Mute Presence: A look at an aphorism by E.M. Cioran

Here is a fifteen minute video that I shot on Vimeo. Recently, I have been using Vimeo as an educational platform and a way to share my thoughts. This video opens up an aphorism by E.M. Cioran and brings in some other thinkers, as well. Is it perfect? No, but it was the best I [...]

Where and When are Words? – A Video Lecture by Dr. Corey Anton

Dr. Corey Anton Where and when are words? May 2009

The Wisdom of Christopher Doyle: The Dance of Cinema

Serendipity landed in my lap this morning as I found a relevant quotation (relevant to my purposes here) from the visual stylist, the cinematographer Christopher Doyle (Jim Jarmusch, Wong Kar-Wai, etc.). The camera as the eye of the motion picture, the lens through which we experience the picture, when wielded by a master, can expand [...]

The Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living: Demetri Martin’s “If I”

I haven’t spent much time with Demetri Martin’s comedy material, but through some great stroke of serendipity, stumbled across this hour-long special for the BBC, entitled “If I.” To my delight, this performance is not simply “stand-up,” but examines such things as communication, choices, life-making, creativity, meaning and thinking. Martin unpacks the word “if” and [...]

Life is the Novel of Matter: An E.M. Cioran Moment

“Only inert things add nothing to what they are: a stone does not lie; it interests no one – whereas life indefatigably invents: life is the novel of matter.” (E.M. Cioran “A Short History of Decay, pg. 84). To live in the human world, is to live through a virtual screen of interpretations and imaginations. [...]

Five Quotations for Your Learning Pleasure (Selected by Your Humble Editor on a Rainy Tuesday Evening)

You will see throughout this blog, quotations from a handful of thinkers that I admire and learn from. The following are five selected quotations for your learning pleasure. Perhaps, one or more of these quotations will help you along with your day or stick with you and re-emerge when the time is right or ripe. [...]

Jose Ortega Y Gasset on “Decisions”

Our lives are continually affected and altered by the decisions that we make, the paths we choose to move within and about, the paths we choose to realize. As you already know, you can’t not decide and therein lies the difficulty – the difficulty of choice. It is a perpetual “trip” through the choices that [...]