Passages records the books I'm reading, the live music I'm hearing, and the movies I'm seeing. Every now and then I'll throw in a passage from a book I read a while back or a trailer from a old favorite movie. Occasionally, there is something that simply caught my eye. But most of it is what I'm reading and hearing and watching in real time.

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Rod Picott: Getting To Me

Ashland Coffee & Tea, Ashland VA, 9/10/14:

An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments

A false dilemma is an argument that presents a limited set of two possible categories and assumes that everything in the scope of the discussion must be an element of that set. Thus, by rejecting one category, you are forced to accept the other. For example, "In the war on fanaticism, there are no sidelines; you are either with us or with the fanatics." In reality, there is a third option, one could very well be neutral; and a fourth option, one may be against both; and even a fifth option, one may empathize with elements of both.

Ali Almossawi, An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments: Learn the Lost Art of Making Sense (2013)

Saturday, September 6, 2014

Deep Song

Deep song sings like a nightingale without eyes. It sings blind, for both its words of passion and its ancient tunes are best set in the night, the blue night of our countryside. It knows neither morning nor evening, mountains nor plains. It has only the night, a wide night steeped in stars. It is song without landscape, withdrawn into itself and terrible in the dark. Deep song shoots its arrows of gold right into our heart. In the dark it is a terrifying blue archer whose quiver is never empty.

Federico Garcia Lorca, Deep Song (1929)