February 2012
2 posts
4 tags
8 tags
Marie Calloway Annex: -My friend said he is... →
basquecuisine:
-My friend said he is interested in Lana Del Rey because of how feminine she is.
“There is something about a direct portrayal of femininity that is still seen at odds with seriousness.
It is what you and her have in common.
It’s a very direct representation of femininity that has not ever really been seen in alt/indie. Indie you’re supposed to play that down.”
It’s...
January 2012
3 posts
5 tags
Marie Calloway Annex: Diary 1 →
basquecuisine:
I am meeting with an Important Literary Agent when I go to NYC in February. He read “Adrien Brody” and said that he is interested in me because it clearly shows talent and intelligence, but basically that he’s skeptical of how my stories are all sex encounter type stories.
A friend said I need…
5 tags
Aubade: Some Peaches, After Storm
by Carl Phillips
So that each
is its own, now--each has fallen, blond stillness.
Closer, above them,
the damselflies pass as they would over water,
if the fruit were water,
or as bees would, if they weren't
somewhere else, had the fruit found
already a point more steep
in rot, as soon it must, if
none shall lift it from the grass whose damp only
softens further those parts where flesh
goes...
December 2011
1 post
4 tags
I had no idea what any of this was in reference... →
SHREK 2: my 1553-word response/”defense” re [someone’s 152-word post on Tumblr “shit-talking” Marie Calloway & “Adrien Brody” & “The trend”]
heheheheheheheeheheheehehe:
Hey, this is Tao Lin. You said:
It is in this peculiar and upturned universe that you will experience Tao Lin congratulating the honesty in your misuse of...
June 2011
1 post
3 tags
Steven and I discussing how he can remember to say...
me: “You need to come up with a mnemonic device that reminds you it’s ‘have.’”
Steven: “Maybe if I think of a giant fist with the word ‘HAVE’ on it pounding into my face.”
April 2011
1 post
8 tags
excerpt from an awesome Tao Lin essay:
1. WHY DO I STRONGLY FEEL LIKE A CFO, A CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER, IF I THINK ABOUT THE PHRASE “I AM A POET”?
“Poet,” when said without some degree of self-awareness, currently denotes to me things like rivers, deer, synonyms being contrasted with profound-seeming intent (“sadness is internal, but depression is on the inside”), intensely neutral facial expressions belying low-level confusion, and...
March 2011
3 posts
3 tags
In Frances Sherwood’s novel Vindication, a fictionalized account of the life of Mary Wollstonecraft, the tortured and occasionally suicidal protagonist is desperate to discover the right way to live. She tells her longtime friend and publisher that she is overwhelmed by “all that might be, not be, so be it, your mind going a hundred thoughts between this moment and the next.” Her friend replies:...
6 tags
We must come to grief and regret anyway, and I for one would rather regret the reality than its fantasm, knowledge than hope, the deed than the hesitation, true life and not mere sickly potentialities. All of which casuistry is only to say, my very dear, come back to the park. Let me touch your hand again. Let us walk in our decorous storm together.
- from Possession by A.S. Byatt
February 2011
3 posts
4 tags
4 tags
I love Mary Gaitskill.
“In the case of this character I’ve created, it does have something to do with the feeling of being unacknowledged or ignored. But to explain a violent sexual urge that way would be ridiculous. It’s mysterious by nature. It’s not that there is no explanation but, whatever it is, it’s both too deep and too fast-moving to be tracked; it blends with too many other things, the way dreams blend...
January 2011
1 post
1 tag
“One can only wonder what was promised him. Maybe keys to the mountain shelter in Utah where the 72 families who own this country by methods of intimidation will go once they figure out a thorough way to get rid of us.”
November 2010
1 post
“Anyway (poetry) is not the most important thing in life, is it? Frankly,...”
– Dylan Thomas
October 2010
1 post
September 2010
5 posts
4 tags
“Whenever people look at a depressing book and view it as, like, a negative thing, I don’t think they’re viewing it as having been created by a person,” Lin says. “If you view both the book and the person, then it’s definitely a life-affirming thing. A person, instead of feeling like the characters do, has actually done something about it by writing a book. So I...
2 tags
We seemed very unmotivated in a non-sequitur manner that seemed less to indicate disinterest in each other than a sudden manifestation of mysteriousness, or “nothingness,” or something, which seemed depressing and very obscurely exciting. I felt a little surprised at the sudden change of tone.
- Tao Lin
...
3 tags
Sometimes it felt like we were in “Mario 64” due to our focus on maneuvering unfamiliar structures in a quiet, enjoyably boring, goalless manner that combined “deadpan” and “being 5-years-old.”
