On Genuine Poetry

“Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.”

– T.S. Eliot

On The Function of Music

“The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought.”

– Thomas Beecham

On Chess and Objectivity

“Chess, first of all, teaches you to be objective.”

– Alexander Alekhine

Kansas Classrooms

I can’t teach you about safe sex because it might encourage you to become promiscuous.

I can’t tell you what airbags do. That information will make you think it’s okay to start crashing into things.

I’m sorry class. We can no longer study Mexico. As you’d all run away to Tijuana if I told you what was there.

If I teach you girls how to rescue a burnt casserole, how can I trust you to follow the teachings of Héloise?

I’m afraid I can’t tell you how Hannibal crossed the Alps. If I did, you crazy kids are likely to conquer the prom with elephants. Oops.

Trigonometry will no longer be taught. You could use that knowledge to calculate the trajectory of eggs thrown at my Geo Metro.

We won’t be using safety glasses this year in shop class. I believe anyone who gets a word chip in their eye have it coming.

Science has been cancelled because your parents prefer to believe in magic.

– Big Fat Whale, Brian McFadden 2006

On Infinity

“If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.”

– Ludwig Wittgenstein

Absolutely Relative Absolute Truth

Dimitri: So, Tasso, you seem to be one of those guys who thinks there is no absolute truth, that all truth is relative.

Tasso: Right.

Dimitri: Are you sure of that?

Tasso: Absolutely.

– Cathcart. T., Klein. D. 2007. Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar New York, United States: Penguin p. 179

On Creating Gods

“Man cannot make a worm, yet he will make gods by the dozen.”

– Michel de Montaigne

On The Erased Idea

“The painting is finished when it has erased the idea.”

– Georges Braque