Even in absurdity, sacrament. Even in hardship, holiness. Even in doubt, faith. Even in chaos, realization. Even in paradox, blessedness
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"Life expands or shrinks in proportion to one's courage." ~Anain Nin
Viddy Thursday: Experimental Film "Gimme the Mermaid" (Negativland) jaybird found this for you @ 20:56 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Viddy Thursday: Experimental Film "Fast Film" jaybird found this for you @ 14:55 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Viddy Thursday: Experimental Film "Float" jaybird found this for you @ 08:47 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
 Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience. jaybird found this for you @ 08:05 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Free Hugs Campaign The music is, well, bleh, but the intention is so awesome. jaybird found this for you @ 20:52 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Viddy Thursday: Sigur Ros Vidrar Vel Til Loftarasa jaybird found this for you @ 20:48 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Viddy Thursday: Sigur Ros Hoppipola jaybird found this for you @ 14:46 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Viddy Thursday: Sigur Ros Glósóli jaybird found this for you @ 08:45 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Viddy Thursday: Powerful female singer songwriters part 3 Joan Armatrading drops the pilot and delivers such soul and warmth... I discovered her by accident about 15 years ago, and so glad for it. jaybird found this for you @ 21:01 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Viddy Thursday: Powerful female singer songwriters part 2 I consider Carole King's "I Feel the Earth Move" to be a bit of a theme song. jaybird found this for you @ 14:56 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Viddy Thursday: Powerful female singer songwriters part 1 Ah, Joni Mitchell. She has given me songs to sing forso many summers now. jaybird found this for you @ 08:52 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Viddy Thursday: Mae West jaybird found this for you @ 21:04 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Viddy Thursday: Marx Brothers jaybird found this for you @ 14:59 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Viddy Thursday: Three Stooges jaybird found this for you @ 08:51 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Shine on, Syd, pt. III Scarecrow. Syd Barrett represented to my young idealistic mind the very purpose of art: to push the mind beyond its simpler constructions and into the sweet madness of being open to the beauty of every possible turn of phrase. There was freedom in very melody, sorcery in every measure. G'night, old man, and shine on. jaybird found this for you @ 20:51 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Shine on, Syd, pt. II There is no other day Let's try it another way You'll lose your mind and play Free games for may See Emily play jaybird found this for you @ 14:41 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Shine on, Syd, pt. I Arnold Layne had a strange hobby... jaybird found this for you @ 08:38 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Superstition (OMFG) Amazing Stevie Wonder on Sesame Street, circa '73 [via mefi] jaybird found this for you @ 01:20 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Listen: South Africa's Kwaito Generation Some people call it South Africa's hip hop. But kwaito is more than that. It's an urban soup of South African jazz and township pop mixed with Western house and rap. It's the music that defines the generation who came of age after apartheid. South Africa's story today is its youth. More than half the population is age 25 or younger. In a still prepubescent democracy, this generation has been affecting the culture, language and economy of South Africa in more ways than the West may realize. And kwaito is the reason. Like American hip hop, kwaito was built from the ground up, originating in what its performers often refer to as "the ghetto." (In this case, though, that ghetto is in Soweto, the township where blacks were forced to live during apartheid.) The music has afforded young blacks opportunities they could only have dreamt of under forced segregation. It has meant financial freedom for some. Moreover, it has given them the chance to exercise their recently won freedom of speech; to address the new struggles (AIDS, crime, xenophobia) that have developed in the wake of the struggle; and to bring their experiences to the TV's and radios of a nation that is still discovering its identity. jaybird found this for you @ 12:43 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Bill Hicks: What would he say now? Bill Hicks, the most scathing comedian of his generation, died 11 years ago at age 32, but he hasn't gone away. On the contrary, the mischievously shifting sands of history have granted an eerie afterlife to some of his material — you can play a recording of a Hicks routine from 1991 or '92 and hear him going after President Bush and the war in Iraq. But Hicks' growing stature as a comedic beacon isn't because of a quirky recurrence of a name and war zone. Hicks went deeper than any of his contemporaries, and he did it with missionary zeal and fearless brilliance... "Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream and we are the imagination of ourselves…. Here's Tom with the weather." With that, Hicks reveals the vision of harmony and serenity that lies on the other side of his rage, hitting a sublime metaphysical plane where he dances in the clouds with the great hipster monologist Lord Buckley. The best comedians can make you feel euphoric, giddy and enlightened, provoked, challenged and inspired. You can get all that from Hicks, and one thing more: Bathed in the fiery torrent of his words, you just might feel saved. jaybird found this for you @ 11:30 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Everyone wants to do it: The Art of Public Miracle   In a sort of deliberate, cartoon-like visual language, Miracles & Co. is an ironic and critical exploration of a drifting theology that has spawned cults, rites, sects, creeds, superstitions, and faiths which are the seeds for confrontations and fanaticism. It is no secret in a world where tyranny masks religious faith why the idea of the "miracle" is relevant. The miracle "endorses a religion and exalts the individual endowed with the gift, making him or her a guide, a leader, a Messiah, a führer." At a time when religious differences form the root of serious international and global tensions, Miracles & Co. aspires