October 2006 Archives

'[T]he creation of the greatest works of art . . . are inevitably linked to a certain general tension of human thought, directed in a precise orientation. The birth of such a work is produced as if in an incandescent atmosphere which arrives at the critical temperature where, like a sudden deflagration, the chemical reaction produces a new quality. And like the blinding light and thunder which suddenly render visible and audible the electric tension accumulated in the clouds, the great work of art, in a powerful discharge, expresses what was in process of being born, growing, and accumulating force in thousands of human brains.'

'Vsevolod Pudovkin (1893'1953), The Force of Poetry; Cinema In Revolution, edited by Luda and Jean Schnitzer and Marcel Martin, translated by David Robinson, 1973.

'[T]he Kino-Eye is conceived as 'what the eye does not see', as the microscope and the telescope of time, as telescopic camera lenses, as the X-ray eye, as 'candid camera' and so on.'

'Dziga Vertov, 1944; Cinema In Revolution, edited by Luda and Jean Schnitzer and Marcel Martin, translated by David Robinson, 1973. I think the movies Koyaaniskatsi and Baraka, might qualify as Kino-Eye extravaganzas!

'In 1922 Kozintsev and I exhibited in the 'Left Stream Exhibition' in Leningrad, which included not only the famous 'Black and White Square', but also another picture by Tatlin which represented nothing at all'the canvas was simply and uniformly covered with a wash of pink paint. That was really the end of the line.

Our paintings . . . were joyous collages. . . . Variegated mosaics, strong in colour. . . .

And they earned us criticism. . . . I recall . . . Punin . . . saying to us scornfully, 'If you go on in this fashion you'll end up in the cinema.''

'Sergei Yutkevitch, 1966; Cinema In Revolution, edited by Luda and Jean Schnitzer and Marcel Martin, translated by David Robinson, 1973.

'The devil is a woman with a red dress on,
A gleam that flits across a roving eye. . . .'

'Ada Moore, Devil Is A Woman, 1956.

BATESVILLE, Ark. (AP)' . . . The man, who has not been identified, was arrested Friday after trying to use the bill to buy cigarettes at a Batesville gas station.

'The bill was unmistakably fake due to the fact that the ink was running on the bill, the president's face was missing and for the president's name, it had the name Clinton on it,' said Deputy Nathan Stephens.

The sheriff's office expects to file counterfeiting charges against the suspect, authorities said.

'Of all the cases I've worked with phony money, this is the sorriest bill I've ever seen,' Lt. Brenda Bittle said.

'Batesville Guard, http://www.guardonline.com/, Oct 30, 9:30 PM EST.

'Ah, what he had in mind and what surrounded him were like sunlight and shadow.'

'Andrei Codrescu, Casanova in Bohemia, 2002.

'The night stretched hopelessly ahead like a sea of black ink. Casanova floated in it, almost drowning, then surfacing miraculously, then sinking again.'

'Andrei Codrescu, a bad night of gambling, from Casanova in Bohemia, 2002.

'As the tablets took effect, everyone became more daring. The revived Count paid close attention to Claribelle and Libussa, who had positioned themselves like the queens on a playing card and were kissing each other deeply in their secret places.'

'Andrei Codrescu, Casanova in Bohemia, 2002.

'Venice, splendidly costumed in her jewels of gold and blue, floats above her canals like a mirror that reflects only herself.'

'Andrei Codrescu, Casanova in Bohemia, 2002.

'The secret of knowing just how much light one must let fall into a room or on a part of one's body is as intricate and complex as the lacemaker's or the glassblower's art.'

'Andrei Codrescu, Casanova in Bohemia, 2002.

'She had sapphire blue eyes that sparkled with a far-off light whose source must have been in the stars.'

'Andrei Codrescu, Casanova in Bohemia, 2002.

'Freedoms are not given, they are taken.'

'Peter Kropotkin, from Words of a Rebel, a collection of his writing from 1872 to 1882.

'I fought hard. But your guns were well aimed. The bullets flew like birds in the air, and whizzed by our ears like wind through the trees in the winter. My warriors fell around me. . . . The sun rose dim on us in the morning and at night it sunk in a dark cloud, and looked like a ball of fire. That was the last sun that shone on Black Hawk. . . . He is now a prisoner to the white men. . . . He has done nothing for which an Indian ought to be ashamed. He has fought for his countrymen, the squaws and papooses, against white men who came year after year, to cheat them and take away their lands. You know the cause of our making war. It is known to all white men. They ought to be ashamed of it. Indians are not deceiful. The white men speak bad of the Indian and look at him spitefully. But the Indian does not tell lies. Indians do not steal.'

'Chief Black Hawk, from his surrender speach, 1832; quoted in A People's History of the United States; 1492-Present by Howard Zinn, 1999.

'The Cherokees' language'heavily poetic, metaphorical, beautifully expressive, supplemented by dance, drama, and ritual'had always been a language of voice and gesture. Now their chief, Sequoyah, invented a written language, which thousands learned. The Cherokees' newly established Legislative Council voted money for a printing press, which on February 21, 1828, began publishing a newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, printed in both English and Sequoyah's Cherokee.'

'Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States; 1492-Present, 1999.

