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The Kindness of Every Split-Second
[Image: display window of "mini-prints" taken with the Fujifilm Instax camera (originally from the Photojojo store). See note at bottom of post for more.] From whiskey river: You know what I believe? I remember in college I was taking this math class, this really great math class taught by this tiny old woman. She was [...]
Swept Away by (and for) Books
My Old Kentucky Blog recently highlighted two of the films nominated for this year’s Oscar in the short-animations category. One of them really struck me, and I think it will really strike you as well — if you are someone who’s ever had a little jolt of excitement at opening a new book… or dreamt of adding [...]
Midweek Music Break: Loreena McKennitt, “Down by the Sally Gardens”
Loreena McKennitt seems to love anything which hitches the adjective Celtic to the noun music. She’s traveled the world to record music both Celtic and Celtic-like, often (even on brand-new songs) using instruments which might have been recognized 2,000 years ago across the whole range of the Celts’ distribution. She’s certainly traveled farther afield than many [...]
Unquiet Large, Quiet Small
From whiskey river: In the point of rest at the center of our being, we encounter a world where all things are at rest in the same way. Then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud a revelation, each man a cosmos of whose riches we can only catch glimpses. The life of simplicity is [...]
Midweek Music Break: Dominant Legs, “Make Time for the Boy”
From a group named “Dominant Legs,” what in the hell sort of music should we expect? Tina Turner in black leather, maybe? I can’t say I have a ready answer to the question. But it wouldn’t have been, for me, something like this: a Lynchian, sweetly blissed-out, dream-dancing, burbling-organ, saxophone-accented, group-sing throwback of a pop song: [...]
“You Didn’t Forget the Words, Did You?”
[Video: a zebra teaches a little girl to scat-sing. Found it at Zooglobble, home of "kids' music worth sharing." Warning: do not visit that site if you are even mildly distractable.] My Dad taught me many things about music, especially jazz, even (I’m certain) in ways which I have yet to understand or even recognize. [...]
The Absorbing and the Absorbed
[Image: a Menger sponge overgrown with vines, found here. Wikipedia explains how to construct a real Menger sponge, noting -- without elaboration -- that the resulting object "simultaneously exhibits an infinite surface area and encloses zero volume."*] From whiskey river: You know when you see something like a marvelous mountain against the blue sky, the [...]
Midweek Music Break: Booker T. and the MGs, “Time Is Tight”
When people think of music in the 1960s-’70s, of soul music, they think automatically of the Motown record label. But there was a heck of a lot going on further south then, too, down in Memphis: the home of Stax Records. Originally Satellite Records, the company was forced to change its name in response to a [...]
It’s Right in Front of You
[Image: unretouched photograph of an anamorphically-painted building interior, by French artist George Rousse; I found it here. As suggested at that site, be sure to see the video about Rousse's "Durham (NC) project." And while you're at it, check out the similar but sometimes entire city-sized work of Swiss artist Felice Varini. I couldn't decide which artist's work to [...]
Midweek Music Break: James & Bobby Purify, “I’m Your Puppet”
So there was this front-page headline in the morning paper: Music legend Robert Dickey dies at age 72 Er, I thought; Who?!? I mean, I hardly know every (well, possibly any) music legend in town. But I’ve been here for almost 20 years and couldn’t recall the name at all. As it happens, Dickey — that’s [...]
