Author Archives: dbv

alcove

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Is it possible that spring could be
once more approaching? We forget each time
what a mindless business it is, porous like sleep,
adrift on the horizon, refusing to take sides, ‘mugwump
of the final hour’, lest an agenda – horrors! – be imputed to it,
and the whole point of its being spring collapse
like a hole dug in sand. It’s breathy, though,
you have to say that for it.

And should further seasons coagulate
into years, like spilled, dried paint, why,
who’s to say we weren’t provident? We indeed
looked out for others as though they mattered, and they,
catching the spirit, came home with us, spent the night
in an alcove from which their breathing could be heard clearly.
But it’s not over yet. Terrible incidents happen
daily. That’s how we get around obstacles.

(John Ashbery, p. 33 in the 20 November 2008 London Review of Books.)

that spiritual condition

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“ ‘Purgatory is not a place, sweetheart. Purgatory is that spiritual condition of restless yearning in which the dead, having in the moment of death caught as it were a first-last instantaneous glimpse of the face of God, are denied a second look – which will distinguish them – so long as a single living soul remembers them – as they actually were, that is to say, not as represented in—”

(James McCourt, Now Voyagers: The Night Sea Journey, p. 512.)

all animals are expert

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“All animals are expert, yet we use them merely as help. If only we knew how to get the best out of them – each in its special capacity – we would be infinitely more successful at holding off the machines that threaten us with creeping destruction.”

(Malcolm de Chazal, Sens-Plastique, trans. Irving Weiss, p. 173)

thoroughly naive in their hopes

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“The Greeks wanted to know everything so that they could think better and the Romans so that they could act better, but the medieval Christians wanted it for the greater glory of God and the remission of their sins. To us today, faced with a knowledge explosion of truly staggering proportions, all three of our ancestor cultures may look thoroughly naive in their hopes. We should be cautious in out conclusions, however; as their descendants, we carry in the strata of our minds all sorts of fossil gifts from them.”

(Tom McArthur, Worlds of Reference, p. 67.)

periander (628–588 bc)

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“Like Thales, Solon and Chilon, Periander of Corinth was considered on of the Seven Sages of Greece. To others, like Aristotle, he was simply a tyrant. However, there is a bizarre story about the lengths to which Periander went in order to conceal his place of burial: he instructed two young men to meet a third man at a predetermined place and kill and bury him. Then he arranged for four men to pursue the first two and kill and bury them. Then he arranged for a larger group of men to hunt down the four. Having made all these preparations, he went out to meet the two young men for he, Periander, was the third man.”

(Simon Critchley, The Book of Dead Philosophers, p. 5.)

february 2–february 7

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Books

  • John Crowley, Little, Big
  • James McCourt, Delancey’s Way: A Debriefing
  • Lucy Ives, My Thousand Novel

Exhibitions

  • “Every Revolution Is a Roll of the Dice”, Paula Cooper Gallery
  • “Peter Moore: Photographs”, Paula Cooper Gallery
  • “Robert Barry: RB 62–08”, Yvon Lambert
  • “Nick Cave: Recent Soundsuits”, Jack Shainman Gallery
  • “Robert Irwin: “Red Drawing White Drawing Black Painting”, PaceWildenstein
  • “Fred Sandback”, Zwirner & Wirth
  • “On Kawara: One Million Years”, David Zwirner
  • “Al Held: Prints 1983–1999”, Pace Prints
  • “Manzoni: A Retrospective”, Gagosian
  • “Derek Jarman: Early Films (Super-8mm)”, Elizabeth Dee Gallery