“It restates the negativeness of the universe. The hideous, lonely emptiness of existence—nothingness—the predicament of man, forced to live in a barren, Godless eternity, like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void—with nothing but waste, horror and degradation—forming a useless, bleak straitjacket in a black, absurd cosmos.”
—Play it Again Sam, 1972
“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.”
“You want the words to create feelings, and also these intense visuals. As a person who writes lyrics, it’s not always about literal heartbreak, but rather the negative space and the feelings around it. How do you describe a feeling without saying “this is the feeling”? How do you take something completely natural, that will eventually transfer to the listener, but not just settle for that instant feeling of “you hurt me,” and go to an imaginary landscape instead? It’s the most intense task.
And I’m sorry, but musicians are not chefs. You don’t like music because of the way it tastes, where [artists] never want to disappoint a paying customer. Music is about your feelings. Stop pleasing people. You please yourself, and if people like it, great. Beach House is our life. Someone asked us, “What are your hobbies?” And there are small things, but this is every day of our lives.”
(Source: pitchfork.com)
“I am lost in trees like I am lost in your eyes. Countless nights of love and of life. Your hands intertwine with mine, perfectly, as we gaze at the stars in this night, summer sky. Puzzle pieces of the universe, they connect in this web of life, which I like to call the ‘Universal Mind.’ Life is all fun and games, but people cover that up with pain. Tear away the layers of fright, and don’t come back until you have realized what is right. Right in you, and right in me. No differences inside, no differences to see. It’s just me. And you. Together as one. Singing soft melodies of illuminated light, like the sun.”
Maurice Denis, Springtime, c. 1897
From the Metropolitan Museum of Art:
With Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard, Denis was a founding member of the Nabis group in France, active from 1888 to 1899. Denis, the group’s spiritual leader and chief theoretician, called for a new pictorial language in response to the rhythms of nature. In date and sensibility, his work bridges the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and as shown here, he had a firm grasp on modernist thought. He once said, “Remember that a picture, before being a war horse, a female nude, or some anecdote, is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order.”
Springtime, a double-sided canvas, describes a purification scene set deep in the forest of Saint-Germain, near Paris. Several pairs of young women-representing the sacred and the profane-blend into a bucolic landscape where one of them stands nude in a stream. Denis draws a parallel between the flowering sapling in the center (a symbol of spring, renewal, and Easter) and the maidens.
Tom Hiddleston reads Bright Star by John Keats
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.
(Source: lazyocean)
Fun fact: The animators of Disney based themselves on this library to draw the shot of the Beast’s library when he gives it to Belle as a present in Beauty and the Beast.
(Source: psychrophile)
(Source: vintagedreamer-s)
“Israeli Wild Poppy Field” (by dalya bersano)
