Gong Ensemble of the Bahnar - Sacrifice to the Communal House (Soi Yang Rông): Sa Kobô (Eating). 

'My mind will be a treasure-house of art, swept and garnished and strong and at its best.'

- Mary MacLane (I Await the Devil's Coming, 1902).

Picture: "Art Lover" cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post by Stevan Dohanos (3rd March 1956).

“Is the spring coming?” he said. “What is it like?…”

“It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine…”

- Frances Hodgson Burnett (The Secret Garden, 1911).

Picture: "Rain in Britain" by Maurice Denis (1889).

On Easter Monday young men used to raid the homes of their chosen girls and duck them (no less) in ponds or wells. In the cities water was replaced with a deluge of scent. The girl had to respond with a gift of a carnation; and debonair lads paraded the evening streets sporting several.

- Joseph Macleod (The Sisters d'Aranyi, 1969)

Picture: "Carnation and Cloth of Gold" by Salvador Dali (1950).

Girl of Carnations by Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso (1913)

Simon George by Hans Holbein the Younger (c.1533)

"One day, as I viewed the faded portrait of a young girl in an album, someone passed who spoke a name...

"And so I knew you; having heard your name, you, I shall dream of you."

- Edourard Dujardin (Antonia, 1891).

Picture: My photo detail of Jelly d'Aranyi from a photo of the three d'Aranyi sisters.

Joseph Macleod - To an Unborn Child (1957).

One of my favourite poets. I would not say this poem is particularly representative of his poetry but it is the only recording I have come across. Well worth taking the time to seek out his work.

Good sources: 

http://www.joseph.macleod.it/

http://www.waterloopresshove.co.uk/#/joseph-macleod-2012/4571490806

Jelly D'Aranyi plays Tomaso Vitali: Chaconne.

‎"If you are on your own for a long time and get used to being alone and are more or less trained in loneliness, then you begin to discover more and more in places which, for normal people, are essentially bare. On the wall you discover cracks, fine cracks, uneven patches, vermin. There is a tremendous movement on the walls. In actual fact the wall and the page of a book completely resemble one another."

- Thomas Bernhard (Three Days, in The Italians, 1972).

Picture: "The Wall" by Yevgeny Rukhin (1962-63).


Words etched in Russian read "Sasha is a jerk" and "Prick"

Midnight Groover + Pierrot = Christiane Colletin - Four a Chabon la.

"Masculinity and femininity, as they are usually understood, are obstacles to humanity¹ [...] Only a gentle masculinity, only an autonomous femininity are right, true and beautiful. And if this is so, one must not further exaggerate the character of the sex in any way [...] but rather seek to soften it by means of counter-measures, so that everyone in what is proper to him or her, is able to find a space as boundless as possible in which to move freely, according to pleasure and love, in the entire sphere of humanity"

- Friedrich Schlegel (On Philosophy - To Dorothea. An open letter to Brendel Veit in Volume 2 (1) of his Athenaeum journal, 1799).

Picture: "Penthésilée – Pentesiléia" by Raul Ubac (1937).
(Penthesilea was the Amazon Queen who went to die in the Trojan war after killing Hippolyta)

1. This first part of the quote is widely attributed online to Karoline von Günderrode, pretty much wherever her name is mentioned, from Wikipedia onwards (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoline_von_Günderrode). Whilst the idea would no doubt fit her writing I can find no evidence in my books or online that she actually wrote it, and those that quote it do not indicate a source. I am certain, on the other hand, though that Schlegel committed the lines to paper in the place cited. I have a correction/query pending with Wikipedia etc but if anyone happens to have a better knowledge of Karoline von Günderrode's work and can set me straight then please do. Till then I am chalking it up as another in my win column in the battle of Me v Internet.

DJ. Giovanni Turiaco - Living in the Past (1981).

The old man heard
A crying against his knee and looked down at the eyes
Of his hound-bitch; he said, "You are wrong, Snap-
per. It is no harm. We shall have less distraction
now.
Death and departure are not evil things. I tell you sadly,
every person that leaves
A place, improves it: the mourners at every funeral know
that
In their shamed hearts: and when the sociable races of
man and dog are done with, what a shining wonder
This world will be."

- Robinson Jeffers, from "The Double Axe, Part II: The Inhumanist" (1948).

Picture: Illustration by Ksawery Kozminski from "Tales & Legends From Poland" by Julie Laguirande-Duval (1929).

Alex Oriental Experience - Die Gunst Der Stunde.

Fleeting are the times of love; enduring the hoppings of the little serf whose gaze you ennoble.

The long weariness of enslavements, and of muffled struggles and feebleness. Its wretched paltry irony is without a smile; a modicum of pity for the eternal captive, the one doomed to ill-chosen downfalls.

After the crisis and the calm, in the momentary silence, listen in all serenity to its voices, the voices of your time gone by.

- Gustave Kahn (Voice in the Park from Les Palais Nomades, 1887).

Picture: "The Hesitant Betrothed" by Auguste Toulmouche (1866).

Even if not interested in the reading course the quotes atop each page form the finest collection of book related quotes I have ever come across.

Guide To Daily Reading by Asa Don Dickinson.

From, "What Shall I Eat? The Housewife’s Manual" by Miss E. Neill, (1892)

Priorities straight.

Erwin Schulhoff - Sonata Erotica (1919).

"He raises himself slightly; the face disperses. The surface of the water, as before, is dappled and the vision has returned. But Narcissus tells himself that to kiss it is impossible, he does not need to desire an image; a gesture to possess it, will tear it. He is alone. What to do? Contemplate.
Religious and grave, he now recovers his calm serenity: he remains - a symbol that grows - and brooding over the semblance of the World, vaguely feels the transient generations of humanity re-absorbed into him."

- André Gide (The Tractate Narcissus [The Theory of Symbols], 1891)

Picture: 1903 print of "Narcissus" by J. K. Le Blon.

Yasuaki Shimizu - Kakashi.

"do I write intelligable I am genneraly understood tho I do not use that awkward squad of pointings called commas colons semicolons etc and for the very reason that altho they are drilled hourly daily and weekly by every boarding school Miss who pretends to gossip in correspondence… Those who have made grammar up into a system and cut it into classes and orders as the student does the animal or vegetable creation may be a fine recreation for schools but it becomes of no use towards making any one so far acquainted with it as to find it useful—it will only serve to puzzle and mislead to awe and intimidate instead of aiding and encouraging him therefore it pays nothing for the study"

- John Clare (quoted in Jeffrey Robinson’s "Romantic Presences").

Picture: Page from Timothy Dexter's "A Pickle for the Knowing Ones; or Plain Truth in a Homespun Dress" (1848). Dexter's book contained no punctuation, and when people complained about the lack he added an extra page of punctuation marks and instructed readers to “peper and solt it as they plese”.