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This site is a source for insightful artworks and educational materials discussing sexuality and love in the arts.  Communities should have exceptional access to diverse sexual and moral viewpoints.  This website has information on theatrical, musical, philosophical, poetic, political, and religious artworks from hundreds of artists over thousands of years.  If you are not yet mature enough to evaluate historical, literary, and artistic information on these important topics, then please be so kind as to consider returning when you are.

To search on any topic, you can use the search cell in the right column to search by keyword, artist, style, era, title, etc.  The tabs across the top of each page connect to word indicies and picture thumbnail indicies to enable searching by either word or image.

This is a non-revenue-generating site with no advertising support.  The posts promote artists, their ideas, and their work.  Wherever artists have online websites, those sites are included to encourage visitors to support those artists.  Thank you to the artists and visitors for continuing these vital dialogues.

No individual person can give artists the support they deserve.  But if we each regularly do something small to support the arts, I hope as a group we can make the world more colorful, memorable, and pleasant.

In the end, kindness matters.

“I got soul, but I’m not a soldier.” - The Killers - Nike’s New Olympic Commercial

If you watched Michael Phelps win his 8th gold this evening, you may have also seen the inspiring new Nike Commercial, with the musical accompaniment of the lyric “I got soul, but I’m not a soldier.”  It is a chorus from their song “All These Things That I’ve Done” from their Hot Fuss album.

“All These Things That I’ve Done” lyrics by The Killers

(Written by:  Brandon Flowers, Dave Keuning, Mark Stoermer, & Ronnie Vannucci.)

When there’s nowhere else to run
Is there room for one more son?
One more son
If you can, hold on
If you can, hold on, hold on

I wanna stand up
I wanna let go
You know, you know
No, you don’t, you don’t
I wanna shine on, in the hearts of men
I want a mean it from the back of my broken hand

Another head aches, another heart breaks
I’m so much older than I can take
And my affection, well it comes and goes
I need direction to perfection, no no no no

Help me out, yeah
You know you gotta help me out, yeah
Oh, don’t you put me on the back burner
You know you gotta help me out, yeah

And when there’s nowhere else to run
Is there room for one more son?
These changes ain’t changing me
The cold hearted boy I used to be

Yeah, you know you gotta help me out, yeah
Oh, don’t you put me on the back burner
You know you gotta help me out, yeah
You’re gonna bring yourself down, yeah
You’re gonna bring yourself down, yeah
You’re gonna bring yourself down

I got soul, but I’m not a soldier
I got soul, but I’m not a soldier
I got soul, but I’m not a soldier
I got soul, but I’m not a soldier

I got soul, but I’m not a soldier
I got soul, but I’m not a soldier
I got soul, but I’m not a soldier
I got soul, but I’m not a soldier

I got soul, but I’m not a soldier
I got soul, but I’m not a soldier

Time, truth, and heart

Yeah, you know you gotta help me out, yeah
Oh, don’t you put me on the back burner
You know you gotta help me out, yeah

You’re gonna bring yourself down, yeah
You’re gonna bring yourself down, yeah
Oh, don’t you put me on the back burner
You’re gonna bring yourself down

Over and in, last call for sin
While everyone’s lost, the battle is won
With all these things that I’ve done

All these things that I’ve done

Time, truth, and heart

If you can, hold on
If you can, hold on

© All rights reserved by the respective artists.

http://www.thekillersmusic.com/

The Killers on Wikipedia

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Looking For Cheyenne - Looking For Reasons To Believe In Love

5 out of 5 stars

This is a lovely French film about a bisexual woman’s search for love. She is uncertain if love exists and uncertain if love is worth pursuing. This is a very smart film that asks difficult and worthwhile questions.

For anyone who has ever doubted whether love is worth the chase, this movie continues that provocative debate.

Love may not be defined by how much we are willing to reconsider and change ourselves, but this movie supports the idea that little love exists without a willingness to consider change.

This is a sophisticated date film that is ideal for watching with popcorn, a comfortable blanket, a private setting, and someone you love.

