Babbling Point

“Today, in our field, there is so much talent and recognition that we are reaching a saturation point. An artist should no longer strive only for breathtaking craftsmanship; he should, instead, try to help us live better, either by dressing the wounds that are constantly being opened by society, or by offering solutions to get us out of the mess we’re in…But it’s going to be difficult and we have a lot of work to do.” - Jean 'Moebius' Giraud (quote via http://kahnehteh.blogspot.com/ )

  I will write in words of fire. I will write them on your skin. I will write about desire. Write beginnings, write of sin. You're the book I love the best, your skin only holds my truth, you will be a palimpsest lines of age rewriting youth. You will not burn upon the pyre. Or be buried on the shelf. You're my letter to desire: And you'll never read yourself. I will trace each word and comma As the final dusk descends, You're my tale of dreams and drama, Let us find out how it ends. (neil gaiman)

“On my first night in Vienna, Jonathan Carroll walked me over to the Danube, where we sat on a flight of steps leading down to the river. The dog walkers were out in force. Greetings were exchanged with small movements of the eyes, and the dogs sniffed one another fondly…Jonathan kept his eye on a woman at the next bridge. She was moving so slowly I thought she might be leading a dogsled pulled by escargots. After an hour, the woman walked in front of us, and she bowed her head in acknowledgment of Jonathan. With great dignity, he returned the gesture. To my surprise, she was walking two enormous tortoises, displaced natives from an Ethiopian desert. The woman walked them every night, and Jonathan was always there to admire their passage. ‘That’s what writers do, Conroy,’ he said. ‘We wait for the tortoises to come. We wait for that lady who walks them. That’s how art works. It’s never a jackrabbit, or a racehorse. It’s the tortoises that hold all the secrets. We’ve...

When you hear that I have died, think of this by Gabrielle Bouliane Think of cool night breezes while you walk to meet your friends for a beer on a Thursday. Think of waking up in flannel sheets on a snowy morning and kissing someone you love. Think of hung-over diner breakfasts and the best cup of coffee in the world. Think of the sound of tires on seamed highways while you travel, think of French kissing and leather jackets and push-up bras and bourbon, think of the joy of hard work with friends. Then think of me. Not sad, not the melancholy solitude of empty skies, but the full days and crowded bars and signed contracts, a smile too big for my face, remember I said I stay busy enough to fit three lives into one. When you hear that I have died, know that I want laughter, and dancing, real dancing, to music that makes you move without thinking, you’re wearing boots and jeans and a great t-shirt and wondering if the girl at the edge thinks you’re cute. And...

I am a man, and men are animals who tell stories. This is a gift from God, who spoke our species into being, but left the end of our story untold. That mystery is troubling to us. How could it be otherwise? Without the final part, we think, how are we to make sense of all that went before; which is to say, our lives?  So we make stories of our own, in fevered and envious imitation of our Maker, hoping that we’ll tell, by chance, what God left untold. And finishing our tale, come to understand why we were born.  Clive Barker “Sacrament”

Joshua Tree Under the Milky Way from Henry Jun Wah Lee on Vimeo . "If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you had better go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid." Q (John de Lancie) Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Q Who?" written by Maurice Hurley from an email I got from Mark, a long time ago, from galaxy far, far, away (yeah, yeah, I know I'm mixing up shows, ok?)

"Everyone in the world has a unique experience, everyone has one set of eyes in the entire history of life on earth and the universe and that's where the originality comes from, by telling the truth of what they see, and a lack of originality comes from not telling the truth and trying to be like someone else." -- Grant Morrison

What Teachers Make, or Objection Overruled, or If things don't work out, you can always go to law school by Taylor Mali http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxsOVK4syxU He says the problem with teachers is, "What's a kid going to learn from someone who decided his best option in life was to become a teacher?" He reminds the other dinner guests that it's true what they say about teachers: Those who can, do; those who can't, teach. I decide to bite my tongue instead of his and resist the temptation to remind the other dinner guests that it's also true what they say about lawyers. Because we're eating, after all, and this is polite company. "I mean, you’re a teacher, Taylor," he says. "Be honest. What do you make?" And I wish he hadn't done that (asked me to be honest) because, you see, I have a policy about honesty and ass-kicking: if you ask for it, I have to let you have it. You want to know what I make? I make kids work hard...

LIFE ISN'T ABOUT FINDING YOURSELF. LIFE IS ABOUT CREATING YOURSELF. George Bernard Shaw

When you start working on a story set in a new universe, where do you find it easiest to begin? Art by Charless Vess, from the book INSTRUCTIONS, written by Neil Gaiman "Begin with the story. Always begin with the story. (Unless you're Lud in the Mist .) The world is there for the story to happen in. Here and now, you don't need to tell the history of the world before you start telling a story that happened on the Isle of Man. You tell the story and let the background and the history creep in where it's needed. The same goes for worlds you've built yourself." NEIL GAIMAN

