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Mark Fisher on the alt:
“Witness, for instance, the establishment of settled ‘alternative’ or ‘independent’ cultural zones, which endlessly repeat older gestures of rebellion and contestation as if for the first time. ‘Alternative’ and ‘independent’ don’t designate something outside mainstream culture; rather, they are styles, in fact the dominant styles, within the mainstream.”
Poe, House Usher:
the kingdom of inorganization. I lack words to express abandon of his persuasion. The belief, however, was connected (as I have previously hinted) with the gray stones of the home of his forefathers. The conditions of the sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of collocation of these stones—in the order of their arrangement, as well as in that of the many fungi which overspread them, and of the decayed trees which stood around—above all, in the long undisturbed endurance of this arrangement, and in its reduplication in the still waters of the tarn. Its evidence—the evidence of the sentience—was to be seen…
Canto I., lines 1,2.
In the midway of our mortal life, I found me in a gloomy wood, astray
Dickens
“That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.”
Robert Grenier:
Is it a long poem if you look at it long enough?
See, I’d argue that logicians are certainly philosophers, and while I’m well aware that all of those things are taught primarily, if not exclusively, in mathematics classes, I don’t think that makes pure mathematicians not philosophers. Especially ones who work in logic. Similarly, my point when talking about historical definitions wasn’t that some guy in the past said so, but that the dividing line between the disciplines has historically been fuzzy. Modern scientists are just empiricists, and do a ton of philosophy, even if it’s sometimes implicit. The purview of philosophy only appears to be shrinking if you consider science to be distinct from philosophy. Otherwise it’s just a subfield that has become so specialized that it requires its own training. I feel that some mathematicians tend to look down on philosophers as doing useless imaginary work, when many pure math researchers spend all their time in just as useless of an imaginary realm. The only difference between them and philosophers is that in math, they all agree on the premises of an argument about something made up, whereas in philosophy they are stuck trying to agree on the premises of an argument about something real.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral
Mary Oliver
[Attention] without feeling, is only a report
It has frequently been remarked, about my own writings, that I emphasize the notion of attention. This began simply enough: to see that the way the flicker flies is greatly different from the way the swallow plays in the golden air of summer. It was my pleasure to notice such things, it was a good first step. But later, watching M. when she was taking photographs, and watching her in the darkroom, and no less watching the intensity and openness with which she dealt with friends, and strangers too, taught me what real attention is about. Attention without feeling, I began to learn, is only a report. An openness — an empathy — was necessary if the attention was to matter. Such openness and empathy M. had in abundance, and gave away freely… I was in my late twenties and early thirties, and well filled with a sense of my own thoughts, my own presence. I was eager to address the world of words — to address the world with words. Then M. instilled in me this deeper level of looking and working, of seeing through the heavenly visibles to the heavenly invisibles. I think of this always when I look at her photographs, the images of vitality, hopefulness, endurance, kindness, vulnerability… We each had our separate natures; yet our ideas, our influences upon each other became a rich and abiding confluence.
Simone Weil
[Attention] is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
Dostoevsky
Brian Eno
Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided.
Simone Weil:
A lot of people think that a little peasant boy of the present day who goes to primary school knows more than Pythagoras did, simply because he can repeat parrot-wise that the Earth moves round the Sun. In actual fact, he no longer looks up at the heavens. This Sun about which they talk to him in class hasn’t, for him, the slightest connexion with the one he can see. He is severed from the Universe around him.
Ellen Ullman
“We build our computers the way we build our cities — over time, without a plan, on top of ruins.”