It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn’t use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like “What about lunch?”
[A.A. Milne]

This is an article in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung that came up when I searched for the German version of “everything solid melts into air.” I was trying to figure out whether Marx was actually quoting Goethe’s Faust, or just channeling parts of Faust (just channeling, it turns out).

The article is dense even in German, and therefore hilarious when run through a translation engine (this is Google Chrome’s automatic one). Here’s a paragraph from two-thirds of the way through. They’re translating “Faust” as “Fist,” which you can’t blame them for, being computers (that is what the word means):

Society of oblivion

To accelerate the coming orgy of forgetfulness: Fist liquidated memory as the condition of personal and collective identity by in Lethe’s dew in the spa bath of oblivion, the sliding track erase his crimes. Fist-exempt interest in the global flexibility and openness from the hassle of “ballast” memory-based phenomena such as ethics and morality. He follows this the ironic Goethe’s motto of a globalization-friendly progress ethics. “Will you Morali, freshest then take the” For Goethe knows: “So little to dampen now the steam cars, so little as this is also in the ethical possible.”

like this morning, when the wild geese came squawking,
flapping their rusty hinges, and something about their trek
across the sky made me think about my life, the places
of brokenness, the places of sorrow, the places where grief
has strung me out to dry. And then the geese come calling,
the leader falling back when tired, another taking her place.
Hope is borne on wings. Look at the trees. They turn to gold
for a brief while, then lose it all each November.
Through the cold months, they stand, take the worst
weather has to offer. And still, they put out shy green leaves
come April, come May. The geese glide over the cornfields,
land on the pond with its sedges and reeds.
You do not have to be wise. Even a goose knows how to find
shelter, where the corn still lies in the stubble and dried stalks.
All we do is pass through here, the best way we can.
They stitch up the sky, and it is whole again.

[“Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself,” by Barbara Crooker, from Radiance. Given to me by Apricot Irving.]

[As is true of most of the videos I post, this is quite old. German concert musicians demonstrate how to use the instrument on patriotically colored vuvuzelas, and then play Brahms and Ravel; with thanks to CultureMaking and ZeitOnline.]

This is my Old Testament professor, Anathea Portier-Young. Her grandfather was an army medic in World War II, and this is another of the videos for After the Yellow Ribbon.

Anathea Portier-Young: On the Old Testament as a resource for healing and lament from Pilar Timpane on Vimeo.

This is another video for After the Yellow Ribbon, with Sam Wells, who is the current Dean of Duke Cathedral.

Sam Wells: On healing in community and the phases of forgiveness from Pilar Timpane on Vimeo.

is a line from the Communist Manifesto, about what it means to turn things into capital. It’s also drawing on a passage from Goethe’s Faust, where Mephisto talks about a man who owns six stallions thereby having twenty-four feet — as though the properties of what we own are absorbed seamlessly into our beings. And it’s the title of a book by Marshall Berman, about moderinity (beautiful book).

In wandering google just now I found the following, which claims to be a trailer for a film called All that is Solid Melts into Air, but I can’t find the film. There’s one by that name from this year’s Sundance, but it’s not the same one — the Sundance one appears to be about oil, and this one is about architecture.

Here’s the trailer in Russian with German subtitles (good entertainment value even if you know neither language):

Trailer ‘All That Is Solid Melts Into Air’ (Alles Stehende verdampft) from isabella willinger on Vimeo.

Here it is with English subtitles:

All That Is Solid Melts Into Air (Trailer Engl.) from isabella willinger on Vimeo.

Because in order for love to be present there must be a lover, a beloved, and the love between them. So, he says, you can’t have love without also having three-in-one.

This is the second in the series of promotional video interviews for the Veterans’ Day event, with New Testament scholar Richard Hays.

Richard Hays: On scripture’s resources for healing from Pilar Timpane on Vimeo.

Hey, I wasn’t around for SNL in the nineties. Or for Maya Angelou, really. But this is still hilarious.

This is a beautifully-shot video made as promotion for an event on healing the wounds of war. I’ve been involved a little in the organization — sending e-mails and coordinating the video interviews was part of my job, and the filmmaker and professors did really lovely work. This is the first of four videos:

Stanley Hauerwas: On moral fragmentation, formation, and repair from Pilar Timpane on Vimeo.