#broken – @nickkahler on Tumblr

He hated the country and he hated the life he lived; he hated living with his mother and his idiot brother and he hated hearing about the damn dairy and the damn help and the damn broken machinery. But in spite of all he said, he never made any move to leave. He talked about Paris and Rome but he never went even to Atlanta.

Flannery O’Connor, “Greenleaf,” 1956

#flannery o'connor #greenleaf #quote #lit #literature #hate #country #nature #living #life #mother #brother #idiot #hearing #broken #machinery #spite #leave #talk #paris #rome #atlanta

nickkahler

I was enamored with the idea of how what seemed broken, discarded, useless was transformed into a meaningful gesture. … We are conditioned to think that what is broken is lost, or useless or a setback, and so when we set out with big ambitions we don’t necessarily recognize what the next graduation is supposed to look like. Unlearning everything you learned in college is just an exercise in learning to recognize how the fragments and small bits lead to something that is much more than the sum of its parts.

Teresita Fernandez, “Commencement Address at VCU,” 2013

#ostracon #fragment #teresita fernández #commencement #address #lecture #vcu #art #idea #broken #useless #transformation #recognition #learning #college #university #exercise #sum #parts #quote

nickkahler

In the history of modern art and aesthetics, the fragment has had a double signification. As a reminder of the past once whole but now fractured and broken, as a demonstration of the implacable effects of time and the ravages of nature, it has taken on the connotations of nostalgia and melancholy, even of history itself. As an incomplete piece of a potentially complete whole, it has pointed toward a possible world of harmony in the future, a utopia perhaps, that it both represents and constructs.

Anthony Vidler, “Lost in Space: Toba Khedoori’s Architectural Fragments” in Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture, 2000

nickkahler

I. Architecture is the meditation on finitude and failure. II. Architecture is the symbolic redistribution of desire. III. Architecture is the execution of exquisite barriers. IV. Architecture is the fiction of the age critiqued in space. V. Architecture is the history of a place told in broken code. VI. Architecture is carried out by a resistance to itself.

Douglas Darden, “Six Aphorisms Envisioning Architecture” from Condemned Building, 1991 (via pollard)

#douglas darden #quote #architecture #aphorism #building #mediation #finite #failure #symbol #desire #execution #barrier #fiction #age #space #history #code #broken #carry #resistance #philosophy

nickkahler

This world is false and illusive, a turbid medium in which the rays of heavenly light are broken and obscured in mist and darkness.

Pythagoras, “On Darkness,” c. 500 BCE

#pythagoras #false #truth #illusion #illusive #turbid #medium #ray #heaven #light #broken #break #obscurity #mist #dark #darkness #art #quote #antiquity #greece #favorite

nickkahler reblogged

mythologyofblue

At moments like these prose is a brick through the poet’s window. The fate of the poet is to ignore the broken window and make good use of the brick, and of the draft.

Rowan Ricardo Phillips, "On Being a Poet," c. 2010 (via parisreview)

#rowan ricardo phillips #poetry #window #brick #material #moment #prose #fate #ignore #broken #draft

nickkahler

Nigel Cooke, Morning Is Broken, 2005

#nigel cooke #morning #broken #painting #art #circle #sun #yellow #ruin #surrealism

nickkahler

An escalator can never break--it can only become stairs. You would never see an "Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order" sign, just "Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience. We apologize for the fact that you can still get up there.

Mitch Hedberg, "On Escalators" from Comedy Central Presents, 1999

#mitch hedberg #escalator #broken #stair #quote #humor #comedy #funny