From Robert Walser

I always walked along the same path, and every time it seemed entirely new. I never tired of delighting in the same things and glorying in the same things. Is the sky not always the same, are love and goodness not always the same? The beauty met me with silence. Conspicuous things and inconspicuous things held hands with each other like children of the same mother. What was important melted away, and I devoted undivided attention to the most unimportant things and was very happy doing so. In this way, the days, week, months went by and the year ran quickly round, but the new year looked much the same as the previous one and again I felt happy.

Robert Walser, “Spring,” in A Schoolboy’s Diary, trans. Damion Searls (New York: New York Review Books, 2013).

Other Walser posts
From “The Essay”
From “Reading”
Robert Walser, Microscripts
Staying small

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Visualizing our solar system

Worth the scroll: If the Moon Were Only One Pixel. I’m with Pascal: “Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m’effraie.”

[Found via Creative Good’s newsletter.]

Darger and Maier

Watching Finding Vivian Maier (dir. John Maloof and Charlie Siskel, 2014), I thought again and again of Henry Darger. The similarities between these Chicago phantoms are unmistakable: years of low-paying work, secret lives of creativity in multiple media, a strong inclination to collect and hoard, a fascination with violence, and a devotion (both tender and cruel) to children. (It’s reasonable to speculate that both suffered abuse in childhood.) There are uncannier similarities too: Darger and Maier both claimed to have been born abroad (Darger in Brazil, Maier in France), and both have last names whose pronunciation is uncertain.

But the contrasts between Darger and Maier are just as unmistakable. Darger labored in the Realms of the Unreal (to borrow from the title of his master narrative) and lived in near isolation. Maier documented urban dailiness and lived in relation to her employers and her charges. She seems to have been at home anywhere, traveling the world, even interviewing strangers in the supermarket (tape recorder running) to get their opinions on current events. I can imagine Maier walking up to Darger, microphone in her hand, and Darger shuffling away and muttering.

What Darger and Maier ultimately have in common is a dedication to their work for its own sake. I like what the photographer Joel Meyerowitz says about Maier in the Maloof-Siskel documentary: “She didn’t defend herself as an artist. She just did the work.” So too with Darger. These artists are fortunate, I think, that their work became known only after their deaths, when public attention could not violate their privacy, when no one could ask anything more of them. Their stories make me wonder how many other secret artists might be at work in our cities.

[Multiple media: Darger: visual art, narrative fiction, autobiography. Maier: photography, home movies, tape recordings. Darger’s name is said to be pronounced with a soft g, though I can no longer recall who says so or what the evidence is. Finding Vivian Maier settles on a long i : my - er .]

Naked City agriculture

From the Naked City episode “Spectre of the Rose Street Gang” (December 19, 1962), sounding like a voice from the future:

“I got a wife, two kids, a nice business — produce, organically grown, no sprays.”

The Oxford English Dictionary gives this definition for organically : “In the manner of or with regard to organic farming or gardening.” The first citation is from H. J. Massingham, The Wisdom of the Fields (1945): “What I did not expect was to see a farm, organically husbanded and thus faithful to the old spirit of the country.”

The OED dates to 1942 the use of organic to describe farming or gardening: ”using no chemical fertilizers, pesticides, or other artificial chemicals. Also designating a farmer or gardener utilizing such a method, or a farm on which the method is employed.”

The OED ’s first citation for organic as a word that describes food (“produced without the use of artificial fertilizers, pesticides, or other artificial chemicals”) is a 1960 New York Times advertisement: “Fruit and vegetable juice. Natural. Organic foods. Energy vitamin and minerals. Catering to special diets.”

Why a reference to organic farming in a Naked City episode? Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was published on September 27, 1962. Sprays — pesticides — were in the air and on people’s minds. This line of Naked City dialogue was (and is) food for thought.

Related reading
All OCA Naked City posts (Pinboard)

[The OED Identifies the author of The Wisdom of the Fields as A. J. Massingham. But he’s H. J.]

Good advice from Seth Godin

Good advice for anyone who does anything:

Do your work, your best work, the work that matters to you. For some people, you can say, “hey, it’s not for you.” That’s okay. If you try to delight the undelightable, you’ve made yourself miserable for no reason.

Mark Trail recycles

[Mark Trail, June 10, 2014.]

Today’s Mark Trail made me think of Bob and Ray and Mark Backstayge, Noble Wife, whose cast members would repeat a key word or phrase in a variety of tones:

“We’re going to the Dry Tortugas.”

“The Dry Tortugas!”

“The Dry Tortugas!?”

“The Dry Tortugas?”

And then the strip made me think of a Specials song: “Where did you get that — blank — blank expression on your face?”

The answer: from May 15’s strip.


[Mark Trail, May 15, 2014.]

It reassures me to see that James Allen, Mark Trail ’s new cartoonist, has preserved Jack Elrod’s practice of recycling old art. Copy, paste, tilt, make slight alterations.

 

Seeing Mark’s repeating face made me think of Cherry Trail, Cherry Trail, Cherry Trail, Cherry Trail. I had to do it:


[Mark Mark Mark Mark, June 10, 2014.]

Related reading
All OCA Mark Trail posts (Pinboard)
Orson Trail (Same face, recycled twice)

[Mark Trail? Mark Trail!? Mark Trail!]

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Strunk and White and Kalman

At Nashville’s Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Maira Kalman: The Elements of Style, an exhibit of Kalman’s paintings for the 2005 illustrated edition of The Elements of Style. These paintings, which illustrate everything from sample sentences (“It was a unique eggbeater.”) to points of usage (“Illusion . See allusion .”) to glossary terms (“sentence fragment”) to index entries (“Lincoln, Abraham”), work well to celebrate the cheerful eccentricity of The Elements.

As I wrote in this 2012 post, I would like to see what Maira Kalman might do with the Elements sentence “Is it worth while to telegraph?” That sentence first appeared in the 1918 Elements. It has never left — which helps to explain both the book’s charm and its awkward position as a guide to writing in the twenty-first-century.

Related reading
All OCA Strunk and White posts (Pinboard)

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