In Which the Magpie Seeks the Zeitgeist of the Losers
The stuff we talk about after we finish with our weekly outrage.
Magpie, definition, Cambridge Dictionary: 1) a bird with black and white feathers and a long tail, 2) someone who likes to collect many different objects, or use many different styles
The Magpie is frequently confused these days. Existence is bewildering in and of itself, of course, but this moment feels particularly opaque and strange. It sometimes seems as if there is a very large animal, or several of them, pushing on reality from behind the panels of the everyday. It’s hard to tell what they are. They make shapes and sounds, but is that a tusk or a hoof? A threatening bellow or the cry of a calf? I see the big signs: the indices, the civic battles, the continuing violence. I hear the debates. I jump in.
Mozart in the Jungle
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More by this author
In Which the Magpie Takes to the Field
De Maria’s field of lightning . . . Thoreau’s “botany boxes” . . . James Schuyler’s salute to the past
In Which the Magpie Makes a Ghost Map of the City
The haunting of Rooney Mara . . . a delivery room turned walk-in closet . . . Ain Gordon’s “Radicals in Miniature”
In Which the Magpie Considers What a Giant Might See
Puppies . . . daffodils . . . surveillance-proof cloaks
More in this series
From the Magpie (Faces)
Novels are also mirror rooms, in a way; we read them “to see our reflections transformed, to wear another’s face.”
From the Magpie (Work)
In which the Magpie finds direction in the grids of Agnes Martin.