Freemen of Color

“People of African descent have been in New Orleans, like the French, from the early eighteenth century. The city’s relative social and geographic isolation during its early history as a French colony and international port contributed to the unique black culture. Blacks were brought to the city as slaves from Senegal, Senegambia, and the Windward Coast of West Africa, as well as from the French Caribbean islands, especially Haiti, after the French Revolution. Some were trained as skilled laborers and crafsmen and were able to buy freedom for themselves and their families upon enactment of the so-called Code Noire, which made this possible for the first time. This gave rise to a community known as the “Freemen of Color.” The intermarriage of Freemen of Color with native Indians and French settlers resulted in the growth of Creoles—blacks of mixed ancestry.”

—Alan Govenar, from A Joyful Noise: A Celebration of New Orleans Music by Michael P. Smith, 1990.

Indian Red

“They do things in church, they sing and they dance and feel the spirit. That’s what church is all about. They praise the Lord.

With Mardi Gras Indians we do the same thing in a sense. We sing, we party, we dance, and we even have our prayer. We praise our past Indians when we sing “Indian Red.” It’s like an Indian national anthem.”

—Johnny “Kool” Stephenson, interviewed by Alan Govenar, from A Joyful Noise: A Celebration of New Orleans Music by Michael P. Smith, 1990.

glass architecture

“If we wish to raise our culture to a higher level, we are forced . . . to transform our architecture. We shall only succeed in doing this when we remove the element of enclosure from the rooms in which we live. We can only do this, however, with glass architecture, which allows the light of the sun, moon and stars to enter not merely through a few windows set in the wall, but through as many walls as possible—walls of coloured glass. The new milleu created in this way must bring us a new culture. . . . Then we should have a pradise on earth.”

—Paul Scheerbart, from Glasarchitektur (Glass Architecture), 1914; quoted in Modernism: Designing a New World, 1914-1939, edited by Christopher Wilk, 2006.

More sun! More light!

“‘More sun! More light! Is the cry of our desperate age,’ wrote a female correspondent in a German nudist magazine. . . .

The nudist’s belief in the therapeutic power of sunshine gained medical credibility during the 1920s as the Swiss doctors August Roller and Oskar Bernhard, working independently, proved the efficacy of the so-called sun cure (heliotherapy) on tuberculosis. . . . Roller’s clinic in Leysin, Switzerland . . . incorporated sun balconies where patients could lie in the sun (they took the sun when it was low in the sky rather than when it was at its strongest). . . .”

—Christopher Wilk, The Healthy Body Culture, from Modernism: Designing a New World, 1914-1939, edited by Christopher Wilk, 2006.

black-line engraving.

“In black-line wood engraving the burin removes all the surface of the block except the lines of the artist’s design; in white-line engraving, the surface of the block prints as a black background, while the burin removes the lines of the design which appear white in the impression. Blocks engraved with a combination of both methods achieved engravings of great strength and delicacy. . . .”
—Early Victorian Illustrated Books; Britain, France and Germany, 1820-1860, by John Buchanan-Brown, 2005.

a kick-ass red lipstick

“Beauty, to me, is about being comfortable in your own skin. That, or a kick-ass red lipstick.”

—Gwyneth Paltrow, (b. 1972).

the snow’s incandescence

“Gleaming with the soft effulgence of a luminous dial, the snow’s incandescence, self-engendered, reached inward to probe the very soul of luxury and draw it forth through stone till it was visible. . . .”

—Jean Cocteau, from The Holy Terrors, translated from the French by Rosamond Lehmann, 1957.

the madness of art

“We work in the dark—we do what we can—we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.”

—Henry James; quoted by Azar Nafisi in Reading Lolita in Tehran, 2003.

like fireflies

“Sometimes I get e-mail messages on my computer, like fireflies . . . from my former students, telling me about their lives and memories.”

—Azar Nafisi, from the epilogue of Reading Lolita in Tehran, 2003.

the voice of your eyes

“the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses”

—e.e. cummings, from somewhere i have never travelled; quoted by Azar Nafisi in Reading Lolita in Tehran, 2003.