something in common with mr. lovecraft

here h.p. lovecraft describes his nature as a tripartite of obscure "loves". these are loves i believe when can both share...

"I should describe mine own nature as tripartite, my interests consisting of three parallel and dissociated groups – (a) Love of the strange and the fantastic. (b) Love of the abstract truth and of scientific logick. (c) Love of the ancient and the permanent. Sundry combinations of these strains will probably account for all my odd tastes and eccentricities." (SL 1.110)

on ugliness

on ugliness by umberto eco. if you have not already...go out and get this book right now! meant to be a companion to the history of beauty...both by umberto eco, the famous italian novelist, essayist, and philosopher. i can not describe how great this book is...i let someone else do it for me...

From Publishers Weekly

Italian literary and cultural critic Eco opens this visually dazzling and intellectually provocative companion volume to his History of Beauty (2004) by arguing that ugliness has been defined through the ages only as the opposite of beauty. Eco attempts to go further in this analysis of ugliness—part history, part cultural criticism—which echoes premises from his previous survey: a correspondence between the public's tastes and artists' sensibilities must be assumed, and cultural and historical contexts determine how both beauty and ugliness are portrayed and received. Each chapter juxtaposes images with brief excerpts from texts through the centuries, and Eco's choices are superb: a discussion of industrial ugliness includes excerpts from Baudelaire, DeLillo and the Eiffel Tower's originally negative reception; the delightful chapter on kitsch includes Hermann Broch and Eco's own hilarious description of California's Madonna Inn. Eco's thoughts on ugliness in contemporary culture are the most interesting: in an age of goth and cyborg aesthetics, the boundaries between beauty and ugliness are perhaps permanently blurred. This unusual and eclectic study will appeal to cultural and art historians as well as to the general reader with an interest in a rarely examined topic. 300 color illus.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Review

ON UGLINESS edited by Umberto Eco (Rizzoli, 455 pages; $45). Beauty may be attractive, but ugliness is more fun, or so it will seem to the peruser of this fascinating volume edited by Umberto Eco and translated by Alastair McEwen. "On Ugliness" does not present a deep theory of repulsion, but what it lacks in depth it makes up for in encyclopedic, vividly illustrated breadth. Interspersing brief passages of historical and philosophical commentary among hundreds of examples of ugliness found in Western art and literature, the book offers a whirlwind tour of its subject from ancient Greece to the popular and avant-garde cultures of today. You will be hard pressed to find a facet of ugliness that does not rear up in some hilarious, obscene, disgusting or terrifying form. KEN JOHNSON -- New York Times 12/7/2007

new books

i just got several new books of insurmountable importance. while i don't always share the books i'm currently reading. these are just so damned special...

1) on ugliness by umberto eco

2) faust---the norton critical edition, 2nd printing, translated by walter aendt-- by goethe

3) the divine comedy by dante---really nice, leather bound.

4) the seven basic plots by christopher booker---indespensible!

5) daphnis and chloe by marc chagall---one of my absolute favorite painters...illustrates this famous myth with lithographs

6) the necronomicon by h p lovecraft---what can i say...the bible of horror literature.

7) the unknown hieronymus bosch by kurt falk---my favorite artist, right now.

some vain renderings of the artist himself

inner voice/ inner cosby



werewolf's ritual raw embarssment

the high priestess of astarte...maw maw elaine

hi my name is justin...you might know me as tv's "the disintrested redeemer jobe cruel". well, shoot, where do i begin...

you may have read, skimed through, or most liklely...completly ignored...an ealier posst called..."maw maw elaine and the inevitable pink magic destiny of the cruel redeemer". is a legendary account of my real life grandmothers life, as well as her beautiful cycle of destruction and creation, life and death, the ebb and the tide that she commands just as the moon does her waves.while there is no real proof that any of this is real and or happened. the truth is that i have no historical evidence on any of the events unfolded durring this metaphorical, folk manifesto, this tome her heriditary brilliance. this spell book is both the key and gate, the watchmen and the watched, the disappearing noose that blames the hanged for hanging.

