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We follow songs in order to be enclosed. We find ourselves inside a message.

John Berger

This was once achieved by extensive deprivation. Today in the developed countries it is being achieved by imposing a false standard of what is and what is not desirable.
JOHN BERGER

Achieve Country Deprivation Desirable Develop False Impose Intensive Standard Today
The impulse to paint comes neither from observation nor from the soul (which is probably blind) but from an encounter: the encounter between painter and model: even if the model is a mountain or a shelf of empty medicine bottles.
JOHN BERGER

Blind Bottle Come Encounter Impulse Medicine Mountain Observation Soul
To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognised for oneself.
JOHN BERGER

Beauty Naked Oneself Recognise Seen
A drawing is an autobiographical record of one’s discovery of an event – either seen, remembered or imagined. A ‘finished’ work is an attempt to construct an event in itself.
JOHN BERGER

Autobiographical Discovery Drawing Event Imagine Record Remembered Seen
The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich.
JOHN BERGER

Before Century Poverty Priorities Result Scarcity Set World
At times failure is very necessary for the artist. It reminds him that failure is not the ultimate disaster. And this reminder liberates him from the mean fussing of perfectionism.
JOHN BERGER

Artist Disaster Failure Mean Necessary Perfection Time Ultimate
That we find a crystal or a poppy beautiful means that we are less alone, that we are more deeply inserted into existence than the course of a single life would lead us to believe.
JOHN BERGER

Alone Beautiful Believe Crystal Deeply Existence Less More Nature Ours Poppy
To remain innocent may also be. to remain ignorant.
JOHN BERGER

Ignorant Innocent May Remain
Poetry can repair no loss, but it defies the space which separates. And it does this by its continual labor of reassembling what has been scattered.
JOHN BERGER

Continual Define Poetry Reassembking Repair Scattered Separate Space
[O]ften art has judged the judges, pleaded revenge to the innocent and shown to the future what the past suffered, so that it has never been forgotten.
JOHN BERGER

Art Future Innocent Judge never Often Past Revenge Shown Suffer
You are observed with interest but you do not observe with interest – if you do, you will become less enviable. In this respect the envied are like bureaucrats; the more impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their power.
JOHN BERGER

Bureaucrat Greater Illusion Impersonal Interest Observe Others Power Themselves
We can become anything. That is why injustice is impossible here. There may be the accident of birth, there is no accident of death. Nothing forces us to remain what we were.
JOHN BERGER

Accident Anything Birth Impossible Injustice May Nothing Remain
It was more than that. It was the period in which we suffered more total losses than in all the rest of our life put together.
JOHN BERGER

Life Loss More Period Rest Suffer Together
For those who are behind the curtain, landmarks are no longer only geographic but also biographical and personal
JOHN BERGER

Behind Biographical Curtain Geographical Landmark Longer Personal
The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object – and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.
JOHN BERGER

Female Herself Object Sight Surveyed Turn Vision Woman
To live and die amongst foreigners may seem less absurd than to live persecuted or tortured by one’s fellow countrymen….
JOHN BERGER

Amouingest Countrymen Die Fellow Foreigner Less Live May Moving Persecuted Seem Torture World

We follow songs in order to be enclosed. We find ourselves inside a message.

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We follow songs in order to be enclosed. We find ourselves inside a message.

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