curating an archaeology of attention
A Blind Flaneur: I walk through my blindness the way I saunter down streets in Paris: unfettered and alive, ever delighted by the raw material of the senses. Come along with me. Just don’t try to take my arm unless I ask. What’s a flaneur? Read the first post, Return of the Flaneur to Galerie Vivienne. After that, try Foot Rage and the Blind Flaneur. If you don’t find me on the street, take a look in the Fair Use Lab. Or browse the archives.
If there is an emerging genetic underclass, I could run for class president or class clown. Read more in Not This Pig (2003).![Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]](../wp-content/uploads/2008/04/isle_royale_fog.jpg "Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]")
"Brendan, this is what the world looks like all the time to me. Just a little fog. It’s a fine day for boating on the Great Lakes.” Without missing a stroke he turned to dart a skeptical glance at me. Brendan the Navigator. When we named him I didn’t tell his mother everything the legendary Irish name implied. But I imagined him taking on the role of navigator for me. Growing up with Coastal Survey charts and tales of Great Lakes shipwrecks, he came to know Superior as another home. He never doubted the wisdom of canoeing there with a father who was half blind. Read more.
Curiosity & The Blind Photographer, M.I.T. 2007.
![Charlotte Casiraghi in a red dress. [Source: Stylophile]](../wp-content/uploads/2008/02/charlotte_casiraghi_red_dress.jpg "Charlotte Casiraghi in a red dress. [Source: Stylophile]")
When I figured out who Charlotte Casiraghi was, I realized that I once sent a poem to her mother. Read more. What was it Delacroix said? “To be a poet and twenty is to be twenty. To be a poet and forty is to be a poet.” Delacroix didn’t take the trope beyond fifty, so he’s no guide in guessing my next state of being. For now, a red dress takes me back to the poetry of my misspent youth.
The legendary Kiki of Montparnasse posed for Man Ray’s Le violin de Ingres (1924). See more from Imaging Paris.
France 24 Headlines![Eugène Delacroix. Liberty Leading the People. 1830. Louvre, Paris. [Source: Wikimedia Commons]]](../wp-content/uploads/2008/05/delacroix_liberty_1830_2.jpg "Eugène Delacroix. Liberty Leading the People. 1830. Louvre, Paris. [Source: Wikimedia Commons]]")
Fair Use Lab
Bottomfeeder
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November 28, 2023 at 5:00pm
by Mark Willis Eva Cassidy breaks my heart all over again when I hear her sing Over the Rainbow and What A Wonderful World. Did she know when she did this concert at Blues Alley in Georgetown that she didn’t have long to live?
Encore: Cheek to Cheek | Autumn Leaves | Fields of Gold | Bridge Over Troubled [...]
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November 28, 2023 at 7:00am
by Mark Willis Forget Black Friday and all its consumerist claptrap. Who needs a semi-national holiday devoted to that? NPR and StoryCorps are kindling a new tradition today – the National Day of Listening. It’s as simple as sitting down wit someone you love. Ask a few heartfelt questions, then listen – really listen – to the stories [...]
Playing by Ear · memoir Add Your Comment
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November 24, 2023 at 6:00am
by Mark Willis Before he left for a retreat in Wesepe, Alex sent me a link to this video he made documenting construction of the ger where he is meditating, teaching, and tending the fire. It makes me think of the kind of unassuming but well-carpentered shack Brendan and I have always wanted to build at Whitefish Bay. [...]
Tutelary Spirits Add Your Comment
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November 23, 2023 at 8:10am
by Mark Willis Here’s a story for Kaitlin on moving day. Like the best of possessions that we accumulate and move from home to home throughout our lives, it’s mercifully light and has legs of its own.
I remember when I told my parents that I was moving out. Actually, I didn’t tell them, I asked for their consent [...]
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November 22, 2023 at 8:21am
by Mark Willis Are nonprofit, online newsrooms the future of journalism? I’ll bet on it. On The Media discusses it this week:
Small, web-only, not-for-profit newsrooms are springing up around the country and scooping much larger dailies with nuts-and-bolts reporting. Voice of San Diego, for example, has managed to uncover a handful of government scandals in the past few [...]
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November 21, 2023 at 3:00pm
by Mark Willis What makes great boudin? Not blood, as NPR’s Melissa Block learned after she mistakenly called it “blood sausage” during a musical profile of Feufollet, a hot young Cajun band from Lafayette. So many listeners wrote to correct her that she followed up the next day with an interview about making boudin with Dana Cormier, owner [...]
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November 19, 2023 at 6:26pm
by Mark Willis One of my First Amendment heroes, Grove Press publisher Barney Rosset, received a lifetime achievement award today from the National Book Foundation. Rosset published the first American edition of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, and he fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court for the right to do so. He tells the story [...]