The Brooklyn Rail

I want to say first how important it is to have read and care about T.S. Eliot because of course this is what this responds to. And I very much love the “coolfreezing” when he says to the sun something about the “algorithmic amplification of our social for lines simplified by the economy of petrol distraction poisoned by pundits and overrated by influences who have nothing of meaning to say.” 

Then he speaks of that legacy as coming “unspooled” so I love the word unspooled, and then he goes on to other references to T.S. Eliot, and the unspool seems to be quite wonderful and I would to “spool” about this text, which is a very wonderful text having to do of course with the double portrait but also maybe even just a single portrait so I will continue reading and then say something I’ve read more and I very much like the expression of “her deafening hush imagine her deafening hush!” that’s really wonderful as is the stuttering disconnect of main character narcissism mutual disregard. How wonderful are all these words and this description of double portraits and of course I love “tune to the self yet tuned to the collective“—that seems to be quite wonderful to be both both things and I suppose this is about a double portrait so both the words and the feeling of both is doubly important, really doubly important. Can I underline doubly important important! 

Rare voices in the silence, turned to the self yet tuned to the collective—that’s where it works. And here is more about the doubleness: call his double portrait—dual in the sense that they include both his drawing of the subject and a video of the conversation they had, and he names them “delicate duets… With two choreographies in which artist and subject dance informally around the performance of meaning and connecting with one another.” And now is the perfect way to point it out, to point out whatever doubleness we care about. Then he talks about the “rare respite” from all those “crowded sentiments, or grace that allows the best approximation of truth we can offer one another.” Now that seems to be absolutely perfect as a description of the double portrait here in play and performance.