Henry Miller – arts & fetters

Why music?

The last two evenings I’ve spent trying to come up with something, anything, that moved me on the piano. Nothing. I keep running into the same difficulties I’ve faced for years–everything sounds sterile and false. I don’t believe it myself. I wrote a bunch of tunes about girls back in 2007. It was a fourContinue reading “Why music?”

Weezer; Henry Miller: Sexus (1950)

Chapter 1: Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterionContinue reading “Weezer; Henry Miller: Sexus (1950)”

film: Godard: Pierrot le Fou (1965)

Dear Meg, I really am trying to write. Actually, the truth is that I haven’t begun writing at all. I have all the materials I need to begin writing, but there’s this present lack of something in me that leads me to a persistent inability not only to finding my words, but also to havingContinue reading “film: Godard: Pierrot le Fou (1965)”

novel: Lawrence: The Trespasser (1912)

Lawrence is one of these authors whose books I’ve always collected, but whose work I’ve never really found the courage to read. Where does one begin? It was my mother who handed me a copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover when I was still a teenager, which was all I ever really received as far asContinue reading “novel: Lawrence: The Trespasser (1912)”

Miller: The Colossus of Maroussi (1941)

I have one of the most remarkably poor memories of anyone I’ve ever met. Perhaps the very worst. What I can handle, though, is something a lot of people have told me is not only strange, but also difficult: I’m generally reading between 20 and 30 books at a time, and I stretch out readingContinue reading “Miller: The Colossus of Maroussi (1941)”

Byron – Occasional Pieces (1810)

It seems particularly apt to come across this short poem today. Shakespeare’s ‘Taming of the Shrew’ was never something that made much sense to me, nor did Anais Nin’s final rebuffing of Henry Miller, and so on, so that all those terrible things we learned would be finally obliterated by feminism, well, I begin toContinue reading “Byron – Occasional Pieces (1810)”