JON KATZ'S PERSONAL PAGE
WELCOME
QUOTH THE RAVEN, "NEVERMORE":
"Music is my mistress." - Duke Ellington
"A Play: The Herald Tribune, Kafka and a Quote." - Joseph Kosuth
"All life is a blur of Republicans and meat." - Zippy the Pinhead.
"You gonna eat that?" Barry Levinson's Diner.
"Richard, why don't you open the door?" -"Dusty" Fletcher And John Mason
"Benny's from heaven 'cause he damn sure ain't from me!” - James Moody
"When you describe art, you are also describing how meaning is produced and subjectivity formed. In other words, you are describing reality." Joseph Kosuth
"Fiction is based on reality unless you're a fairy-tale artist... You have to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have to know the material you're writing about before you alter it." Hunter S Thompson (AP 2003).
"The hostage crisis lasted almost a year. Most of my political advisers were urging me to launch an attack against Iran. I could have, in effect, destroyed Iran with one strike. And it would have been politically popular to do so. But in the process, I would have also killed thousands of innocent Iranians. And it would have undoubtedly resulted in the execution of our hostages... My family tied me back to the human element in the most important international, diplomatic and military decisions I had to make. And in the end, I was thankful that although my profession was that of a military man - commander in chief of the armed forces, prepared to defend my nation with maximum force if I had to - I was able to go through my entire term in office without firing a bullet, dropping a bomb or launching a missile." Jimmy Carter (Esquire, January 2005).
"I believe in the near future, the government will use anti-drug hysteria to set up a police state" William S. Burroughs (1947)
"Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write." Voltaire, letter to M. le Riche, February 6, 1770.
"Dare to be great." Stephen Rench (one of my four main teachers)
"All living things are sacred. Punishment is no solution; putting people in cages is no solution; more killing is no solution. These things happen because of fear." Jun Yasuda (one of my four main teachers)
"For those who may not find happiness to exercise religious faith, it's okay to remain a radical atheist, it's absolutely an individual right, but the important thing is with a compassionate heart -- then no problem." Dalai Lama.
"Accumulated feathers will sink the boat." - From quote in 1990 Amnesty International calendar.
"Listen to your body and your intuition for life and happiness. " Boutenko Family (Victoria Boutenko is one of my four main teachers.)
"Invest in loss." Cheng Man Ching (one of my four main teachers) /“No burn, no earn.” “No pain, no gain.” Benjamin Lo
"Meat's no treat for those you eat!" PETA
"Never an accident." Trudy Morse
"If you don't make mistakes, you aren't really trying." Coleman Hawking
"There are no secrets." Cheng Man Ching:
"Sometimes [Cheng Man Ching] would say, 'There are no secrets in this Tai Chi Chuan, but if there was a secret, it is that the hands don’t move.' This was yet another one of those times when I initially thought he was contradicting himself, only to realize later that in both cases he was saying the same thing: 'The hands don’t move' and 'The mind moves the ch’i' are the same and the secret of our Tai Chi Chuan." Wolfe Lowenthal, Gateway to the Miraculous.
"I see the love relationship ... as a triangle. The two bottom points are the two partners. The third one is God consciousness. The two get close to each other as the peak of the triangle comes near and they merge with one another in God. That’s love." Ram Dass (from interview with Sentient Times (Aug./Sept. 2003)
"It's an unnerving thought that we may be the living universe's supreme achievement and its worst nightmare simultaneously." Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything.
"Tomorrow is not real. It is an illusion. The only reality is now." From Zen in Martial Arts.
"He was the other half of my heartbeat." Dizzy Gillespie on Charlie Parker.
"One
thought can produce a million vibrations." John
Coltrane
"If someone fires bullets at me and I die without a groan and with God's name on my lips, then you should tell the world that here was a real Mahatma..." Gandhi on the morning of his assassination.
"He Ram, He Ram" - Ghandi's last words, praying to the deity.
"Be here now." Ram Dass /"It's Here Now (Are You?)" Bhagavan Das.
FROM THICH NHAT HANH AND ANTOINE de SAINT-EXUPERY
Thanks to the creators of the Leah Deni memorial page for introducing me to the following two powerful passages:
Contemplation on No-Coming and No-Going
By Thich Nhat Hanh
This body is not me
I am not limited by this body.
I am life without boundaries
I have never been born,
And I have never died.
Look at the ocean and the sky filled with stars,
Manifestations from my wondrous mind.
Since before time, I have been free
Birth and death are only doors through which we pass
Sacred thresholds on our journey
Birth and death are a game of hide and seek
So laugh with me,
Hold my hand,
Let us say goodbye
Say goodbye to meet again soon.
We meet today
We will meet again tomorrow
We meet at the source every moment.
We meet each other in all forms of life.
Thich Nhat
Hanh, Chanting and
Recitation from Plum Village. Page 188.
"If you want to build a ship, do not drum up people to
collect wood, and do not assign them tasks of work, but
rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of
the sea." –Antoine de Saint-Exupery
WELCOME
What began in 1999 as an introductory page focusing on creativity and quotes from Duke, Zippy and Diner, has expanded with added quotes from amazing people. I have interacted with many of the quoted people -- some in great depth.
I created this personal website to share the many gifts, insights and experiences that I have found and received during my life, sometimes from the selfless, sometimes from the absorbed, and sometimes from the inanimate. Such gifts should not be squirreled away.
ORIGINAL 1999 INTRODUCTION
Life is fluid, so there's no neat dichotomy between my professional webpage and this personal webpage. I felt compelled to do a personal webpage to present some matters that don't fit in as well with my law firm's site, and because I immensely enjoy creating.
Creativity is an essential part of my life, and I've often channeled it into areas that won't show my technical sloppiness in handmade drawings and paintings. My creations have included improvisational jazz, trial work, origami, writing, and now web design.
Creativity needs to be nurtured, not stifled. Creativity can be stifled through censorship; through the self; and through a host of power and influence centers -- including some or many government entities, schools, parents, corporations, social and religious movements, economic forces, and the mass media.
Some of my favorite creators constantly push the creative and even the politeness envelope. They include John Waters, Ben Katchor, Cecil Taylor, Dizzy Gillespie, R. Crumb, Jim Jarmusch, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Bill Burroughs, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Henry Miller, Bill Griffith, and Joseph Kosuth. One of my favorite experiences of pushing the creative envelope was an irregularly-shaped painting fitted within an irregularly-shaped frame, with numerous angles the shapes of glass shards. Why must a frame be rectangular, anyway? Why does a musical scale need to have only eight whole steps and thirteen half steps? Why does a feature film have to run between ninety and one hundred fifty minutes?
See this site's excellent links page with commentary.
Marks & Katz Appears on the O'Reilly Factor: January 25, 2006; rebroadcast during halftime on Super Bowl Sunday. Click here for the full interview, and here for more details.
View with Windows Media Player
Rebroadcast courtesy Fox News
JUST SAY KNOW TO SEARCHES AND TALKING WITH THE POLICE.
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This entire website is copyrighted by Jon Katz. 2000-2006