A Poor Wayfaring Stranger

Agent de Changement

In any society, the artist has a responsibility. His effectiveness is certainly limited and a painter or writer cannot change the world. But they can keep an essential margin of non-conformity alive. Thanks to them the powerful can never affirm that everyone agrees with their acts. That small difference is important.
-Luis Bunuel

If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job to do. He's not a little peripheral figure entertaining rich people, he's really needed.
-David Hockney

Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.
-Wm. S. Burroughs

INFO:
http://affinityproject.org/groups/artandrevolution.html

(artwork by Henry Darger)

Starting Over

The turritopsis nutricula species of jellyfish may be the the world's only immortal animal. Since it is capable of cycling from a mature adult stage to an immature polyp stage and back again, there may be no natural limit to its life span.
The key lies in a process called transdifferentiation, where one type of cell is transformed into another type of cell. Some animals can undergo limited transdifferentiation and regenerate organs, such as salamanders, which can regrow limbs. Turritopsi nutricula, however, can actually regenerate its entire body over and over again.
Researchers are studying the creature to discover how it is able to reverse its aging process.
Because they are able to bypass death, the number of individuals is spiking. They're now found in oceans around the globe rather than just in their native Caribbean waters. "We are looking at a worldwide silent invasion," says Dr. Maria Miglietta of the Smithsonian Tropical Marine Institute.
INFO:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2009/01/29/the-curious-case-of-the-immortal-jellyfish/

Shape Shifting Dance

Lumière Brothers' film of Loie Fuller
(shot & hand-colored in 1899)

"The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind."*

*-William James

"From error to error one discovers the entire truth."*

*-Sigmund Freud

Rip It Up

Bill Haley & The Comets

As It Be

"There exists only the present instant... a Now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence."

-Johannes Eckhart (1260-1328)

Live For Today

The Grass Roots

"Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom."*

*-Hannah Arendt

INFO:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Arendt

Unloved

"When you long with all your heart for someone to love you, a madness grows there that shakes all sense from the trees and the water and the earth. And nothing lives for you, except the long deep bitter want. And this is what everyone feels from birth to death."

- Denton Welch

(video: "Plastic Bag" - by Ramin Bahrani / narrated by Werner Herzog)
INFO:
http://a-poor-wayfaring-stranger.blogspot.com/2009/02/plastic-soup.html

Remembrance Of Things Past

"There is no man, however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a way the consciousness of which is so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory."

-Marcel Proust

Always Coming Back To You

Scott Walker

The Nakedness of Truth

Despair has no wings,
Nor has love,
No countenance:
They do not speak.
I do not stir,
I do not behold them,
I do not speak to them,
But I am as real as my love and my despair.

-Paul Eluard

(painting: Magritte)

I can't get started

Billie Holiday

"Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again."*

*-Andre Gide

"Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame."*

*-Benjamin Franklin

Blackface

INFO:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackface

Shame, Shame, Shame

Shirley and Company

"An injured friend is the bitterest of foes."*

*-Thomas Jefferson

Homeland Security

Of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob want to risk his life when the best he can get out of it is to come back in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

-Hermann Goering