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Answers in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear
[Image: xkcd #936, on password strength. Click image to enlarge; see xkcd itself for the full six panels and the punchline.] From whiskey river: This accidental meeting of possibilities calls itself I. I ask: what am I doing here? And, at once, this I becomes unreal. (Dag Hammarskjöld [source]) …and: Ch’ui the draftsman Could draw more [...]
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 [...]
What’s in a Song: Body and Soul (1)
It starts in silence. By the end, the singer has thrown him- or herself melodramatically, almost operatically on the mercy of a lost love. It’s drenched in self-pity, but was written for and first performed by a woman once dubbed “Hollywood’s first maneater.” One of its most famous covers includes no vocal at all, and [...]
Oceanic Complications
[Video: "Ten Things I Have Learned about the Sea," by Lorenzo Fonda. One of whiskey river's posts this week was based on the text in this video. For more information, see the Vimeo page.] From whiskey river: Clam Each one is a small life, but sometimes long, if its place in the universe is not [...]
Where Worlds and Art Forms Overlap: The Icebook*
I feel somewhat at risk of turning this joint into one of those blogs which serve as dumping grounds for videos, rather than actual words. But some videos just demand circulation, y’know? This came to me by way of an email message from my great blog-friend, Froog, who just knew it would appeal to me. [...]
What’s in a Song: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes (2)
[Another entry in an occasional series about American songs with long histories. This one follows Part 1, about the history of the composition of "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." You can read Part 1, posted last week, here.] [Video clip above assembled from the first film version of Roberta (1935); Irene Dunne sings it here. [...]
What’s In a Song: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes (1)
[One of a continuing series of posts on American popular songs with long histories. As is usually the case, this one on the history of "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" will be was followed in a couple days by Part 2, about some of the cover versions.] Where Were You in ’62? So asked one [...]
Enchanté
From whiskey river’s commonplace book: The whale moves in a sea of sound: shrimps snap, plankton seethes, fish croak, gulp, drum their air-bladders, and are scrutinized by echo-location, a light massage of sound touching the skin. The small, toothed whales use high frequencies: Finely tuned and focused sound-beams, intense salvoes of bouncing clicks, a thousand [...]
What’s in a Song: Begin the Beguine (2)
[This is another in an occasional series on popular songs with long histories. Part 1 -- which focused on the song's composition and lyrics -- appeared on Wednesday.] How many times and by which performers has “Begin the Beguine” been covered? It is to laugh. The most comprehensive list I’ve seen was on the page [...]
What’s in a Song: Begin the Beguine (1)
[Cole Porter at the piano, sometime in the 1930s. For me, it's easy to see in him, from this photo, the song "Begin the Beguine" -- but not the beguine itself.] [This is another in an occasional series on popular songs with appeal across the generations. This post will be broken into two parts; Part [...]
