A barricade on the Rue Soufflot, Paris, June 1848

A barricade on the Rue Soufflot (with the Panthéon behind), Paris, June 1848, Horace Vernet

struggle

Che (Steven Soderbergh, 2008)

strategics

"I think that Che is absolutely not about glorifying Che! I think it's not a biopic and I think it's hardly about Che Guevara. I think it's a movie about strategics. I think it's the one movie I can think of which actually does take the issues of strategy as its core theme. The way I see the film is you have a first part that describes how you win a revolutionary war, how you move from the swamps to the village, from the village to the small town. How you actually do win an urban guerilla battle and how ultimately you win the war and take over the country. And it goes into great detail in explaining the dynamics of it, the logic of it, and why, how and one thing leading to the other, ultimately you win. And then you have a second part, which explains exactly why you do not win because the terrain is not appropriate, because the local population is suspicious, because the legitimate politicians are too conflicted about your struggle, because the enemy has grown stronger."

- Olivier Assayas

on the mojito / Advice from Fidel, #1

Che (Steven Soderbergh, 2008)

fees protests

this is excellent. all around. [as a document; as participation; as a film]

Two moments I love: the lingering on the silver table (as if to say: c'mon, lads, here's a weapon); the cut to black while the audio continues. in that moment, the protest seems to expand to take over the whole country.

danger, safety, conviction

"Within a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day. Fear of imprisonment, fear of torture, fear of death, fear of losing friends, family, property or means of livelihood, fear of poverty, fear of isolation, fear of failure. A most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom, condemning as foolish, reckless, insignificant or futile the small, daily acts of courage which help to preserve man's self-respect and inherent human dignity. It is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear. Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man."

In honor of the political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi, rightfully elected Prime Minister in the 1990 elections, whose National League for Democracy party refused to stand in today's "elections" in Burma.

"Those of us who decided to work for democracy in Burma made our choice in the conviction that the danger of standing up for basic human rights in a repressive society was preferable to the safety of a quiescent life in servitude."

For more on the situation in Burma, please see Burma Campaign UK or U.S. Campaign for Burma

before and after

“Before enlightenment chop wood and carry water.
After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.”
- Wu Li

HERE. NOW.

Outer Space

(via)

Icarus also flew

Failing and Flying
by Jack Gilbert

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

work, love, waiting

"The first thing we have to learn is that love is an art, just as living is an art."
- Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

"They heard me singing and they told me to stop /
Quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock"
- Régine Chassagne, "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)"

"If we line up one hundred years of scenes of people leaving factories, we can imagine that the same shot had been taken over and over and over. Like a child who repeats its first word for one hundred years to immortalise its pleasure in that first spoken word. Or like Far Eastern artists who repeatedly paint the same picture until it is perfect, and the artist can enter the picture. When we could no longer believe in such perfection, film was invented."
--Harun Farocki, Arbeiter verlassen die Fabrik, 1995. (via)

"perfectio propter imperfectionem"
- Lucilio Vanini, on Empedocles

"We used to wait for it... /
We used to wait for it..."  - Win Butler, "We Used To Wait"

"In the Book of Jonah, God explains to Jonah that the essence of love is to labour for something and to make something grow, that love and labour are inseparable. One loves that for which one labours, and one labours for that which one loves."
- Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

"I'm gonna write /
a letter to my true love, I'm gonna sign my name"
- Win Butler, "We Used To Wait"

"We watched the end of the century /
Compressed on a tiny screen /
A dead star collapsing and we could see /
That something was ending"
- Win Butler, "Deep Blue"

"Sometimes I wonder if the world's so small
that we can never get away from the sprawl"
- Régine Chassagne, "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)"

a desire to begin again