“Being in a film school was like an island in the craziness.”—Vilmos Zsigmond, in Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, Budapest. S5E5
An Oscar-winning cinematographer remembers film school in Hungary’s hardest years as an island in the craziness. Most of us have needed one.
"I don't know what else I'd do if I didn't write songs, or sing." Christine McVie, interview with Larry Katz, 1987
In 1987 a journalist asked Christine McVie whether she could still see herself doing this at fifty or sixty. Her answer wasn't a promise. It was something truer.
"I want something serious, something fresh — something with soul in it! Onward, onward." — Vincent van Gogh, letter to his brother Theo, The Hague, 3 January 1883. Letter 298.
Through working hard, Van Gogh wrote, "I'm hunting it and fighting for it." The story of a man who never claimed to have arrived — only to keep going. Onward, onward.
"El sueño de la razón produce monstruos. / The sleep of reason produces monsters."— Francisco Goya, Los Caprichos, Plate 43 (1799).
Everyone quotes half of it. Goya's own caption said the fuller thing — reason and imagination aren't enemies. They need each other.