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flash fiction

for sale baby shoes never worn

the shortest story ever told? maybe the most meaningful? i’ve read some discrepancies about hemingway’s origination of the quote, but no matter who wrote it, this is some consummate flash fiction. by sv

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love song

rainer maria rilke german poet

How can I keep my soul in me, so that
it doesn’t touch your soul? How can I raise
it high enough, past you, to other things?
I would like to shelter it, among remote
lost objects, in some dark and silent place
that doesn’t resonate when your depths resound.
Yet everything that touches us, me and you,
takes us together like a violin’s bow,
which draws one voice out of two seperate strings.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what musician holds us in his hand?
Oh sweetest song.

some beautiful words from rainer maria rilke on this friday; to lighten and enlighten. by sv

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“to be worth something or nothing…

albert camus and his twins…to create or not to create. in the first case everything is justified. everything, without exception. in the second case, everything is completely absurd. the only choice then to be made is of the most aesthetically satisfying form of suicide: marriage, and a forty-hour week, or a revolver.” 

when i was sixteen years old, scrummaging through my high school library while i was supposed to be researching some project; i came across the journals of albert camus. i had just read the stranger, which was quite impactful on an indignantly naive teenager, so my intrigue was boundless. to this day, it is my most cherished piece of literature, one i go back to more than any other. next thursday, the seventh of november being what would have been albert’s centenary, the journal’s message and presence in my handbag is incumbent. in other news, i thought dd would appreciate the photograph, camus and his twin daughters, catherine and jean. by sv

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Glenn o’brien remembers lou reed

Lou_Reed_avedon-largeHey Lou, it’s me. “I wished I talked to you more when you were alive…”

You wrote that to Andy when he bought it. Well, fucking ditto.

I just wanted to say that you went out well. You went out on top. And the whole fucking thing…your um, oeuvre, is like, scintillating and mind-boggling and thrilling and scary. Thrills and chills, fear and loathing, and then, just when we least expected it, you pulled out a big fat heart.

I first saw Lou Reed when I was in college. It had to be the summer of ’67 because the first Velvet Underground album, The Velvet Underground & Nico, had come out in March.  The one with the Warhol peel-able banana on the inside of the LP. I had seen it in the record store. I think I didn’t have enough money to buy the album right off but I knew that the band was involved with Andy Warhol and they looked more interesting than anybody I’d ever seen before, and that was good enough for me.  There was Andy on the back cover, staring through a tambourine.  Lou was the guitar player in wraparound shades and a cop hairdo holding a guitar with his fingers bent in a weird posture, possibly resulting from taking a pill.

So I went to see The Velvets play at La Cave, a folk club on the East side of Cleveland, Ohio. I had gone there numerous times to see gentle folkies like Bob Gibson, Tom Rush, Judy Collins, and Ian & Sylvia, but I was especially psyched to see the weird band managed by Andy Warhol that had a songs called “Heroin,” “The Black Angel’s Death Song,” and “All Tomorrow’s Parties.” With the incredibly beautiful German singer who was in La Dolce Vita. Nico!

…..

  read more here

by pp.

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“does good music need to be good?”

daft-punk-random-access-memories-album-cover-art“the duo has become so good at making records that i replay parts of ‘random access memories’ repeatedly while simultaneously thinking it is some of the worst music i’ve ever heard.” 

sasha frere-jones, the new yorker’s brilliant columnist and music critic wrote this article in may, and it is still looming in my conscious each time i hear a track from the “noodly jazz fusion” album. we were discussing the album here at ts headquarters earlier, and dd noted on the brilliant inconsistency, once again bringing the above words to mind. really good bad music. as usual, the french are onto something; especially since we are talking about this, months later. by sv

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an immodest proposal

vice magazine fashion spread women writers 007vice magazine fashion spread women writers 006 vice magazine fashion spread women writers 002 vice magazine women writers fashion spread 004 vice magazine fashion spread women writers 005 vice magazine fashion spread women writers 00`

in their 2013 fiction issue, vice magazine is featuring the above pictures in a spread entitled the ever-so-cunning (can you sense my facetiousness yet?) last words.  the fashion spread features models, you know, doing model-y things in their haute couture, except here’s the catch: they are depicting female writers who have committed suicide!  ah yes, please, let’s procure and solidify even more glorification in this world.  women in fashion are not disposable enough, let’s juxtapose that fleeting nature with the timelessness of literature and the written word.  is anything valuable anymore?  perhaps not.  the spread, styled by annette lamothe-ramos and photographed by annabel mehran, depicts charlotte perkins gilman (with the ubiquitous yellow wallpaper, naturally), sanmao (who hung herself with a pair of stockings, so don’t you want a pair too!), virginia woolf (not nicole kidman), sylvia plath, elise cowen, iris chang (who only took her own life in 2004, but fashion leaves no room for the grieving), and dorothy parker, who maybe unbeknownst to vice DID NOT KILL HERSELF despite many attempts.  at the end of the day, am i being too harsh to expect more from the world?  is this truly surprising when gratification is often at our fingertips?  i don’t know.  what i do know, is that dorothy parker, one of my idols, deserves better. by sv

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Herman Melville: Moby Dick sans cashmere

for my dear xy

“as i sat there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck; after the bitter exertion at the windlass; under a blue tranquil sky; the ship under indolent sail, and gliding so serenely along; as i bathed my hands among those soft, gentle globules of infiltrated tissues, woven almost within the hour; as they richly broke to my fingers, and discharged all their opulence, like fully ripe grapes their wine; as i snuffed up that uncontaminated aroma, – literally and truly, like the smell of spring violets; i declare to you, that for the time i lived as in a musky meadow; i forgot all about our horrible oath; in that inexpressible sperm, i washed my hands and my heart of it; i almost began to credit the old paracelsan superstition that sperm is of rare virtue in allaying the heat of anger: while bathing in that bath, i felt divinely free from all ill-will, or petulance, or malice, of any sort whatsoever. amen.” – herman melville. by cm

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kanye west – ego-licious

Kanye-West-Nick-Knight-interview-nyt“i think what kanye west is going to mean is something similar to what steve jobs means. i am undoubtedly, you know, steve of internet, downtown, fashion, culture. period. by a long jump. i honestly feel that because steve has passed, you know, it’s like when biggie passed and jay-z was allowed to become jay-z.”

yeah right kanye…. be careful, ego-licious interview here by pp.

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