“The places in which any significant event occurred become embedded with some of that emotion, and so to recover the memory of the place is to recover the emotion, and sometimes to revisit the place uncovers the emotion. Every love has its landscape.”
Rebecca Solnit in ‘A Field Guide to Getting Lost’
escape from a bankrupt state
Collecting, sharing and pointing to material that makes me click.
Author Archives: Daria Koskorou - Escape from a Bankrupt State
‘Pictory’ photo showcase site: The One Who Got Away
'The Stand In', photograph by Joshua Longbrake, via The One Who Got Away showcase on pictorymag.com
“This isn’t a photograph of her — it’s too soon. This is someone else. I keep the real photos hidden, so I won’t stumble upon them accidentally. But I keep them, because they are my story. I know that one day I’ll start a new story with someone else, a better story, and I’ll be able to revisit these images. When I do, it will heal more than hurt. May that time be soon.”
Joshua Longbrake’s caption on his image “The Stand In” on The One Who Got Away in Pictory
Pictory is a site for showcasing captioned photographs from people around the world. From what I have understood, founder and editor Laura Brunow Miner suggests a theme and members can submit one captioned image to illustrate it from their personal, cultural point of view.
Some theme galleries are really interesting. All past theme galleries exist in their archive. I first noticed this site when its ‘current’ gallery was presenting the theme: “The One Who Got Away”. I thought and still think it was a very touching one…
Artworks on the move // sites on the making
Great images on the life of exhibitions found on WRAPIT-TAPEIT-WALKIT-PLACEIT . Works being moved, installed. Nice idea for a photo – site!
“To paraphrase several sages: Nobody can think and hit someone at the same time.”
Susan Sontag in ‘Regarding the Pain of Others’
Susan Sontag Quote
TED 2008 Talk by Benjamin Zander on Music and Passion
TED is one of my favourite platforms / sites out there. I always try to be updated with its events and event uploads and most of the times I am amazed by the people, ideas and material there is! Creative minds from all sorts of walks of life and fields communicate their creative thinking, they get attention and hopefully further their funding options, while we get to have “shining eyes” out of excitement and wonder. TED has become super trendy and popular these days, but there are older talks that might get ‘lost’ on TED’s always expanding video bank. So I thought of sharing today a talk I love from Benjamin Zander, an orchestra conductor, that gave a presentatiom at TED 2008, on music and passion.
Zander uses this talk to communicate his sense of fulfillment when he shares his love of classical music and of empowering people.
At some point during his talk he says:
‘The conductor of an orchestra doesn’t make a sound, he depends of his power on his ability to make other people powerful…. I realised that my job is to awaken possibility to other people”
You know if you are doing it “if other people’s eyes are shining.”
Because the question is, “Who am I being that my players’ eyes are not shining?”
A fun and beautiful talk. Enjoy it!
Beloved, at this moment let mind, knowing, breath, form, BE INCLUDED.
in ‘Zen Flesh Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings’
Zen Quote
People are always talking of originality but what does that mean? As soon as we are born the world begins to act on us and this goes on to the end. And, after all, what we call our own, except energy, strength and will?
Goethe
Goethe Quote
Easter on an Orthodox (is)land
Following my mood for trying something new these days and avoid reverting to my ‘good ol’ habbits’ I spent Easter in Paros for the first time. For the first time, that is, in Greece away from Corfu. Anyone that knows me well understands that this is quite a strange thing to do, since I could easily be called a Corfiot Easter ‘fanatic’. Of course I missed home and how we do Easter there, but I was equally curious and excited to experience a more “Orthodox” Easter that is celebrated in the place I now live.
With Easter week over but the Easter feel still in the air, I can say that in both places – Corfu & Paros – it is a beautiful coming together of the community to remember its heritage and celebrate life. It is a festivity that feasts in spring to spread an ethereal optimism.
At Paros I went to watch the main easter do’s at the Ekatontapiliani Church in Parikia (a literal translation in English would be: the Church of a Hundred Doors), a breathtaking monument. The site was originally an ancient temple and a roman gymnasium. In the 4th century AD the Byzantine Emperor Constantine built in its place this Christian church following his mother’s (St. Helen) will. A couple of centuries later, Emperor Justinian restored and enlarged the original structure. It has been operating as a Christian church ever since, that is for a bit more than 1700 years. The architectural style is pure and original byzantine and most of its building materials are a re-use of the ancient pieces of parian marble found on site. In other words, you can read great parts of the history of Paros and of the eastern mediterranean just by sitting there.
So, although my ‘default’ enjoyment of Easter celebrations is heavily, if not exclusively, based on the music and spring colors of Corfu, this too was a beautiful yet very different experience. Easter on Paros is a more obvious religious event than I would fancy these festivities to be and visiting the church during the various easter services didn’t make of me a bearer of hope and light in any religious or dogmatic sense. But I was moved and excited these days by the overall community feel, the beauty of the Ekatontalypiani, the naturalness in everybody’s behaviour in engaging with the rituals, the blossoming of the island, the brightness of the Aegean light and the force of its winds; a combination of elements that created a very specific environment for friends to meet. So I may not have felt any sort of metaphysical transcendence, but I was definitely reminded that symbols and rituals make it easier for us to mark and live the extraordinary.
‘Allegory reminds us that by necessity reality skids away from logic, and it is this gap, this apparent imperfection, that nourishes the sacred as the desire for and the impossibility of the union between truth and mean- ing.’
Michael Taussig
Michael Taussig Quote
“The Known Universe” by the American Museum of Natural History
A couple of years ago I bumped into this film about the universe that was created by the AMNH Museum, as part of an exhibition titled ‘Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe‘, at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan in 2010.
The film, titled ‘The Known Universe’, is based on precise scientific observations and research and that is what makes it so beautiful and almost incredible. I have watched it many times trying to make myself understand the size and scale of our universe. It is absolutely wonder(ful) that this is real and we are part of it! And to this day, hard as I may try I can hardly grasp the immensity of the known objects, space, events and territories we call cosmos.
As the Hayden planetary people say on the webpage they made a year after they first showed this film:
‘For scientists, those areas that appear blank, where we have yet to point our telescopes, offer more curiosity.’
Imagine that…
escape from a bankrupt state 