John Wynberg
@johnwynberg.bsky.social
Literature | Cinema | Art | Music | Philosophy | Psychoanalysis | English | Spanish | German | French
“[...] what I discover through my immersion in that summer is an immense desire, impossible to put into words, which reduces to insignificance the cheerful willingness of girls who, with full awareness, do everything, [+]
“On a summer’s day like this, when everyone was filled with a pleasant inertia, nothing could possibly arouse one’s mistrust in the institutions or motives of people in general, [+]
"Moby Dick ceasing to care any longer about resemblance (those scruples of his early days) pines after pedestrians of all shapes and sizes, so long as they more or less give the illusion, alone on a beach (solitude will, in the long run, suffice: every man by himself is Ahab) – men and women, [1/4]
“All my life I had been reaching for the tangible, and it had evaded me, much like the myth of Tantalus, much as if the tangible itself were an illusion. My life had been made up of just these disrelated, delusive images hovering only for a moment [1/5]
« C'est davantage dans les poèmes et les phrases d'écrivains soigneusement recopiés dans un agenda de 1958 en carton rouge [...] que j'ai la plus forte probabilité de saisir les bribes de mon discours intérieur. [+]
« Dès que tu t’éloignes, je crois que le dormeur qui nous rêve se réveille. Mais non. Il se retourne dans son lit. Je te vois et son rêve recommence. » Jean Cocteau, L'Aigle à deux têtes, 1946.
„Ich lese Kriminalromane, und sie interessieren mich nicht im geringsten; ich merke nicht einmal, daß ich sie schon gelesen habe. Einer würde mir fürs ganze Leben reichen. Genausogut könnte ich mich betrinken oder Pillen schlukken oder einen hilfreichen Menschen bitten, [+]
🎶 Herbie Hancock, Empyrean Isles, 1964: youtu.be/yQgv5bRqmnk?...
One Finger Snap (Remastered)
YouTube video by Herbie Hancock - Topic
youtu.be
"What do you mean you hate jazz?" 🎥 Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) and Mia (Emma Stone) in Damien Chazelle's La La Land (2016).
ESTRAGON: I can’t go on like this. VLADIMIR: That’s what you think. ESTRAGON: If we parted? That might be better for us. VLADIMIR: We’ll hang ourselves tomorrow. [Pause.] Unless Godot comes. ESTRAGON: And if he comes? VLADIMIR: We’ll be saved. Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot, 1952/1956.
“Odysseus was melting into tears; his cheeks were wet with weeping, as a woman weeps, as she falls to wrap her arms around her husband, fallen fighting for his home and children. She is watching as he gasps and dies. She shrieks, a clear high wail, collapsing [+]
“The belly is just like a whining dog: it begs and forces one to notice it, despite exhaustion or the depths of sorrow. My heart is full of sorrow, but my stomach is always telling me to eat and drink. It tells me to forget what I have suffered, and fill it up.” Homer, The Odyssey [Tr. Emily Wilson]
Favourite films and series watched in July: The Boy (Nagisa Ōshima, 1969) Cape Fear: Season 1 (Nick Antosca, 2026) Obsession (Curry Barker, 2025) The Odyssey (Christopher Nolan, 2026) Paradise: Seasons 1 & 2 (Dan Fogelman, 2025-26) Queen of Earth (Alex Ross Perry, 2015)
🎥 Alice (Élodie Bouchez) and Jason Tantra (Alain Chabat) in Quentin Dupieux's Reality (2014).
“Everyone’s a critic. No wonder now, is it, why the world’s in such a mess. Can’t nobody agree on nothin’.” Barry Gifford, Perdita Durango, 1992.
🎥 David Cronenberg and Elijah Wood in Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett's Ready or Not: Here I Come (2026).
"Stranger, are you so foolish that you choose to give up, and take pleasure in your pain?" Homer, The Odyssey. [Tr. Emily Wilson]
📷 Francisco de Goya, Para eso habeis nacido [This is what you were born for], 1863.
“Especially through the 1990s, Chilean society underwent what we may call a fast postmodernization: an explosion of consumerist hedonism, superficial sexual permissiveness, competitive individualism, and so on. Those in power realized that such atomized social space is much more effective [1/3]
