#john berger

[soracities]

"You were welding something. You wore a leather apron and apart from that a pair of shorts. In front of your face was a dark metal shield.

When you emerged from behind it, you were wearing a black patch over your right eye, and your face was screwed up as if in pain.

Is your eye hurt? I asked.

It’s inflamed, you replied, and I had to go to the hospital. It happens with this—and you held up the welder.

You were wearing heavy leather boots without socks and with their laces undone.

Where are you from? you asked me.

I told you and explained how a guy in the petrol station, seeing I was taking this road that nobody takes, had asked me to deliver the battery.

You looked me up and down and murmured, thank you.

How long do you have to keep the patch on your eye? I asked.

Until I find gold! you said.

Then, smiling, you slowly strode towards me and took it off."

John Berger, From A to X: A Story in Letters

[sealskin]

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/41pu2j0alrvmmqq/AADcNEo2K-fsdlacFfuXnKtva?dl=0

Above is the link to an audio file with Palestinian music, read-aloud poetry, storytelling, and excerpts from speeches on history and liberation. It was gathered by Radio Al Hara, an internet radio station broadcast from Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Amman in Jordan, founded during the pandemic as a way to connect during isolation. “Al Hara” means ​“the neighbourhood” in Arabic. From the river to the sea! 🇵🇸

[dreamingawayyour1ife]

“Men act, women appear. Men look at women, women watch themselves being looked at”

-John Berger, ways of seeing

[doomedbythenarrator]

if i gave up on being pretty, i wouldnt know how to be alive

grace vanderwaal // unknown // nessa barrett // fleabag // unknown // @/seravph // john berger // unknown // susan sontag // mitski

[quotefeeling]

closeness with a certain sum of shared experiences. Yet in reality total strangers, who will never say a single word to each other, can share an intimacy — an intimacy contained in the exchange of a glance, a nod of the head, a smile, a shrug of a shoulder. A closeness that lasts for minutes or for the duration of a song that is being listened to together. An agreement about life. An agreement without clauses. A conclusion spontaneously shared between the untold stories gathered around the song.

John Berger, Some Notes on Song

[prokaryotics]

“Being born a woman is an awful tragedy…yet, God, I want to talk to everybody I can as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night...”

“The Female Man” - Joanna Russ // “The Robber’s Bride” - Margaret Atwood // “Gone Girl” - Gillian Flynn // “Ways of Seeing” - John Berger // “The Female Man” - Joanna Russ // Sylvia Plath

[breatth]

“ Hele arzu karşılıklıysa arzulanan kimseyi pervasız kılar.”

[llovelymoonn]

what art does for us

john berger and our faces, my heart, as brief as photos \\ larissa pham the limits of the viral book review \\ frantz (2016) dir. françois ozon \\ johann wolfgang von goethe the sorrows of young werther (tr. david constantine)

kofi

[edwordsmyth]

John Berger reads Ghassan Kanafani.

[summerpoets]

— the shape of a pocket by john berger

[wizardpimp69]

[soracities]

What did I see? I don’t know what words to use. The words are never there. But between the useless words you’ll see what I saw.

John Berger, From A to X: A Story in Letters

[nobeerreviews]

We who draw do so not only to make something visible to others, but also to accompany something invisible to its incalculable destination.

-- John Berger

(Munich, Germany)

[slowtides]

Much of what happens to us in life is nameless because our vocabulary is too poor. Most stories get told out loud because the storyteller hopes that the telling of the story can transform a nameless event into a familiar or intimate one. We tend to associate intimacy with closeness and closeness with a certain sum of shared experiences. Yet in reality total strangers, who will never say a single word to each other, can share an intimacy — an intimacy contained in the exchange of a glance, a nod of the head, a smile, a shrug of a shoulder. A closeness that lasts for minutes or for the duration of a song that is being listened to together. An agreement about life. An agreement without clauses. A conclusion spontaneously shared between the untold stories gathered around the song.

John Berger, "Some Notes on Song (for Yasmine Hamdan)"

[funeral]

Today images abound everywhere. Never has so much been depicted and watched. We have glimpses at any moment of what things look like on the other side of the planet, or the other side of the moon. Appearances registered, and transmitted with lightning speed. Yet with this something has innocently changed. They used to be called physical appearances because they belonged to solid bodies. Now appearances are volatile. Technological innovation has made it easy to separate the apparent from the existant. And this is precisely what the present system’s mythology continually needs to exploit. It turns appearances into refractions, like mirages: refractions not of light but of appetite, in fact a single appetite, the appetite for more. Consequently -- and oddly, considering the physical implications of the notion of appetite -- the existant, the body, disappears. We live within a spectacle of empty clothes and unworn masks.

John Berger, Steps Toward A Small Theory of the Visible

[vampiresdontsleep]

ON FRIENDSHIP, LOSS, & MOVING ON.

Anne Lamott // Edward Hopper - Automat // Robert Frost - This Week Magazine: September 1954, “Robert Frost’s Secret” by Ray Josephs // Raymond Chandler - The Longest Goodbye // funnyhowflowersdothat.co.uk - Mourning and the symbolism of flowers // John Berger - The Shape of a Pocket // Elsa Gidlow - Of a Certain Friendship // Edward Hopper - Morning Sun // Stephen Chbosky - The Perks of Being a Wallflower // Langston Hughes - Poem