,,,,,,Asked in an interview in 1982 if he felt nostalgia “for the clarity of the classical age,” Michel Foucault replied:
“I know very well that it is our own invention. But it’s quite good to have this kind of nostalgia, just as it’s good to have a good relationship with your own childhood if you have children. It’s a good thing to have nostalgia toward some periods on the condition that it’s a way to have a thoughtful and positive relationship to your own present.”
[[Moyra Davey]], [[Index Cards]]
[[#nostalgia]]<h1>Moyra Davey</h1>
* [[Index Cards]]<h1><a href="https://www.ndbooks.com/book/index-cards-1/" target="_blank">Index Cards</a></h1>
Book by [[Moyra Davey]], 2020
* [[Asked in an interview...]]
* [[I am developing new...]]
* [[I feel a little...]]
* [[In 1971 Hollis Frampton...]]
* [[In the essay Diana...]]
* [[Roland Barthes spoke of...]] <h1>#nostalgia</h1>
* [[Alma (excerpt)]]
* [[Asked in an interview...]]
* [[In 1971 Hollis Frampton...]]
* [[I've Dreamed of You So Much]] <h1>JCR's Commonplace Garden 🌻</h1>
[[Tags]]
[[Creators]]
[[Works]]
<updated>last updated June 2, 2022</updated><h1>Creators</h1>
* [[Cathryn Rose]]
* [[Forrest Gander]]
* [[Frank O'Hara]]
* [[Jack Spicer]]
* [[James Tate]]
* [[Jeanette Winterson]]
* [[John Ashbery]]
* [[Mathias Svalina]]
* [[Moyra Davey]]
* [[Peter Gizzi]]
* [[Rebecca Wolff]]
* [[Robert Desnos]]
* [[Stephanie Laing]]
* [[Tomas Elliott]]
<h1>Works</h1>
* [[Be With]]
* [[Breathe]]
* [[Clarity in Velocity]]
* [[Goodtime Jesus]]
* [[Index Cards]]
* [[It Was Raining in Delft]]
* [[I've Dreamed of You So Much]]
* [[Lighthousekeeping]]
* [[Lunch Poems]]
* [[Made for Love]]
* [[A Second Train Song for Gary]]
* [[Selfie-Portraits: Agnès Varda, JR, and the Politics of Sharing]]
* [[Thank You Terror (excerpt)]]
* [[You are perfect for me (excerpt)]]
<h1>Tags</h1>
* [[#accident]]
* [[#building]]
* [[#cataloging]]
* [[#community]]
* [[#creation-of-art]]
* [[#discovery]]
* [[#family]]
* [[#friendship]]
* [[#grief]]
* [[#growing-up]]
* [[#limitation]]
* [[#nostalgia]]
* [[#perfect]]
* [[#place]]
* [[#romantic-love]]
* [[#selfhood]]
* [[#shared-experience]]
I feel a little toward my books as I do towards the fridge, that I have to manage these as well, prioritize, determine which book is likely to give me the thing I need most at a given moment. But unlike with the fridge, I like to be surrounded by an excess of books, and to not even have a clear idea of what I own, to feel as though there’s a limitless store waiting to be tapped, and that I can be surprised by what I find.
I spend most of my time trolling through a half a dozen or so books, all the while imagining there’s another one out there I should be reading instead, if I could only just put my finger on it. Often I find the spark where I least expect it, in a book I may have been reading casually, lazily, wondering why I am even bothering to read it. Sometimes I persist with a book, even just through inertia, and it can happen that the writing will suddenly open itself up to me.
[[Moyra Davey]], [[Index Cards]]
[[#discovery]]<h1>#discovery</h1>
* [[I feel a little...]] In 1971 Hollis Frampton made a film called “[<em>nostalgia</em>].” … On one level [<em>nostalgia</em>] is permeated by a sense of regret over things never said, amends not made, a sense of failure and real loss for the moments and people no longer in Frampton’s life. ...
Some of the struggles Frampton talks about in [<em>nostalgia</em>] are uncomfortably familiar to me from the days when I was just starting out. For instance, having an idea for a picture, but eventually feeling a kind of inertia about the whole thing, and after some time and effort, chalking it up to failure. ...
