The Whitest Boy Alive[via FoxyTunes / The Whitest Boy Alive]

<p><b>The Whitest Boy Alive</b></p><p class=”foxytunes-signature” style=”font-size: 12px;”>[via <a href="http://www.foxytunes.com">FoxyTunes</a> / <a href="http://www.foxytunes.com/artist/the_whitest_boy_alive">The Whitest Boy Alive</a>]</p>

Klaus Burgel

I like to think of my jewelry as a secretion. Like a bee produces honey, the jewelry is what comes out of me.

I find it very difficult to live up to my own standards. It’s like wrestling an alligator. I know there is a place where I feel complete but the place is always shifting. There are times when I wonder why I do what I do and what it is all for. But then, each piece I finish opens a new door .

Beautiful objects turn the most mundane activity into a ceremony.

I prefer to use materials which do not like to talk, materials which are shy, locked up in themselves. Their silent power is driving me crazy. I try everything to make them open their mouths, everything to make them talk to me.

If I use a found object, it is usually for the opposite reasons. Found objects are loaded with history, chatty and eager to tell their story.

The pieces I feel very strong about usually combine discipline with chance. Intellect with emotion. They encourages me not to listen to all the sweet voices I so very much would like to please.

A successful piece to me has to incorporate the surprise of discovery, a secret and a mistake

I would love to see more obsessive craftsmanship, abstract constructions, deconstructivist ornaments, anti-dogmatic and unpredictably honest. Work of divine madness, visually complex and free of seductive packaging. Work that is bold, confident and discrete. Work that makes use of the advantages of the small intimate format to connect with the human psyche.

Billy Collins

(from 1999): As I’m writing, I’m always reader conscious. I have one reader in mind, someone who is in the room with me, and who I’m talking to, and I want to make sure I don’t talk too fast, or too glibly. Usually I try to create a hospitable tone at the beginning of a poem. Stepping from the title to the first lines is like stepping into a canoe. A lot of things can go wrong.

(from 2004): Moving from the position of United States poet laureate to New York State poet laureate might seem like a demotion or a drop in rank to the military-minded. It might even appear that I am heading toward eventually being crowned laureate of my ZIP code. But in fact, it is very gratifying to be honored again as a representative of poetry, this time by my native state where I grew up — more or less — and continue to live.

Louise Bourgeois

Bourgeois’s essentially diaristic conception of drawing: the images she draws are made in immediate psychic response to the experience of daily life.

Otte (a rap song)

Frank Gehry

On the treadmill today: