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two-grey-rooms.livejournal.com"Once she commenced to paint, she ceased to think. That skunk corpse of guilt floated off like a hairball. Soon she was whistling and humming, dancing first on one foot and then the other. She slopped the paint on, and she dabbed it on, she knifed it on thick, and she washed it on thin, she tinted it with white and shaded it with black, she blended it into creamy textures and isolated it in singular, emphatic, commalike brush strokes. When it came to techniques, she was definitely a slut.
"On her small canvas, she recreated a section of the Crazy Mountains, the range near Livingston that they had admired earlier that day; that is to say, she recreated the mountains not as she had originally seen them but as she eventually chose to see them, for a person has not only perceptions but a will to perceive, not only a capacity to observe the world but a capacity to alter his or her observation of it--which, in the end, is the capacity to alter the world itself. Those people who recognize that imagination is reality's master, we call 'sages,' and those who act upon it, we call 'artists.'
"Or 'lunatics.' "
--Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs and All
" 'You are an artist. You know that big picture at the museum midtown, that picture by that fellow Rousseau, it is called The Sleeping Gypsy?'
" 'Yeah. Sure. That's a very famous painting.'
" 'It ought to be called The Sleeping Arab, that picture. An Arab lies in the desert, sleeping under the crazy-faced moon. A lion sniffs at the Arab, the Arab is unafraid. The Arab dreams on. The river in the background, I think the river is the Arab's dream. Perhaps the lion is also dreamed: you notice it has left no paw prints in the sand. In any case, that picture, my dear, is the definitive portrait of the Arab character. Fierce and free, sleeping fearlessly beneath the wild night stars. But dreaming. Dreaming always of water. Dreaming of danger when real danger is absent, in order to demonstrate bravado. Arabs live in their fantasies. We are not a practical people like the Jews are. The Jews get things accomplished. The Arab dreams--and converses with the moon.' "
--Tom Robbins
"One tended to lose one's bearings in the presence of willful and persistent acts of craziness, and the more gentle the act, the crazier it seemed, as if rage and violence, being closer to the norm, were easier to accommodate.
"But was he actually crazy? Ellen Cherry was in no hurry to find out. For now, she was content with the inspiration that he provided, and the oblique solace. This, she told herself, this and not what's happening tonight at Ultima Sommerveil's gallery, or any other gallery, this lonely, uncompromising, obsessive tug-of-war with presumed reality, this is what art is all about."
--Tom Robbins
" 'The radios that pass by here play nothing but rap music. Sounds like somebody feeding a rhyming dictionary to a popcorn popper.'
" 'While shoving 'em both up a guard dog's ass.' "
--Tom Robbins
"...leaving Raoul on the verge of composing one of those trite romantic lyrics that, lacking the ivory flame of great poetry, nevertheless stay with a person forever, like a scar, a tattoo, or third-grade arithmetic."
--Tom Robbins
"It was time to bathe, and she seriously considered inviting Captain Vibrator to bathe with her. 'Maybe I should wait until I know him better,' she said to the vase of roses on the breakfast table, the roses that Spike and Abu had sent. She bathed with the roses, instead. They floated in the water around her, sometimes pricking her with their tiny thorns. 'Acupuncture,' she said. 'I needed that!' Petals came loose like pages from a magazine about aphid lifestyles, only to be trapped in webs spun by spiders of soap. Ellen Cherry pasted wet rose petals on her nipples, plastered one under her nose like a comedian's mustache. 'Springtime for Hitler,' she said. Outside, it was November, and the margarita glasses of the skyscrapers were salted with frost.
"Sanitary now, and most casually attired, she wrapped the drowned roses in newspaper and laid them with the garbage. 'They wouldn't have lasted anyway,' she told herself, drying her hands on her sweatshirt. 'Not for long.' "
--Tom Robbins
"Softly, but with practiced conviction, she said, 'Art is the only place a person can win.'
" 'It may be the only place you can win. I believe we can win any damn place we try.' "
--Tom Robbins
"She smiled in such a way that down in the Bowery, on the other end of the line, he could tell that she was smiling. There are smiles that actually travel along telephone wires, although no engineer at Bell Laboratories could explain how it works.
"Boomer answered the smile. 'Folks take art too seriously. Did I say that already?' "
--Tom Robbins
"Both money and art, powdered as they are with the romance and poetry of the age, are magic. Rather, money is magic, art is magik. Money is stagecraft, sleight of hand, a bag of clever tricks. Art is a plexus of forces and influences that act upon the senses by means of practical yet permanently inexplicable secret links. Admittedly, the line between the two can be as thin as a dime. What's more, the magicians of capitalism strengthen their hold on their audience through the manipulation of artistic images."
--Tom Robbins
"What is plain is that neither money nor the love of it is the root of all evil. Evil's roots run deeper than that. Anyway, money is not a root. Money is a leaf. Trillions of leaves, actually; dense, bushy, dollar-green, obscuring the stars of reality with their false canopy. Who says that money doesn't grow on trees?
"The introduction of money, with its seductive, if largely ambiguous promises, added a fresh measure of zip to the sport of life, but the zip turned to zap when the players, stupefied by ever-shifting intangibles, began to confuse the markers with the game.
"So, even for those of us who can't personally witness Salome's dance, the fifth veil surely will fall. It will fall at the moment of our death. As we lie there, helpless beyond distraction, electricity stealing out of our brains like a con man stealing out of a sucker's neighborhood, it will occur to many of us that everything we ever did, we did for money. And at that instant, right before the stars blink off, we will, according to what else we may have learned in life, burn with an unendurable regret--or have us a good silent laugh at our own expense."