'It was in the [post Civil War] South that the crop-lien system was most brutal. By this system the farmer would get the things he needed from the merchant: the use of the cotton gin at harvest time, whatever supplies were necessary. He didn't have money to pay, so the merchant would get a lien'a mortgage on his crop'on which the farmer might pay 25 percent interest. . . . The man with the ledger became to the farmer 'the furnishing man,' to black farmers simply 'the Man.' The farmer would owe more money every year until finally his farm was taken away and he became a tenant.'

'Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States; 1492-Present, 1999.

'There are blue-blooded queens and princesses,
Who have charms made of diamonds and pearl,
But the only and Thoroughbred Lady
Is the Rebel Girl.'

'Joe Hill, Rebel Girl, a song included in the IWW Little Red Song Book of the nineteen-teens; quoted in A People's History of the United States; 1492-Present by Howard Zinn, 1999.

'The plunge of civilization into this abyss of blood and darkness . . . is a thing that so gives away the whole long age during which we have supposed the world to be . . . gradually bettering.'

'Henry James, a letter to a friend a few days after the England declared World War One; quoted in A People's History of the United States; 1492-Present by Howard Zinn, 1999.

'And in the south he saw the golden oranges hanging on the trees, the little golden oranges on the dark green trees; and guards with shotguns patrolling the lines so a man might not pick an orange for a thin child, oranges to be dumped if the price was low. . . .'

'John Steinbeck, from his novel of the depression, The Grapes of Wrath; quoted in A People's History of the United States; 1492-Present by Howard Zinn, 1999.

'I killed more people tonight than I have fingers on my hands. I shot them in cold blood and enjoyed every minute of it. . . . They were Commies . . . red sons-of-bitches who should have died long ago. . . .'

'Mickey Spillane, Mike Hammer in One Lonely Night, 1951; quoted in A People's History of the United States; 1492-Present by Howard Zinn, 1999.

'I want to see lithe Negro girls,
Etched dark against the sky
While sunset lingers. . . .

I want to hear the chanting
Around a heathen fire
Of a strange black race. . . .

I want to feel the surging
Of my sad people's soul
Hidden by a minstrel-smile.'

'Gwendolyn Bennet, a poem from the 1930s; quoted in A People's History of the United States; 1492-Present by Howard Zinn, 1999.

'You think I have visions
because I am an Indian.

I have visions because
there are visions to be seen.'

'Buffy Sainte'Marie, a poem published in Akwesasne Notes 1967; quoted in A People's History of the United States; 1492-Present by Howard Zinn, 1999.

'And our flag'another pride of ours, our chiefest! We have worshiped it so, and when we have seen it in far lands'glimpsing it unexpectedly in that strange sky, waving its welcome and benediction to us'we have caught our breaths and uncovered our heads and couldn't speak for a moment, for the thought of what it was to us and the great ideals it stood for. Indeed, we must do something about these things; it is easily managed. We can have a special one'our states do it: we can have just our usual flag, with the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and crossbones.'

'Samuel L. Clemens, from his essay To the Person Sitting in Darkness, 1901.

'Fill up again your pumpkins with alcohol, and hand up the largest of them to me. . . . Solemn, I will light the giant candles for you. Now in the night. In the deep black night.'

'Max Beckmann, On My Painting, 1964.

'Our torches stretch away without end . . . silver, glowing red, purple, violet, green-blue, and black. We bear them in our dance over the seas and the mountains, across the boredom of life.'

'Max Beckmann, On My Painting, 1964.

'Dressed head to toe in black, including masks, they blindfold and cut the clothes off their new captives, then administer an enema and sleeping drugs. They outfit detainees in a diaper and jumpsuit for what can be a day-long trip. Their destinations: either a detention facility operated by cooperative countries in the Middle East and Central Asia, including Afghanistan, or one of the CIA's own covert prisons'referred to in classified documents as 'black sites.''

'Dana Priest, Wrongful Imprisonment: The Anatomy of a CIA Mistake, Washington Post, December 4, 2005; quoted in Static, by Amy Goodman and David Goodman, 2006.

'Do we want the stars' We can have them.'

'Ray Bradbury, from Zen in the Art of Writing, 1990.

'He arrived with a seedy two-bit carnival, The Dill Brothers Combined Shows, during Labor Day Weekend of 1932, when I was twelve. Every night for three nights, Mr. Electrico sat in his electric chair, being fired with ten billion volts of pure blue sizzling power. Reaching out into the audience, his eyes flaming, his white hair standing on end, sparks leaping between his smiling teeth, he brushed an Excalibur sword over the heads of the children, knighting them with fire. When he came to me, he tapped me on both shoulders and then the tip of my nose. The lightning jumped into me. Mr. Electrico cried: 'Live Forever!''

'Ray Bradbury, from Zen in the Art of Writing, 1990.

'Owsley [Augustus Owsley Stanley III] was obsessed with making his product as pure as possible'even purer than Sandoz; which described LSD in its scientific reports as a yellowish crystalline substance. As he mastered his illicit craft, Owsley found a way to refine the crystal so that it appeared blue-white under a fluorescent lamp; moreover, if the crystals were shaken, they emitted flashes of light, which meant that LSD in its pure form was piezoluminescent'a property shared by a very small number of compounds.'

