Monday, 27 January 2014

quote unquote

Rummaging through my files I came across these quotations, kept but never used. They seem to run together reasonably well:


…there is a composition by John Cage called Imaginary Landscapes #4 for twelve radios. Two performers sit at each radio, one controlling the volume, the other the station dial . . . each performer has specific instructions concerning what to do at each moment with the knob . . . he or she controls . . . The conductor is admonished to be very strict. There is a story in circulation about a performance in Town Hall, New York, in which one of the radios caught strains of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto and someone in the audience yelled ‘Leave it on.’
     - Leo Tresler, ‘History & music’ in New Literary History 21/2, 1990

The language is not like throwing a sweater over the topography of referents. Rather it is like light, without which color itself would not be possible, let alone shape, perspective & a whole host of other features. Our language & what we know of it is not separable from the world that shines through.
                                                - Ron Silliman

Colouring the world is always a means of denying it.
                                                - Roland Barthes, Mythologies

Critics will never rate you ABOVE the estimate you give yourself: If he says he's dumb I'd be stupid to ignore him, I guess is the thought process.
                                                - Ken Bolton

My will to live completely overcame my desire to win.
                - Alfred Hajos, German winner of the 1896 Athens Olympic long distance swim, held in icy four metre high seas a kilometer off Piraeus. Many contestants had to be rescued.


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