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The essence of songs is neither vocal nor cerebral but organic.

John Berger

Oil painting did to appearances what capital did to social relations. It reduced everything to the equality of objects.
JOHN BERGER

Appearance Capital Equality Everything Object Oil Painting Reduce Relation Social
What is significant, and is so difficult for the urban stranger to understand, is that the two statements are connected by an and not by a but.
JOHN BERGER

Connect Difficult Significant Statement Strange Understand
It dreams, like a dog in its basket, of hares in the open.
JOHN BERGER

Basket Dog Dream Haire Like Open
It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it
JOHN BERGER

Establish Explain Fact Facts Place Seeing Surround Undo Word World
Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.
JOHN BERGER

Look Love Men Women
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
Words are so often used in the opposite sense, as a screen of diversion. It’s the struggle towards truthfulness which is the same whether one is writing a poem, a novel or an argument.
JOHN BERGER

Argument Diversion Opposite Same Screen Struggle Towards Truthfulness Use Word Writing
We who draw do so not only to make something observed visible to others, but also to accompany something invisible to its incalculable destination
JOHN BERGER

Calculate Destination Draws Invisible Make Observed Something Visible
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
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
If the public photograph contributes to a memory, it is to the memory of an unknowable and total stranger.
JOHN BERGER

Contribute Memories Photograph Stranger Unknowable
Your lips, beloved, are like a honeycomb: honey and milk are under the tongue. And the smell of your clothes is like the smell of my home.
JOHN BERGER

Beloved Clothes Home Honeycomb Like Lip Milk Smell Tongue
You cant draw it for others. You can try, of course, but it doesn’t work. People obeying rules laid down my somebody else is not the same thing as respecting life. And if you want to respect life, you have to draw a line.
JOHN BERGER

Course Else Life Line Obey Other People Respect Somebody
When he painted a road, the roadmakers were there in his imagination, when he painted the turned earth of a ploughed field, the gesture of the blade turning the earth was included in his own act.
JOHN BERGER

Earth Field Gesture Imagination Paint Ploughed Reality Road Roadmaker Turn Warth
The essence of songs is neither vocal nor cerebral but organic.
JOHN BERGER

Celebrate Essence Order Organic Song Vocal
Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display. The nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress.
JOHN BERGER

Beauty Condemned Display Dresses Naked Nue Place

The essence of songs is neither vocal nor cerebral but organic.

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The essence of songs is neither vocal nor cerebral but organic.

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