first a reminder I am a ghost a library’s ghost I died when he my librarian packed up his library aka me and put it me into plastic boxes in his basement only to proceed to build another library a living library which is where I now haunt and speak to you from today although […]
Words, they are slippery things. And don’t get me started on the sounds they make! (Wait, do words even make sounds? Or do sounds make words?). Phonetics or Phonology? Or both! Anyway, some sounds seem to appear out of nowhere when certain words are pronounced. Listen to that linking or intrusive ‘r’. (Hold Me Farst!). […]
Joining filmmaker and writer John Waters and art historian Miwon Kwon as blurb writers for the back of the 2008 book Long Life Cool White: Photographs & Essays by Moyra Davey, introduced by Helen Molesworth and which my librarian received as a generous gift from the artist and writer, Moyra Davey herself, choreographer and filmmaker […]
With these dispatches steadily accumulating, as the books move from shelf to shelf or from shelf to bag to car to office to floor, I think it is time to reveal something that I have been holding back until now. My haunting of Lucius Fletcher’s living library – yes, that is now the name I […]
After about ten minutes it began to rain, and though Dalie [Giroux] didn’t mind, the umbrella was not enough to protect the camera, so we moved inside to a couch in the living room where we sat and talked, off camera, for hours, about her work, her writing and about ourselves, our early lives separated […]
Imagine it is the morning of November 17th, 1978. George Steiner was visiting Oxford University, conducting research for his book Antigones, which he would publish six years later. He is sitting down to breakfast with the other dons, leafing through the days newspapers. He picks up a copy of that day’s Oxford Mail, and as […]
My struggles, bared teeth, growls, howls, and so on, look and sound no different to those of a bear, badger, or what have you. And Plato ought to agree, I think, that my struggles are not merely similar to the animal’s struggles, but that they arise from the same psychological source. Plato, of all people, […]
from: Richard Fletcher <fletcher.161@osu.edu> to: National Philistine <feed@nationalphilistine.com> date: Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 4:08 AM subject: Re: Font commission mailed-by: gmail.com Dear Mr Chan, Thank you for getting back to me. I have several interests in your work, which I first encountered not long ago, when I spent a month in Bilbao and saw […]
When I started Minus Plato on this day five years ago, little did I know what an impact it would have on my work and life. (For the curious, here is what I posted back on May 4th, 2012). Looking back, I acknowledged the significance of Cy Twombly’s art for my work as a Classicist, […]