2003.10.23 14:47
Stan Allen tonight
My goal is in fact to bring on harrassment and a terrible reputation, as well as to be the greatest blow hard, pompous ass of archinect. I did not expect such success while utilizing less than one percent of my potential, however.
This is fun. I truly enjoy it.
Here, bite on this:
The notion of casting Duchamp in the nude might be all that is needed to ensure success, with occasional slips into drag, of course. And that line, "Oddly enough, the crack of my ass is a ready-made" gets the audience howling every time. ["Don't tell me. I noticed it too. Something sphinx in here again."]
Then there is the competing notion of an enormous Duchamp dream of a chess game with the opponent unknown, yet all the pieces are actual personalities. For example, Duchamp's Queen is Michelangelo and Duchamp's King is Rrose Selavy, while the opponent's Queen is Elizabeth II and the opponent's King is Michelangelo. [One has to wonder if playing with a real Queen has its advantages.] As usual, one of Duchamp's Bishops is Pope St. Celestine V, the one that "was unfitted for the papal office in every respect except his holiness." And, with any luck, the peon's are dedicated people like you and me.
mp/euclitian/phillygash.jpg
Or should I say chew this up.
1.05% so far.
reenactment forthcoming?
probably
Even novocain doesn't work?
2002
Denis Diderot "Encyclopedia"
Diderot, Denis. "Encyclopedia." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Philip Stewart. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0000.004 (accessed 23 October 2026). Originally published as "Encyclopédie," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 5:635–648A (Paris, 1755).
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Among the other books which it is essential to acquire, one should count the catalogues of the great libraries: it is there one comes to know the sources on which one must draw; it would even be desirable for the editor to be in correspondence with the librarians. While it is necessary to consult good works, it is not useless to leaf through bad ones. A good book furnishes one or several excellent articles; a bad book helps you do better. It adds to your task; the former condenses it. Besides, without a considerable knowledge of the bibliography, you run the constant risk of writing poorly, with great effort and much time and expense, what others have executed superbly. You go to great effort to discover things that are well known. I might observe that except for the material on the arts, everything that is properly with a dictionary's ken has already been published, and consequently it is all the more desirable that each person be familiar with the great books composed in his section, and that the editor be armed with the most complete and extensive catalogues.
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The exact citation of sources would be extremely useful: this rule should be imposed. It would be an important service to those preparing to study a particular science or art, to give them an acquaintance of the best authors, the best editions, and the order they should follow in their reading. The Encyclopedia has sometimes done this correctly; it ought never to have failed.
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One must analyze scrupulously and faithfully every work to which time has assured a constant reputation. I say time, because there is a great difference between an encyclopedia and a collection of journals. An encyclopedia is a rapid and disinterested exposition of the discoveries of men in all places, all kinds, and all centuries, without any judgment of persons; whereas journals are but a momentary history of works and authors. They indiscriminately review felicitous and infelicitous efforts, which is to say that in a newspaper that deserves some attention, countless books are lengthily discussed which are forgotten before the last issue of the year has come out. How much these periodicals would be abbreviated, if only an interval of time were allowed between the publication of a book and the review that would or would not appear: a given work that was discussed at length in the journal, would not even be mentioned. But what purpose does the extract serve when the book is forgotten? A universal and analytical dictionary is destined for the general and permanent instruction of the human race; periodicals, for the momentary satisfaction of the curiosity an idle few. They are little read by men of letters.
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One must particularly extract from authors their systems, exceptional thoughts, observations, experiments, views, maxims, and facts.
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But there are works so important, so well thought out, so precise, few in number to be sure, that an encyclopedia must swallow them whole. I speak of those in which the general object is treated in a methodical manner and in depth, such as the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, although too diffuse; the Considérations sur les moeurs, although too dense; the Institutions astronomiques, although they are not elementary enough, and so forth. [73]
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The observations, facts, experiments, etc., must be distributed to their appropriate locations.
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One must know how to dismember a work skillfully, manage its distributions, present its outline, give an analysis of it in the body of an article, the references of which will indicate the rest of the object. The idea is not to break its joints, but to distend them; not to separate the parts, but to disassemble them and scrupulously preserve what artists call reference marks.
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Sometimes it is important to mention absurd things; but it must be done lightly and in passing, solely for the history of the human mind, which reveals itself better in certain unusual oddities than in the most reasonable act. These oddities are to the moralist what the dissection of a monster is to the natural historian: it is more useful to him than to study a hundred individuals that are alike. There are words that depict more forcefully and completely than a whole discourse. A man to whom no ill act could be reproached was saying terrible things about human nature. Someone asked him, but where have you observed man as being so hideous? In myself, he replied. This was an evil man who had never done any wrong; may he die soon! Another was saying of an old friend: so-and-so is a very honest man; he is poor, but that does not keep me from making him an unusual case. I have been his friend for forty years, and he has never asked me for a penny. Ah, Moliére, where were you? You wouldn't have missed that example, and your Miser would offer none either truer or more emphatic.
