A few links that pinged my radar screen recently:
“50 Books to Inspire Artists of All Kinds,” by Emily Temple at Flavorwire. With thanks to artist Tina Rath for bringing the list to my attention.
I’ve always loved abandon and decay–mud brick hovels slowing crumbling back into the desert from which they were raised; collapsed, weed-filled homesteads on the high plains; old piers rotting into the waves… This photostream of “The 33 Most Beautiful Abandoned Places in the World,”on Imgur, brought to my attention by Valerie Martin, shows a lot of beauty in that vein. (And should you have photos or links of related material, please add them to the comment thread–the world is full of such spectacle.)
Which brings to mind my favorite poem, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias,” one of the few I’ve got memorized. (Click on that link to read the poem, listen to it read aloud (I’m not wild about the voice work–if I can summon the courage, I’ll take a pass at it myself), and read some commentary by David Mikics.)
