//Talking Differently to Myself

What I liked most about the Merchant of Venice is how it played with my presumptions. It turned them on its head while letting the audience lead with moral smugness before turning it back on me again. It made me suspend moral judgement and to see an underlying sameness to the different point of views. It makes one think what is isn't necessarily so, and maybe that the alternatives are no different except for being different.

Salman has been on a recent craft and material revival: the fetishization of handmade objects and a rejection of the machine. But is machined perfection so bad? Why is it we crave a sort of retrospective return to this romantic notion of craft and folk. Is it because of a seeming human connection an errant stitch conveys? or is it a longing for material, tactile feedback. Has modernity been so cold? Do we regress or do we move forward. I think it is the engagement of the senses that he is craving. The smell of leather, and conversely, also the smell of PVC. The visual tic of a craggly line. Cold metal is fine, as long as it has an other to play off against. What

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is another Schnabel beauty.