--Tom Robbins
"On her small canvas, she recreated a section of the Crazy Mountains, the range near Livingston that they had admired earlier that day; that is to say, she recreated the mountains not as she had originally seen them but as she eventually chose to see them, for a person has not only perceptions but a will to perceive, not only a capacity to observe the world but a capacity to alter his or her observation of it--which, in the end, is the capacity to alter the world itself. Those people who recognize that imagination is reality's master, we call 'sages,' and those who act upon it, we call 'artists.'
"Or 'lunatics.' "
--Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs and All
" 'You are an artist. You know that big picture at the museum midtown, that picture by that fellow Rousseau, it is called The Sleeping Gypsy?'
" 'Yeah. Sure. That's a very famous painting.'
" 'It ought to be called The Sleeping Arab, that picture. An Arab lies in the desert, sleeping under the crazy-faced moon. A lion sniffs at the Arab, the Arab is unafraid. The Arab dreams on. The river in the background, I think the river is the Arab's dream. Perhaps the lion is also dreamed: you notice it has left no paw prints in the sand. In any case, that picture, my dear, is the definitive portrait of the Arab character. Fierce and free, sleeping fearlessly beneath the wild night stars. But dreaming. Dreaming always of water. Dreaming of danger when real danger is absent, in order to demonstrate bravado. Arabs live in their fantasies. We are not a practical people like the Jews are. The Jews get things accomplished. The Arab dreams--and converses with the moon.' "
--Tom Robbins
"One tended to lose one's bearings in the presence of willful and persistent acts of craziness, and the more gentle the act, the crazier it seemed, as if rage and violence, being closer to the norm, were easier to accommodate.
"But was he actually crazy? Ellen Cherry was in no hurry to find out. For now, she was content with the inspiration that he provided, and the oblique solace. This, she told herself, this and not what's happening tonight at Ultima Sommerveil's gallery, or any other gallery, this lonely, uncompromising, obsessive tug-of-war with presumed reality, this is what art is all about."
--Tom Robbins
" 'The radios that pass by here play nothing but rap music. Sounds like somebody feeding a rhyming dictionary to a popcorn popper.'
" 'While shoving 'em both up a guard dog's ass.' "
--Tom Robbins
"...leaving Raoul on the verge of composing one of those trite romantic lyrics that, lacking the ivory flame of great poetry, nevertheless stay with a person forever, like a scar, a tattoo, or third-grade arithmetic."
--Tom Robbins
"It was time to bathe, and she seriously considered inviting Captain Vibrator to bathe with her. 'Maybe I should wait until I know him better,' she said to the vase of roses on the breakfast table, the roses that Spike and Abu had sent. She bathed with the roses, instead. They floated in the water around her, sometimes pricking her with their tiny thorns. 'Acupuncture,' she said. 'I needed that!' Petals came loose like pages from a magazine about aphid lifestyles, only to be trapped in webs spun by spiders of soap. Ellen Cherry pasted wet rose petals on her nipples, plastered one under her nose like a comedian's mustache. 'Springtime for Hitler,' she said. Outside, it was November, and the margarita glasses of the skyscrapers were salted with frost.
"Sanitary now, and most casually attired, she wrapped the drowned roses in newspaper and laid them with the garbage. 'They wouldn't have lasted anyway,' she told herself, drying her hands on her sweatshirt. 'Not for long.' "
--Tom Robbins
"Softly, but with practiced conviction, she said, 'Art is the only place a person can win.'
" 'It may be the only place you can win. I believe we can win any damn place we try.' "
--Tom Robbins
"She smiled in such a way that down in the Bowery, on the other end of the line, he could tell that she was smiling. There are smiles that actually travel along telephone wires, although no engineer at Bell Laboratories could explain how it works.
"Boomer answered the smile. 'Folks take art too seriously. Did I say that already?' "
--Tom Robbins
"Both money and art, powdered as they are with the romance and poetry of the age, are magic. Rather, money is magic, art is magik. Money is stagecraft, sleight of hand, a bag of clever tricks. Art is a plexus of forces and influences that act upon the senses by means of practical yet permanently inexplicable secret links. Admittedly, the line between the two can be as thin as a dime. What's more, the magicians of capitalism strengthen their hold on their audience through the manipulation of artistic images."
--Tom Robbins
"What is plain is that neither money nor the love of it is the root of all evil. Evil's roots run deeper than that. Anyway, money is not a root. Money is a leaf. Trillions of leaves, actually; dense, bushy, dollar-green, obscuring the stars of reality with their false canopy. Who says that money doesn't grow on trees?
"The introduction of money, with its seductive, if largely ambiguous promises, added a fresh measure of zip to the sport of life, but the zip turned to zap when the players, stupefied by ever-shifting intangibles, began to confuse the markers with the game.
"So, even for those of us who can't personally witness Salome's dance, the fifth veil surely will fall. It will fall at the moment of our death. As we lie there, helpless beyond distraction, electricity stealing out of our brains like a con man stealing out of a sucker's neighborhood, it will occur to many of us that everything we ever did, we did for money. And at that instant, right before the stars blink off, we will, according to what else we may have learned in life, burn with an unendurable regret--or have us a good silent laugh at our own expense."
--Tom Robbins
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