inactive

Maybe migrating birds just start to feel like going south. Building a nest just for fun seems like a good idea. Being overcome with the sudden urge to sing, and - immediately afterwards - the desire to beat the shit out of this other asshole who is trying to sing on your goddamn turf. The fact that they are things that need to happen to ensure the survival of the species doesn't mean they aren't also things that they want to do. Birds only do things that they want to do, they spend all their time doing whatever the fuck they feel like doing at that exact moment.

Human instincts aren't involuntary compulsions, either. They are urges to do something, whether or not you know or understand where these desires stem from. The idea that humans are free of instinctive behaviours because of ~power of intelligent reason~ is just as goddamn absurd as the idea that we, too, are slaves to them. No, what makes the difference is having the capacity wonder why, how, and where the instinctive desire comes from.

An animal who instinctively reacts to an unnatural situation in a way that doesn't serve the survival of this individual or the species as a whole isn't broken, it's just doing something that feels right. I don't think that a shark who bites an electric cable doesn't understand it doesn't have any nutritional value, it just goes "ooh, this looks like something that would be fun to bite."

And I think kids should be taught that this isn't just fine and normal, but that you totally can - and actually should - romanticise it. Because since there's nothing else you can do about that sort of thing, you might as well have fun having it. You do get to be the the Tragic Suffering Protagonist about it. It's a beautiful, keen and unique sort of pain that is your own personal tragedy and 100% a you problem.

The idea that the only acceptable outcome of falling in love with someone is a relationship with the object of that desire is genuinely dangerous. The idea that the only way to a happily ever after is to "win them over", get out of the friend zone, finally do some feat that'll impress them or prove your worth and finally get the girl. That's not how it works, that's not how any of this works.

Moping isn't inherently bad for you. Okay of course it's possible to spend too much time wallowing in self-pity, but it's good for you to indulge in it as needed. The difference between poison and medicine is dosage, and everyone is allowed to have a little bit of small personal tragedy sometimes, as a treat. You have to do it sometimes just to get it out of your system, be sad about something for long enough to simply get bored of that, and go do something else.

And not to get "A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down" stuck in your head, but sometimes that's the key to it. If the only way to go through something is to suffer through it, might as well make it sweet. Sometimes you just gotta be like "I love her and her happiness means more to me than my own, and she does not want me, so therefore I must do this Noble Sacrifice and suffer in silence and simply let her be happy without me" for like six months or a year until you're done being like that and over with it.

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Let’s get this out of the way: Politics definitely belongs in art.

People are inevitably political; we form alliances and tribes, we try to figure out how to reach our goals.  We  are political with our friends and family, co-workers and enemies, and everyone else.  Politics is human, and humans make art, and all art is a statement on the person and the time it is made - politics is always there.

Politics is human, art is human, all art is political.

You cannot remove art from politics, and anyone telling you that you can wants you to obey their politics.  They’re not telling you to “take something out” when they say they don’t want politics, they want you to conform to them.  They’re liars (which often makes them poor artists)

Attempts to remove politics from art really is an attempt to make art conform to someone else’s politics.

If you attempt to remove politics from art, even sincerely, you flush it of everything that makes it real.  It is unemotional.  It lacks context.  It avoids cause and effect.  Not only is it essentially impossible, any attempt to do so makes it boring.

Even if you try to remove art from politics, you will only destroy the art while trying to conform.

Therefore the only thing you can do is embrace the political in art, to take it all the way.  Dive into the experience and make good art.  Good art stands on its own, speaks for itself, and is true - even if the truth might be hard, or worse indicate your art is bad.  At least you know.

We might as well dive deep into politics in our art because it will make good art - or reveal our own flaws.

It is inevitable if we dive into making art sincerely, to embrace ever side of it including politics, that we will surprise ourselves.  Art is a process of realization, and as we all know a work inevitably changes as we create it.  That surprise is a sign we’re doing it right - as we express things (including politics) we learn about ourselves, our ideas, and what they mean (or that our ideas aren’t so good).

Good art shocks you and surprises you because as you make it you are learning.

If you are not surprised by your art, if it does not lead you to new paths and thoughts, then something is wrong.  You’re not creating, you’re just churning things out, you aren’t learning.  If your art is exceptionally political, then it’s likely you’re not exploring your ideas.

If your art, especially art that is intensely political, isn’t surprising you then you’re not learning anything.

I find the best way to approach art and politics is to hold your work “lightly.”  Don’t grasp it tightly and try to force it into one form, but let it grow and evolve, let new ideas flow into it and lessons flow out of it.  By letting your work grow you grow.

Don’t cling to your art much, let it grow, so you grow as well.