to de-dramatize the irrational force behind religious feelings and actions, while exposing the accompanying economic commercialization and political manipulation of believers. jaybird found this for you @ 16:19 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Hayao Miyazaki: Forest Spirits, Giant Insects and World Trees Representations of kami and the natural world in Miyazaki’s films express an underlying belief of the early Shinto worldview, that is, continuity between humanity and nature. This concept is also encapsulated by the Japanese word nagare, meaning "flow," and leads to the conception of vital connections between the divine nature of the kami, and by extension the natural world, and humanity (through respectful rituals); between post-mortem souls and the living (such as the ie construct, or ancestor/descendent link); and between the inner and outer worlds (as expressed through ideas about pollution and purity). The ancient Japanese did not strictly divide their world into the material and the spiritual, nor between this world and another perfect realm. Miyazaki is very much aware of this in his work, saying in an interview about Princess Mononoke that "I’ve come to the point where I just can’t make a movie without addressing the problem of humanity as part of an ecosystem." jaybird found this for you @ 16:09 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Brokeback Mountain = Chokeback Mountain The already-famous hot gay cowboy sex arrives fairly early in Brokeback Mountain. Without spoiling any of the cowpoking—and really, not since The Crying Game have genitals played such an important and odd role in a plot—it’s safe to share that it’s really fairly graphic and accurate. For Bound, the Wachowski siblings had to recruit sexpert Susie Bright to coach Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly on their girl-on-girl sex scenes, and that was probably the last time same-sex sex looked so totally right onscreen. jaybird found this for you @ 07:24 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Johfra: Unio Mystica  Galleries of the artist's masterworks [via metachat] jaybird found this for you @ 20:30 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
New mathematics-based sculpture unveils fourth dimension  The sculpture, designed by Adrian Ocneanu, professor of mathematics at Penn State, presents a three-dimensional "shadow" of a four-dimensional solid object. Ocneanu's research involves mathematical models for quantum field theory based on symmetry. One aspect of his work is modeling regular solids, both mathematically and physically. In the three-dimensional world, there are five regular solids -- tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron -- whose faces are composed of triangles, squares or pentagons. In four dimensions, there are six regular solids, which can be built based on the symmetries of the three-dimensional solids. Unfortunately, humans cannot process information in four dimensions directly because we don't see the universe that way. Although mathematicians can work with a fourth dimension abstractly by adding a fourth coordinate to the three that we use to describe a point in space, a fourth spatial dimension is difficult to visualize. For that, models are needed. "Four-dimensional models are useful for thinking about and finding new relationships and phenomena," said Ocneanu. "The process is actually quite simple -- think in one dimension less." To explain this concept, he points to a map. While the Earth is a three-dimensional object, its surface can be represented on a flat two-dimensional map. jaybird found this for you @ 12:25 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Lost Beethoven score discovered The 80-page manuscript of Beethoven's Gross Fuge for piano duet was created when he was deaf and is filled with editing and notations from the composer's own hand. Never before seen by scholars, it was written a few months before the composer's death in 1827... “It's a very important discovery... This was a controversial and not understood work because it was so ahead of its time. It sounds like it was written by a dissonant 20th-century composer.” jaybird found this for you @ 12:59 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Salsa Arabesque: Is this the rhythm of a world in step? What if it could be proved that no two nations that play salsa music have ever declared war on each other? Some of the best salsa music in the Middle East comes from Egypt and Israel, for instance. Both nations have been at peace since 1979, the same period when salsa began to take hold. The first time I heard Arabic salsa music, I was in a taxi in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, racing to catch a connecting flight to Afghanistan. The taxi driver, a Pakistani, was playing an incredible song on his radio. First came the Latin rhythms on bongos, then the rush of flamenco guitars. It sounded like the sort of dance music I grew up listening to in south Texas but with a distinctly Middle Eastern trill of the voice and the guttural lyrics that could only be Arabic. The music was a revelation. jaybird found this for you @ 16:13 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
mary chapin carpenter
I'm not running I saw you this morning I'm not running jaybird found this for you @ 22:17 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Happy Friday: One blooming big bunny  A controversial Viennese art group, Gelatin, has erected a giant pink rabbit on the side of a mountain where they plan for it to stay until 2025. jaybird found this for you @ 12:49 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Tom Waits I can see it in my dreams arm-in-arm down Burgundy a bottle and my friends and me hoist up a few tall cool ones play some pool and listen to that tenor saxophone calling me home and I can hear the band begin "When the Saints Go Marching In" by the whiskers on my chin New Orleans, I'll be there I'll drink you under the table and deal the cards roll the dice jaybird found this for you @ 22:53 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Whitman: I Sing the Body Eclectic I sing the body electric, Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves? jaybird found this for you @ 16:19 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Bruce Cockburn: Pacing the Cage A stunning piece of music and poetry... Sunset is an angel weeping I've proven who I am so many times I never knew what you all wanted Sometimes the best map will not guide you jaybird found this for you @ 07:49 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
balancing point  jaybird found this for you @ 17:34 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