I take far fewer pictures now, but it can still happen that I'll get that sense of heightened absorption and suspended time that comes with the first idea and the notion of a latent image.
[[Moyra Davey]], [[Index Cards]]
[[#nostalgia]]<<if passage() isnot "Home">>\
<footer>
[[home->Home]] · [[tags->Tags]] · [[creators->Creators]] · [[works->Works]]</footer>
\<</if>><h1>Beckoned</h1>
At which point my grief-sounds ricocheted outside of language.
Something like a drifting swarm of bees.
At which point in the tetric silence that followed
I was swarmed by those bees and lost consciousness.
At which point there was no way out for me either.
At which point I carried on in a semi-coma, dreaming I was awake,
avoiding friends and puking, plucking stingers from my face and arms.
At which point her voice was pinned to a backdrop of vaporous color.
At which point the crane’s bustles flared.
At which point, coming to, I knew I’d pay the whole flag-pull fare.
At which point the driver turned and said it doesn’t need to be
your fault for it to break you.
At which point without any lurching commencement,
he began to play a vulture-bone flute.
At which point I grew old and it was like ripping open the beehive with my hands again.
At which point I conceived a realm more real than life.
At which point there was at least some possibility.
Some possibility, in which I didn’t believe, of being with her once more.
[[Forrest Gander]], [[Be With]]
[[#grief]]<h1>Forrest Gander</h1>
* [[Be With]] <h1><a href="https://www.ndbooks.com/book/be-with/" target="_blank">Be With</a></h1>
Book by [[Forrest Gander]], 2018
* [[Beckoned]]
* [[What It Sounds Like]] <h1>#grief</h1>
* [[Beckoned]]
* [[Clarity in Velocity]]
* [[I was just thinking...]]
* [[What It Sounds Like]]
<h1>What It Sounds Like</h1>
As grains sort inside a schist
An ancient woodland indicator called <em>dark dog’s mercury</em>
River like liquid shale
And white-tipped black lizard-turds on the blue wall
For a loss that every other loss fits inside
Picking at a mole until it bleeds
As the day heaves forward on faked determinations
If it’s not all juxtaposition, she asked, what is the binding agent?
Creepy always to want to pin words on “the emotional experience”
Azure hoplia cockchafer, the caddis worm, the bee-louse, blister beetle, assassin bug
The recriminations swarm around sunset
When it was otherwise quiet all the way around
You who were given a life, what did you make of it?
[[Forrest Gander]], [[Be With]]
[[#grief]] I find <em>Visages Villages</em> notable for how it disrupts the form of the self-reflective essay or personal film. Firstly, and most obviously, the film is a dialogue rather than a monologue, a generally friendly but occasionally testy conversation between two artists. Secondly, its ethos seems to be based primarily on coming to know the lives of others rather than oneself (“we’re getting to know each other”, Varda comments at one point). Both the film’s politics and its aesthetics, in other words, are based on sharing rather than self-discovery, recalling what So Mayer has identified as the importance of exchange in cinema, most notably in the works of another feminist filmmaker, Sally Potter. Mayer argues that Potter’s work is based on a “politics of love” created through an exchange “between characters, and between the film and the viewer”.
[[Tomas Elliott]], [[Selfie-Portraits: Agnès Varda, JR, and the Politics of Sharing]]
[[#creation-of-art]] [[#shared-experience]]<h1>Tomas Elliott</h1>
* [[Selfie-Portraits: Agnès Varda, JR, and the Politics of Sharing]] <h1><a href="http://framescinemajournal.com/article/selfie-portraits-agnes-varda-jr-and-the-politics-of-sharing/" target="_blank">Selfie-Portraits: Agnès Varda, JR, and the Politics of Sharing</a></h1>
Article by [[Tomas Elliott]] in <em>Frames Cinema Journal</em>, 2021
* [[I find Visages Villages...]]
* [[In her final film...]]
* [[Varda tells us that...]] <h1>#creation-of-art</h1>
* [[I find Visages Villages...]]
* [[In her final film...]]
* [[In the essay Diana...]]
* [[Varda tells us that...]] <h1>#shared-experience</h1>
* [[I find Visages Villages...]]