Finally, be ready to let your art into the world.  Each time you create you grow and expand.  Each work created that way will affect people and make them think.  From this you’ll learn even more - to make your next work.

Let art have contact with others so they and you can grow to make your next work.

Of course, you may realize that a work created sincerely, openly, evolving and growing could be a very dangerous work indeed.  What can you make without giving in to fit current politics, or to fit into your current ego?  What dreams can you make that may change the world for the better?

Well, why not find out?  Don’t be afraid …

… but people that should be afraid of what you can create should fear that somewhere out there, someone is making the art that will challenge them.

Steven Savage

www.StevenSavage.com

Could you please tag the post where you mentioned your favourite non fictions about cities.

Thanks again!

hi, i can't seem to find the original, so here you go

banaras by diana l. eck — what i love the most about this is that it weaves in and out of mythology and history together to show you why the city is so complex, and why it matters so much

istanbul by thomas madden — a history of the city, great detail, but easy to read

bombay, meri jaan edited by jerry pinto and naresh fernandes — a collection of writing on mumbai; includes fiction, essays, poetry

the lonely city by olivia laing — semi-memoir, semi-art criticism, about being alone and lonely in new york, explores how artists have dealt with isolation; this will always be a favourite

the epic city by kushanava choudhury — it’s a personal story of kolkata; mixes popular history, memoir, travel notes; it’s a funny book (but i’m not sure how well the humour holds up outside of the very specific indian context)

mumbai fables by gyan prakash — tells the history of the city through select events and stories that have shaped the city’s development, its politics, the economy; very good starting point

venice by thomas madden — like istanbul, very richly detailed; equally good

city of djinns by william dalrymple — explores post-independence delhi and its development, how it deals with its past, both ancient and more recent; not the best if you want actual historical insight, but it’s a more accessible read than most i’ve encountered

shock cities by harold platt — bit of urban history for you: a comparative study of chicago and manchester as industrial cities; explores the relationship between the city and its hinterland, takes into account the environment; an overall solid academic work

and a few on my tbr

jerusalem by simon sebag montefiore

berlin by barney white-spunner

istanbul by orhan pamuk

feminist city by leslie kern

gotham and greater gotham

Here’s a (non-exhaustive) list of essays I like/find interesting/are food for thought; I’ve tried to sort them as much as possible. The starred (*) ones are those I especially love

also quick note: some of these links, especially the ones that are from books/anthologies redirect you to libgen or scihub, and if that doesn’t work for you, do message me; I’d be happy to send them across!

Literature + Writing

Godot Comes to Sarajevo - Susan Sontag

The Strangeness of Grief - V. S. Naipaul*

Memories of V. S. Naipaul - Paul Theroux*

A Rainy Day with Ruskin Bond - Mayank Austen Soofi

How Albert Camus Faced History - Adam Gopnik

Listen, Bro - Jo Livingstone

Rachel Cusk Gut-Renovates the Novel - Judith Thurman

Lost in Translation: What the First Line of “The Stranger” Should Be - Ryan Bloom

The Duke in His Domain - Truman Capote*

The Cult of Donna Tartt: Themes and Strategies in The Secret History - Ana Rita Catalão Guedes

Never Do That to a Book - Anne Fadiman*

Affecting Anger: Ideologies of Community Mobilisation in Early Hindi Novel - Rohan Chauhan*

Why I Write - George Orwell*

Rimbaud and Patti Smith: Style as Social Deviance - Carrie Jaurès Noland*

Art + Photography (+ Aesthetics)

Looking at War - Susan Sontag*

Love, sex, art, and death - Nan Goldin, David Wojnarowicz

Lyons, Szarkowski, and the Perception of Photography - Anne Wilkes Tucker

The Feminist Critique of Art History - Thalia Gouma-Peterson, Patricia Mathews

In Plato’s Cave - Susan Sontag*

On reproduction of art (Chapter 1, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger*

On nudity and women in art (Chapter 3, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger*

Kalighat Paintings  - Sharmishtha Chaudhuri

Daydreams and Fragments: On How We Retrieve Images From the Past -  Maël Renouard

Arthur Rimbaud: the Aesthetics of Intoxication - Enid Rhodes Peschel

Cities

Tragic Fable of Mumbai Mills - Gyan Prakash

Whose Bandra is it? - Dustin Silgardo*

Timur’s Registan: noblest public square in the world? - Srinath Perur

The first Starbucks coffee shop, Seattle - Colin Marshall*

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Mumbai’s iconic railway station - Srinath Perur

From London to Mumbai and Back Again: Gentrification and Public Policy in Comparative Perspective -  Andrew Harris