urban anamorphosis 
jaybird found this for you @ 19:43 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Monty Python meets the Department of Homeland Security government sponsored fake terror, consumerism, bureaucracy, fear, ugliness, parody and dreams of love... How could a film produced fifteen years ago have foreseen these developments in such remarkable detail? Perhaps because they are not new: they are recurring patterns in the way that states use and manufacture the threat of warfare in order to control their own citizens. State power tends to grow during wars because citizens become more willing to trade liberty for the security that states are willing to promise them. But when a war ends, the pendulum swings back at least partially. So why not manufacture a permanent state of war during which freedoms can be indefinitely suspended? Gilliam was writing history as well as foretelling the future. By creatively retelling the past as a work of fiction about the future, he exposes the totalitarian impulse. jaybird found this for you @ 12:35 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
depth of field   Cambridge, England after dark and by moonlight. [via Mefi] jaybird found this for you @ 08:25 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
kubrick The stone is the great impetus for the human race. At every turn it comes in and saves the human race from itself. The first time that it appears it saves the apemen from certain extinction. The second time it appears it saves the human race from the technical domination of this age. Without the intervention of the monolith this course would lead to certain extinction also. The third time it appears, it initiates Bowman into a kind of cosmic consciousness. Bowman has been to the end of the universe and back. He knows that he is in a prison of his own design, which is the meaning of the last few scenes in the hotel-like room. Bowman's ultimate realization that he is trapped is made symbolically by Kubrick with the breaking of the wine glass. Even after all that he has been through Bowman still makes mistakes. The wine glass is like a zen koan that illuminates the mind in a flash. His own fallibility thrusts the scene towards it's climax as the old man dies on the bed and sees the monolith for the last time. The Great Work of the stone is complete. There is now a man, a human, who understands the greater universe. This man also understands that he is trapped in a jail that his own consciousness has designed. With the realization of his own fallibility, and his own trapped spirit, he is finally liberated from the realm of the hotel prison, or the world of illusion. In that instant he understands what the book of stone is trying to tell him. He lifts his hand in a gesture of understanding. And in that moment he is transformed - without dying - into the Starchild. The stone has given Bowman the gifts that the Philosopher's Stone has always promised. Bowman has achieved complete gnosis, or knowledge, and now he has become immortal by overcoming physical death and being reborn. In that moment, he passes through the monolith one last time. The earth is ahead of him now and he will be reborn on that planet. Bowman will be a new human, just as different from Homo Sapiens as Homo Sapiens are different from that apeman who picked up that bone all that time ago. Nietzche's ape to man to superman theme, from his Thus Spoke Zarathustra essays, is mirrored perfectly by Strauss' music and Kubrick's movie. Kubrick has evoked the spiritual and physical evolution of our race as it has been transformed by this magical black stone. jaybird found this for you @ 12:18 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
the future is so retro  The Prefab From Another Planet The circular house, 11 feet high and 26 feet across, was designed by Matti Suuronen, a Finnish architect, in 1968. A hatch door in its lower half opened down to reveal steps, like the door of a small airplane, and led into a room outfitted with six plastic bed-chair combinations and a central fireplace slab, as well as a kitchenette and a bathroom. Photographs from the time make the house look like a place where the Teletubbies might live, with Barbarella as a frequent houseguest. jaybird found this for you @ 15:35 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
deep film critiquing One problem with the word “shaman,” which traces its origins to the Siberian steppe, is that it is popularly employed by people more interested in fantasizing about some alternate reality than squaring their shoulders to bear the mundane burdens of this one. However, in cultures where such an office exists, the job of the shaman is primarily to foster the interrelation of two groups or positions that have hardened into such stubborn opposition that the survival of the society is at risk. For life to go on, the two camps must overcome their polemic, and the shaman acts by throwing himself into the fray—mentally, bodily, and emotionally, sometimes at personal risk. The result of his labors typically constitutes a paradigm shift rather than a compromise: the rules, though not necessarily undone, are re-contextualized and the system changes, including the position of the shaman himself. The Existential Detectives in Huckabees, including their dissenting French faction, are essentially concerned with one thing—conflict—and not, as protagonist Albert Markovski initially supposes, with understanding coincidence in itself. Ideas, for the detectives, are clues that reveal human soul-sickness or tools that can correct it. Their explanations of how the universe works—a unified “blanket” on one hand and a meaningless void on the other—tend to be goofy or oversimplified. But this is somewhat beside the point, for their aim is action rather than analysis. They are working toward the creation and resolution of conflict—achieving a moment of crisis in order to shift an entire system. jaybird found this for you @ 19:38 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
The Rage of Ludwig The 'Ode', which has been sung at every Olympic Games since 1956, was also adopted as an anthem by Ian Smith's white-supremacist regime in Rhodesia. In Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange it stood for private criminality and public terrorism, and it was what Leonard Bernstein chose to conduct — with an orchestra symbolically drawn from six nations — when the Berlin Wall came down. As an American critic once put it, we all live in the valley of the Ninth: no other work has been all things to all men. And no other composer remains so idolised. |