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Love Searches - Creative Responses To Terror

I continue to slowly and carefuly read the diary of Anne Frank.  I am also reading Irène Némirovsky’s Suite Francaise. 

I have read Elie Wiesel’s Night and some of his other novels.  I have studied Schindler’s List many times.  And I have read numerous other accounts and histories of that tragic period.

It is fascinating to observe and to try to ascertain how people choose to live and respond to looming and indefinite dangerous circumstances.  Some people choose to become more creative in diverse ways.

Reading Anne Frank, I get the consistent impression she wrote each entry with a mindfulness that each entry may be her last.  Conversely, Irène Némirovsky, when faced with similar persecution and pending doom, chose to begin a 5 novel series, with sweeping and patient narratives. 

Both creative styles are defiant and beautiful. 

The first style, Anne’s, is more focused on being as honest and direct as possible, with terror ever present and knocking at the door.  It’s as if she’s always writing with the knowledge that literally her time to write may run out sometime that day. 

The second style, Irene’s, is honorable, humane, and defiant by choosing to start something large, long, and epic, refusing to live as if tomorrow will be her last day - refusing to allow her enemies to keep her from telling the fully-fleshed out kinds of stories she wanted her life and her work to be able to tell.

From Anne Frank’s diary: 

“I asked her whether, as proof of our friendship, we could touch each other’s breasts.  Jacque refused.  I also had a terrible desire to kiss her, which I did.  Every time I see a female nude, such as the Venus in my art history book, I go into ecstasy.  Sometimes I find them so exquisite I have to struggle to hold back my tears.  If only I had a girlfriend!” - Thursday, January 6, 1944.

“The sun is shining, the sky is deep blue, there’s a magnificent breeze, and I’m longing - really longing - for everything:  conversation, freedom, friends, being alone, I long . . . to cry!  I feel as if I were about to explode.  I know crying would help, but I can’t cry.  I’m restless.  I walk from one room to another, breathe through the crack in the window frame, feel my heart beating as if to say, “Fulfill my longing at last . . .”
     I think spring is inside me.  I feel spring awakening, I feel it in my entire body and soul.  I have to force myself to act normally.  I’m in a state of utter confusion, don’t know what to read, what to write, what to do.  I only know that I’m longing for something . . . Yours, Anne”  - Saturday, February 12, 1944.

© All rights reserved by the respective artists.

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Love Searches

Love searches for creative ways to oppose cycles of terror
Love searches for ways to oppose imposed silences and censorship
Love searches for ways to reveal the false assumptions that lead to fears
Love searches for ways to teach alternatives to violence

When faced with a problem,
Love begins to search anew

Love searches

~ OneMoreOption

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Anne Frank on Wikipedia

Irène Némirovsky on Wikipedia

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What Places In A Bride’s Head Keep Being Revisited?

This is a review of the 2008 movie “Brideshead Revisited.”

5 out of 5 stars.

This movie could not be improved.

Lovers of the original novel and the famous 1981 British Television Mini-Series starring, among others, Jeremy Irons, Sir John Gielgud, and Sir Lawrence Olivier may enjoy advocating that the other versions of the story are better.  And to those arguments, I will happily concede.  Nevertheless, this latest 2008 film version is exceptionally good.

While the world was all focused on World War II, Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh chose to spend his time writing this story in 1944, a story about boundaries and priorities in love relationships - boundaries between mothers and children, between family and non-family, between husbands and wives, between spouses and lovers, between social classes, between religions, and between ideologies.

It is a story about the relationship between religion (Catholicism more specifically) and guilt.  The story repeatedly, in each of the main character relationships, asks this type of question:

What philosophical priorities, religious or otherwise, would you put above your love for someone close to you?  The sophisticated examination of those ideological priorities in the story’s characters’ relationships is fascinating and revealing.

The full title of the original book is telling of the author’s likely intents:

Brideshead Revisited, The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

This novel is an examination of social, cultural and religious structures, hierarchies, and “trumping” considerations.  The word “profane” has several definitions, but generally it means non-religious, or non-sacred (not subordinating to religious precepts).  The movie (probably even more than the original novel) attempts to portray a sympathetic portrait of the profane considerations, more than the sacred ones.

