Fuck Yeah Sopranos!

A couple years ago I threw together a couple of pictures, tagged on a couple quotes, and updated a Sopranos blog on the daily. I got worn out, lost my muse, and gave it a break that lasted a lot longer than I expected. What can you do? If the Sopranos have taught us anything, you never know when life will give you a pair of socks. 

I even took a break from the show. Haven’t watched it in a couple years, but it was always in the back of my mind, like a poison you couldn’t quite root out. The show covered so many life experiences that you end up finding parallels to your life. And as you discover these parallels, you realize the craft and genius that this show spit out over 86 episodes. 

Since the break, things have changed. The cast and crew have moved on, Gandolfini passed away unexpectedly (R.I.P.). New shows have taken the Sopranos place on our weekly radar. The first episode was pre-9/11, it ended right before the Bush administration. The world’s a different place, and yet...

I’ve been rewatching the episodes lately. There’s a timelessness. The fashions have changed (Well, maybe not in North Jersey), but each episode still talks to us in a way often mimicked, but never replicated. It’s still a master’s class on filmmaking. Everytime you comeback, there’s something new to experience. Even more fascinating is how the Sopranos predicts the current fractured state of a nation tied down to a history that didn’t exactly play out the way we were told, and unprepared for the minute by minute tectonic shifts that challenge us each day. 

We’re all Tony Soprano in Melfi’s office, trying to make sense of this world. If there’s any glimmer of hope in this cynical and depressing show, it’s that one day we’ll make the right changes, instead of digging deeper into our collective misery. 

“To think the way you do, you have to be a man who lives either on a tremendous despair, or on a tremendous hope. On both perhaps.” 

"tel qu'en lui-même enfin l'éternité le change"

This list isn't all encompassing by any means, but it's a nice start. The title is linked to where you can find the book. Some of the older ones can be found online. The quote links to the FYS photo the quote is connected to. When I get time, I will link up more.

Albert Camus - The Rebel "All Modern Revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the state."

Noam Chomsky - Understanding Power "The world does not reward honesty and independence, it rewards obedience and service. It’s a world of concentrated power, and those who have power are not going to reward people who question that power.”

Francois duc de la Rochefoucauld - Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims "Most of our faults are more pardonable than the means we use to conceal them."

Geoffrey Witney - A Choice of Emblems 

"Of flatteringe speeche, with sugred words beware,

        Suspect the harte,whose face doth fawne, and smile,

        With trusting theise, the worlde is clog'de with care,

        And fewe there bee can scape theise vipers vile:

                        With pleasinge speeche they promise, and protest,

When hatefull hartes lie hidd within their brest"

Bernard Schlink - "The Weekend" “With the first murder Jan had renounced the social contract according to which we don’t kill other people.  What could hold him back after that?”

Fyodor Dostoevsky - The Possessed. "But do you understand, I cry to him, do you understand that along with happiness, in the exact same way and in perfectly equal proportion, man also needs unhappiness!

-Fernando Pessoa – The Book of Disquiet  “The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd - The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.”

R.D. Laing – The Politics of Experience Love and violence, properly speaking, are polar opposites. Love let’s the other be, but with affection and concern. Violence attempts to constrain the other’s freedom, to force him to act in the way we desire, but with ultimate lack of concern, with indifference to the other’s own  or destiny. We are effectively destroying ourselves by violence masquerading as love.

Victor Frankl – Man’s Search for Meaning Because of social pressure, individualism is rejected by most people in favor of conformity. Thus the individual relies mainly upon the actions of others and neglects the meaning of his own personal life. Hence he sees his own life as meaningless and falls into the “existential vacuum” feeling inner void. Progressive automation causes increasing alcoholism, juvenile delinquency, and suicide. 

Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Memories of Melancholy Whores “… My generation, greedy for life, forgot in body and soul about their hopes for the future until reality taught them that tomorrow was not what they had dreamed, and they discovered nostalgia.”

William Ralph Inge - The End of an Age and Other Essays - “A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by common hatred of its neighbours.”

Also, Tony Soprano is the 1%. Always remember that.

Be back when I can.

All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.