here is an actual rare archival depiction of early "pink magic" maw maw...at that timethe word pink magic was cleverly disguised as "pink collar." this of course was a unified front to destract away from the natural magic, power, and beauty of an incrediblly loving and strong female.





my own maw maw's influence on the great minds of her time is unavoidable. she herself invokes burroughs himself, along with pan and numerous other fairy beast and homosexuals. she calls upon burroughs, pan, and the gods of old to deliver us this invocation...that has ben passed down through my family. every thanksgiving, durring our bloodletting we chant..."

...to hex chu chan, the dangerous one, to ah pook, the destroyer, to the great old one the star beast, to pan, god of panic, to the nameless gods of dispersal and emptiness, to hassan i sabbah, master of assassins, to hank williams and his lonesome birds, to billie holliday whose strange fruit hung not at the end of the noose but at the tip of a needle, and to anais nin who came alive and was born by the sex of millers words...to all the scribes and artist and practioners of magic through whom these spirits have been manifested......

NOTHING IS TRUE. EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED

these are the very words that run through my vains invoking the spirit of the beast...ART.

more self-absorbed belly-aching in the name of something true

and now without further ado...i will invoke the muse...

to the goddess melpomene, she who is melodious, the one that celebrates with dance and song...the beautiful muse of tragedy. i now invoke melpomene so that she might see fit to adorn me in the cothurnus, the boots of tragic actors, so that i may go forth and share the song of the shadow, and so that she may grant me the ability, as she has for so many before, the gift of creating beautiful phrases.

now good people...i must go forth an profess the word of melpomene.
is not, the heart of hearts, hidden inside the message of melpomene. the one who sings is the one who suffers. the one who celebrates with dance and song...is the one who tragedy serves. how does tragedy serve, beside tormment...through beautiful phrases...tragedy serves through art.

your heart of hearts is tragic. we will visit buddhas words...buddha says that we must embrace our "genuine heart of sorrow". buddha's noble truths, are in fact, the truths of duhka...the truths of suffering.

so what then is the result of embracing the genuine heart of sorrow, of invoking melpomene, of tragic art. the result is...joy, true love, geniune being, transcendent life, rejoicing...redemption, salvation.

so then...what is wrong with being the tragic actor? dancing and singing sad songs of joy for the salvation and redemtion of lost souls.

arson is art: carl jung and jobe of the jungle join forces to bore you and ruin your day

i have been attempting to describe my own idea of what "art" is to me, both in these absurdly unintresting blogs as well as in the act of living itself. in life i have found very little distinction between "making art" and "living life". in fact, i have found that the two are one and the same.
durring my intense studies i came across some excellent back up to my half-assed obsession. here is carl jung, to help me say...in your face....

"...If a work of art is explained in the same way as a neurosis, then either the work of art is a neurosis or a neurosis is a work of art. This explanation is all very well as a play on words, but sound common sense rebels against putting a work of art on the same level as a neurosis. An analyst might, in an extreme case, view neurosis as a work of art through the lens of his professional bias, but it would never occur to an intelligent lay person to mistake a pathological phenomenon foe art, in spite of the undeniable fact that a work of art arises from much the same psychological conditions as a neurosis. This is only natural, because of these conditions are present in every individual and, owing to the relative constancy of the human environment, are constantly the same, whether in the case of a nervous intellectual, a poet, or a normal human being. All have had parents, all have a father- or a mother complex, all know about sex and therefore have a certain common and typical human difficulties. One poet may be influenced more by his relation to his father, another by his mother, while a third shows unmistakable sexual repression in his poetry. Since this can be said equally of not only every neurotic but of every normal human being, nothing specific is gained for the judgement of a work art. At most our knowledge of its psychological antecedents will have broadened and deepened.'