Just started Susan Sontag's "On Photography". As probably all of her essays and novels, it's beautifully written and I think this is the only book on photography that I would ever start to read, as I've never was interested in a genre at all. But how can you not love the book, when from the first page it's full of quotations like: "In teaching us a new visual code, photographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe. They are a grammar and, even more importantly, an ethics of seeing".
Weekend readings
From my weekend readings :
"... but it was ever thus, all through my life: whenever I have
diverged from custom and principle and uttered a truth, the rule has
been that the hearer hadn't strength of mind enough to believe it" -
Mark Twain
I understand where you're coming from, Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Honestly.
Today's inspiration: Mark Twain
"Hicks
was born honest; I, without that incumbrance -- so some people said.
Hicks saw what he saw, and reported accordingly; I saw more than was
visible, and added to it such details as could help. Hicks had no
imagination, I had a double supply. He was born calm, I was born
excited. No vision could start a rapture in him, and he was constipated
as to language, anyway; but if I saw a vision I emptied the dictionary
onto it and lost the remnant of my mind into the bargain. " - Mark
Twain, Autobiography.
RIP Hitch
Life is a terrible thing to waste.
So I hope I haven’t wasted too much of it.
- Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens has passed away. I thought I would write this post as soon as I heard the news, but too many thoughts crossed my mind at that moment, so I had to give myself few moments, few days I should say, to sort it out in my head before writing this little obituary.
Was he a socialist in some point of his life? - Yes.
Did he express very right-wing ideas on different times of his life? - Yes.
Did he contradicted himself more than once? - YES
Did I agree on everything he said? - No. Did it make me think and provoked my mind? - YES, and this is the best compliment I could ever tell to anyone.
And YES, he was not only a polemicist on the outside, he seemed to be one in the inside too, which is why I will always respect him, as it shows a life-long growth, a state of mind in constant search of a new argument, not only strong in its meaning but also brilliantly phrased, struggling with everyone who stands in the way of principle, even if that someone was Hitchens himself.
Not so many people are brave enough to be themselves, to admit that their job was their life and that it all was worth it after-all:
"It’s not for everybody. Not everyone wants to always be an outcast or
out of step or against the stream. But if you do feel that the
consensus doesn’t speak for you, if there’s something about you that
makes you feel that it would be worth being unpopular or marginal for
the chance to lead your own life and have a life instead of a career or a
job, then I can promise you it is worthwhile, yes."
- Hitchens on my favorite interview on summing up his life - on Charlie Rose show - http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11168
Thank you, Christopher Hitchens, for reminding me that not everyone has to grow
out of youthful maximalism during very confusing times in my life when I
almost chose an easy way.
Rest in peace, Hitch', I really hope you are not in heaven now, but just in case you are, I hope you're at least enjoying the argument with God about the fact he does not exist.