Tom Cheetham's Blog, page 2

Vegetal Philosophy

oh boy... and so very much more - so many books...


Plant-Thinking A Philosophy of Vegetal Life
Michael Marder. Foreword by Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala
Columbia University Press, 2013

Michael Marder Homepage

Hannah Arendt on Lying in Politics

Lying in Politics: Hannah Arendt on Deception, Self-Deception, and the Psychology of Defactualization
Maria Popova
A characteristic of human action is that it always begins something new, and this does not mean that it is ever permitted to start ab ovo, to create ex nihilo. In order to make room for one’s own action, something that was there before must be removed or destroyed, and things as they were before are changed. Such change would be impossible if we could not mentally remove ourselves from where we physically are located and imagine that things might as well be different from what they actually are. In other words, the deliberate denial of factual truth — the ability to lie — and the capacity to change facts — the ability to act — are interconnected; they owe their existence to the same source: imagination. It is by no means a matter of course that we can say, “The sun shines,” when it actually is raining (the consequence of certain brain injuries is the loss of this capacity); rather, it indicates that while we are well equipped for the world, sensually as well as mentally, we are not fitted or embedded into it as one of its inalienable parts. We are free to change the world and to start something new in it. Without the mental freedom to deny or affirm existence, to say “yes” or “no” — not just to statements or propositions in order to express agreement or disagreement, but to things as they are given, beyond agreement or disagreement, to our organs of perception and cognition — no action would be possible; and action is of course the very stuff politics are made of.

Hence, when we talk about lying … let us remember that the lie did not creep into politics by some accident of human sinfulness. Moral outrage, for this reason alone, is not likely to make it disappear.

Richard Evans Schultes

I've known about Richard Evans Schultes for a very long time. My wife heard him lecture in 1973. And quite a while ago I read something by his student Wade Davis. But since Pollan's new book How to Change Your Mind  came out I've revisited some of those long ago interests. I've just read The Lost Amazon (2nd edition) by Wade Davis which is a beautifully illustrated and fairly short version of his longer book One River. Don't miss these books! Schultes was the original Indiana Jones - and his biography is jaw-dropping. I can't recommend either of these enough. And then we discover the The Amazon Conservation Team has a website with an interactive map devoted to Schultes' travels: The Amazonian Travels of Richard Evans Schultes (it may take a while to load - don't give up).

Richard Nisbett

Here are a couple books I am glad to know about. 
The Person and the Situation: Perspectives of Social Psychology and The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why

The Rothko Chapel

The Rothko Chapel
Letter of RecommendationBy JACQUI SHINE New York Times AUG. 23, 2017
I've been to the Rothko Chapel. I'd spent many hours at the Twombly Gallery before I went and I wasn't impressed. I usually am moved by Rothko. I hated the building and was disturbed by the number of people who were there - maybe 25 or so. I went back to the Twombly... But Shine's essay ensures that next time I am in Houston I will revisit the Chapel, and give it the respect it is due. Still, I go to Houston for the Twombly, which requires an entirely different sensibility.

The Rothko ChapelLetter of RecommendationBy JACQUI SHINE&...

The Rothko Chapel
Letter of RecommendationBy JACQUI SHINE New York Times AUG. 23, 2017
I've been to the Rothko Chapel. I'd spent many hours at the Twombly Gallery before I went and I wasn't impressed. I usually am moved by Rothko. I hated the building and was disturbed by the number of people who were there - maybe 25 or so. I went back to the Twombly... But Shine's essay ensures that next time I am in Houston I will revisit the Chapel, and give it the respect it is due. Still, I go to Houston for the Twombly, which requires an entirely different sensibility.

Étienne Souriau

In a marvelous bit of synchronicity I have just found that Souriau has been translated into English. Corbin devotes a long and crucially important footnote to his work in Creative Imagination. This review in the LARB is fascinating.
Journey Through the World(s)By Stephen Muecke

A Curriculum of the Soul

I met Albert Glover the other day and we talked about the world and Charles Olson and poetry. I told him I would do my small part in helping to make known the marvelous Curriculum of the Soul volumes that he and Jack Clarke labored on for decades. The 2 volume set is a beautiful thing to behold and contains the work of some of the finest poets of our time. I am working on a website about Olson's idea, the project and the books. Take a look HERE. Some of the links there:

The Community of THE CURRICULUM OF THE SOULBY JOANNE KYGER
A CURRICULUM OF THE SOULA review by Patrick James Dunagan June 5, 2017
What is soul and why might it need a curriculum? -- Charles Olson's "Curriculum of the Soul"Michael  Boughn
ART WRITING FIELD STATION: CHARLES OLSON’S PLAN FOR A CURRICULUM OF THE SOUL

Aase Berg at Black Ocean

With Deer
Aase Berg's first book
Translated by JOHANNES GÖRANSSON
@ Black Ocean Press

I'm not sure I know anyone who would "like" these poems. I find them irresistible. Transformative. Liberating. Bizarre, certainly. Disturbing, funny, grotesque. But they come from a place I recognize and it's awfully nice to find that someone else has been there too. Let the menacing guinea pigs into your life. They could change you.
  

Aase Berg

TO HACK, TO BECOME IMMUNE: AN INTERVIEW WITH AASE BERG
PAUL CUNNINGHAM     02.05.17
[To celebrate the recent release of Hackers (Black Ocean, 2017), Paul Cunningham and Aase Berg met up somewhere in a dark, twisted matrix to talk horses, parasites, translation, revolution, and, of course, hacking. Introduction by poet Rachel Zavecz.]

I am smitten. Completely dumbstruck. I don't even remember how I found out about Aase Berg but it was some online source that I clicked on. I don't remember quite why I bought Remainland but I did and I am only part way through it. So I should not be saying this - but these poems are... I guess maybe they are what I have been looking for for a long long time. Time will tell, but I don't feel like this very often. Thanks largely to Johannes Goransson (who was a student of Jed Rasula!) I don't have to learn Swedish - at least not yet.

Here is a list of some sources - for me as much as for readers:

Response & Bio: Double Room - Spring/Summer 2004

PRESSURES OF LUMINOSITY: AASE BERG’S DARK MATTER AND HDR PHOTOGRAPHY by Ryo Yamaguchi, July 17, 2014

The Swedish edition of Mörk Materia contained collages by Tom Benson. Three of them are shown here. This is the one for "Mare Imbrium":




more coming...