this is the time of times

“There’s definitely a motivation in writing something down or creating something and recording it, whether it’s just a thought, because you’re trying to stop time a little bit and you want to make something. We take photos of our lives. Why do we do that? Why do we need to? I mean, we can look in the mirror if we want to see ourselves, but we take pictures of our kids and our families and ourselves at moments because we always want to go back and remember. Remember that our life is good and things are good and remember that things are good because it’s easy to forget. Sometimes we get lost in fear and darkness and sadness. And sometimes you have to remind yourself. Sometimes it’s easy to forget all the little bits and pieces that make it. Life is really hard to live; it’s hard to stay alive in the world, it is. Not that you’re going to get hit with a tree, but people everywhere, no matter how healthy of mind and spirit you are, sometimes you look at the darkness, and all you can see is the darkness. So you have to capture the little bits of light and replay them for yourself. That’s what songs are, that’s what movies are, people are trying to remember.”

Hey, I'm sorry if this is super weird, but you're beautiful, and I wondered if you'd ever thought about doing any topless pics?

How on earth did it happen, I used to wonder that a whole city - arches, pillars, colonades, not to mention vehicles and animals - had all one fine day gone under? I mean, I said to myself, the world was small then. Surely a great city must have been missed? I miss our old city - white pepper, white pudding, you and I meeting under fanlights and low skies to go home in it. Maybe what really happened is this: the old fable-makers searched hard for a word to convey that what is gone is gone forever and never found it. And so, in the best traditions of where we come from, they gave their sorrow a name and drowned it.

When I’m among a blaze of lights, With tawdry music and cigars And women dawdling through delights, And officers in cocktail bars, Sometimes I think of garden nights And elm trees nodding at the stars. I dream of a small firelit room With yellow candles burning straight, And glowing pictures in the gloom, And kindly books that hold me late. Of things like these I choose to think When I can never be alone: Then someone says ‘Another drink?’ And turns my living heart to stone.

Philip Seymour Hoffman in NYC, 2000 from Photographs