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 10, 2023 at 4:16pm
by Mark Willis The flaneur knows that an interesting street can be an art gallery, a library, a classroom. Even the representation of a street on television has possibilities for children whose overprotective parents won’t let them walk down the real thing. So here’s a tip of the hat to Sesame Street on its 40th birthday!
When I heard [...]
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May 14, 2023 at 2:41pm
by Mark Willis I heard a snippet of this Sesame Street alphabet lesson on the radio this morning. Now I can’t get it out of my head. Nothing else I’ve heard today has been as dramatic, as funny, or as profound. Guess I work in the cube farm equivalent of the FAA’s sterile cockpit. Maybe I should get [...]