* [[It Was Raining in Delft]]
* [[In her final film...]]
* [[Varda tells us that...]]
* [[You are perfect for me (excerpt)]] I’m driving to Brianna’s and looking for the big old friendly trees that meet in the middle and make a canopy overhead. It’s the prettiest thing. When I drive under them it’s like being inside and outside at the same time. I’ll drive down a street like that to settle myself like I’m my own baby. It always sets something right in me. And I’ll think, <em>I could die here</em>. Not a scared what-if, not any kind of plan. Just calm and steady but lit up gentle, thinking how it might be okay after all if it’s like this. …
I’m at Brianna’s party and Derrick brought me a glass of water. He just brought it to me. No man’s ever wondered if I needed water before. I’m always standing naked in kitchens, dehydrated and still tasting the cum I’d long swallowed, rifling through half-empty cabinets looking for a clean cup and banging my footbones on the bottles they’d left on the floor. I don’t mean to complain about cum, it’s fun, it’s just that some cum tastes better than others. Less like glue gone bad and more like a new glittery kind of water bursting warm and salty in your mouth. I know something’s going to happen with Derrick because when he talks to me his eyes get all twinkly and he smiles with his mouth open. His whole face goes soft like he’s a little boy. Like he’s in his imagination. It makes me feel like I need to sit down even though I’m already sitting down.
[[Cathryn Rose]], [[Breathe]]
[[#growing-up]]<h1>Cathryn Rose</h1>
* [[Breathe]]<h1><a href="https://joylandmagazine.com/fiction/breathe/" target="_blank">Breathe</a></h1>
Essay by [[Cathryn Rose]] in <em>Joyland</em>, 2021
* [[I'm driving to Brianna's...]] <h1>#growing-up</h1>
* [[I'm driving to Brianna's...]] In her final film, <em>Varda par Agnès</em> (2019), Varda picked out three words that she said had motivated her: “inspiration, creation, sharing.” The concept of “sharing” has a prominent place in many of her late works, from films like <em>Les glaneurs et la glaneuse</em> (2000) to <em>Les plages d’Agnès</em> (2008), where she frequently picks up on the small titbits of other people’s lives so that she can share them with the world. As she puts it in <em>Varda par Agnès</em>: “We don’t make films to watch them alone; we make films to show them.”
[[Tomas Elliott]], [[Selfie-Portraits: Agnès Varda, JR, and the Politics of Sharing]]
[[#creation-of-art]] [[#shared-experience]]Varda tells us that she takes photos of people so that they will not “fall down the holes in [her] memory.” … The idea that the photographic portrait sits in a liminal space between remembering and forgetting is nothing new. In <em>Camera Lucida</em>, Roland Barthes famously quoted Kafka’s comment that “we photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds.”
[[Tomas Elliott]], [[Selfie-Portraits: Agnès Varda, JR, and the Politics of Sharing]]
[[#cataloging]] [[#creation-of-art]] [[#shared-experience]]<h1>#cataloging</h1>
* [[Roland Barthes spoke of...]]
* [[Varda tells us that...]] <h1>On the Way to San Remo (excerpt)</h1>
The moon passes into clouds
so hurt by the street lights
of your glance oh my heart
[[Frank O'Hara]], [[Lunch Poems]]
[[#romantic-love]]<h1>Frank O'Hara</h1>
* [[Lunch Poems]] <h1><a href="https://citylights.com/poetry-published-by-city-lights/lunch-poems-pp-19/" target="_blank">Lunch Poems</a></h1>
Book by [[Frank O'Hara]], 1964
* [[Alma (excerpt)]]
* [[On the Way to San Remo (excerpt)]]
* [[Poem]] <h1>#romantic-love</h1>
* [[A Second Train Song for Gary]]
* [[I put my mouth...]]