Nostalgia — it’s delicate, but potent. Teddy told me that in Greek, “nostalgia” literally means “the pain from an old wound.” It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards. It takes us to a place where we ache to go again. --Don Draper I've only watched the first two seasons of MAD MEN and this is still my favorite quote and favorite scene. Watch Don Draper's complete preamble and pitch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suRDUFpsHus&feature=related Picture and quote from: http://crabcakes.tumblr.com/post/890794310/annahinks-acrossoceans-marinersubmariner

"In some ways, every business man needs to learn how to be an artist. It's crucial when you're leading a project." --Lionel Poilane One of Poilane's favorite projects is the cage that he and Salvador Dali made together out of bread dough. "The bird could eat it's way out of the cage," Poilane explains. "That was very real to me. As an apprentice, I too felt like a bird in a cage made out of bread. I just had to feed on my limits." Lionel Poilane, Fast Company, March 2001

“I was never gonna get off that island. I was gonna die there, totally alone. I was gonna get sick, or get injured or something. The only choice I had, the only thing I could control was when, and how, and where it was going to happen. So... I made a rope and I went up to the summit, to hang myself. I had to test it, you know? Of course. You know me. And the weight of the log, snapped the limb of the tree, so I-I - , I couldn't even kill myself the way I wanted to. I had power over *nothing*. And that's when this feeling came over me like a warm blanket. I knew, somehow, that I had to stay alive. Somehow. I had to keep breathing. Even though there was no reason to hope. And all my logic said that I would never see this place again. So that's what I did. I stayed alive. I kept breathing. And one day my logic was proven all wrong because the tide came in, and gave me a sail. And now, here I am. I'm back. In Memphis, talking to you. I have ice in my glass... and I've l...

"Sometimes winning is as hard to deal with as losing. It's easy to moon over a lost love-- to fantasize over what might have been, secure in the knowledge that it'll never happen-- it makes a great excuse for not facing the risks and demands of reality." Wolverine, Uncanny X-Men No. 183, written by Chris Claremont

"We each have our lives to live, our own roads to walk to our individual destinies. Friends-- and lovers-- may walk by our side but ultimately, the journey is made alone." "Life involves growth, and growth, continual change. You may not like those changes but you cannot run from them. You must face them." Storm, Uncanny X-Men No.180, written by Chris Claremont

"...poker taught me you play the hand you're dealt. Winning and losing aren't in the cards, they're in the people playing them." Rogue, Uncanny X-Men No. 239, written by Chris Claremont

You’ve heard `the media is the message`? It’s not really true anymore. Message is Media. Internet, YouTube, blogs, vlogs, camphones – this is really THE DAWN of human history, right? This is the moment when we start recording ALL of our moments. Asymmetrical media, viral, unmarketable and unstoppable. Our histories are broadcast instantly and remembered infinitely. Everything we do now will haunt us all the rest of our lives. And it’s my job to manage that history – to manage that message any way I can. Kate Kildare, Press Agent of the super-hero team The Order THE ORDER (Marvel Comics), written by Matt Fraction

"Apple never holds focus groups. It doesn't ask people what they want; it tells them what they're going to want next." -- Lev Grossman "...I discovered that one doesn't relate to it [the iPad] as a "tool"; the experience is closer to one's relationship with a person or an animal. I know how weird that sounds. But consider for a moment. We are human beings; our first responses to anything are dominated not by calculations but by feelings. What [Jonathan Ive] and his team understand is that if you have an object in your pocket or hand for hours every day, then your relationship with it is profound, human and emotional. Apple's success has been founded on consumer products that address this side of us: their products make users smile as they reach forward to manipulate, touch, fondle, slide, tweak, pinch, prod and stroke." --Stephen Fry Quotes from: How Apple Does It By Lev Grossman http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1118384...

"A beautiful girl can make you dizzy, like you've been drinking Jack and Coke all morning. She can make you feel high full of the single greatest commodity known to man - promise. Promise of a better day. Promise of a greater hope. Promise of a new tomorrow. This particular aura can be found in the gait of a beautiful girl. In her smile, in her soul, the way she makes every rotten little thing about life seem like it's going to be okay." This was one of our favorite movies back in the 90s. If we developed the biggest crush on Natalie Portman in LEON: THE PROFESSIONAL, we absolutely fell in love with her in this movie. I also loved this poster back then—loved it so much that we used it as a peg for a cover of BATCH72. (But now that I look at it, I quickly noticed the awful Photoshop job done on the poster.) I was cleaning out my folders today when I found this poster again, which made me check IMDB and found the quote above. Just wanted to share. More qu...

"A few years ago, a young taxi driver drove me to John F. Kennedy Airport on Long Island. After a few minutes of conversation, I discovered that Mike had belonged to my synagogue years before I came to the community. "So, rabbi," he asked while we sat in heavy traffic, "what do you say to a Jew like me who hasn't been in a synagogue since his bar mitzvah ceremony?" Thinking for a moment, I recalled that in Hassidic lore, the baal aqalah (the wagon driver) is an honored profession. So I said, "We could talk about your work." "What does my work have to do with religion?" "Well, we choose how we look at the world and at life. You're a taxi driver. But you are also a piece of the tissue that connects all humanity. You're taking me to the airport. I'll go to a different city and give a couple of lectures that might touch or help or change someone. I couldn't have gotten there without you. You help make the connection hap...