February 21st, 2011 / 4:16 pm
Snippets

“Passion in writing or art–or in a lover–can make you overlook a lot of flaws. Passion is underrated. I think we should all produce work with the urgency of outsider artists, painting and jerking off to our kinky private obsessions. Sophistication is conformist, deadening. Let’s get rid of it.”
–Dodie Bellamy in Barf Manifesto

11 Comments

  1. NLY

      I’ve known highly sophisticated, highly passionate people. This is too simple.

  2. M. Kitchell

      I love words
      ‘Cos they’re so weak
      Repeat

      -Ariana Reines in Coeur de Lion

  3. stephen

      :)

  4. stephen

      :)

  5. NLY

      I don’t know what this is conveying, so I can’t respond, at this point.

  6. Scott mcclanahan

      This is perfect Kitchell.

  7. M. Kitchell

      i totally agree

  8. Mark Doten

      like

  9. michael

      yep

  10. James Yeh

      Seems to me what’s actually needed is a mix of what Bellamy’s talking about–all of it and also none of it. The highly passionate, highly dispassionate, highly sophisticated, highly debased. Also lowly all those things, and everything in between.

      I like what Bellamy says about the “urgency of outsider artists.” That’s good. But I’m confused by the part about “painting and jacking off to our kinky private obsessions”–which is of course all fine and well–but I’m not sure how actually doing that, or attempting to do that, is going to lead to the clear-eyed, flaw-noticing gaze she’s wanting in the first place, merely a less conformist version of the same blind thing. The blindness of the kinky private fetishist, to me, seems only one notch above the blindness of a passionate conformist and is still blindness. What I want, I think, is something that transcends both, and sees.

      Blindness is conformist, deadening. Let’s get rid of that.

  11. James Yeh

      Also, on a side-note, am I wrong in wanting a lover who would be willing to overlook a few of my flaws?