Benavent

Via Swissmiss;

Go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an an enormous reward. You will have created something.

– Kurt Vonnegut

INTERVIEWER: How important has your sense of optimism been to your career?

BRADBURY: I don’t believe in optimism. I believe in optimal behavior. That’s a different thing. If you behave every day of your life to the top of your genetics, what can you do? Test it. Find out. You don’t know—you haven’t done it yet. You must live life at the top of your voice! At the top of your lungs shout and listen to the echoes. I learned a lesson years ago. I had some wonderful Swedish meatballs at my mother’s table with my dad and my brother and when I finished I pushed back from the table and said, God! That was beautiful. And my brother said, No, it was good. See the difference?

Action is hope. At the end of each day, when you’ve done your work, you lie there and think, Well, I’ll be damned, I did this today. It doesn’t matter how good it is, or how bad—you did it. At the end of the week you’ll have a certain amount of accumulation. At the end of a year, you look back and say, I’ll be damned, it’s been a good year.

Read the full interview at the Paris Review.

Via Ray Bradbury on optimism

¿Quién no echa una mirada al sol cuando atardece?
¿Quién quita sus ojos del cometa cuando estalla?
¿Quién no presta oídos a una campana cuando por algún hecho tañe?
¿Quién puede desoír esa campana cuya música lo traslada fuera de este mundo?

Ningún hombre es una isla entera por sí mismo.
Cada hombre es una pieza del continente, una parte del todo.
Si el mar se lleva una porción de tierra, toda Europa queda disminuida, como si fuera un promontorio, o la casa de uno de tus amigos, o la tuya propia.
Ninguna persona es una isla; la muerte de cualquiera me afecta, porque me encuentro unido a toda la humanidad; por eso, nunca preguntes por quién doblan las campanas; doblan por ti.

Tomado de La costa más lejana vía Blog de Javier Otaola

Sometimes something good happens when you don’t expect it. Ravel doesn’t like very much his Pavane pour une infante defunte, it was wrotte as incidental music, the title wants to mean nothing and Ravel himself doesn’t consider it was a great piece.

But, when you don’t expect it, things happens, maybe, this is a lessons to be learned. And the piece becomes famous, and translated into different versions although it was for the piano now you may find it in guitar and orchestra version among others

I’ve a soft spot for Richter:

As far as 1993 I see Much ado about nothing. By those days I like Emma Thompson, so, just because of she, I saw the movie.

But the movie offers surprises. I realized how good is Shakespeare at writting poems, although his famous mastering in theater. He also describes humorously how men may be.

Now I bring back this video, with a nice poem (with its translation for spaniards) describing some men, from some women point of view.

(Thanks to José Miguel Ridao for his translation)