I watched a film by James Benning, he was in the audience and spoke about a class he teaches called Looking and Listening and his interest in painting and the American landscape. Eight Bridges consisted of eight long shots of eight bridges in the US. As I watched the film my body ached. To sit with an image for that long.
I’ve been thinking about love for a long time. It was daylight savings and the sun went down an hour later. I went home and I made this mix and rediscovered this quote by James Baldwin.
Ti Saluto Parte 1 – Dienne
Bird In The Rafters – AG Cook
Conditional Love – Claire Rousay
I Feel Like Giving You Things – ML Buch
Grace – The Durutti Column
kiara – OHYUNG
The Pull – Now, Now
Games – Kraus
Some Lunar Day – Gunn Truscinski Duo
This Woman’s Work – Kate Bush
“The role of the artist is exactly the same role, I think, as the role of the lover. If you love somebody, you honor at least two necessities at once. One of them is to recognize something very dangerous, or very difficult. Many people cannot recognize it at all, that you may also be loved; love is like a mirror. In any case, if you do love somebody, you honor the necessity endlessly, and being at the mercy of that love, you try to correct the person whom you love. Now, that’s a two-way street. You’ve also got to be corrected. As I said, the people produce the artist, and it’s true. The artist also produces the people. And that’s a very violent and terrifying act of love. The role of the artist and the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see. Insofar as that is true, in that effort, I become conscious of the things that I don’t see. And I will not see without you, and vice versa, you will not see without me. No one wants to see more than one sees. You have to be driven to see what you see. The only way you can get through it is to accept that two-way street which I call love. You can call it a poem, you can call it whatever you like. That’s how people grow up. An artist is here not to give you answers but to ask you questions.”
— James Baldwin, The Black Scholar Interviews James Baldwin
Image: still from a video taken somewhere in South Dakota