I don’t know if this screenplay is close to the original novel in plot or emphasis.  And while I do care about that question, I don’t choose to critique a movie solely because it deviates from its source material.  I loved Emma Thompson’s Sense & Sensibility and that movie deviated liberally from the book.

This movie is aimed at breaking every empathetic viewer’s heart in one way or another - not out of malice, but rather to emphasize the social conflicts which not only effected middle 20th century culture, but also still effect modern culture.

At the same time, the movie is very funny.  The acting is executed with exceptional social awareness and sharp pitch.  The direction is marvelous.  The set lighting and underlit dark interiors create consistent and apropos emotional environments.  The hand-held camera techniques are well-done and timely, breaking out of more common static camera expectations associated with other BBC productions.  The costuming is lovely.  The musical score is first rate, not overbearing, melodramatic, nor distracting.

Emma Thompson is excellent, playing a character with sufficient power and resolve to blind herself to any critiques.

Matthew Goode plays Charles Ryder superbly.  Other actors would have tried to have been the center of each of Charles Ryder’s scenes (he is the “lead” role).  But Goode makes the superb choice to play a character who is the eyes of the story more than the focus of the story.  That acting (and directing) choice is consistent with Charles Ryder’s character.  Ryder expresses early on in the movie that he intends to be an artist who reveals the emotional context in what he sees around him.

Hayley Atwell and Ben Whishaw, who play Julia and Sebastian Flyte, also make excellent and informed acting choices.  Atwell displays understated conflicts between passion, duty, religion, and love.  She is neither a pawn nor a queen.  She knows the consequences of the choices she makes, but still chooses them.  Whishaw plays the correct tone for his character.  He is neither too flamboyant nor too charismatic.  Yet clearly, he has lived a lifetime of suppression - being madly in love with people and things he knows will always be unrequited toward him.

I will buy this movie when it becomes available on DVD.  And I look forward to studying it repeatedly.  I thank all the people who worked so hard to create this film.  I love this film.

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Why Should You Learn More About How To Better Educate Yourself?

Most people mistakenly think they are aware of most of the important things they don’t know.

Education often teaches us crucial concepts we did not know we did not know.

And what we don’t know often hurts us constantly.  What we don’t know can permanently damage us for the rest of our lives.

Learning ways to better educate yourself is often pleasant because someday there may be something or someone you want, and you’ll want to be able to teach yourself anew what you may need to know to improve the odds of you being able to help you and them obtain what you both want.  And at the juncture, you may benefit from not being dependent on anyone else to obtain what you want.

You + The Ability To Better Educate Yourself can help you obtain more of what you and your community wants.

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Things That Could Not Be Improved # 9: Tatiana Reis, Séverine Pichon, Edward Hopper, Renee King, René Magritte, Meghan Adriel Dwyer, Odd Nerdrum, Edoard Pasero, Bruce Barone, & hawkstudios

Above artwork by Tatiana Reis.

This is the 9th edition of “Things That Could Not Be Improved,” a grouping of things that need not be, or could not be, improved.  I’m not a proponent of perfection, but I love seeing well-conceived and well-crafted artworks: 

(Click on images to view them individually.)

This collection has a theme of being made up of beautiful artworks I don’t fully understand.  And I don’t fully understand all the reasons I admire them.  But I admire each of them tremendously.  That is one thing I love about many artworks - they often contain elements that are foreign to me and beyond my ability to ever fully comprehend.

Artwork by Séverine Pichon:

Artwork by Edward Hopper:

“Self-Portrait with George” by Renee King:

“Attempting The Impossible” by René Magritte: 

“Dangerous Liaisons” by René Magritte:

“.exhibition” by Meghan Adriel Dwyer:

“.churning” by Meghan Adriel Dwyer:

“The Kiss” by Odd Nerdrum:

Artwork by Edoardo Pasero:

“Nadine” by Bruce Barone:

Artwork by hawkstudios:

Coolest laptop artwork . . . ever.

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“Things That Could Not Be Improved” Series:  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

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Living For This And Future Generations

This post formed in my dreams last night, after my love and I went to see “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2,” an enjoyable, but slightly flawed movie.