'Martin A. Lee & Bruce Shlain, Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD, 1985.

'Owsley invested in a professional pill press and soon he started dyeing his tablets a different color each time he turned out a new shipment. Although there was no difference between the tablets (each contained a carefully measured 250 micrograms), street folklore ascribed specific qualities to every color: red was said to be exceptionally mellow, green was edgy, and blue was the perfect compromise.'

'Martin A. Lee & Bruce Shlain, Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD, 1985.

'The windows were still screened from the summer. A moth so still that it might have been glued there clung to one of the screens. Its feelers stood out like delicate wool, the color of cedar bark, and its wings, the length of a woman's finger, were a pale, almost diaphanous green. The ranges of mountains beyond were already autumn-red in the evening sun. That one spot of pale green struck him as oddly like the color of death. The fore and after wings overlapped to make a deeper green, and the wings fluttered like thin pieces of paper in the autumn wind.'

'Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country, translated from the Japanese by Edward G. Seidensticker, 1957.

'The moon shone like a blade frozen in blue ice.'

'Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country, translated from the Japanese by Edward G. Seidensticker, 1957.

'Was the sun already up' The brightness of the snow was more intense, it seemed to be burning icily. Against it, the woman's hair became a clearer black, touched with a purple sheen.'

'Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country, translated from the Japanese by Edward G. Seidensticker, 1957.

'The Milky Way. Shimamura too looked up, and he felt himself floating into the Milky Way. Its radiance was so near that it seemed to take him up into it. Was this the bright vastness the poet Basho saw when he wrote of the Milky Way arched over a stormy sea' The Milky Way came down just over there, to wrap the night earth in its naked embrace. There was a terrible voluptuousness about it. Shimamura fancied that his own small shadow was being cast up against it from the earth. Each individual star stood apart from the rest, and even the particles of silver dust in the luminous clouds could be picked out, so clear was the night. The limitless depth of the Milky Way pulled his gaze up into it.'

'Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country, translated from the Japanese by Edward G. Seidensticker, 1957.

'Angel eyes, that old devil sent
They glow unbearably bright.
Need I say that my love's mispent
Mispent with angel eyes tonight''

'Angel Eyes, written by Matt Dennis in 1947, and sung wonderfully by Chet Baker on the album Chet Baker With Fifty Italian Strings in 1959.

'How could he apologize'

He saw his escape in the Shino water jar. He knelt before it and looked at it appraisingly, as one looks at tea vessels.

A faint red floated up from the white glaze. Kikuji reached to touch the voluptuous and warmly cool surface.

'Soft, like a dream. Even when you know as little as I do you can appreciate good Shino.''

'Yasunari Kawabata, Thousand Cranes, translated from the Japanese by Edward G. Seidensticker, 1959.

'The white glaze carried a faint suggestion of red. As one looked at it, the red seemed to float up from deep within the white.

The rim was faintly brown. In one place the brown was deeper.

It was there that one drank'

The rim might have been stained by tea, and it might have been stained by lips.

Kikuji looked at the faint brown, and felt that there was a touch of red in it.

Where her mother's lipstick had sunk in'

There was a red-black in the crackle too.

The color of faded lipstick, the color of a wilted red rose, the color of old, dry blood. . . .'

'Yasunari Kawabata, Thousand Cranes, translated from the Japanese by Edward G. Seidensticker, 1959.

One or a group of sensations experienced as premonitions of the onset of an attack of a particular disease. For example; in epilepsy, asthma, or migraine, patients may experience strange odors, flashes of light, itching between the shoulder blades, or other sensations warning of the imminence of an attack.

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

Clouding of the lens of the eye that partially or entirely prevents light from entering the eye.

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

The transparent front covering of the eyeball, part of the white of the eye, through which is seen the pupil and . . . the iris.

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

The treatment of disease by exposing the body to sunlight, used in certain forms of tuberculosis.

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

A false interpretation of a real sensation. Example: when one is on a motionless train next to another train just starting off, the sense that one is moving backward and the other train is standing still.

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

The colored, circular disc of the eye, suspended behing the transparent part of the eye, the cornea. Its hind surface rests on the lens of the eye. . . . The iris . . . contains . . . muscles [that] control the size of the pupil.

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

Yellowness of the skin, lining tissues, and secretions due to bile pigments in the blood.

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

1. A crystal or piece of glass that bends rays of light passing through it. . . . 2. The transparent egg-shaped body lying behind the pupil of the eye, called the crystalline lens of the eye.

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

1. Resembling or relating to a lens. 2. Relating to the crystalline lens of the eye.

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

A pale, leaden, bluish color. The discoloration produced by an injury.

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

A pigmented spot upon the skin. 2. A spot in the retina. . . .

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

Black or dark-brown pigment found, in some degree, in all people and responsible for complexion.

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

1. Relating to , or affecting, one eye. 2. Having a single eyepiece as in the monocular microscope.

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

Nearsightedness, due to a greater than normal length of the eyeball from front to back, resulting in the image falling in front of the retina. Lenses . . . that push the image back onto the retina are used to correct this condition.

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

Excessive winking.

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

Defective night vision. When temporary may be due to a deficiency of vitamin A. When permanent may be due to diseases of the retina. . . .

