Wednesday, October 22, 2008

we want comic book stock!

the book should flow like life > with time comes corruption, beauty & understanding

>> nothing
>> something (we suffer trying to know what beauty is)
>> everything (becomes beauty)

we'll make a reversible book, either cover is the front, both black & white are defined as nothing
cover <> white <> something <> everything <>something <> black <> cover

innocence
nature
natural
pleasure
consumption
portraits
sustainability
grief
exploitation
food
jalousy
money
poverty
greed
politics
power
love
sex
violence
education
shelter
serenity
self affirmation > you are beautiful

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

class concept discussion notes monday october 20

* TIME - once you understand beauty it means it is lost - it is not about superficial/supervisual beauty
as opposed to:
* things that become more beautiful with age & understanding
* growth vs deteriation vs emergence of beauty
* threats to the beauty of youth
* important role of nature for O.W.
* pattern pages more 'like life flows'?

* flip-book in corner?
* pop-up book?
* progressive pages? YES - i contacted lis who contacted the print department for access to the printshop

create sketches at home for more discussion by tomorrow
please update your blogs on thoughts regarding the book

Monday, October 20, 2008

Youth
by Oscar Wilde

'BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE MOST MARVELOUS YOUTH, AND YOUTH IS THE ONE THING WORTH HAVING.'

...Someday, when you are old and wrinkled and ugly, when thought has seared your forehead with its lines, and passion branded your lips with it hideous fire, you will feel it terribly. Now, wherever you go, you charm the world.

Will it always be so? ...You have a wonderfully beautiful face. Don't frown. You have.

And Beauty is a form of Genius -- is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it.

You smile? Ah! when you have lost it you won't smile ... People say sometimes that Beauty is only superficial as Thought is. To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible...Yes, the gods have been good to you. But what the gods give they quickly take away.

You only have a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, or have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats.

Every month as it wanes brings you nearer to something dreadful. Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses. You will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed. You will suffer horribly...

Ah! realize your youth while you have it. Don't squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age.

Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing...A new Hedonism --that is what your century wants. You might be its visible symbol. With your personality there is nothing you could not do. The world belongs to you for a season...For there is such a little time that your youth will last -- such a little time.

The common hill-flowers wither, but they blossom again. The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now. In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we never get back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty, becomes sluggish.

Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memories of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to. Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth!'

- Oscar Wilde -