The Zen Commandments (Gerhard Richter)

Three Sisters, 1965

Forest Piece, 1965

Deer II, 1966

Shadow Picture, 1968

Sternbild Constellation, 1970

180 Colours, 1971

Three Candles, 1982

Apples, 1984

Dead, 1988

Tulips, 1995

Musique Du Jour: Farewell to Philosophy, Gavin Bryars

Tender Miseries

Gerhard Richter - I.G., 1993

alone with everybody

the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
and the women break
vases against the walls
and the men drink too
much
and nobody finds the
one
but keep
looking
crawling in and out
of beds.
flesh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than
flesh.

there's no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.

nobody ever finds
the one.

the city dumps fill
the junkyards fill
the madhouses fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill

nothing else
fills.

Charles Bukowski

Musique Du Jour: Song To The Siren, The Czars (The My Flash Fetish player does have a track for you to play today. Unfortunately, the operators of the widget have been toying with it again and disabled the listing function. Just click on the [blank] gray strip - where the words 'musique du jour' would normally be seen - if you want to hear Song To The Siren. For some reason, they have also made 'replay' the default setting. If you want to stop the track repeating, click 'play/pause'.)

Eis, Wolken Und Wasser

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) - The Sea of Ice, 1824

Gerhard Richter (b. 1932) - Seascape (Cloudy), 1969

Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945) - Andromeda, 2001


1. 'We are standing at the edge of all the religions which have sprung from Catholicism. The abstractions are declining, everything is airier and lighter than that which has gone before. Everything strives towards landscape, searches for something certain in this uncertainty and does not know how to being. Those who reach back for history are wrong and only confuse themselves. Is then this new art - Landschafterey, if you want to call it that - not capable of reaching a pinnacle which will be even more beautiful than that of the previous art?'

2. 'When above me the sky swarms with with countless stars the wind blusters through the wide space, the wave breaks roaring in the wide night, over the forest the atmosphere reddens, and the sun lights up the world; the valley steams, and I throw myself on the grass sparkling with dewdrops. Every leaf and every blade of grass swarms with life, the earth is alive and stirs beneath me, everything rings in one chord, then the soul rejoices and flies in the immeasurable space around me. There is no up and no down any more, no time, no beginning and no end . . .'

3. 'This perception of the relationship of the whole universe to us; this joyful delight in the most intimate, vivid spirit in our soul; this unifying harmony, which in its buoyancy touches every string in our heart . . . We hold fast to the consummation of these feelings and in this way certain thoughts arise in us.

We express these thoughts in words, tones, or pictures and thus inspire the same feelings in the hearts of men near us.'

4. 'His work should not be for himself and his friends simply a picture, not merely a work of art, but rather should transmit the experience of nature, its processes and laws.'

5. 'The preset situation would lead much more towards the arabesque and hieroglyphs; and it is only from these that landscape must come forth - even as historical compositions also came from them . . .

It is necessary for one who wishes to express a magnificent concept through symbols and hieroglyphs, particularly if one desires to make such expressions public, that one considers the hieroglyphics as mere words which have been understood for some time and that they should be used in a new way, much like a musician who plays his instrument without being conscious of how he holds it. But if one tries to enjoy every individual aspect of the work and explain each note to others, then he will block himself off from the vital energy of the picture.'

Philipp Otto Runge (1777-1810)

Inaubible As A Melody Cut In A Disc Of Flesh

Pablo Ruiz Picasso (1881-1973) - Mandolin and Guitar, 1924



"A painter paints their pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence."

Leopold Stokowski

"Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life."

Ludwig van Beethoven

"You are the music while it lasts."

T. S. Eliot

"Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent."

Victor Hugo

"When words leave off, music begins."

Heinrich Heine

"Music is the shorthand of emotion."

Leo Tolstoy

"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music."

Aldous Huxley

"Music is the poetry of the air."

Jean Paul Richter

"Perhaps all music, even the newest, is not so much something discovered as something that re-emerges from where it lay buried in the memory, inaudible as a melody cut in a disc of flesh. A composer lets me hear a song that has always been shut up silent within me."

Jean Genet

"Too many pieces of music finish long after the end."

Igor Stravinsky