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

One who cannot see at night.

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

An unnatural fear of night and darkness.

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

1. Relating to the eye. 2. The lens of a microscope or other optical instruments nearest to the eye; an eyepiece.

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

Relating to the eye.

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

One who makes lenses or optical instruments. One who sells spectacles.

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

One who measures the seeing ability without the use of eyedrops.

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

Relating to the eye.

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

A specialist in the eye and its diseases.

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

An instrument for examining the interior of the eye consisting of a searchlight, the rays of which are concentrated in a small point and directed into the pupil, and small magnifying lenses through which the examiner looks.

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

Eye pain on exposure to light, or a morbid fear of light.

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

A contagious inflammation of the eye with the production of matter and a very definite reddening of the whites of the eyes.

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

A kind of mole, purple or violet in color, only slightly raised above the skin, usually seen on the face. A type of birthmark.

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

The innermost of the three coats of the eyeball, actually an expansion of the head of the nerve of sight that enters the eyeball from behind. The retina receives light sensation and transforms it into nervous impulses that are then sent along the nerve of sight to the brain for translation into vision.

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

An obsolete name for . . . poisoning with ergot. A common characteristic of this condition is a bright-red appearance of the skin.

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

1. Bloody or resembling blood. 2. Active, hopeful.

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

A contagious disease, especially of childhood, coming on suddenly with fever . . . sore throat, inflammation of the glands in the neck, and . . . a pin-point or scarlet eruption.

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

Inflammation of the skin caused by the action of the sun's rays; discoloration of skin due to sun (tan).

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

An infectious disease of sudden onset particularly prevalent in the American tropics and subtropics. It is caused by a virues carried to man by a mosquito. . . . Jaundice discolors skin and eyes yellow, black vomit due to the presence of blood becomes profuse. . . . Death often results.

'Layman's Medical Dictionary, Harry Swartz, M.D., 1963.

'It is interesting to note that the third time a printer's mark was used, in 1470, it was a counterfeit of [Peter] Schoffer's mark.'

'Bernard Rudofsky, from Seven Designers Look at Trademark Design, edited by Egbert Jacobson, 1952.

'The theory has been advanced that the modern signature is, pradoxically, a product of illiteracy. The signs and signatures that came into use during the thirteenth century are only letters and signs grafted onto crosses. Kings, as well as their lowest subjects labored on their monogrammed crosses, and few could probably read what they signed.'

'Bernard Rudofsky, from Seven Designers Look at Trademark Design, edited by Egbert Jacobson, 1952.

'As far back as anyone can remember, orange was the 'look at me' color, found on road signs and heavy industrial equipment. Orange and plastic, it must be said, were made for each other. But the color embodied a Zen-like transcendence that also endeared it to the avant-garde. From A Clockwork Orange to Andy Warhol's screen prints . . . using orange was a way of declaring, 'We're modern!' Designers claimed it was the visual equivalent of an exclamation point.

And so it was until the 1990s, when corporations in search of a hipper image gave orange mainstream legitimacy. In 1994, Federal Express abbreviated its name to FedEx and combined orange with offbeat purple for its new look. . . . Orange popped up on Apple computers and redesigned Volkswagen Beetles, then spread like a virus to sneakers, toothbrushes, baby strollers, golf balls, and innumerable Web sites. . . .

Home Depot's orange logo had a utilitarian tint, but . . . it beckoned the tool-belt-toting individualist in every suburban home. Bit by bit, the color of safety morphed into an emblem of ballsy Bobo capitalism. . . .

This triumphant narrative swelled to a crescendo during 17 days in November 2004, when the 'Orange Revolution' erupted on the streets of Kiev, spawning a vast tent city and an orgasm of orange hats, T-shirts, bandannas, scarves, and neckties. Ukrainians wore the color to protest the government's effort to falsify election results and steal the presidential election from opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko.'

'Andras Szanto, The Color of Revolution, from Print magazine, May/June 2006.

'Orange is the national symbol of the Netherlands, whose royal family hails from the House of Orange-Nassau. The country's industrious spirit and equitable democracy are widely admired. And as every Ukranian sports fan knows, the excellent Dutch national soccer team is called Oranje.'

'Andras Szanto, The Color of Revolution, from Print magazine, May/June 2006.

They could be poison ivy,
They might be poison oak,
But anyway, here's your bouquet!
Hey'can't you take a joke'

'Shel Silverstein, Red Flowers for You, from Falling Up, 1996.

'A SPLENDID ORCHESTRA
Is in town, but has not been engaged.
Also, . . .
MAGNIFICENT FIRE WORKS
were in contemplation for this occasion, but the
idea has been abandoned.
A GRAND TORCHLIGHT PROCESSION
May be expected; in fact, the public are privileged
to expect whatever they please.'

'Mark Twain, from an advertisement for a postwar San Francisco performance; quoted in Printer's Devil: Mark Twain and the American Publishing Revolution by Bruce Michelson, 2006.

'The medical faculty at the University of Paris in 1348 listed change of season, 'flying' stars, change in the color of the air, lightning and other aerial lights, winds and thunder, dead animals, and an increase in frogs and reptiles as signs of the plague. In 1350 the physician and poet Simon de Covino listed heavy mists, clouds, lightning, and falling stars.'