* [[I've Dreamed of You So Much]]
* [[On the Way to San Remo (excerpt)]]
* [[Poem]]
* [[You are perfect for me (excerpt)]] <h1>Alma (excerpt)</h1>
How often she thought of her father! the castle, the kitchen-garden, the hollihocks and the mill stream beyond curving gently as a parenthesis. Many a bitter tear was shed by her on the boards of this theatre as she pondered the inscrutable meagerness of divine Providence, always humming, always shifting a little, never missing a beat. She guested one season at the height of her nostalgia with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet in <em>Salammbô</em>; her father seemed very close in all that oriental splendor of bamboo and hotel palms and stale sweat and bracelets, an engagement of tears. In the snow, in her white fox fur wraps, how more beautiful than Mary Garden!
[[Frank O'Hara]], [[Lunch Poems]]
[[#family]] [[#nostalgia]] <h1>#family</h1>
* [[Alma (excerpt)]] <h1>Poem</h1>
Instant coffee with slightly sour cream
in it, and a phone call to the beyond
which doesn't seem to be coming any nearer.
"Ah daddy, I wanna stay drunk many days"
on the poetry of a new friend
my life held precariously in the seeing
hands of others, their and my impossibilities.
Is this love, now that the first love
has finally died, where there were no impossibilities?
[[Frank O'Hara]], [[Lunch Poems]]
[[#friendship]] [[#limitation]] [[#romantic-love]]<h1>#friendship</h1>
* [[Poem]] <h1>#limitation</h1>
* [[I am developing new...]]
* [[Poem]] I put my mouth on yours, and your breathing changed as you kissed me in your sleep. I lay down, my hand on your stomach, following the rise and fall of another land.
[[Jeanette Winterson]], [[Lighthousekeeping]]
[[#romantic-love]]<h1>Jeanette Winterson</h1>
* [[Lighthousekeeping]] <h1><a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/lighthousekeeping/oclc/962313950" target="_blank">Lighthousekeeping</a></h1>
Book by [[Jeanette Winterson]], 2004
* [[I put my mouth...]] What sadness knows, knowledge knows only
in it passing, like a large bell
passing fidgeting others who only signal
to the past when it is gone
or waiting there forever.
What I did I did already.
There is no one to make plain
particular ivy and so on.
Grief is panoptic and segments every
past questioning until we come out and admit
to our day as it won us,
and make it more interesting than it possibly could have been.
I love you, school.
Trespass in shade.
[[John Ashbery]], published in <a href="http://www.jubilat.org/jubilat/archive/issue39/" target="_blank"><em>Jubilat</em> #39</a>, 2021
[[#grief]]<h1>John Ashbery</h1>
* [[Clarity in Velocity]] <h1>I've Dreamed of You So Much</h1>
I’ve dreamed of you so much you’re losing your reality.
Is there still time to reach that living body and kiss
onto that mouth the birth of the voice so dear to me?
I’ve dreamed of you so much that my arms, accustomed
to being crossed on my breast while hugging your shadow
would perhaps not bend to the shape of your body.
And, faced with the real appearance of what has haunted
and ruled me for days and years, I would probably
become a shadow.
o sentimental balances.
I’ve dreamed of you so much it’s no longer right
for me to awaken. I sleep standing up, my body exposed
to all signs of life and love, and you
the only one who matters to me now, I’d be less able
to touch your face and your lips than the face and the lips
of the first woman who came along. I’ve dreamed of you so much, walked so much, spoken
and lain with your phantom that perhaps nothing more is left me
than to be a phantom among phantoms and a hundred times more shadow
than the shadow that walks and will joyfully walk
on the sundial of your life.
[[Robert Desnos]], found on <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/3177518-i-ve-dreamed-of-you-so-much-you-re-losing-your-reality" target="_blank">Goodreads</a>, possibly sourced from <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/voice-of-robert-desnos-selected-poems/oclc/57577441" target="_blank"><em>The Voice of Robert Desnos: Selected Poems</em></a>, 2004
[[#romantic-love]] [[#nostalgia]]<h1>Robert Desnos</h1>
* [[I've Dreamed of You So Much]] <h1>A Second Train Song for Gary</h1>
When the trains come into strange cities
The citizens come out to meet the strangers.
I love you, Jack, he said
I love you, Jack, he said
At another station.
When passengers come in from strange cities
The citizens come out to help the strangers.
I love you too, I said
I love you too, I said
From another station.
The citizens are kind to passing strangers
And nourish them and kiss their lips in kindness.
