De Canadese dichter, folk singer-songwriter en schrijverLeonard Cohen werd geboren op 21 september 1934 te Montréal. Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Leonard Cohen op dit blog..
Dear Diary
“You are greater than the Bible
And the Conference of the Birds
And the Upanishads
All put together
“You are more severe
Than the Scriptures
And Hammurabi’s Code
More dangerous than Luther’s paper
Nailed to the Cathedral door
“You are sweeter
Than the Song of Songs
Mightier by far
Than the Epic of Gilgamesh
And braver
Than the Sagas of Iceland.
“I bow my head in gratitude
To the ones who give their lives
To keep the secret
The daily secret
Under lock and key
“Dear Diary
I mean no disrespect
But you are more sublime
Than any Sacred Text
“Sometimes just a list
Of my events
Is holier than the Bill of Rights
And more intense.”
I Wonder How Many People
I wonder how many people in this city
live in furnished rooms.
Late at night when i look out at the buildings
I swear I see a face in every window
looking back at me
and when I turn away
I wonder how many go back to their desks
and write this down.
Leonard Cohen (Montréal, 21 september 1934)
In 1969
De Amerikaanse schrijver Stephen Edwin King werd geboren in Portland, Maine, op 21 september 1947. Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2008 en ook mijn blog van 21 september 2009 en ook mijn blog van 21 september 2010
Uit: Duma Key
“How to draw a picture
Start with a blank surface. It doesn’t have to be paper or canvas, but I feel it should be white. We call it white because we need a word, but its true name is nothing. Black is the absence of light, but white is the absence of memory, the color of can’t remember.
How do we remember to remember? That’s a question I’ve asked myself often since my time on Duma Key, often in the small hours of the morning, looking up into the absence of light, remembering absent friends. Sometimes in those little hours I think about the horizon. You have to establish the horizon. You have to mark the white. A simple enough act, you might say, but any act that re-makes the world is heroic. Or so I’ve come to believe.
Imagine a little girl, hardly more than a baby. She fell from a carriage almost ninety years ago, struck her head on a stone, and forgot everything. Not just her name; everything! And then one day she recalled just enough to pick up a pencil and make that first hesitant mark across the white. A horizon-line, sure. But also a slot for blackness to pour through.
Still, imagine that small hand lifting the pencil … hesitating … and then marking the white. Imagine the courage of that first effort to re-establish the world by picturing it. I will always love that little girl, in spite of all she has cost me. I must. I have no choice. Pictures are magic, as you know.”
Stephen King (Portland, 21 september 1947)
De Franse schrijver Frédéric Beigbeder werd geboren op 21 september 1965 in Neuilly-sur-Seine.Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2008 en ook mijn blog van 21 september 2009 en ook mijn blog van 21 september 2010
Uit: 99 Francs
„Quand, à force d’économies, vous réussirez à vous payer la bagnole de vos rêves, celle que j’ai shootée dans ma dernière campagne, je l’aurai déjà démodée. J’ai trois vogue d’avance, et m’arrange toujours pour que vous soyez frustré. Le Glamour, c’est le pays où l’on n’arrive jamais. Je vous drogue à la nouveauté, et l’avantage avec la nouveauté, c’est qu’elle ne reste jamais neuve. Il y a toujours une nouvelle nouveauté pour faire vieillir la précédente. Vous faire baver, tel est mon sacerdoce. Dans ma profession, personne ne souhaite votre bonheur, parce que les gens heureux ne consomment pas.
Connaissez-vous la différence entre les riches et les pauvres ? Les pauvres vendent de la drogue pour s’acheter des Nike alors que les riches vendent des Nike pour s’acheter de la drogue.
Les hommes politiques ne contrôlent plus rien ; c’est l’économie qui gouverne. Le marketing est une perversion de la démocratie : c’est l’orchestre qui gouverne le chef. Ce sont les sondages qui font la politique, les tests qui font la publicité, les panels qui choisissent les disques diffusés à la radio, les “sneak previews” qui déterminent la fin des films de cinéma, les audimats qui font la télévision. […] Big Brother is not watching you, Big Brother is testing you. Mais le sondagisme est un conservatisme. C’est une abdication. On ne veut plus vous proposer quoi que ce soit qui puisse RISQUER de vous déplaire. C’est ainsi qu’on tue l’innovation, l’originalité, la création, la rebellion. Tout le reste en découle. Nos existences clonées… Notre hébétude somnambule… L’isolement des êtres… La laideur universelle anesthésiée….“
Frédéric Beigbeder (Neuilly-sur-Seine, 21 september 1965)
De Amerikaanse schrijfster en actrice Fannie Flagg (eig. Patricia Neal) werd geboren op 21 september in Birmingham (Alabama). Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2009 en ook mijn blog van 21 september 2010
Uit: Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven
„Elmwood Springs, Missouri.