'Joseph P. Byrne, Daily Life During the Black Death, 2006.

'[Get] a piece of . . . gold, if you can of Elizabeth's coin (it is the best), which is philosophical gold and keep it always in your mouth when you walk out or any sick persons come to you.'

'John Allin, advice in a letter written during London's Great Plague of 1665; quoted in Daily Life During the Black Death by Joseph P. Byrne, 2006.

'Across the era of the Second Pandemic . . . [a]uthorities stepped in to limit the depressing effects of mourners in black and tolling bells, and prevented gatherings of people through which the disease might be spread. The times were extraordinary, and the death tolls often unbelievable. . . . Without controlling'or outright banning'the traditional ceremonies, cities would have become true necropolises, cities of the dead.'

'Joseph P. Byrne, Daily Life During the Black Death, 2006.

'I can remember every second of that morning, if I shut my eyes I can see the deep blue colour of the sky and the mango leaves, the pink and red hibiscus, the yellow handkerchief she wore round her head, tied in the Martinique fashion with the sharp points in front, but now I see everything still, fixed for ever like the colours in a stained-glass window. Only the clouds move.'

'Jean Rhys, from Wide Sargasso Sea, 1966.

'We are cross-stitching silk roses on a pale background. We can colour the roses as we choose and mine are green, blue and purple. Underneath, I will write my name in fire red, Antoinette Mason, n'e Cosway, Mount Calvary Convent, Spanish Town, Jamaica, 1839.'

'Jean Rhys, from Wide Sargasso Sea, 1966.

'Everything was brightness, or dark. The walls, the blazing colours of the flowers in the garden, the nuns' habits were bright, but their veils, the Crucifix hanging from their waists, the shadow of the trees, were black. That was how it was, light and dark, sun and shadow, Heaven and Hell. . . .'

'Jean Rhys, from Wide Sargasso Sea, 1966.

'Blot out the moon,
Pull down the stars.
Love in the dark, for we're for the the dark
So soon, so soon.'

'Jean Rhys, from Wide Sargasso Sea, 1966.

'Devil with the blue dress, blue dress, blue dress
Devil with the blue dress on. . . .

Wearin' her wig hat and shades to match
She's got high-heel shoes and an alligator hat
Wearin' her pearls and her diamond rings
She's got bracelets on her fingers, now, and everything.'

'Devil with the Blue Dress, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, 1966.

'Put on your red shoes and dance the blues.'

'Let's Dance, David Bowie, 1999.

'I'm gonna stick to you like white on rice.'

'Warm Daddy, by Eddie Bo, 1960.

'But darlin' can't you see my signals turn from green to red''

'Crosstown Traffic, Jimi Hendrix, from the album Electric Ladyland, 1968.

The Diamond Sutra is the world's oldest known complete and dated book. Published in China in A.D. 868, it was printed in ink with woodblocks onto paper sheets that were then assembled into a scroll.

Within the text, the title of the book is explained in this way:

"Subhuti asked, 'World Honored One, by what name should this Discourse be known''

Buddha answered, 'This Discourse should be known as The Vajracchedika Prajna Paramita'The Diamond Cutter of Transcendental Wisdom'for it is the Teaching that is hard and sharp like a diamond that cuts through misconception and delusion.'"

'translation by Edward Conze.

June. This name was universal to every Algonquin tribe. However, in Europe they called it the Rose Moon. Also because the relatively short season for harvesting strawberries comes each year during the month of June . . . so the full Moon that occurs during that month was christened for the strawberry!

'from the online Farmer's Almanac, 2006.

April. This name came from the herb moss pink, or wild ground phlox, which is one of the earliest widespread flowers of the spring. Other names for this month's celestial body include the Full Sprouting Grass Moon, the Egg Moon, and among coastal tribes the Full Fish Moon, because this was the time that the shad swam upstream to spawn.

'from the online Farmer's Almanac, 2006.

'Whatever happened
To Tuesday and so slow,
Going down to the old mine with a
Transistor radio.
Standing in the sunlight laughing
Hide behind a rainbow's wall,
Slipping and a-sliding
All along the waterfall,
With you, my brown-eyed girl,
You, my brown-eyed girl.'

'Brown-Eyed Girl, written and recorded by Van Morrison in 1967.

'Green-eyed lady, windswept lady
Moves the night, the waves, the sand.

Green-eyed lady, ocean lady
Child of nature, friend of man.'

'Green-Eyed Lady, by Sugarloaf (Jerry Corbetta, J.C. Phillips and David Riordan), 1970.

'When they're dancing where the lights are soft and low,
All the glory of the sunset's purple glow
Is reflected in your eyes where beauty dwells,
And I hear blue and orange birds and silver bells.'

'Blue and Orange Birds and Silver Bells, recorded by Della Reese with the Jimmy Hamilton Orchestra in 1953.

'I got into bed and lay there . . . thinking of that picture advertising the Biscuits Like Mother Makes, as Fresh in the Tropics as in the Motherland, Packed in Airtight Tins. . . .

