1. Bob Dylan, 1997:
In fact, he seems near the edge of his comfort zone talking about why he's not talking about one of his most illegible back pages: that conservative, born-again-Christian phase that blindsided his liberal, secular fan base some 15 years ago. "It's not tangible to me," he says. "I don't think I'm tangible to myself. I mean, I think one thing today and I think another thing tomorrow. I change during the course of a day. I wake and I'm one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I'm somebody else. I don't know who I am most of the time. It doesn't even matter to me." This cracks him up.

""It is a spooky record,'' says Dylan, ""because I feel spooky. I don't feel in tune with anything.'' Yet he's proud of having registered his ambivalence and alienation so nakedly. ""I don't think it eclipses anything from my earlier period. But I think it might be shocking in its bluntness. There isn't any waste. There's no line that has to be there to get to another line. There's no pointless playing with somebody's brain. I think it's going to reach the people it needs to reach, and the ones it doesn't, maybe they'll come along another day.''

Then, in October 1987, playing Locarno, Switzerland, with Tom Petty's band and the female singers he now says he used to hide behind, Dylan had his breakthrough. It was an outdoor show--he remembers the fog and the wind--and as he stepped to the mike, a line came into his head. ""It's almost like I heard it as a voice. It wasn't like it was even me thinking it. I'm determined to stand, whether God will deliver me or not. And all of a sudden everything just exploded. It exploded every which way. And I noticed that all the people out there--I was used to them looking at the girl singers, they were good-looking girls, you know? And like I say, I had them up there so I wouldn't feel so bad. But when that happened, nobody was looking at the girls anymore. They were looking at the main mike. After that is when I sort of knew: I've got to go out and play these songs. That's just what I must do.'' He's been at it ever since.

from http://www.newsweek.com/id/97107/output/print

1. Bob Dylan, 1997:
"Here's the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don't find it anywhere else. Songs like 'Let Me Rest on a Peaceful Mountain' or 'I Saw the Light'-that's my religion. I don't adhere to rabbis, preachers, evangelists, all of that. I've learned more from the songs than I've learned from any of this kind of entity. The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs."

from http://www.newsweek.com/id/97107/output/print

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Air and Angels:
(John Donne)

Twice or thrice had I lov'd thee,
Before I knew thy face or name;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame,
Angels affect us oft, and worship'd be.
Still when to where thou wert I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing I did see.
But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
More subtle than the parent is
Love must not be, but take a body too.
And therefore what thou wert, and who,
I bid Love ask, and now
That it assume thy body, I allow,
And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.

Whilst thus to ballast love, I thought,
And so more steadily to have gone,
With wares which would sink admiration,
I saw I had love's pinnace overfraught;
Ev'ry thy hair for love to work upon
Is much too much; some fitter must be sought;
For, nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme and scattering bright, can love inhere;
Then as an angel, face and wings
Of air, not pure as it, yet pure doth wear,
So thy love may be my love's sphere.
Just such disparity
As is 'twixt air and angels' purity,
'Twixt women's love, and men's will ever be.

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1. I love this page and I love all the little steps. It gets lonely here; little footsteps on the snow.
There's a beautiful chain hidden deep in these recesses. It tickles along under some throat.
It's a beautiful image: the beauty of web.

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John Donne when he was 23 years old.
(I wish I'd done that when I was 23 years old.)

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The Sagrada Familia by Antoni Gaudi. This is fucking ridiculous.

Click here, here, and here.

Originally designed by Antoni Gaudí (1852–1926), who worked on the project for over 40 years, devoting the last 15 years of his life entirely to the endeavor, the project is scheduled to be completed in 2026. On the subject of the extremely long construction period, Gaudí is said to have remarked, "My client is not in a hurry."

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagrada_familia

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Christ welcomes you to Rio de Janeiro.

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