Because of my first couple of significant other relationships, my life has often become about challenging cliches.

My second girlfriend relished saying to me that assumptions make an ass out of you and me.

I don’t much like sayings like that one. 

Even that saying is a cliche.  Further, assumptions are actually often integral to healthy reasoning decisions.  But her implied point was that I should double check and question things I have assumed (or taken on faith) but not proven (or at least I assume that was one of her good intents behind using that cliche).

There is a common cliche:

“Live each day as if it was the last day of your life.”

And while that concept has positive characteristics and may be quite romantic, I’ve personally decided it’s not ideal for me.

Instead, my goals revolve more around a similarly expressed concept:

Live each day working towards creating artworks and sharing ideas that will disarm fears, promote pleasure, and reduce suffering during your lifetime and long after you’re gone.

One of my goals is not to make me notable, but rather to make notable ideas more well known.  I work to make this generation’s world better.  But equally important, I work to make subsequent generations more educated and empowered long after you and I are forgotten and gone.

I live each day as if my life should already be over, but I’ve been given one more day to pass on a couple more ideas to future generations.

I remember watching Oliver Stone’s Platoon as a young person and thinking how many better people than me, young men and women soldiers, lost their lives or had their life messed up by the circumstances of the Vietnam War.  And I remember mentally thinking at that point:  “My life doesn’t have to be about anything everyone tells me should be so important.  There were many young people better than me that didn’t even live this long.  They didn’t get to choose how to live their life.  From this point forward, I’m going to make my life different.  I’m going to define my own priorities.  I’m going to try to be a positive force, as I define “positive force,” on others, even if most people ridicule my chosen priorities.”

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The Most Beautiful Thing I Saw Today

“The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or woman.” - Willa Cather.

This blog is about many things.

It attempts to share: 

1) The best artworks I encounter.

2) The resilience of the human spirit.

3) The grace of human kindnesses.

4) The marvels and intellect of inspired designs.

Today, I discovered something marvelous on Wikipedia.

If you don’t think well-crafted words matter, then please consider reading what Maya Lin wrote for her 1981 proposed design for the Vietnam Memorial.  Here is the text of what she wrote:

“Walking through this park-like area, the memorial appears as a rift in the earth - a long, polished black stone wall, emerging from and receding into the earth.  Approaching the memorial, the ground slopes gently downward, and the low walls emerging on either side, growing out of the earth, extend and converge at a point below and ahead.  walking into the grassy site contained by the walls of this memorial we can barely make out the carved names upon the memorial’s walls.  These names, seemingly infinite in number, convey the sense of overwhelming numbers, while unifying those individuals into a whole.  For this memorial is meant not as a monument to the individual, but rather as a memorial to the men and women who died during this war, as a whole.

The memorial is composed not as an unchanging monument, but as a moving composition, to be understood as we move into and out of it;  the passage itself is gradual, the descent to the origin slow, but it is at the origin that the meaning of this memorial is to be fully understood.  At the intersection of these walls, on the right side, at this wall’s top is caved the date of the first death.  It is followed by the names of those who have died in the war, in chronological order.  These names continue on this wall, appearing to recede into the earth at the wall’s end.  The names resume on the left wall, as the wall emerges from the earth, continuing back to the origin, where the date of the last death is carved, at the bottom of this wall.  Thus the war’s beginning and end meet;  the war is “complete”, coming full circle, yet broken by the earth that bounds the angle’s open side, and contained within the earth itself.”

“As we turn to leave we see these walls stretching into the distance directing us to the Washington Monument to the left and the Lincoln Memorial to the right, thus bringing the Vietnam Memorial into historical context.  We, the living are brought to a concrete realization of these deaths.”

Maya Lin’s design drawing:

The realized monument (Photo by Stella Pope Duarte):

“Brought to a sharp awareness of such a loss, it is up to each individual to resolve or come to terms with this loss.  For death is in the end a personal and private matter, and the area contained within this memorial is a quiet place meant for personal reflection and private reckoning.  The black granite walls, each 200 feet long, and 10 feet below ground at their lowest point (gradually ascending towards ground leve) effectively act as a sound barrier, yet are of such a height and length so as not to appear threatening or enclosing.  The actual area is wide and shallow, allowing for a sense of privacy, and the sunlight from the memorial’s southern exposure along with the grassy park surrounding and within its walls, contribute to the serenity of the area. Thus this memorial is for those who have died, and for us to remember them.