There was a little girl in a pink dress eating a large yellow biscuit studded with currants'what they called a squashed-fly biscuit'and a little boy in a sailor-suit trundling a hoop, looking back over his shoulder at the little girl. There was a tidy green tree and a shiny pale-blue sky, so close that if the little girl had stretched her arm up she could have touched it. (God is always near us. So cosy.) And a high, dark wall behind the little girl. . . .

And that used to be my idea of what England was like.

'And it is like that, too,' I thought'

'Jean Rhys, Voyage in the Dark, 1934.

'There was a spot on the ceiling. I looked at it and it became two spots. The two spots moved very rapidly, one away from the other. When they were about six inches apart they remained stationary and grew larger. Two black eyes were staring at me. I stared back at them. Then I had to blink and the whole business began all over again.'

'Jean Rhys, Voyage in the Dark, 1934.

'There was always a little grey street leading to the stage-door of the theatre and another little grey street where your lodgings were, and rows of little houses with chimneys like the funnels of dummy steamers and smoke the same colour as the sky; and a grey stone promenade running hard, naked and straight by the side of the grey-brown or grey-green sea; . . .'

'Jean Rhys, on England, in Voyage in the Dark, 1934.

I liked the room and the red carnations on the table and the way he talked and his clothes'especially his clothes. It was a pity about my clothes, but anyway they were black. 'She wore black. Men delighted in that sable colour, or lack of colour.' A man called 'Coronet' wrote that, or was it a man called 'A Peer'''

'Jean Rhys, from Voyage in the Dark, 1934.

'Being black is warm and gay, being white is cold and sad.'

'Jean Rhys, from Voyage in the Dark, 1934.

'Few who heard it could forget Baker's version of 'The Thrill Is Gone,' which he counted off at a tempo so slow that the music seemed to float in space. 'This is the end, so why pretend . . . ,' he sang, pulling listeners into the black hole of desolation where he seemed the happiest. Then came a trumpet chorus so drawn out and full of silence that it felt as though he were groping through the dark for the next one.'

'James Gavin, from Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker, by James Gavin, 2002.

'The music on this album remains hung in the night sky like a star.'

'French jazz critic Laurent Goddet, on the album The Touch of Your Lips, 1979; quoted in Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker, by James Gavin, 2002.

'From the damaged lips of this broken, defeated, skinny pathetic man emerges, night after night, a music sublime, luminous, and lyrical. From his voyage to the ends of hell, Chet Baker has resurrected, in the day, the blue diamonds of jazz. . . .'

'French writer Philippe Adler, on the later years of trumpeter Chet Baker; quoted in Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker, by James Gavin, 2002.

'I'm not sure why but colors in dreams aren't very clear or vibrant'there's not much contrast. That's why most people think they dream in black and white, which is rather silly because it's so artificial and a long way from the way the brain actually understands the world. . . . Color is a difficult thing to remember. What I mean is that if you ask someone to describe something they've just seen, often they'll make a mistake about the color. My wife just came in. Do you remember the color of her clothes'

Black pants and . . .

And her top' Was it red, green, or white' It was beige! People say, 'Ah! Today I dreamt in color,' but this is only when those colors took on some dramatic importance'like blood for example.'

'Roman Polanski, from an interview with Richel Ciment, Michel Perez, and Roger Tailleur, 1969; Roman Polanski Interviews, edited by Paul Cronin, 2005.

'Indigo [in the eighteenth century] . . . became an important commodity, especially in the district around Baton Rouge. This tropical plant, imported to Louisiana from the West Indies, produced a blue dye vital to the European textile industry. Durable cotton fabric colored witih this dye became extemely popular, and its descendant exists today in the denim of American 'blue jeans.''

'Bennet H. Wall, editor, Louisiana: A History, third edition, 1997.

'Pierre Le Moyne, better known by his title Sieur d'Iberville . . . dreamed of founding a great French city on the lower reaches of the Mississippi River. In late February [1699] he decided to organize a group of about fifty men to locate the mouth of the river, go upstream, and scout the area. . . .

Initially they saw few Indians, but eventually they arrived at a relatively large settlement marked by a red pole (used by the Indians for ceremonial purposes). Iberville accordingly named the spot Baton Rouge, or 'Red Stick,' because of it.'

'Bennet H. Wall, editor, Louisiana: A History, third edition, 1997.

'The question of the minimum house is the question of the basic minimum of space, air, light, and heat which is necessary to man. . . . Man from a biological viewpoint needs improved conditions of ventilation and lighting and only a small quantity of living space, especially if this is organized in a technically correct manner.'

'Walter Gropius, Die Soziologische Grundlagen der Minimalwohnung in Die Wohnung f'r das Existenzminimum, 3rd edition, 1933.

'The SunGold Market into which he turned was a large, brilliantly lit place. All the fixtures were chromium and the floors and walls were lined with white tile. Colored spotlights played on the showcases and counters, heightening the natural hues of the different foods. The oranges were bathed in red, the lemons in yellow, the fish in pale green, the steaks in rose and the eggs in ivory.'

'Nathanael West, Homer Simpson visits the grocery store in The Day of the Locust, 1933. Not the Homer Simpson, but a Homer Simpson.

'It was one of those blue and lavender nights when the luminous color seems to have been blown over the scene with an air brush. Even the darkest shadows held some purple.'

