- A job is a spiritual death-sentence. This alone is a good argument for anti-capitalism; anarchy.
- Anarchy is often a literal death-sentence. This alone is a good argument for capitalism.
- I wonder why we believe in progress — why we think technology is a sign of progress. Instead I ask: why is a belief in technological progress necessary for people?
- Civilization is a framework within which people can control their impulses; our civilization now is a framework for people to act impulsively — to click, swipe; input; consume.
- Why do we build information systems that steal our information and destroy our cognitive abilities?
- There seems to be a direct correlation between the popularity of ‘Instapoets’ and their blithe terribleness. This is not a terribly courageous remark on my point — it’s to point out the obvious. The same I might affirm, is true of all writers on social media: the more insipid they are, the more likely they are to acquire fans.
- There is an ontological difficulty with the title of poet — does one acquire the title from writing good poetry or from writing it at all. If more people are reading Rupi Kaur, does that mean there are now more poetry readers — or does it mean that there are just as many poetry readers as before, and several million more consumers of enjambed cliche?
- What we call ourselves does not matter. Self-affixed social media labels are the worst kind of self-deception. It is really pathetic, I think, to maintain the ego through peddling faked-up pseudo-wisdom to technology addicts with no idea what a real idea or work of art is. If you make garbage for the garbage man, you don’t get to call yourself Picasso.
- The very few pragmatically soul-enhancing developments of modern technology is the wide — ubiquitous and cheap — availability of classic film and home-viewing formats that are, if not cinema-quality, good enough to make us feel what the films are saying. Good enough to give us the essence. For almost anyone to be able to watch the complete films of Bergman, Fellini, Godard, Kurosawa, Malick, and others, is as significant, culturally, as the development of the public library or the mass-market paperback classic or the phonograph.
- I write this while re-watching Godard’s classic 1963 film Contempt. I have seen this film many times, but the effect is always the same: I feel an immediate aesthetic ecstasy — I’m transported. Contempt — Godard’s love/hate letter to cinema industry — is a rigorously ethical film; caustic, bitter, and beautiful. The framing, color, soundtrack, performances, locations combine in every shot to speak — Contempt arrests the soul in order to lecture it; shocks the soul with its vitality.
- Smartphone culture is visual. Smartphone culture poisons the eye. Cinema culture cleanses it.
- Great film often seems over-familiar because its shot-style is borrowed and denuded by advertising. That is not the fault of great film. That is our fault. Our tastes are corrupted.
- Art — the classic — in any medium, is time-travel: it is the attempt of the past to save the future. Art is the memory of geniuses.
- Bergman is the natural development of Ibsen; Malick of Proust; Godard of Brecht. The spark of genius leaps across mediums; uses the best tools of its day.
- In 2017, aesthetics must be simple and pragmatic; blunt and universal. I just want to feel uninterrupted aliveness. I resent anything that temporarily deadens or dulls me. Say that to yourself. Ask yourself whether what you consume brings you to life or lulls you to sleep.
