Emmylou sings his songs.
Willie sings his songs.
There’s nothing else to say, he’s a brilliant songwriter.
I just saw “Sling Blade” (yes, just now) and it features Lanois singing some of his own work. A great voice and great songs. He’s that classic No Depression kinda alt.country Austin sound.
I went out with the lovely Ms. Pond tonight.
She’s pretty and funny and quixotic. After some shared jumbo shrimp we headed up to Cost Plus (and escaped financially unscathed). After that, I grabbed some ice cream and we went by Albertsons.
I also mentioned that I watched “The Good Girl” – I forgot to mention that Zooey Deschanel was in it.
http://www.museumsyndicate.com/artist.php?artist=380
Feynman: Physicist, seduction artist, lock-picker, artist. Several sketches y one of the most amusing jesters who ever understood Bohr.
I am a person who is fascinated by knowledge intersections. Intersections come when luminaries of the same field meet, or, even more remarkably, when luminaries of different fields meet, and find some commonality in their chosen metiers that shows a a unity or a common thread between two seemingly different disciplines.
I have the feeling author Craig Brown must be the same sort of chap since his recent book Hello Goodbye Hello chronicles 101 remarkable meetings, or, intersections. He chronicles meetings between Twain and Kipling et al. The meeting that I found most remarkable was the day Helen Keller visited Martha Graham’s studio (via [brainpickings.
A few months ago I decided that Lauren and I ought take advantage of some of the civic institutions available here in Our Fair City by the Bay. Thus I booked us to enjoy our first opera together, “Don Giovanni.” We rather enjoyed the performance and that was that. We were given an introductory offer to come and see additional operas and wound up seeing both Verdi’s “Attilla” and Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” before the close of the season.
This season we were not planning on catching any shows but this poster, hanging from many a lamp-post in the city convinced me that we had to catch Angela Gheorghiu (warning: site plays music on load) in the title role:
I’m fascinated by how people describe the act of creation to outside
observers. What exactly is happening “in there” when a writer tries
to tell us Zorba’s anguish is so great that he must dance, that the
weight of modern life can only be expressed in rich tonal hues (e.g.
Rothko), or that an if/else construct can be elided if the
determining evaluation is made more ignorant 1? Who is
it that solves problems when we’re trying to puzzle something out? Who
is it with whom we argue to decide whether to add or take away a dollop
of paint (or, for that matter, eat a cookie)? It’s a wonder that we’re
able to go through these ineffable states to arrive at abstractions that
help us create new solutions, but it’s an even greater feat that we’re
able to abstract that process and communicate it by gestures, sign,
and metaphor to one another. In sum, how do creators go about creating?
Inside
Consider a hard problem in a creative endeavor; I’ll consider
programming, the field with which I’m most familiar. It’s become very
clear that the thing that “solves” a problem is not really under my
control. If I think about my “ritual” to enter the “dream state”
where problems are resolved, I realize that it’s all a form of cargo culting: I’m doing rituals that I believe make my brain, over which
I have only nominal control, offer up a solution such that I can utter:
“I know!” or “I had an idea.” While I do my best to not let my mind
stray, I’m certainly not “wiring up” connections a la a 1960’s
switchboard operator nor am I drag-clicking mental components as if I was
seated in front of the Smalltalk or Self or Interface Builder
graphical programming environments.
Is there a thing I could do that would more directly produce “Eureka!”
moments? No. Is there a communicable process whereby I could tell
someone to execute a series of steps in order to come to the same
insight? No. I have to try to perform a dance of cargo-culted
behaviors (charts, blog posts, poor drawings on whiteboards) in order to
convince their own unconscious processes, over which they too find
it convenient to believe they hold control while having only little, to
offer up to them a “Eureka!” moment.
Ego
It is clear that we are not in control of our own insight capabilities.
Nevertheless we tend to use ego-centric, originative language to
describe our ideation process e.g. “I had an idea” or “Oh it just came
to me.” Despite our clear lack of control about ideation, we find it
very attractive to let our egoes claim credit for it. Who is the “I” in
those exclamations about successful ideation?
http://www.tofugu.com/2012/02/18/japanese-fart-scrolls/
So amazing. What would you do with a blue bag of fart gas? And what if you deployed it as a weapon only to find your enemies had fans and a counter-farting strategy. Japan, man. Japan.
