Beardsley claimed, somewhat heroically, that aesthetic experience is distinguished by its unity, intensity and complexity. Dickie argued, in reply, that such characeristics were either not plausibly necessary conditions of aesthetic experience, or else that Beardsley's description of them was inadequate. Part of Dickie's attack was completely beside the point, since he confused aesthetic experiences with the experiences of works of art; the fact that some experiences of works of art are not as Beardsley describes is, or should be, irrelevant. But it cannot be denied that Dickie was right that even if the problems of characterizing the three features were resolved, it would still not be remotely plausible that the three Beardsleyian features are necessary (or sufficient) conditions of aesthetic experience. Nevertheless, all that would show would be that Beardsley's account of the aesthetic is inadequate. That Beardsley's extraordinary and heroic Trinitarian doctrine cannot be maintained does not mean that the notion of the aesthetic should be abandoned. That would be a flawed induction from a single instance. 

(from SEP, by Nick Zangwill)

the selby is not in my place (2)

From top to bottom:
i. Entrance to The Lair
ii. I miss my math teacher and his adorkable ways
iii. FEMALE cookbook 1979
iv. CAN YOU SAY FLAN PARTY>>???>
v. Dioramic scene from the Cupboard of Kitsch. Note: plastic cockatoo, teachers' day quote, Nineties-era McDonalds porcelain figure and miniature tangerine tree.
vi. An old book I found lying around detailing the short lives of other people. Published by Picador.
vii. For example, Billie Holiday had a short life.

150 years of photojournalism

Whee so I'm blogging from the KI library when I should really be doing notes for East-West philosophy. PRIORITIES, WHAT PRIORITIES?

Anyway, prelim results have come screaming back today. Woe is me! Melancholia, ambivalence, etc. etc.

I'm trying to convince myself that one day, I'll look back at these times and feel as sense of longing and nostalgia. But that would only remind me of the Duffy question, the memory of which only brings me heartache and palpitations.

Gonna go for KOI. Question of the hour: should I reward myself with new books? Pragmatist says no, but (rogue) economist says yes. Sigh @ vulgar ubiquity of middle-class dilemma.

notes

1. Seven days left to my monthly allowance... I am excited. 
2. I cannot study in a group environment. People are so distracting!
3. Today, I visited the Istana for the first time in my life. I did not emerge more patriotic, but did learn new phrases to describe movements in and out of palatial grounds. Also, was interviewed by local Chinese newspaper. Charmed.
4. Excerpt from Sontag's On Photography: "While photographs fill out our mental image of the past, the photographs being taken now transform what is present into a mental image, like the past." 
5. Fake money saves Brazil from hyperinflation – this is interesting: through the manipulation of people's attitudes towards an unstable currency, brilliant economists save the day. 
6. I dreamt about being in a Broadway retrospective, and was cast as a gollum in a variant of the musical Wicked. I didn't rehearse with the cast at all, I missed all the cues for my song-and-dance numbers, and Ian McKellen was backstage. It was humiliating.

"painterly"

I love this acoustic version of 100,000 fireflies.

I'm inordinately nervous about tomorrow. It's going to be KI, Lit and SEA history all at once like grenades being thrown while you're chained to some hideous chair. But what can I do, really? I'll just pick up the pieces and continue walking, only this time a stronger person with the wind in my hair and chocolate all over my face. 

PMSL

WATCH THIS



AND THIS



YOU'LL THANK ME.

mmm linen

I am very, very excited about trying out my silky-soft Muji bedspread tonight. Seersucker. Am inveterate Muji whore. But IKEA works for me too.

(Spent the whole of 4 minutes trying to announce this in non-skanky, value-neutral way.)

I like italics

Urgh woke up today to an empty house and my grandmother's slow walk to the kitchen. I'm bringing her to visit my grandfather again. I hope it rains forever. Cathedrals in the water.

teeth

susan and friends, or, things I did today

So, feeling slightly bored after school, I went down to Kinokuniya (surprise, surprise) intending to wither away my life savings on books that I need to read. There is always a grating discomfort, like a knot in my chest, when I discover a book that I NEED to read but fail to appropriate. It's like a little blonde pixie braids my alveoli together whenever that happens, and when I finally choke to death, it will flit out of my half-open, frothing mouth to deliver a friendship bracelet that will somehow land the story of my life in Chicken Soup for the Book Lover's Soul or Paranormal Activity. 

Anyway, my hand hovered around the S section and snatched Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963 independent of my conscious, rational mind. After floating around the Literature, Sleazy Romance Novel and Game Fiction shelves, my hand snatched Camera Lucida and Poem of the Deep Song. Realizing the folly of my ways, (and my forgetting to bring the membership card that would have entitled me to fabulous and dazzling offers beyond my wildest bookslut fantasies,) I placed the books back, making impassioned, if not unrealistic, vows to return someday.

That day exists only beyond the horizon of my knowledge.

Overcome with despair, I ordered a plate of roast pork when I had lunch with my family at Zhou's Kitchen. It's a nice place with impossibly uncomfortable seats and stiff-lipped waitresses. It's the furthest my family can go with my grandparents, but my grandmother still takes half an hour to walk from one end of Novena Square to the other. The roast pork arrived in neat cubes that were accompanied with a lacing of mustard. The mustard was dry. About 748 other dishes arrived shortly after that, including Salted Crab with Salty Beehoon and Salt (tossed with a handful of spring onions as a sort of defeatist afterthought,) and a noxious stew of fermented soybean paste with vegetables (that necessitated a comparison to Japanese natto to reassure ourselves of the bourgeoise value of its near-formidable pungency.) Not every dish tested our thresholds of taste and adventure though; the spring roll (singular, because it was enormous) with wasabi mayo fascinated us, and the coffee pork ribs with toasted almonds were, for lack of a more suitable description, freaking nice. The ribs were meaty and the portions were generous. We were stuffed and faintly disgusted with ourselves.

After lunch, my parents (with granny in tow) went to the hospital to visit my grandfather, while Esther and I went for pre-examinations retail therapy because we would only visit my gramps in the evening slot, and because we needed to. She bought herself new TOMS! Good for her! People light up when they first slip their feet into the soft hugging fabric, and immediately forget about the exorbitant prices at the hipster-shoe monopoly that is rockstar. They rationalize that a poor child, likely to be really ethnic, like African or Asian, would receive a pair of shoes in their thatched-hut villages, and then fantasize about their philanthropy for the rest of the week. But amidst the several levels of exploitation, the Feel Good that comes with the purchase of a pair lasts as long as the shoes last. I love TOMS. I also love rockstar for bringing them in. The capitalization of the brand name is just a little annoying. 

In the evening we visited my grandfather, who has been asking every visitor to give him ten dollars so that he might take a taxi back home. We are like, No but you can't be discharged yet, and he's like The hospital already sent us the bill, and I can go home, mostly vocalized in rough growls. It breaks my heart to see him disheveled in blue pajamas in this blue ward with clashing green curtains and the heaving, moist jowls beneath oxygen masks wherever I turn; no amount of store-hopping could ever complete me.