"When we are exiled from the order and unities of culture, language, ethnicity that make up the great smooth national narratives of history, we are cast out into a multicultural, multi-lingual, multiethnic 'non-nation', an empire that frustrates our need to narrate a descent from origins and forces us to confront the lyrical unevenness of our lives. This is a confrontation that from time to time, for good or for ill, we try hard to avoid. ...the medieval [is not] a moment of past time since transcended but [] a metaphor for a kind of [artistic] practice that defies the national culture paradigm." --Walter G Andrews. introductory essay to Ottoman Lyric Poetry (1997)

The War of the Senses. (via wood_s lot)

"Empire commits us to the continual violation of our own standards. " --Christopher Lydon


"...These songs of freedom
Is all I ever had..."

--Bob Marley