Friday, January 17, 2014



In revolutionary times there are those that seek some new gesture; there are others who marvel at the deep continuity of the shapes human hands make. Start at Year One or hope that time will come around again, that the past will carry on into the future, as something lived, known, even if unspoken.

And now, when things change at such an alarming rate, the hands of the father are not recognized by the son.

Does the last moment seal, put a stamp on, all the moments that went before it? Does the last moment reveal or upturn, confirm or bewilder? There are hands that are full of sin, and there are poor hands of simple, elegant grace; hands that have known the years go by and that bear witness, others whose movements say nothing.

There is universal human nature, national culture, the genius of place, continuity of work patterns, family inheritances..and against all this the individual scrambles his or her way out into the clear, emerging like a bright, clean shoot. Against the solid and slow moving way of life each individual gesture could be recognized and each find his or her place since stock phrases, facial expressions, ways of speaking and hand gestures would be repeated year after year, unknowingly. Now? Our hands are more anxious.'Talk to the hand' means: there is no more mutual comprehension. Increasingly you see hands and fingers busy texting.

The revolution, she said, will be me & you.

Above: a picture of Tina Modotti and one by her. What a life! Stumbled across her looking for Paul Strand's Mexico pictures (which you saw at the Tate a few years back).

~~~

Wahabinomics.

I've often found economists to be a bit asocial (or anal) and one wonders whether anals are drawn to the subject or if the subject makes them like that?

With their quest for purity, their simple, reductive assumptions, and construction of 'pure worlds', they are a bit like the wahabis! Also, given the imperialism the analogy may not be too far off the mark!

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