Quote of the Day
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“In reality, and for the existentialist, there is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested in loving; there is no genius other than that which is expressed in works of art. The genius of Proust is the totality of the works of Proust; the genius of Racine is the series of his tragedies, outside of which there is nothing. Why should we attribute to Racine the capacity to write yet another tragedy when that is precisely what he did not write? In life, a man commits himself, draws his own portrait and there is nothing but that portrait. No doubt this thought may seem comfortless to one who has not made a success of his life. On the other hand, it puts everyone in a position to understand that reality alone is reliable; that dreams, expectations and hopes serve to define a man only as deceptive dreams, abortive hopes, expectations unfulfilled; that is to say, they define him negatively, not positively. Nevertheless, when one says, ‘You are nothing else but what you live,’ it does not imply that an artist is to be judged solely by his works of art, for a thousand other things contribute no less to his definition as a man. What we mean to say is that a man is no other than a series of undertakings, that he is the sum, the organization, the set of relations that constitute these undertakings.”—Jean Paul Sartre
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I was completely unknown for thirty years, my books did not sell at all. I was comfortable with that situation which worked well with my view on things. The only important years are the years of anonymity. To be unknown is a voluptuousness which has its bitter sides sometimes, but it is an extraordinary state.
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Cities of what
the thing that propels me through life is my anxiety, although maybe i
never gave it that name in the past. restlessness. i wake up and the
light is in a certain way and i’m compelled to be outside, photographing
it, capturing it while the world is still in bed. the images give me a
language, and when the landscape here changes little, i find little to
say. until i look back retrospectively and the images tell their own
story.
ever more i rely upon photography to speak for me. it means
more than it ever has. through it i’m taught that every country exists
in these unchanging photographs of san francisco; that my restlessness
for another place is a restlessness that likely would remain unsatisfied
by another place. but still my list of places to go, where the light
might fall in a certain way, grows larger by the month.
provence, portland maine, myanmar, copenhagen, kyoto.
when
spring looms nearer, i catch glimpses, shards really, as they’re tiny
intrusions upon my consciousness – of feeling and foresight for all the
photographs i’ll take in the future; scent and flavor and experience
reduced to a moment. i guess you could call it excitement, or
anticipation, but one that lasts for all of a split second, soon
followed by a feeling of having lost something. i’ve always lived with
this fear of missing out, and the pressure of maximizing every moment
for creative benefit. maybe because my head’s been so stuffed with
images of everywhere from a young age. maybe because of south america, a
country i saw at fourteen that gave the world a shape, and made my own
never enough by contrast.
to take up permanent residence in that one second, though: i suppose it’s what we’re all striving for.
—Anonymous
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I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there’s little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.
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J. G. Ballard
NTERVIEWER
So, how do you write, exactly?
BALLARD
Actually, there’s no secret. One
simply pulls the cork out of the bottle, waits three minutes, and two
thousand or more years of Scottish craftsmanship does the rest.
INTERVIEWER
Let’s
start with obsession. You seem to have an obsessive way of repeatedly
playing out permutations of a certain set of emblems and concerns.
Things like the winding down of time, car crashes, birds and flying,
drained swimming pools, airports, abandoned buildings, Ronald Reagan…
BALLARD
I
think you’re completely right. I would say that I quite consciously
rely on my obsessions in all my work, that I deliberately set up an
obsessional frame of mind. In a paradoxical way, this leaves one free of
the subject of the obsession. It’s like picking up an ashtray and
staring so hard at it that one becomes obsessed by its contours, angles,
texture, et cetera, and forgets that it is an ashtray—a glass dish for
stubbing out cigarettes. Presumably all obsessions are extreme metaphors waiting to be born.
That whole private mythology, in which I believe totally, is a
collaboration between one’s conscious mind and those obsessions that,
one by one, present themselves as stepping-stones.
INTERVIEWER
Your work also seems tremendously influenced by the visual arts.
BALLARD
Yes, sometimes I think that all my writing is nothing more than the compensatory work of a frustrated painter.
INTERVIEWER
How does a book take shape for you?
BALLARD
That’s
a vast topic, and, to be honest, one I barely understand. Even in the
case of a naturalistic writer, who in a sense takes his subject matter
directly from the world around him, it’s difficult enough to understand
how a particular fiction imposes itself. But in the case of an
imaginative writer, especially one like myself with strong affinities to
the surrealists, I’m barely aware of what is going on. Recurrent ideas
assemble themselves, obsessions solidify themselves, one generates a set
of working mythologies, like tales of gold invented to inspire a crew. I
assume one is dealing with a process very close to that of dreams, a
set of scenarios devised to make sense of apparently irreconcilable
ideas. Just as the optical centers of the brain construct a wholly
artificial three-dimensional universe through which we can move
effectively, so the mind as a whole creates an imaginary world that
satisfactorily explains everything, as long as it is constantly updated.
INTERVIEWER
How many hours a day do you put in at the desk?
BALLARD
Two hours in the late morning, two in the early afternoon, followed by a walk along the river to think over the next day. Then at six, Scotch and soda, and oblivion.
INTERVIEWER
That sounds like the schedule of an efficient worker.
INTERVIEWER
Aside
from your adolescent dream of becoming a psychiatrist, do you have any
other pet daydreams about other lives, other careers?
BALLARD
I haven’t really had any private fantasies about an alternative life, even in the daydream sense. I rather like the idea of ending my days drinking myself to death on a mountainside in Mexico.
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How To Be Positive | by Ajahn Brahm