#lit

To transform a grimace into a sound sounds impossible, yet it is possible to transform a vision into music, to go outside an enslaved personality, to become impersonal by transforming into sand, into water, into light. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#dejan-stojanovic #grimace #impersonal #impossible #light

The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat. ↗

— Confucius

#knowledge #religion #religion

We start our lives with blues . . . with music. It's our first language. It's the rhythm of the womb. It's your mama's heartbeat inside your head. ↗

— David Mutti Clark

#god #griot #music #spirituality #troubadour

And here's to the blues, the real blues— where there's a hint of hope in every cry of desperation. ↗

— David Mutti Clark

#griot #music #race-relations #spirituality #troubadour

There’s something lyrical about an eternal truth. It’s a graceful riff. A free-flowing melody. Light and airy, it floats all around you. And when it lands on your ears, when you hear it for the first time, you instantly recognize it― because it’s like bumping into an ageless, best friend. ↗

— David Mutti Clark

#griot #music #race-relations #spirituality #troubadour

She now represents the Western United States, thus proving politics is even more accepting of the strange, unusual, and mostly useless than the music industry. ↗

— John Zakour

#humour #politics #music

Most people are slow to champion love because they fear the transformation it brings into their lives. And make no mistake about it: love does take over and transform the schemes and operations of our egos in a very mighty way. ↗

— Aberjhani

#intimacy #love #spirituality #valentine-s-day #love

To Solitude O solitude! if I must with thee dwell, Let it not be among the jumbled heap Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,— Nature's observatory—whence the dell, Its flowery slopes, its river's crystal swell, May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep 'Mongst boughs pavillion'd, where the deer's swift leap Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell. But though I'll gladly trace these scenes with thee, Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind, Whose words are images of thoughts refin'd, Is my soul's pleasure; and it sure must be Almost the highest bliss of human-kind, When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee. ↗

— John Keats

#poetry #solitude #nature

It is a terrible error to let any natural impulse, physical or mental, stagnate. Crush it out, if you will, and be done with it; or fulfil it, and get it out of the system; but do not allow it to remain there and putrefy. The suppression of the normal sex instinct, for example, is responsible for a thousand ills. In Puritan countries one inevitably finds a morbid preoccupation with sex coupled with every form of perversion and degeneracy. ↗

— Aleister Crowley

#sex #sexuality #suppression #nature

Son, never trust a man who doesn’t drink because he’s probably a self-righteous sort, a man who thinks he knows right from wrong all the time. Some of them are good men, but in the name of goodness, they cause most of the suffering in the world. They’re the judges, the meddlers. And, son, never trust a man who drinks but refuses to get drunk. They’re usually afraid of something deep down inside, either that they’re a coward or a fool or mean and violent. You can’t trust a man who’s afraid of himself. But sometimes, son, you can trust a man who occasionally kneels before a toilet. The chances are that he is learning something about humility and his natural human foolishness, about how to survive himself. It’s damned hard for a man to take himself too seriously when he’s heaving his guts into a dirty toilet bowl. ↗

— James Crumley

#drinking #humility #morality #philosophy #self-righteousness