Three Lives – Gertrude Stein, Simone Weil & Alan Sondheim
Alan Sondheim 
(via)
Some eccentric and interesting people were born on February 3, the ones that interest me all happened to be Jewish.
Have you read Three Lives by Gertrude Stein? 
You can sample or read the entire novel here. The Review is here.
Judy Grahn lists the following principles behind Stein’s work:
1 Commonality
2 Essence
3 Value
4 Grounding the Continuous present
5 Play
6 Transformation
(via wikipedia)
“By the power of words we always mean their power of illusion and error….(skip) God and truth are such words: also justice, love and good. It is dangerous to use words of this kind. They are like ordeal. To use them legitimately one must avoid referring them to anything humanly conceivable and at the same time one must associate with them ideas and actions which are derived solely and directly from the light which they shed. Otherwise, everyone quickly recognizes them for lies.” Further along S. Weil wrote,
“There is no guarantee for democracy, or for the protection of the person agaisnt the collectivity, without a disposition of public life relating it to the higher good which is impersonal and unrelated to any political form. (Page 337 , The Simone Weil Reader, edited by George A. Panichas)
“Weil’s is the most comical life I have ever read about, and the most truly tragic and terrible.” – Flannery O’Connor, letter, 1955
“Simone WeilŠ made up her own revolution out of her vitals, like a spider or silkworm.” – Kenneth Rexroth, “Simone Weil,” 1957″
How shall we understand? (Anorexia of Simone Weil)
“To desire and to renounce at once—that is the mode of the anorexic. A refusal to “eat” (seek to possess, control) that for which one hungers is a way of honoring that which is eternally beautiful in the world: “We want to eat all the other objects of desire. The beautiful is that which we desire without wishing to eat it. We desire that it should be.” (Read more here.)
Simone Weil: A saint for our time? by Jillian Becker
Last year vitro-nasu celebrated Stein and Sondheim’s birthday and forgot about Simone, this year Sondheim must follow our patron saint Simone Weil.
Alan Rocks.
“David Salle told me his style wasn’t my style or was my style not his style. I’m desperate for fame, I’m a star fucker. I watched Vito Acconci and Laurie Anderson swell into greatness and I used to call them Vito and Laurie and I thought I was in love with Laurie when I was running around with Vito’s ex-wife.” Read the whole thing and make sure to scroll down to see the funny lego animation.