'Nathaniel West, The Day of the Locust, 1933.

A term coined by Variety to describe a series of Hollywood genre films made in the early 1970s, featuring black performers, that were produced for a black audience.'

'American Cinema/American Culture, by John Belton, 1994.

Literally meaning 'black film,' film noir refers to a style or mode of filmmaking, which flourished between 1941 and 1958, that presents narratives involving crime or criminal actions in a manner that disturbs, disorients, or otherwise induces anxiety in the viewer.

'American Cinema/American Culture, by John Belton, 1994.

'She used to let her golden hair fly free
For the wind to toy and tangle and molest;
Her eyes were brighter than the radiant west.
(Seldom they shine so now.)'

'Francis Petrarch (1304'1374), She Used to Let Her Golden Hair Fly Free.

'When I realize that she is gone, perhaps gone forever, a great void opens up and I feel that I am falling, falling, falling, into deep, black space. And this is worse than tears, deeper than regret or pain or sorrow; it is the abyss into which Satan was plunged. There is no climbing back, no ray of light, no sound of human voice or human touch of hand.'

'Henry Miller, from Tropic of Cancer, 1961.

'Everything is packed into a second which is either consummated or not consummated. The earth is not an arid plateau of health and comfort, but a great sprawling female with velvet torso that swells and heaves with ocean billows; she squirms beneath a diadem of sweat and anguish. Naked and sexed she rolls among the clouds in the violet light of the stars. . . . Love and hate, despair, pity, rage, disgust'what are these amidst the fornications of the planets' What is war, disease, cruelty, terror, when night presents the ecstasy of myriad blazing suns' What is this chaff we chew in our sleep if it is not the remembrance of fang-whorl and star cluster.'

'Henry Miller, from Tropic of Cancer, 1961.

'The Projection Screen. Here is to be found the interpretation of [Kasimir] Malevich's last picture [White on White, 1918]'the plain white surface, which constituted an ideal plane for kinetic light and shadow effects which, originating in the surroundings, would fall upon it. In this way, Malevich's picture represented a miniature cinema screen. . . .

The play of refracted light. In the continuation of this work we must undoubtedly come to the manipulation of moving, refracted light (color); we must 'paint' with flowing, oscillating prismatic light. . . .'

'Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, from The New Vision, 1947.

'Using only the primary plastic elements: the straight line, the right angle, the rectangle, and the colors yellow, red, blue (primary colors), white, gray, and black (neutral colors), the De Stijl painters formed the structural syntax which was automatically translated into the theory of neoplasticism.'

'Daniele Baroni, from The Furniture of Gerrit Thomas Rietveld, 1977.

'[T]he De Stijl artists'including Rietveld in his early furniture'held rigidly to the principle of primary colors'red, blue and yellow'together with the use of noncolors like gray, white, and black, and rejected the contamination of complementary and secondary colors.''

'Daniele Baroni, from The Furniture of Gerrit Thomas Rietveld, 1977.

'[W]hen I had got hold of a bank roll, I gave up the rough graft of picking pockets and started in what was called at that time 'sure thing graft' such as the 'flim flam,' or more properly speaking, short changing with a ten or twenty dollar bill. I worked this graft for about six months and was very successful.

In the meantime, I became acquainted with the men in the the green goods business. . . .'

'George Appo, from his unpublished autobiography; quoted by Timothy J Gilfoyle in A Pickpocket's Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York, 2006.

'The green goods game worked like this: Operators sent out letters or 'circulars' throughout the United States claiming that they possessed stolen or discarded currency engraving plates from the U.S. Treasury. The circular offered genuine-looking counterfeit money, or 'green goods,' to prospective buyers at cut-rate prices. For one hundred dollars one could purchase twelve hundred dollars in counterfeit notes; six hundred dollars bought ten thousand dollars of the same. For purchasing the maximum, the individual was promised 'states rights,' or a monopoly on the green goods in his region. . . .

The most successful green goods operations required considerable finance, thoughtful planning, elaborate hierarchies, and police or political protection. Leading financial backers, or 'capitalists,' supplied bankrolls of three thousand to twenty thousand dollars to display before potential victims, a huge sum of money in an age when unskilled workers earned less than one thousand dollars annually. . . .

The best defense . . . was that the green goods game was legal. Since such swindlers displayed genuine currency during their transactions, they were not guilty of fraud, counterfeiting, or any other statutory crime. . . . A cunning green goods operator used only legal tender . . . 'which he pretends to be counterfeit.''

'Timothy J Gilfoyle, from A Pickpocket's Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York, 2006.

'As I came of age, earth was visited yet again in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. . . . These aliens were neither monsters of organic mutation nor totalitarian robots, neither vegetable nor mechanical nor near-human in crustacean make-up and/or what passed for futuristic couture at the time. Instead the nonhuman arrived in utterly nonhuman form: black monoliths ten feet tall.'

'Edward Strickland, from Minimalism: Origins, 2000; quoted by Charlie Gere in Art, Time and Technology, 2006.

'By the beginning of the nineteenth century it was possible to grind paint mechanically, rather than by hand, as had been the practice hitherto. . . . One result of this was that the nature of paint changed considerably. . . . [M]achine production tended to lead to overgrinding, which meant that the subtle differences between pigments that hand grinding brought out were lost. . . .

