Hermann Hesse: “We Who Bore the Mark…”

 

Photographers Unknown, We Who Bore the Mark

“We who bore the mark might well be considered by the rest of the world as strange, even as insane and dangerous. We had awoken, or were awakening, and we were striving for an ever perfect state of wakefulness, whereas the ambition and quest for happiness of the others consisted of linking their opinions, ideals, and duties, their life and happiness, ever more closely with those of the herd. They, too, strove; they, too showed signs of strength and greatness. But as we saw it, whereas we marked men represented Nature’s determination to create something new, individual, and forward-looking, the others lived in the determination to stay the same.”

—Hermann Hesse, Damian, Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

John Steinbeck: “Our Species is the Only Creative Species”

Photographers Unknown, Our Species is the Only Creative Species

“Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.” 

—John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Kôichi Imaizumi, “Berlin Drifters”

Kôichi Imaizumi, “Berlin Drifters”, Trailer, 2017, Habakari Cinema Research, Jurgen Bruning Filmproduction

Pinku eiga star and intense adult director Kôichi Imaizumi teamed with Japan’s prominent adult manga author for the film “Berlin Drifters”. A low-budget, all-hands-on-deck affair, “Berlin Drifters “ unites a who’s who of Asian and European eroticists, from Dutch porn star Michael Selvaggio and German self-described erotic photographer Claude Kolz to Chinese LGBT activist and dramatist Xiaogang Wei. Most notable, however, could be the participation of Japanese gay erotica artist Gengoroh Tagame, most easily described as Japan’s Tom of Finland.

Imaizumi is perhaps best known as a pinku eiga actor — the soft-core Japanese mini-features, celebrated in last year’s Nikkastu Roman Porno Series and which have given some of the country’s most prominent filmmakers their starts. As a director, Imaizumi dabbled with graphic sex in both “The Secret to My Silky Skin”, starring Majima, and the troubling sci-fi rape comedy “The Family Complete”.

Imaizumi’s hallmarks of sexuality and masculinity are present in “Berlin Drifters”,  but also the insights regarding acceptance and the stigmas surrounding homosexuality in Japan. “Berlin Drifters” was shown at the Hong Kong Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. Sales of the film are through Habakari Cinema Research.

Markus Zusak: “Shower After Shower”

Photographer Unknown, Shower After Shower

When their bodies had finished scouring for gaps in the door, their souls rose up. When their fingernails had scratched at the wood and in some cases were nailed into it by the sheer force of desperation, their spirits came toward me, into my arms, and we climbed out of those shower facilities, onto the roof and up, into eternity’s certain breadth. They just kept feeding me. Minute after minute. Shower after shower.”
Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

Subjective Experience

A Subjective Experience

“Human consciousness cannot be a passive observer of the outer world, just interpreting the input signals that are being received by the brain from the external world. Rather, it compares the fitness of a person’s inner world — feelings, perception, imagination, dreams, desires, etc. — with the external world, allegedly accepted as ‘objective reality’ outside individual consciousness. However, such an objective reality cannot be so objective as it is believed to be. Due to various internal processes to achieve a balance between the inner and outer worlds, consciousness insensibly changes the physical characteristics of reality, making it a subjective phenomenon, at least to a large extent. For this reason, in order to determine what is real (outside of human consciousness) and what is just a subjective experience, it is actually a difficult job.”
Elmar Hussein

Alan Wilson Watts: “A Whole System of Symbols”

Photographer Unknown, Model Unknown, (A Whole System of Symbols)

“The art of meditation is a way of getting into touch with reality, and the reason for it is that most civilized people are out of touch with reality because they confuse the world as it with the world as they think about it and talk about it and describe it. For on the one hand there is the real world and on the other there is a whole system of symbols about that world which we have in our minds. These are very very useful symbols, all civilization depends on them, but like all good things they have their disadvantages, and the principle disadvantage of symbols is that we confuse them with reality, just as we confuse money with actual wealth.”
Alan Wilson Watts