Word + Pictures = Inspiration

I found all these from random tumblrs over the years so I don't know who to give credit to. But I love these images!!!

Have a wonderful last hour of November 2011. We will never live it again!

Shakespeare Quote to Live By

I'm not sure if the punctuation is correct, but this is just a little something I made on photoshop. It's becoming one of my favorite quotes. Will Shakespeare was a wise, wise man.

Keats

"I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks; your loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute"

- John Keats

Image from Love Trains

And I sunned it with my smiles

A Poison Tree

BY WILLIAM BLAKE

I was angry with my friend:

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe:

I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears

Night and morning with my tears,

And I sunned it with my smiles

And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,

Till it bore an apple bright,

And my foe beheld it shine,

And he knew that it was mine, --

And into my garden stole

When the night had veiled the pole;

In the morning, glad, I see

My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

I was messing around on different poetry sites today and this one greatly stood out to me. You don't usually see many poems about revenge. Pain, love, melancholy? Yes. But revenge? No. Thought I'd share it with you all on this rainy night in Georgia!

Photo from Igor + Andre

Fashion Advice Part I

“Good clothes open all doors.”Thomas Fuller 

Errol Flynn

James Dean

“A man should look as if he had bought his clothes with intelligence, put them on with care, and then forgotten all about them.”

Hardy AmiesQuotes and Images from The Impossible Cool

James Vincent McMorrow's We Don't Eat

I'm having a thought here; on Of The Thing Sung I share poems, quotes from novels and I even sometimes talk about plays, films and book reviews. But what do I not talk about? Music. It's in the very title of my blog and I don't talk about it! Tsk Tsk 

Lyrics have the ability to define generations in the same way that novels do. Bruce Springsteen's Thunder Road, J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, The Rolling Stones' Gimme Shelter and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Need I say more? 

I want to start a new segment to remedy this problem. Weekly, if not more frequently, I want to feature a musician whose lyrics demonstrate that they understand love of the thing sung, not of the song or of the singing. 

Here's the first, a beautiful song by Irishman James Vincent McMorrow. Endlessly inspiring and nostalgic.

verse 1

if this is redemption, why do i bother at all
theres nothing to mention, and nothing has changed
still i’d rather be working at something, than praying for the rain
so i wander on, till someone else is saved

i moved to the coast, under a mountain
swam in the ocean, slept on my own
at dawn i would watch the sun, cut ribbons through the bay
i’d remember all, the things my mother wrote

chorus

that we dont eat until your fathers at the table
we dont drink until the devils turned to dust
never once has any man i’ve met been
able to love
so if i were you, i’d have a little trust

verse 2

two thousand years, i’ve been in that water
two thousand years, sunk like a stone
desperately reaching for nets
that the fishermen have thrown
trying to find, a little bit of hope

me i was holding, all of my secrets soft and hid
pages were folded, then there was nothing at all
so if in the future i might, need myself a saviour
i’ll remember what was, written on that wall

chorus

bridge

am i an honest man and true
have i been good to you at all
oh i’m so tired of playing these games
we’d just be running down
the same old lines, the same old stories of
breathless trains and, worn down glories
houses burning, worlds that turn on their own

chorus

so we dont eat until your fathers at the table
we dont drink until the devils turned to dust
and never once has, any man i’ve met been
able to love
so if i were you my friend
learn to have just a, little bit of trust.

Advice from Presidents

"Either write something worth reading, or do something worth writing."

- Benjamin Franklin

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."
- Theodore Roosevelt

Photo by Fanny Latour-Lambert

Knowing, Creating

“Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.”- Walker Evans

“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”- George Bernard Shaw

Images from booom.com and Molly Steele's blog (which is private at the moment)

Quotes to Live By

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much

- Oscar Wilde

The safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.
- C.S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters

Images from Fanny Latour-Lamert and Hedi Slimane

Dear American Airlines Review

It's time for another

of Jonathan Miles' novel Dear American Airlines

Here's an excerpt from the book's jacket if you need a little explanation!

Bennie Ford, a fifty-three-year-old failed poet turned translator, is traveling to his estranged daughter’s wedding when his flight is canceled. Stuck with thousands of fuming passengers in the purgatory of O’Hare International Airport, he watches the clock tick and realizes that he will miss the ceremony. Frustrated, irate, and helpless, Bennie does the only thing he can: he starts to write a letter. But what begins as a hilariously excoriating demand for a refund soon becomes a lament for a life gone awry, for years misspent, talent wasted, and happiness lost. Bennie’s writing is infused with a sense of remorse for the actions of a lifetime—and made all the more urgent by the fading hope that if he can just make it to the wedding, he might have a chance to do something right.

This novel is one of my absolute favorites! I've read Dear American Airlines once a year for the past three years and I just adore it. I read it months ago and I still get caught up in thinking about its beautiful moments. 

Like when Bennie's proud Southern mother, Miss Willa, reduced by a stroke to scrawling messages to him on post-it notes, suspects he will commit suicide after his daughter's wedding. As he is preparing to leave for the airport, she hands him a post-it that says only, "no."

And when Bennie tries to win the love of his life, Stella, back by screaming her name at the bottom of their apartment steps. At the time they were living in New Orleans. He immediately stops screaming, realizing the ridiculousness of life.  Brooding and bitter at literature for stealing his scene, for the rest of his life he swears that if she had a different name, he would have won her back.

I love how Jonathan Miles weaves Bennie's past (the stories of his childhood, his love for Stella and their daughter) his present (hilarious anecdotes about the absurdity of airport travel) and his uncertain future (for twenty years he has been living only for walking his daughter down the aisle. When that is done...) all into one LETTER. It's a letter people! GAH Brilliant. Hilarious. Touching. Sad. Loved it.

At just under 200 pages, it's a quick read and would be a perfect airport companion novel (Irony I'm sure Bennie would appreciate). If I were a Hollywood director I would snatch this up. The movie version would have OSCAR written all over it.