I have friends wherever there are companies of trees, wounded but not vanquished, which huddle together with touching obstinacy to implore an inclement and pitiless sky.
O voice the angels kissed when unbreathed yet!
O lips made spiritual with uttering it!
O eyes wild with the lust of the divine
In thy felt presence, making thee its shrine!
O that this moment of thee were Thyself!
That thou ne’er fell'st from this Thou, and the pelf
Of gathered days with avarice of living,
Touched thee not from this moment of God's giving!
O eternal actuality of thee!
O by thy voice sculptured immutably
In some stone‑flesh of spirit! O set free
From being all contained in being seen!
O firmament of joy purely serene
With spaciousness of soul and stars of song
Above thyself, God's human heights among!
Sing on, and let thy singing be a couch
To that of me which to my soul doth vouch
Of God as of a self and of a home!
Dissolve me to thy notes! Make me become
An outside of myself, and have in me
Nought but a selfless sense of hearing thee!
Let me pertain to the sounds thou dost voice!
Let me be other than I and rejoice
Hearing time like a breeze pass by the place
Thy song imprisons in its halcyon grace!
Thy voice compels to parapets from heaven
Dim winged happinesses whence is woven
To our souls such a glamour, spirit‑fair,
That, feeling it, all life becomes despair
And all the sense of life to wish to die.
Sing on! Between the music's human cry
And thy song's meaning there is interposed
Some third reality, less life‑enclosed,
Some subtler tenderness than music makes
Or words sung, and its moonless moonlight takes
Our visionary moods by their child‑hand
And our tired steps begin to understand.
Sing, nor stop singing till bliss ache too much!
O that I could, without moving my hand,
Stretch forth some hand imaginary and touch
That body of thine thy singing giveth thee!
That kiss‑like touch would wake eternity
In me again, and, as by a great morn,
The night my body makes of me were torn
Away from being, and my unbodied shape
Would, like a ship doubling the final cape,
Come to that sight of port and shiver of coming
That God allows to those whose bliss of roaming
Is no more than the wish to find His peace
And mingle with it as a scent with the breeze.
Fernando Pessoa, "To One Singing" in The Mad Fiddler, c. 1923
Do not touch, caress.
Jaume Plensa, TEDx Talk at SMU, Dallas, TX, 2011
My interest is not to continue destroying what is already destroyed… When things die, new ideas are born. The tree’s leaves fall, rot, and disappear. For me, this building’s history, all the marks on the ground that should not be touched, were what should be emphasized, and it was this thought that gave birth to the ramps and the bridge.
Sverre Fehn, "On the Hedmark County Museum," Hamar, Norway, 1978 (via jirihavran)
You are going to meet people who will tell you that this form of architecture is about optimism for the future. But I can tell you that in Palestine, for me, this cannot be the case. When I see rebar coming from the roofs of the buildings, I see a violent fear of the future. A fear that comes from not knowing what is being passed down from one generation to the next. Previously, we had the olive fields, and there was a rootedness to the land. But what was once a communitarian, horizontal mentality is now individualistic and vertical. No matter how hard people work, no matter how far they extend their efforts, they just go higher and higher, never touching, never making contact with those around them.
Friend of Joseph Redwood-Martinez, "A Necessary Incompleteness," Ramallah, Palestine, 2014
nickkahler reblogged
What may emerge as the most important insight of the twenty-first century is that man was not designed to live at the speed of light. Without the countervailing balance of natural and physical laws, the new video-related media will make man implode upon himself. As he sits in the informational control room, whether at home or at work, receiving data at enormous speeds — imagistic, sound, or tactile — from all areas of the world, the results could be dangerously inflating and schizophrenic. His body will remain in one place but his mind will float out into the electronic void, being everywhere at once in the data bank. Discarnate man is as weightless as an astronaut but can move much faster. He loses his sense of private identity because electronic perceptions are not related to place. Caught up in the hybrid energy released by video technologies, he will be presented with a chimerical “reality” that involves all his senses at a distended pitch, a condition as addictive as any known drug. The mind, as figure, sinks back into ground and drifts somewhere between dream and fantasy. Dreams have some connection to the real world because they have a frame of actual time and place (usually in real time); fantasy has no such commitment.
Marshall McLuhan, The Global Village, c. 1965 (via bohemia)
Once a landscape is no longer 'virgin' it is typically written off as fallen, lost to nature, irredeemable.
Michael Pollan, Second Nature, 2003
Dennis Oppenheim, Two Stage Transfer Drawing, c. 1980 “As I run a marker along Eric’s s back he attempts to duplicate the movement on the wall. My activity stimulates a kinetic response from his sensory system. I am, therefore, Drawing Through Him."