The memorial’s origin is located approximately at the center of the site; its legs each extending two hundred feet towards the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.  The walls, contained on one side by the earth, are ten feet below ground at their point of origin, gradually lessening in height, until they finally recede totally into the earth, at their ends.  The walls are to be made of a hard, polished black granite, with the names to be carved in a simple Trojan letter.  The memorial’s construction involves recontouring the area within the wall’s boundaries, so as to provide for an easily accessible descent, but as much of the site as possible should be left untouched.  The area should remain as a park, for all to enjoy.”

Actual handwritten text:

Thank you to Maya Lin for imagining and working diligently to help bring into being a moving tribute to veterans, by using some of the best aspects of memorial, honor, and solemnity.

Maya Lin on Wikipedia

Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Wikipedia

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The Importance of Want

It is important for the health of your social community to work hard and smart to determine your wants.

One of the supporting premises of this blog project is this:

Want is generally good.

And whatever programming you’ve received that suggests to you the things you want are bad - that programming should be questioned.

Too many pleasures are incorrectly characterized as perverse or selfish.

Satisfying our hungers is good.

Fulfilling our desires is good.

Relishing our pleasures is good.

It can be as unhealthy to diminish our appetites as it can be unhealthy to exceed them.

The starvation of one want can lead to excesses in another want, and vice versa.

The pursuit of balance is often improved by pursuing more wants, to balance each other out.

At the point you realize you may have a lack of want, that is a point to re-examine your core assumptions and reasoning processes.

Wants lubricate the world, making it slide more happily.

If you sense you have a lack of want, then talk to counselors, read books on the topics, and consider taking on additional social contacts outside of your current social circle, a social circle that may have helped to create the environment and rationales leading to your absences of want.

If you cannot determine what you want for yourself, you may disarm the most empathetically talented people around you, because if you can’t determine what you want, they will likely have a difficult time helping you obtain it.

Want is good.

Want is healthy.

Define your wants - on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, monthly, yearly, and life long.  Wants are rarely set in stone.  They are often flexible by nature.  It is good to write them down, acknowledge them, and work toward them, changing them as needed.

Write out your internal dialogue of wants.  That process will likely help you and your entire social community.

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Tell Me What I Cannot Write About

Tell Me What I Cannot Write About

And I will write about it

Tell me what I cannot ask

And I will ask it

Tell me what I cannot study

And I will study it

Tell me what I cannot learn

And I will attempt to learn it

Tell me what I cannot see

And I will look for it

Tell me what I cannot hear

And I will listen to it

Tell me who I cannot know

And I will befriend them

Tell me who I cannot love

And I will love them

If you tell me what I cannot do

I will likely try to do it anyway

The only thing that will stop me

Is if you persuade me it might be better for others

Then, I will likely listen

And yield

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - A Day In The Life - 1918–2008

Thank you for showing us all what it was like to live a day in your life.

As a survivor of Stalin’s labor camps, you shared with the world the resilience of the human spirit in the worst of circumstances. 

Thank you for sharing your protests.

Thank you for speaking out when you knew there were worse things than exile.

Thank you for not being silent, so that others might not suffer the harsh realities you faced.

Thank you for sharing with all of us some of your important perspectives.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on Wikipedia

One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich on Wikipedia

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On a related note:  I’ve been watching Citizen Kane a couple times in the last few days, listening to the Peter Bogdanovich and Roger Ebert soundtrack commentaries, and these ideas came to me: 

Sometimes I think people perceive genius to be a collection of rare and exquisitely talented gifts.

That may be true.  But more often, genius may be found in people who inexhaustibly use the limited gifts they have for greater purposes.

Whatever gifts you have, no matter how small, use them to the best of your intents.

Never stop running.

Never give up.

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