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Since it is also at least as important to make men better, as to make them less ignorant, I would not be displeased for us to collect every striking example of moral virtues. They must be well attested: each would be distributed to the article it would enliven. Why should we be so attentive to the preservation of the history of men's thoughts, and neglect the history of their acts? Is it not the most useful; is it not the history that does the most honor to the human race? I do not wish to have bad deeds recalled; it were better they had never existed. Man has no need of bad examples, nor does human nature need to be more decried. One should mention dishonest acts only when they have been followed, not by loss of life and property, which are only too often the sad consequences of the practice of virtue, but when they have made the evil man unhappy and despised amidst of the most brilliant rewards for his crimes. The examples that ought to be collected above all, would be those where the character of honesty is joined with that of great insight, or heroic steadfastness. The example of M. Pellisson would surely not be forgotten. He files an accusation against his master and benefactor, who is taken to the Bastille; he is brought to face the man he accused, to whom he attributes some imaginary fraud. The accused asks for the evidence. The evidence? replies Pelisson. Well, sir, it can only be found in your papers, and you know quite well they have all been burned: and so they had been. Pelisson had burned them himself, but he needed to inform the prisoner of this; and he did not hesitate to have recourse to an expedient, a sure one in truth, since everyone was fooled by it; but one which risked his freedom, perhaps his life, and which, had it not been found out, which was possible, would have attached everlasting ignominy to his name, and could redound to the shame of the republic of letters, in which Pelisson held a distinguished position. M. Gobinot of Reims has borne for forty years the public indignation he incurred by excessive niggardliness from which he gained enormous sums which he used for monuments of the greatest utility. To him let us add a prelate respectable for his apostolic qualities, his distinctions, his birth, the noble simplicity of his daily life, and the solidity of his virtues. During a great calamity, it occurred to this prelate, after he had provided relief with generous free distributions of money and grain to that portion of his flock that allowed all its indigence to be seen, to assist the part that hid its misery, those whose cries were stifled by embarrassment and were only the more unhappy, against the oppression of those bloody men whose soul is overjoyed amidst of the general murmur, and he has grain brought to the public square where it is distributed for a price well below what it has cost. The partisan bias that abhors any virtuous act which is not by one of its own members, calls his charity a monopoly, and an little-known knave inscribes this horrible calumny among those with which he has long filled his weekly papers. Meanwhile new calamities arrive: the inalterable devotion of this rare pastor continues to act, and finally a decent man comes along who raises his voice, and speaks the truth, giving recognition to virtue, and exclaiming, ecstatic with admiration: What courage! what heroic patience! How consoling to the human race that spitefulness is incapable of such efforts. Such are the examples that should be collected; and who would read them without feeling warmth in his heart? If an anthology were published containing many such great and praiseworthy deeds, who would consent to die without furnishing the material for a line? Can one imagine a more stirring opus? It seems to me there would be few pages which a man born with an honest and sensitive soul would not wet with his tears.
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One must be particularly careful to avoid adulation. When praise is deserved, it would be most unfair to grant it only to the unfeeling, cold ashes of those who can no longer hear it: shall the equity that dispenses it yield to the modesty that refuses it? Praise is an incitement to virtue; it is a public pact you force the virtuous man to contract. If his praiseworthy deeds were engraved on a column, would he for a moment lose sight of that imposing monument? Would it not be one of the staunchest supports one could lend to human weakness? The man would have to determine to break his own statue. Praise of an honest man is the most worthy and endearing recompense from another honest man: after the praise of his conscience, the most flattering praise is that of the man of good will. O Rousseau, my dear and worthy friend, I have never had the strength to refrain from praising thee: I have felt my attraction to truth grow, and my love of virtue. Why so many funeral orations, and so few panegyrics of the living? Do you think Trajan would not have feared to give the lie to his panegyrist? If you do, you don't know the full power of everybody's admiration. After the praiseworthy deeds one has done, the keenest incentive to multiply their number is the notoriety of the first ones; and it is this notoriety that gives man a public character which he cannot easily give up. Is this innocent secret not even one of the most important of a virtuous education? Put your son in a position to practice virtue; give him a household reputation for his good deeds; attach to his name some epithet which reminds him of them; grant him some admiration: it he ever breaks that barrier, I dare assert that his soul is fundamentally bad; that your child is lowborn, and you will never make anything but a wicked man of him; with this difference, that he would have plunged head first into vice, and that held back by the contrast he has observed between the honorable names he has been given, and those he is going to incur, he will let himself slide towards evil, but on a slope that will not be so slight that attentive parents will fail to notice the successive degradation of his character.
1999.10.23
Criminal Taylor JFK Architecture
1966.10.23
1966. Sunday, New York City
The Duchamps attend a performance in the series of "Nine Evenings--Experiments in Art and Technology" at the 25th Street Armory and meet Monique Fong, also in the audience. The programme that evening is Lucinda Childs, Debbie Hay and Robert Rauschenberg in Open Score.
Ephemerides
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