Monday, April 1
9:28 am, 74 degrees and sunny
After Elner Shimfissle accidentally poked that wasps’ nest up in her fig tree, the last thing she remembered was thinking “Uh-oh.” Then, the next thing she knew, she was lying flat on her back in some hospital emergency room, wondering how in the world she had gotten there. There was no emergency room at the walk-in clinic at home, so she figured she had to be at least as far away as Kansas City. “Good Lord,” she thought. “Of all the crazy things to have happen this morning.” She had just wanted to pick a few figs and make a jar of fig preserves for that nice woman who had brought her a basket of tomatoes. And now here she was with some boy wearing a green shower cap and a green smock, looking down at her, all excited, talking a mile a minute to five other people running around the room, also in green shower caps, green smocks, and little green paper booties on their feet. Elner suddenly wondered why they weren’t wearing white anymore. When had they changed that rule? The last time she had been to a hospital was thirty-four years ago, when her niece, Norma, had given birth to Linda; they had all worn white then. Her next-door neighbor Ruby Robinson, a bona fide professional registered nurse, still wore white, with white shoes and stockings and her snappy little cap with the wing tips. Elner thought white looked more professional and doctorlike than the wrinkly, baggy green things these people had on, and it wasn’t even a pretty green to boot.
She had always loved a good neat uniform, but the last time her niece and her niece’s husband had taken her to the picture show, she had been disappointed to see that the movie ushers no longer wore uniforms. In fact, they didn’t even have ushers anymore; you had to find your own seat. “Oh well,” thought Elner, “they must have their reasons.”
Fannie Flag (Birmingham, 21 september 1944)
De Britse schrijver Herbert George Wells werd geboren op 21 september 1866 in Bromley, Kent. Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor H. G. Wells op dit blog.
Uit: The Door In The Wall
“One confidential evening, not three months ago, Lionel Wallace told me this story of the Door in the Wall.And at the time I thought that so far as he was concerned it was a true story.
He told it me with such a direct simplicity of conviction that I could not do otherwise than believe in him.But in the morning, in my own flat, I woke to a different atmosphere, and as I lay in bed and recalled the things he had told me, stripped of the glamour of his earnest slow voice, denuded of the focussed shaded table light, the shadowy atmosphere that wrapped about him and the pleasant bright things, the dessert and glasses and napery of the dinner we had shared, making them for the time a bright little world quite cut off from every-day realities, I saw it all as frankly incredible.”He was mystifying!” I said, and then: “How well he did it!. . . . .It isn’t quite the thing I should have
expected him, of all people, to do well.”
Afterwards, as I sat up in bed and sipped my morning tea, I found myself trying to account for the flavour of reality that perplexed me in his impossible reminiscences, by supposing they did in some way suggest, present, convey–I hardly know which word to use–experiences it was otherwise impossible to tell.
Well, I don’t resort to that explanation now.I have got over my intervening doubts.I believe now, as I believed at the moment of telling, that Wallace did to the very best of his ability strip the truth of his secret for me.But whether he himself saw, or only thought he saw, whether he himself was the possessor of an inestimable privilege, or the victim of a fantastic dream, I cannot pretend to guess.Even the facts of his death, which ended my doubts forever, throw no light on that.That much the reader must judge for himself.“
H. G. Wells (21 september 1866 – 13 augustus 1946)
De Duitse dichter Johann Peter Eckermann werd geboren op 21 september 1792 in Winsen (Luhe). Hij was bovenal de medewerker en vriend van Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Johann Peter Eckermannop dit blog.
Uit: Gespräche mit Goethein den letzten Jahren seines Lebens
»Ich halte dafür, daß diese Gespräche für Leben, Kunst und Wissenschaft nicht allein manche Aufklärung und manche unschätzbare Lehre enthalten, sondern daß diese unmittelbaren Skizzen nach dem Leben auch ganz besonders dazu beitragen werden, das Bild zu vollenden, was man von Goethe aus seinem mannigfaltigen Werk bereits in sich tragen mag.
Weit entfernt aber bin ich auch wiederum, zu glauben, daß hiermit nun der ganze innere Goethe gezeichnet sei. Man kann diesen außerordentlichen Geist und Menschen mit Recht einem vielseitigen Diamanten vergleichen, der nach jeder Richtung hin eine andere Farbe spiegelt. Und wie er nun in verschiedenen Verhältnissen und zu verschiedenen Personen ein anderer war, so kann ich auch in meinem Falle nur in ganz bescheidenem Sinne sagen: dies ist mein Goethe.
Und dieses Wort dürfte nicht bloß davon gelten, wie er sich mir darbot, sondern besonders auch davon, wie ich ihn aufzufassen und wiederzugeben fähig war. Es geht in solchen Fällen eine Spiegelung vor, und es ist sehr selten, daß bei dem Durchgange durch ein anderes Individuum nichts Eigentümliches verloren gehe und nichts Fremdartiges sich beimische. Die körperlichen Bildnisse Goethes von Rauch, Dawe, Stieler und David sind alle in hohem Grade wahr, und doch tragen sie alle mehr oder weniger das Gepräge der Individualität, die sie hervorbrachte. Und wie nun ein solches schon von körperlichen Dingen zu sagen ist, um wieviel mehr wird es von flüchtigen, untastbaren Dingen des Geistes gelten! Wie dem nun aber in meinem Fall auch sei, so werden alle diejenigen, denen aus geistiger Macht oder aus persönlichem Umgange mit Goethe ein Urteil dieses Gegenstandes zusteht, mein Streben nach möglichster Treue hoffentlich nicht verkennen.«
Johann Peter Eckermann (21 september 1792 – 3 december 1854)
Goethe en Eckermann (rechts)