Hannover, 1975

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

In recognition of two wonderful posts by Mangan and Sarsfield concerning Miles Davis’ Porgy and Bess, and Nina Simone, here the two are together. A live performance in 1960 of I Loves You, Porgy, starting with a little of “Dey’s so fresh an’ fine”.

Some important facts to remember: Miles’ tunes were the result of Gil Evans and Himself reworking George Gershwin’s songs from his Opera. Porgy and Bess the Opera was first performed in 1935, Miles Davis’ recording came out in 1958, Kind of Blue came out in 1959, and Nina Simone is performing this in 1960. She is 27 years old.

Having a Coke with You

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluoresent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them

I look

at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse

it seems they were all cheated of some marvellous experience

which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it

“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”
– Bertrand Russell

I found this Finnish photographer online through his flickr, and his images are fantastic. He’s young and hasn’t amassed huge portfolio, nor does he have a particular style — in fact, part of what intrigued me to him was his fluid experimentation. Despite his wildly varying subject matters, his work is unified by a quiet warmth. That may not be the word for his protest and demonstration work, but his captures make me feel like I’m looking through the viewfinder myself and I’m excited to be where he is. I hope he doesn’t mind this posting, but I wanted to share a few of his photos. These should by no means be seen as the best as I haven’t yet looked through his complete collection, but they are a few that stood out to me.

Flickr

Website

i will wade out
till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers
I will take the sun in my mouth
and leap into the ripe air
Alive
with closed eyes
to dash against darkness
in the sleeping curves of my body
Shall enter fingers of smooth mastery
with chasteness of sea-girls
Will i complete the mystery
of my flesh
I will rise
After a thousand years
lipping
flowers
And set my teeth in the silver of the moon

Seven years ago I had the delight of witnessing the Bill Frisell 858 Quartet perform eight works of synchronicity and abrasive, discordant marvel, one for each of German painter Gerhard Richter’s eight abstract works. The paintings are ugly and barely agree with themselves, yet they hold you and suspend your disbelief until they permanently reverse your position to praising the beauty and pastoral dissonance in each.

Composer and Jazz guitarist Bill Frisell was asked to create music to accompany the pieces, and he did so faithfully, molding a score for still images that captures the kinetic energy, the strained pull of pigments against each other, and the metallic dis-likability that fuses gently into a pleasing picture. The quartet musicians are Bill Frisell on guitar, Eyvind Kang (a personal favorite) on viola, Jenny Scheinman on violin, and Hank Roberts on cello.

Listen, view, and enjoy.

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Posted in music, visual

What are you interested in? The question is rhetorical, but you ought to think about it anyway. Maybe you’ll find that you’re interested in things you know nothing about. For example, I’ve been interested in pedagogy, social psychology and strategies for bootstrapping* humanity’s collective IQ. Instead shooting to Wikipedia, I went to TED, and I watched hours and hours of talks given by skilled lecturers from all fields and countries, who have come together in this on-line format to share their forward-thoughts, their ideas worth spreading (to be taken as considerations and arguments, rather than facts all in a row). The transit time for profound thoughts is speedier than it has ever been, and so, for your cognitive pleasure, I present Barry Schwartz.

Dr. Schwartz is a psychologist and social theorist with some ideas that you should consider. Though the theme of his talk is precise, and his delivery concise, the amount of penetrating perception in nearly every sentence is staggering, almost imposing. While the content is far-reaching and doubtless important, I’m also interested his art of rhetoric, speachwriting, and public speaking. Enjoy.

*”Bootstrapping” is the term coined by Douglas Engelbart to refer to the use of computers and networking in helping humanity solve more complex problems.

As Paul Auster notes in his essay “Jim Jarmusch: Poet,” one of America’s finest indie film directors started out as an advocate of New York School poets on the editorial staff of the Columbia Review.  His films pay tribute to the language of Frank O’Hara or John Ashbery: an aesthetic of relaxed conversation populates Jarmusch’s screen; or, as Auster puts it, “Nothing happens, or so little in the way things traditionally happen in stories that we can almost say there is no story.”  Night on Earth is the prime example of this kind of film-making, and not surprisingly, the film that will most likely turn you into a Jarmusch addict.

The movie, originally titled “Los Angeles-New York-Paris-Rome-Helsinki,” is divided into five sections, each of which introduces a different taxi driver, a different fare, a different metropolis, and an extraordinary procession of events.  Starting at 7:07 pm, L.A. time, the movie jumps time zones to progress from an initial early evening cab ride through Beverly Hills, to a hungover morning in Helsinki.  Corky, Helmut, Driver #1—played by Isaach De Bankolé–, Driver #2—played the magnanimous Roberto Benigni–, and Mika are forced to engage with their respective customers as they patrol the world of Night on Earth.  The brief relationships created on screen between the five unlikely parties are often strange, sometimes tragic, but always touching.  My personal favorite, and the only segment based on an actual experience of the director’s, is the illustrious ride of Helmut and Yoyo.  Putting a former East German clown who can’t drive automatic and a Brooklyn “fresh”-fiend in a dilapidated cab is weird enough, but when Yoyo’s volcanic sister-in-law Angela takes the back seat, the fireworks truly begin.

Binding all the segments together, apart from a masterfully composed Tom Waits score, is the profound question of synchronicity: what’s going on at any given hour, all over the planet?  While the movie could be appraised simply as a series of vignettes, Jarmusch’s insurmountable ability to layer narrative with atmospheric, urban montage, supplies the movie with a sense of panorama.  Night on Earth is a small movie with a global consciousness, an indie movie with the scope of a five-hour epic.

I have one warning for the watcher: after you hear Roberto Benigni’s magnificent Charlie Parker impersonation and his adaptation of Dante, no cab driver will ever deserve your tip again.