- Tao Lin
http://thoughtcatalog.com/2010/coming-and-crying-tao-lin-audrey-shoplifting-from-american-apparel/
Elsie! →
August 2010
1 post
3 tags
How do you view Richard Yates in terms of its seemingly autobiographical elements?
I view Richard Yates as something created to have a certain effect, and I wrote and edited it in service of that, using anything, ideally, as a means, regardless of whether it “really happened,” if certain people would think certain things about me, if it was “original” or not, if certain [anyone] would think...
July 2010
4 posts
4 tags
“She suspected that she wouldn’t soon forget the sight of this dick. Would...”
– The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
6 tags
“It grew to be a big question in her own mind, just what her emancipation ought to consist of: whether it meant having lemon skins and gin stoppers in the wash-basin and talking freely of exhibitionism and voyeurism, or whether it meant being the recipient of some overwhelmingly beautiful passion which her poetical soul still prescribed but which she knew couldn’t exist because she was...
3 tags
“She had a thing for a straight woman who was married to a man whom she herself might have liked to marry. It was a reasonably hopeless case. And St. Jude gave and St. Jude took away.”
- The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
June 2010
5 posts
2 tags
he just wants to hang out. →
(I <3 craigslist)
7 tags
if I ever propose marriage, I want to be turned...
Jessie: “So, yes or no?”
Frank: “Not a chance. Jessie, you could be the Queen of Sheba with a rose in your teeth. You could be velvet-skin Annie out of a ‘frisco hook shop, the answer’d still be no. I’ve been working since I was 10 years old, Jessie, cleaning spittoons at a dime a day. It’s now 30 years later and all I can see out the window here is a...
3 tags
“this strategy does work until you run out of weird people to hook up with, which is where I am at now. and then you have to reevaluate your life and suffer, but until then it is a pretty good ride.”
5 tags
“Mom, what does it feel like to…hone?”
“Well, for me, the first time it happened so fast I hardly knew I had honed. And after that it was more repitition than anything else. Oh my young one, your cone is changing and you feel unsure.”
“How would you know what it’s like? You’ve been married to Daddy for so long!”
“I was a young cone...
4 tags
“You mean Rodney was behaving like a flarndip?”
“Flarndip?”
“Flarndip — an uninvited grasper of cone, a masher, a hustler.”
-Coneheads
May 2010
4 posts
4 tags
“I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.”
-Ursula LeGuin
2 tags
3 tags
“I was thinking about getting some plastic surgery and of course I want to have...”
– Maria Bamford!
<3
3 tags
April 2010
11 posts
1 tag
“When I snap the glistening pastel saviors’ necks a silence drinks up half of me like the basin of a fountain. In every direction the air is a school of minnows and each of my teeth has at its core a pale florid ribbon streaming through pain, unalterable, self-satisfied.”
3 tags
“all I understand is dogs, prices, girls, knowledge, roads, streets, squares, mum & dad and love — that’s all I understand, that’s all I wanna understand”
- from the documentary 21 Up
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_Series
3 tags
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and...”
– Antoine de Saint Exupery
(thanks to my highly enjoyable friend Nick for showing me this!)
5 tags
4 tags
2 tags
4 tags
Garret began to say things like, “Without coffee I am nothing,” and “Terrorism Schmerrorism Berrorism Schlerorrism,” which he said mostly for the torpidity of it, the easy mindlessness of it. He felt that the bones of his jaw and skull were growing, felt the fatty pout of his lips, the discomfort of bigger bones behind his mouth and face. He stopped going to classes,...
3 tags
“If I gained thirty pounds,” Kristy said in bed, “would you still be with me?” For love to work, Garret believed, you had to lie all the time, or you had to never lie at all. “I don’t know,” he said. You had to pick one and then let the other person know which you had picked. You had to be consistent, and sometimes a little stupid. “I can’t...
4 tags
excerpt from LOVE IS A THING ON SALE FOR MORE...
People began to quit their jobs. They saw that their lives were small and threatened, and so they tried to cherish more, to calm down and appreciate things for once. But in the end, bored in their homes, they just became depressed and susceptible to head colds. They filled their apartments with pets, but then neglected to name them. They became nauseous and unbelieving. They did not believe...
March 2010
42 posts
4 tags
Cover Me: Full Albums: Tom Waits' "Rain Dogs" →
covers of all the songs on Rain Dogs! really excellent! thanks to @Epiphora for showing me this :).
3 tags
“There is no escape. You can’t be a vagabond and an artist and still be a solid...”
– Herman Hesse (via nightmarebrunette) (via mwano)
1 tag
her, reading craigslist: “Who does that?! ‘I know! I’m gonna find a stranger to suck my dick before I go home to my wife!’ Seriously?!”
him: “…”
her: “…You would totally do that.”