The Limits of “White Town” in Colonial Calcutta - Swati Chattopadhyay

The Metropolis and Mental Life - Georg Simmel

Colonial Policy and the Culture of Immigration: Citing the Social History of Varanasi - Vinod Kumar, Shiv Narayan

A Caribbean Creole Capital: Kingston, Jamaica - Coln G. Clarke (from Colonial Cities by Robert Ross, Gerard J. Telkamp

The Colonial City and the Post-Colonial World - G. A. de Bruijne

The Nowhere City - Amos Elon*

The Vertical Flâneur: Narratorial Tradecraft in the Colonial Metropolis - Paul K. Saint-Amour

Philosophy

The trolley problem problem - James Wilson

A Brief History of Death - Nir Baram

Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical - John Rawls*

Should Marxists be Interested in Exploitation? - John E. Roemer

The Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief - Scott Berinato*

The Pandemic and the Crisis of Faith - Makarand Paranjape

If God Is Dead, Your Time is Everything - James Wood

Giving Up on God - Ronald Inglehart

The Limits of Consensual Decision - Douglas Rae*

The Science of “Muddling Through” - Charles Lindblom*

History

The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine - Maria Dolan

The History of Loneliness - Jill Lepore*

From Tuskegee to Togo: the Problem of Freedom in the Empire of Cotton - Sven Beckert*

Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism - E. P. Thompson*

All By Myself - Martha Bailey*

The Geographical Pivot of History - H. J. Mackinder

The sea/ocean

Rim of Life - Manu Pillai

Exploring the Indian Ocean as a rich archive of history – above and below the water line - Isabel Hofmeyr, Charne Lavery

‘Piracy’, connectivity and seaborne power in the Middle Ages - Nikolas Jaspert (from The Sea in History)*

The Vikings and their age - Nils Blomkvist (from The Sea in History)*

Mercantile Networks, Port Cities, and “Pirate” States - Roxani Eleni Margariti

Phantom Peril in the Arctic - Robert David English, Morgan Grant Gardner*

Assorted ones on India

A departure from history: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990-2001 - Alexander Evans *

Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World - Gyan Prakash

Empire: How Colonial India Made Modern Britain - Aditya Mukherjee

Feminism and Nationalism in India, 1917-1947 - Aparna Basu

The Epic Riddle of Dating Ramayana, Mahabharata - Sunaina Kumar*

Caste and Politics: Identity Over System - Dipankar Gupta

Our worldview is Delhi based*

Sports (you’ll have to excuse the fact that it’s only cricket but what can i say, i’m indian)

‘Massa Day Done:’ Cricket as a Catalyst for West Indian Independence: 1950-1962 - John Newman*

Playing for power? rugby, Afrikaner nationalism and masculinity in South Africa, c.1900–70 - Albert Grundlingh

When Cricket Was a Symbol, Not Just a Sport - Baz Dreisinger

Cricket, caste, community, colonialism: the politics of a great game - Ramachandra Guha*

Cricket and Politics in Colonial India - Ramchandra Guha

MS Dhoni: A quiet radical who did it his way*

Music

Brega: Music and Conflict in Urban Brazil - Samuel M. Araújo

Color, Music and Conflict: A Study of Aggression in Trinidad with Reference to the Role of Traditional Music - J. D. Elder

The 1975 - ‘Notes On a Conditional Form’ review - Dan Stubbs*

Life Without Live - Rob Sheffield*

How Britney Spears Changed Pop - Rob Sheffield

Concert for Bangladesh

From “Help!” to “Helping out a Friend”: Imagining South Asia through the Beatles and the Concert for Bangladesh - Samantha Christiansen 

Gender

Clothing Behaviour as Non-verbal Resistance - Diana Crane

The Normalisation of Queer Theory - David M. Halperin

Menstruation and the Holocaust - Jo-Ann Owusu*

Women’s Suffrage the Democratic Peace - Allan Dafoe

Pink and Blue: Coloring Inside the Lines of Gender - Catherine Zuckerman*

Women’s health concerns are dismissed more, studied less - Zoanne Clack

Food

How Food-Obsessed Millennials Shape the Future of Food - Rachel A. Becker (as a non-food obsessed somewhat-millennial, this was interesting)

Colonialism’s effect on how and what we eat - Coral Lee

Tracing Europe’s influence on India’s culinary heritage - Ruth Dsouza Prabhu

Chicken Kiev: the world’s most contested ready-meal*

From Russia with mayo: the story of a Soviet super-salad*

The Politics of Pancakes - Taylor Aucoin*

How Doughnuts Fuelled the American Dream*

Pav from the Nau

A Short History of the Vada Pav - Saira Menezes

Fantasy (mostly just harry potter and lord of the rings)

