The Connections: Yin-Yang Edition

Jon Pareles on Jarvis Cocker:

Between songs Mr. Cocker chatted about how shifting exchange rates made it hard to keep songs realistic, and of his disdain for experiencing a concert through a cellphone screen. He explained what he had been reading lately in philosophy: that it was possible to hold two opposing ideas at the same time, opening up gray areas between virtue and evil. —NYT

EP in Triple Canopy:

I always show my students these two quotes—a warning against referential mania, or perhaps just notes toward an aesthetic:

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.”
—H. P. Lovecraft