It is commonly said that you can’t judge a book by its cover. Most people have a story where this wasn’t true and here’s mine.
Help me internet! Who designed this cover?
This amazing cover to Camus’ “The Stranger” got me to read this book and my life was never the same afterward. But before I tell the story of its impact on me I must ask: “Does anyone know about who made this cover or who this troupe on the cover is?”
This cover was one of my first exposures to conceptual art. I had never seen anything like this: the make-up, the absurd yet regimented uniforms, the implication of “theatah.
http://petapixel.com/2013/09/12/marked-photographs-show-iconic-prints-edited-darkroom/
Amazing. Marked test print show how an enlarger’s deployment was scaled, tested, dodged, etc. to produce an iconic image.
As predicted, the other prosthetic shoe drops http://www.wired.com/2015/01/3-d-printed-prosthetics-look-fit-sci-fi-warrior/ shows off some of the newer, cheaper, more interesting options for those requiring support. Glorious.
Great effect showing a photograph and the self-portraits interacting:
http://38.media.tumblr.com/2795217752747f1bff90ae2ce9409c32/tumblr_n4ebdn19X11ryvq99o1_400.gif
Full of surprises to the end, David Bowie planned his death with just as much precision - and even more passion - as anything he did in life.
http://m.ranker.com/list/how-david-bowie-died-better-than-most-people-live/clark-benson
http://io9.gizmodo.com/a-guide-to-the-epic-scifi-movie-valerian-and-the-fanta-1789112928
We really lost something when the French stopped imagining the aesthetic of the future. From Jules Verne to Mőbius there’s a grand, beautiful tradition.
This work reveals something terrible about humanity. It shows how fast a person can hurt you under favorable circumstances. It shows how easy it is to dehumanize a person who does not fight, who does not defend himself. It shows that if he provides the stage, the majority of “normal” people, apparently can become truly violent.
https://www.elitereaders.com/performance-artist-marina-abramovic-social-experiment/
I’d like to dream we’d hug her. We’d praise her. We’d ask if she was comfortable. We’ll do that if she’s like us enough.
Otherwise…Lord of the Flies.
Its like we’ve gone back to the zenith of the steampunk era:
This is IBM’s quantum computer. Powerful and beautiful. pic.twitter.com/OJugWcxIb8
— Ben Bajarin (@BenBajarin) January 10, 2018
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/74/conventions
It is still the one with Barlow’s romantic, heartbreaking, and funny story about finding love at a convention and relief from grief in the skies.
Also: “‘Dark Shadows’ rules!”
A Gallery Owner Was Arrested After Leaving a 10-Foot Heroin Spoon Sculpture Outside OxyContin Maker Purdue Pharma
http://time.com/5320384/fernando-luis-alvarez-purdue-pharma/
Year of the Purdue Wonder-Gateway Drug
(You’re missed David Foster Wallace)
In one of my earliest book reviews, I reviewed the Southern Reach trilogy by
Jeff VanderMeer. I wrote that a trope “that really interested me was how
VanderMeer’s writing can be conceived of as a post-DNA-theory,
“bio-philic” Lovecraftian horror” and I also acknowledged the
source of that adjective as being the Icelandic artist, Björk.
I’ve always admired, and, in truth occasionally snickered at, the French demand
that French things stay French in an obviously French way. It was like they
were trying to hold back the tide of globalism through hauteur and
protectionism.
These days, I’m more sympathetic. By virtue of indoctrinating this behavior
("puh!"), some truly special and uniquely French things still exist. For a
moment, let me extol French graphic novels.
First, they’re both excellent illustrations. But I mean there’s a certain
stylistic something that unites the two. Given that Ravensburger and Catan
are both products of Germany, I suspect that there’s a certain style or art
school that was formative to both these artists’ creations. I’d like to learn
more about it.
If anyone has a link on it, let me know at the email address in the about page.