Purebloods and Mudbloods: Race, Species, and Power (from The Politics of Harry Potter)

Azkaban: Discipline, Punishment, and Human Rights (from The Politics of Harry Potter)*

Good and Evil in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lengendarium - Jyrki Korpua

The Fairy Story: J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis - Colin Duriez (from Tree of Tales)*

Tolkien’s Augustinian Understanding of Good and Evil: Why The Lord of the Rings Is Not Manichean - Ralph Wood (from Tree of Tales)*

Travel

The Hidden Cost of Wildlife Tourism

Chronicles of a Writer’s 1950s Road Trip Across France - Kathleen Phelan

On the Early Women Pioneers of Trail Hiking - Gwenyth Loose

On the Mythologies of the Himalaya Mountains - Ed Douglas*

More random assorted ones

The cosmos from the wheelchair (The Economist obituaries)*

In El Salvador - Joan Didion

Scientists are unravelling the mystery of pain - Yudhijit Banerjee

Notes on Nationalism - George Orwell

Politics and the English Language - George Orwell*

What Do the Humanities Do in a Crisis? - Agnes Callard*

The Politics of Joker - Kyle Smith

Sushant Singh Rajput: The outsider - Uday Bhatia*

Credibility and Mystery - John Berger

THIS SHIT WORKS OKAY, I AM DEAD SERIOUS.

The last time I saw this on my dash, I didn’t think it would happen, so jokingly I wished I could go to a fun. concert.

AND GUESS WHAT, I WENT TO A FUCKING FUN. CONCERT.

I SAW THIS ON MY DASH THE OTHER DAY AND THOUGHT “ITS WORTH A TRY” SO I WISHED I COULD GET A 3DS

LITERALLY LIKE 4 DAYS LATER MY DAD SENT ME A PICTURE OF THE 3DS XL HE BOUGHT FOR ME WHILE I WAS AT SCHOOL

GUYS.

HE FUCKING CALLED ME 20 MINUTES LATER

20 FUCKNG. MINUTES. LATER.

Dark times all around but there are still people out there who love you

A great way to learn a new language is by listening to music in that language so here is a list of songs in different languages:

German songs:

Willst du einen Schneemann bauen? (Do you wanna build a snowman?)

COSMA - Es hat alles seine Zeit

Helene Fischer - Atemlos durch die Nacht

Clueso - Stadtrandlichter

Namika - Lieblingsmensch

Max Giesinger - 80 Millionen

Andreas Bourani - Auf anderen Wegen

Clueso - Freidrehen 

Anastasia - Es war einmal im Dezember

French songs:

Stromae - Papaoutai 

Kendji Girac - Andalouse  

Sindy - Aïe aïe aïe

Léa Castel - Larguer les amarres

Maître Gims - Zombie

Maître Gims - Est-ce que tu m'aimes ?  

Isleym - Avec le Temps  

Anaïs Delva - Libérée, Délivrée

Indila - S.O.S   

Indila - Dernière Danse 

Sylvie Vartan - Baby c'est vous

Romanian songs:

ADDA - Lupii 

ADDA - Iti Arat Ca Pot

Vescan feat. Florin Ristei - Las-o…  

Carla’s Dreams - Acele  (the singer is from Moldavia so you may hear an accent)

Carla’s Dreams - Sub Pielea Mea | #eroina  

Carla’s Dreams - Imperfect  

Andra - Niciodata Sa Nu Spui Niciodata  

Mihail - Ma ucide ea

Tudor Gheorghe - Au înnebunit salcâmii (old but gold)  

Norwegian songs:

Unge Ferrari - Hvis Du Vil 

Katastrofe - Typisk Norsk ft. Alexander Rybak

English songs:

(less known or personal favourites)

Wilkinson - Sweet Lies ft. Karen Harding 

Nothing But Thieves - Trip Switch

Lia Marie Johnson - DNA

A R I Z O N A - I Was Wrong

Jaymes Young - I’ll Be Good

Emeli Sandé - Hurts

Rag'n'Bone Man - Human

BØRNS - American Money

Krewella x Diskord - Beggars

Spanish songs:

Gente de Zona - La Gozadera 

Malú - Vuelvo A Verte

Malú - Te Voy a Olvidar

Enrique Iglesias - DUELE EL CORAZON ft. Wisin

If you have any recommendations, message me and I’ll add it to the list!

ENJOY!

… your chat is open to talk about cultures, languages, social topics, or anything you want to talk about with new international friends!