lots to love in february (by jcpenney)
I hope I’m not the only one who loves these ads.
Source: youtube.com
The cast of The Office (US) reproduce George Seurat’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” (1884).
This makes me so happy.
I saw the original at the Art Institute in Chicago! Awesome museum.
andrew dawson heringer: thank you ira glass.
Found this through a sequence of interesting links - a friend of
- Ellen’s,
- Kyle, commented on my recent
- video post of Milo Greene’s song, “1957,” plugging his friend
- Andrew Heringer, the lead singer of the band. I googled him and found his website, thereby stumbling upon his
- blog -
this is totally pieced together and paraphrased but still brilliant.
nobody tells this to people who are beginners. I wish someone had told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple year you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase; they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work wen through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you finish one piece. It’s only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone i’ve ever met. It’s gonna take a while. It’s normal to take awhile. You just gotta fight your way through.
you can watch the actual interview and dialogue here: http://youtu.be/BI23U7U2aUY
I really needed to read/watch/hear that.
Source: andrewheringer
Something about this photograph breaks my heart, in a bittersweet way.
Dear Photograph,
Thank you for everything we had.
@jonathanstampf
(via ohkaleidoscope)
Source: dear-photograph
Enough of this radio silence - I need to write for pleasure!
Our visit to Madrid has become such an important reference point for the continuation of my Spanish studies this year. My professor and conversation group instructor are both from Madrid, and just being able to picture their home city in my mind gives me this sense of affinity with them, somehow. It sounds bogus, I know - how much can I learn about a city in just a few days of being there? - but it’s been so helpful for me, a seemingly lone Senior struggling to express herself in a class of much more skilled and practiced Sophomores and Juniors. Necesito a tanto apoyo que puedo obtener. (I don’t even know if that’s grammatical. Hm.)
Madrid, in my mind, is one of the great European capital cities, bustling and bursting with culture and colour. This is the city that houses Diego Velasquez’s “Las Meninas” and Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica”, that serves some of the best food I’ve ever had in my life - please, please, please go to Casa Lucas if you can; it may change your life - that I will always remember fondly, in wonderful memories of travelling with Ellen, Ivee and Daniel.
Highlights:
- Discovering, whilst stumbling about in the rain, looking for a place to hide from the cold, just how genuinely ubiquitous the dubious institution of the “Irish Pub” is;
- Meeting up with Mary and her high school Spanish teacher, and having authentic Ecuadorian food;
- Food-Googling with great success;
- CASA LUCAS (ask Ivee for detailed run-down of which dishes we had!);
- Enjoying after dinner gelato from San Mercado - so good;
- Having a laughing fit in el Parque del Retiro over nothing we can remember!
Hasta luego, Madrid.
Vacation: Extended by Volcanic Ash
I should be fifteen minutes into a flight from Florence back to London right now, but I am not, as London’s airports remain closed.
Hopefully, I will be, at this same time, in 2 days, on our re-booked flight.
I’m thankful that I’m not freaking out, stranded, stuck for another 2 days in a 6-bunk-bed room in a hostel in Rome where I don’t know a soul but Ellen, preparing to travel by rail for a full 36 hours to get from Italy to France to the UK coast to Oxford.
Instead, I’m comfortably installed in the Hotel Bellettini in Florence, where Ellen lived for 6 weeks over the Summer, being cared for by the sweetest hotel staff team - aka Ellen’s friends - and being taken around by a Personal Tour Guide (PTG for short), Miss Ellen Williams herself.
Today, I saw Michelangelo’s ‘David’. I wouldn’t have been surprised for a moment if he had started to move and talk to us; he might as well have been alive - his hands, his feet, his gaze, his proportions. I’m so convinced that I’ve seen sculpture taken to its fullest extent that I don’t feel any need to see another statue/sculpture in my life. They will all be less, all fall far short; I cannot imagine anything being better.
Very, very blessed. So thankful, to the Big Guy Up There, that I’m here, that things aren’t worse, that I’m effectively getting a 2-day extension on our time in Florence that I will thoroughly, thoroughly enjoy, and remember for years to come.
It’s Norman Rockwell’s birthday today
I’m a huge fan. I have one of his pictures on my bulletin board! Let me find the one:
Source: loveallthis