I walk the unbelieving streets
I walk the unbelieving streets
In a strange city.
At night in cold new beds the welcomed strangers
Achieve in memory the city's promise.
I wake in love with you
I wake in love with you
At last year's station.
Then say goodbye to citizens and city
Admit this much—that they were kind to strangers.
I leave my love with you
I leave my love with you
In this strange city.
[[Jack Spicer]], published in <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/51260/a-second-train-song-for-gary?" target="_blank"><em>Poetry</em> (July/August 2008)</a>
[[#community]] [[#place]] [[#romantic-love]]<h1>Jack Spicer</h1>
* [[A Second Train Song for Gary]] <h1>#community</h1>
* [[A Second Train Song for Gary]] <h1>#place</h1>
* [[A Second Train Song for Gary]]
* [[It Was Raining in Delft]] <h1>You are perfect for me (excerpt)</h1>
I say
Drink Me
I say it to you silently
but it calls forth in me
the water for you
the water you asked for
[[Rebecca Wolff]], published on <a href="https://poets.org/poem/you-are-perfect-me" target="_blank">Poets.org</a>, 2015
[[#romantic-love]] [[#shared-experience]] <h1>Rebecca Wolff</h1>
* [[You are perfect for me (excerpt)]] <h1>Thank You Terror (excerpt)</h1>
There is a limit to knowing the self,
the clicks that link a thought
to its wounds & forms,
heard melodies reiterated
so many times
they feel like my own thoughts.
I am tired of what I can know.
I want the cold
to matter how a song matters,
the lyrics so internalized
I mouth them
without thinking the words.
I want not knowing to fill me
like a familiar song on the radio
with which I sing along,
my heart beating
the off-time of its own sweetness,
my own life plagiarized,
my own voice in this public mouth,
unwarranted, unpublishable
in any state
other than this police state.
[[Mathias Svalina]], published in <a href="https://iterant.org/issue7-mathias-svalina/" target="_blank"><em>Iterant</em> #7</a>, 2022
[[#selfhood]]<h1>Mathias Svalina</h1>
* [[Thank You Terror (excerpt)]] <h1>#selfhood</h1>
* [[Thank You Terror (excerpt)]] <h1>It Was Raining in Delft</h1>
A cornerstone. Marble pilings. Curbstones and brick.
I saw rooftops. The sun after a rain shower.
Liz, there are children in clumsy jackets. Cobblestones
  and the sun now in a curbside pool.
I will call in an hour where you are sleeping. I’ve been walking
  for 7 hrs on yr name day.
Dead, I am calling you now.
There are colonnades. Yellow wrappers in the square.
Just what you’d suspect: a market with flowers and matrons,
  handbags.
Beauty walks this world. It ages everything.
I am far and I am an animal and I am just another I-am poem,
  a we-see poem, a they-love poem.
The green. All the different windows.
There is so much stone here. And grass. So beautiful each
  translucent electric blade.
And the noise. Cheers folding into traffic. These things.
  Things that have been already said many times:
leaf, zipper, sparrow, lintel, scarf, window shade.
[[Peter Gizzi]], published on <a href="https://poets.org/poem/it-was-raining-delft" target="_blank">Poets.org</a>, from <em>Some Values of Landscape and Weather</em>, 2017
[[#place]] [[#shared-experience]] <h1>Peter Gizzi</h1>
* [[It Was Raining in Delft]] <h1>Goodtime Jesus</h1>
Jesus got up one day a little later than usual. He has been dreaming so deep there was nothing left in his head. What was it? A nightmare, dead bodies walking all around him, eyes rolled back, skin falling off. But he wasn’t afraid of that. It was a beautiful day. How ’bout some coffee? Don’t mind if I do. Take a little ride on my donkey. I love that donkey. Hell, I love everybody.
