her shoulders. Apparently she was raised at the French court during the exile of the English nobles. They say Louis XIV couldn’t take his eyes off her.’
Tuesday, 16 February 2016
Michael Blackburn: ‘How thoughtful of the EU to assume control of our broadcast networks, and how accommodating of our national government to hand them that power — and then to do their bidding. In this case you may say, well, it’s done something whose results you approve of. To which I’d respond, “So what?” I’d be quite happy to have missed these programmes if it meant not having a bunch of unelected foreigners telling our broadcasters what to do.’
Michael Blackburn: ‘This posturing wouldn’t be so bad if you knew these various celebs had done their research beforehand and exercised some independent thinking instead of following whatever line the Guardian or The Independent or the mainstream media in the US are peddling. But it’s not going to happen. They’re part of the in-crowd and you’ve got to go where the in-crowd goes, even if your fashionable pose quickly goes the way all fashions go: into the charity shop.’
Richard Berengarten: ‘If conversation is like a river (line, thread), flowing sequentially in one unstoppable direction, a text (or a recording, in the sense in which I’ve been using the word) is more like a lake, a reservoir. That is to say, it can be imaged, pictured, approached and re-approached, as a space in, though, around and over which—even while you’re actively doing things in it and to it, and shaping and bounding it—you have the freedom both of overview of the whole and of insights into its parts. ‘
Michael Blackburn: ‘Social media have allowed everyone, including the psychotic and moronic, a platform from which to displays their views. That’s always going to be a bear pit. The fact that the financially-failing Guardian has found itself crushed under the weight of free speech is not in itself a great loss. The real danger is that all the other available outlets will be censored or shut down and nothing springs up replace them. ‘
Peter Riley: ‘Gascoyne’s modernity rests mainly on rhetorical gestures inherited from the nineteenth century. For all the outlandish figuration he never ventured into the linguistic basis of the act, never regarded the machinery of transmission. This would not necessarily have meant falling into a wilful avant-garde inchoation but could have meant the cultivation of a stronger lyrical tension in such matters as lineation and sound-values. Basically, the structure of language stayed as it was: both surrealism and the prophetic urge forbade its disruption; it was needed in its stable form to connect the wild or monumental substantives into a discourse.’
Michael Blackburn: ‘A friend and I once tried this at university. A student my companion vaguely knew but didn’t like started talking to us in the pub. He asked us what we were both up to. Possessed by a spirit of mischief and without thinking I immediately said we’d both packed in our studies and and begun training as Formula One racing drivers. He believed us. My friend knew something about cars so could come up with a few choice engineering details. I just added stuff about blondes and pitstops. It was so easy.’
Michael Blackburn: ‘So much then for these anti-women feminists. They are apologists for a religion that not only despises women and subjugates them to second class status but also violates and murders them. They are advocates for a belief system that attacks the very principles which provides them with the money, education, freedom and opportunity to preen themselves in public on your impeccable correctness.’
Alan Zhukovski: ‘A village can look so much bigger than cities, whose high-rises loom in each suburb.
A countryside minute can sometimes be longer than days in the shrunken dimension.’
Lewis Oakwood: ‘Their bones grind together as they walk round and round
the old orchard, where I watch and listen to the dead:
“we lost our tomorrow and in that blackest night we are
afraid that you have forgotten our names.’
The interview as text and performance.
Richard Berengarten: ‘If conversation is like a river (line, thread), flowing sequentially in one unstoppable direction, a text (or a recording, in the sense in which I’ve been using the word) is more like a lake, a reservoir. That is to say, it can be imaged, pictured, approached and re-approached, as a space in, though, around and over which—even while you’re actively doing things in it and to it, and shaping and bounding it—you have the freedom both of overview of the whole and of insights into its parts. ‘