"which serve all the more strongly to confirm the validity of the system"

"“Whenever Orson Welles offends against the tricks of the trade, he is forgiven because his departures from the norm are regarded as calculated mutations which serve all the more strongly to confirm the validity of the system.” The apparatus may reinforced—not threatened—by auteurists, who perpetuate the illusion of choice."

- Nick Rombes, in the comments to this post at The Auteurs' Notebook, citing Horkheimer and Adorno's The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception, in response to a critique levied by (the writer formerly known as) DPR.

in the presence of absence

"I have defeated you, death
All the beautiful arts have defeated you
The songs of Mesopotamia, the obelisks of Egypt, the carved tombs of the pharaohs on the altar have defeated you, and you are vanquished."
- Mahmoud Darwish (March 13, 1941 - August 9, 2008)


"I thought poetry could change everything, could change history and could humanize, and I think that the illusion is very necessary to push poets to be involved and to believe, but now I think that poetry changes only the poet."

The defiance of the whispering wind

The defiance of the whispering wind