[[James Tate]], from <a href="https://www.jamestate.net/chosen-by-readers" target="_blank">his website</a>
[[#perfect]]<h1>James Tate</h1>
* [[Goodtime Jesus]] <h1>#perfect</h1>
* [[Goodtime Jesus]] WORKS----------
<h1><a href="https://www.example.com" target="_blank">Title</a></h1>
Book by [Author], YYYY
* [Content]
<h1><a href="https://www.example.com" target="_blank">Title</a></h1>
Article by [Author] in <em>Journal</em>, YYYY
* [Content]
<h1><a href="https://www.example.com" target="_blank">Title</a></h1>
Essay by [Author] in <em>Magazine</em>, YYYY
* [Content]
WORKS/CONTENT----------
Text
[Author], published in <a href="https://www.example.com" target="_blank"><em>Magazine</em> #Number</a>, YYYY
[#tag]
Text
[Author], published in <a href="https://www.example.com" target="_blank"><em>Magazine</em> (MMM YYYY)</a>
[#tag]
Text
[Author], published on <a href="https://www.example.com" target="_blank"><em>Website</em></a>, from <em>Original Publication</em>, YYYY
[#tag]
CONTENT----------
Text
[Author], [Work]
[#tag]
<h1>Title</h1>
Text
[Author], [Work]
[#tag]
<h1>Title (excerpt)</h1>
Text
[Author], [Work]
[#tag]
Text
"<a href="https://www.example.com" target="_blank">Episode</a>," [Series] S##E##, dir. [Director]1. Add content.
a) Double-check against style guide.
b) Don't forget a title where appropriate!
2. List the content on the appropriate:
a) tag(s)
b) creator
c) work
3. Update the global lists of [[Tags]], [[Creators]], and [[Works]] to reflect any new additions.
4. Test each new or updated passage for expected behavior.
5. Adjust the "last updated" date on [[Home]].Roland Barthes spoke of his love of, his addiction almost, to note-taking. He had a system of notebooks and note cards, and Latinate names to designate different stages of note-taking: <em>notula</em> was the single word or two quickly recorded in a slim notebook; <em>nota</em>, the later and fuller transcription of this thought onto an index card. When away from his desk he used spring-activated ballpoint pens that required no fumbling with a cap, and wore jackets with pockets that would accommodate these tools. He maintained friends who would not question his habit of stopping, mid-walk, mid-sentence, to quickly note a thought.
Barthes: "When a certain amount of time's gone by without any note-taking, without my having taken out my notebook, I notice a certain feeling of frustration and aridity. And so each time I get back to note-taking (<em>notatio</em>) it's like a drug, a refuge, a security. I'd say that the activity of <em>notatio</em> is like a mothering. I return to <em>notatio</em> as to a mother who protects me. Note-taking gives me a form of security" (<em>La préparation du roman</em>, 1979).
[[Moyra Davey]], [[Index Cards]]
[[#cataloging]] In the essay "Diana and Nikon," [Janet] Malcolm quotes Lisette Model on the attraction of the snapshot: "We are all so overwhelmed by culture that it is a relief to see something which is done directly, without any intention of being good or bad, done only because one wants to do it."
[[Moyra Davey]], [[Index Cards]]
[[#creation-of-art]]I am developing new coping mechanisms for lost words and lost negatives ... . Where something is lost, redirect energy, follow the <em>dérive</em>, the chance and flow of what life tosses us, and make something new instead.
[[Moyra Davey]], [[Index Cards]]
[[#accident]] [[#limitation]]<h1>#accident</h1>
* [[I am developing new...]]I was just thinking about Judiff.
Mm. Well, she's odd.
But you can trust her.
Mm, no, I was thinking about how she said that I should just go about my life and... and do all the things that I would normally do.
Yeah, well, everybody's been telling you that.
Yeah, I... I know. I just...
I just have no idea what that would look like.
Well, nobody's telling you you gotta, uh, build a new life overnight.
Mm-hmm.
You start small.
Do something that you used to do back when you lived here.
Hm? What'd you use to do for fun?
"<a href="https://tvshowtranscripts.ourboard.org/viewtopic.php?f=1310&t=52566" target="_blank">I Want You to Give a F*** about Me</a>," [[Made for Love]] S01E06, dir. [[Stephanie Laing]]
[[#building]] [[#grief]]<h1><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7808566/" target="_blank">Made for Love</a></h1>
TV series, beginning in 2021
* [[I was just thinking...]]<h1>Stephanie Laing</h1>
* [[I was just thinking...]]<h1>#building</h1>
* [[I was just thinking...]]