Mechanical grinding of paints led to another important development, that of paint in tubes. . . . [T]he mechanized production of paint and its storing in sealable tubes'as opposed to its production by hand'standardized colour, both literally, in that additives such as wax and oil tended to efface the differences between pigments, and conceptually in that it turned colours into a series of discrete, universal signs, 'cadmium red', 'magenta' and so on. . . .'

'Charlie Gere, from Art, Time and Technology, 2006.

'Van Gogh is a painter because he re-collected nature as if he had re-perspired it and made it sweat, made it spurt forth in luminous beams onto his canvas, in monumental clusters of colors, the secular crushing of elements, the fearful elementary pressure of apostrophes, stripes, commas, bars, and we can no longer believe, after him, that the natural aspects of nature are not made up of these things. . . .

with color seized as if just pressed out of the tube,

with the imprint of each hair of his brush in the color,

with the texture of the painted paint, distinct in its own sunlight, with the I, the comma, the period of the point of the brush itself screwed right onto the hearty color that spurts forth in the forks of fire which the painter tames and remixes everywhere.'

'Antonin Artaud, from Van Gogh, le suicid' de soci't', 1963; quoted by Charlie Gere in Art, Time and Technology, 2006.

'Man's skull . . . is equal to the universe, for in it is contained all that it sees in it. Likewise the sun and the whole starry sky of comets and the sun pass in it and shine and move as in nature; similarly, comets appear in it and disappear, inasmuch as they do in nature; all projects for perfection exist within it. Epoch after epoch, culture after culture appear and disappear in its infinite space.'

'Kasimir Malevich; quoted by Charlie Gere in Art, Time and Technology, 2006.

'If transportation of mankind to another sun is possible, then why our fears about the light-giving span of life of our presently bright sun' Let it grow dim and become extinct! During hundreds of millions of years of its glory and brilliance man will be able to build up supplies of energy and emigrate with them to another seat of life. . . .

In all likelihood, the better part of humanity will never perish but will move from sun to sun as each dies out in succession. Many decillion years hence we may be living near a sun which today has not yet even flared up but exists only in the embryo, in the form of nebulous matter designed for eternity and for high purposes. . . .

Thus, there is no end to life, to reason and to perfection of mankind. Its progress is eternal. And if that is so, one cannot doubt the attainment of immortality.

Advance boldly, great and small workers of the human race, and you may be assured that not a single bit of your labours will vanish without a trace but will bring to you great fruit in infinity.'

'Konstantin Eduardovitch Tsiolkovski, Investigation of World Spaces by Reactive Vehicles, 1911-12; quoted by Charlie Gere in Art, Time and Technology, 2006.

'In 1969 . . . [part of] a special edition of Marshall McLuhan's Dew-Line Newsletter . . . [was] a pack of cards, the 'Distant Early Warning Deck.'. . . Each card has a quotation from a different thinker or artist. The five of diamonds is dedicated to [John] Cage, and bears the following: '[S]ilence is all the sounds of the environment at once.''

'Charlie Gere, from Art, Time and Technology, 2006.

'[A] dream of technical control and of instant information conveyed at unthought-of velocities haunted Sixties culture. The wired, electonic outlines of a cybernetic society became apparent to the visual imagination.'

'David Mellor, from The Sixties: Art Scene in London, 1993.

'The arc-light shining into his window seemed for this hour like the moon, only brighter and more beautiful than the moon.'

'F. Scott Fitzgerald, from The Beautiful and Damned, 1922.

'Madame Jouvenon was . . . seated in La Sevillana eating a merinque. She was a bright-eyed little woman whose hair, having gone prematurely white, she had unwisely allowed to be dyed a bright silvery blue. To complete the monochromatic color scheme she had let Mlle. Sylvie dye her brows and lashes a much darker and more intense shade of blue. The final effect was not without impact.'

'Paul Bowles, from Let it Come Down, 1952.

?When he looked at the sun, his eyes closed almost tight, he saw webs of crystalline fire crawling across the narrow space between the slitted lids, and his eyelashes made the furry beams of light stretch out, recede, stretch out.?

?Paul Bowles, from Let it Come Down, 1952.

?The sun?s light filtered through his closed eyelids, making a blind world of burning orange warmth;?

?Paul Bowles, from Let it Come Down, 1952.

?The day opens in milky whiteness, streaks of salmon-pink sky, snails leaving their shells. Paris. Paris.?

?Henry Miller, from Tropic of Cancer, 1961.

?Moldorf is word drunk. He has no veins or blood vessels, no heart or kidneys. He is a portable trunk filled with innumerable drawers and in the drawers are labels written out in white ink, brown ink, red ink, blue ink, vermilion, saffron, mauve, sienna, apricot, turquoise, onyx, Anjou, herring, Corona, verdigris, gorgonzola. . . .?

?Henry Miller, from Tropic of Cancer, 1961.

?When the world blows up and the final edition has gone to press the proofreaders will quietly gather up all commas, semicolons, hyphens, asterisks, brackets, parenthesis, periods, exclamation marks, etc. and put them in a little box over the editorial chair.?

?Henry Miller, from Tropic of Cancer, 1961.