Dark Sky Gets Motivational
We’ll tell you all our secrets but lie about our past. Yes, yes. The past. We make mistakes; we have regrets. But the future pushes our reluctant minds forward. Like that dirty vice you’re trying to escape. So back to the future we go today. In case you haven’t heard enough about the Berlin Wall, Commonweal has more. Warhol endures, and we take a linguistic trip backward. In the meantime, as long as we prod forward, we’ll be debating whether The Original of Laura should have been published or not. But we’ll reserve judgment until we read it. Finally, we will forever be looking forward to Tom Waits. Don’t look back. – Andrew Geer
– When the Campbell Soup Company wanted to pay tribute to Andy Warhol—the Pop artist who single-handedly transformed the brand’s red and white label into a symbol of wealth and power—the company offered a series of limited-edition tomato soup cans with colored labels based on the artist’s silkscreen combinations: green and red, pink and orange, aqua and indigo, gold and yellow. — Andy Warhol in ARTnews
Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall
– The fall of the Berlin Wall, twenty years ago this month, happened on live TV. While fielding questions from journalists on the evening of November 9, 1989, East German Politbüro member Günter Schabowski announced a new law permitting the country’s citizens to travel to the West. “When does it go into effect?” asked a West German reporter. In fact, the ruling party, the SED, had decided to begin the new policy the next day, but a confused Schabowski extemporized. “Sofort,” he said—“immediately.” — The Fall of The Berlin Wall in Commonweal
– Should this book have been published? Certainly all the work of a great writer like Vladimir Nabokov ought to be available to scholars and interested readers. To my mind, Dmitri Nabokov was clearly right to ignore his dying father’s request that he destroy these fragments of an unfinished novel. — Nabakov in The Washington Post
Categorized Under Glitter
– It’s hard to think of gruff Tom Waits getting his start as an earnest, albeit eccentric singer-songwriter in the 1970s. Almost immediately after releasing his debut, Closing Time, in 1973, Waits began shaking up his act and developing the oddball facets of his current persona: the hipster Beat delivery, the fascination with prowlers of back alleys and underbellies, the appreciation for jazz and blues and other American idioms, and the unmistakable voice that has grown stranger and more thunderous with each album. — Tom Waits in Pitchfork
– No words are more typical of our moral culture than “inappropriate” and “unacceptable.” They seem bland, gentle even, yet they carry the full force of official power. When you hear them, you feel that you are being tied up with little pieces of soft string. — Moral Language in Prospect Magazine
Video: Tom Waits, The Piano Has Been Drinking
