dutch baklavah: February 2009

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

everything is in the eye of the beholder

"when a woman dresses up for an occasion, the man should become the black velvet pillow for the jewel." /john weitz
--
men always look identical at fancy occasions: very good, but uniform. these woman arrest my attention:

they'll never let you perform in the pageant naked--i already asked.

every passing minute is another chance to turn it all around.

you're famous for your mud? how's your chinese food? (and natalie portman on the right.)
--
"art is not an end in itself, but a means of addressing humanity." /modest mussorgsky

"the more horrifying this world becomes, the more art becomes abstract." /paul klee

SeeqPod - Playable Search

yuri arajs:

keegan wenkman:

nick howard:

more art from all of the above

Thursday, February 19, 2009

love your neighbor

"most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do." /bertrand russell
--

Neighbours
Norman McLaren, 1952, 8 min 6 s

In this Oscar®-winning short film, Norman McLaren employs the principles normally used to put drawings or puppets into motion to animate live actors. The story is a parable about two people who come to blows over the possession of a flower. Film without words.

thousands more shorts and documentaries from the national film board of canada.
--
bedrich smetana's moldau is one of my favorite classical compositions ever. instruments breathe in and out of each other, finishing each other's phrasing wherever necessary. bells on staffs dance along to a wedding polka by the riverbank. it ends like a w.h. auden poem and finishes like a firework. read about it while you listen to its beauty:

Vltava (1874) is the second symphonic poem in Má Vlast, and portrays the river, called the Moldau by German-speaking Czechs such as Smetana, which rises in the umava forest and flows through the Bohemian countryside and the city of Prague before joining the River Elbe. For Smetana, the course of the river provided a ready-made musical structure; Vltava is a sort of rondo, with the flowing theme of the river recurring in different forms between colourful episodes depicting Bohemian life and folklore along the riverside. Two brooks, portrayed on two flutes, form the sources of the river; these flow into the main stream of the river itself, the surging string melody which Smetana is said to have derived from a Swedish folk-song but which now sounds quintessentially Czech. Hunting horns are heard in the forests, before the river flows past a rustic wedding celebration where the guests are dancing a polka. Smetana led the way (here and in his String Quartet "From my Life") in introducing this light-hearted dance to symphonic music. The next episode portrays moonlight shimmering on the river in magical orchestral colours, and Smetana evokes the legend of the Rusalkas, the water-nymphs who feature prominently in Slav folklore and would later form the subject of Dvorák’s best-known opera. The music accelerates and grows agitated as the river crashes over the Rapids of St. John, above Prague, and finally sweeps through the Czech capital itself. The majestic chorale-theme of Vysehrad, the great rock-fortress that is the symbol of the Czech nation, towers over the closing bars, as the Vltava flows unstoppably onwards to the Elbe.

Monday, February 16, 2009

¡olé!

"writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. they deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. when writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. we are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. it’s like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. you can’t stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship." /anne lamott, bird by bird
--

eat, pray, love, by liz gilbert

closely related:

bonnie "prince" billy - you remind me of something (the glory goes)

i like the places where the night does not mean an end
where smiles break free and surpirse is your friend
and dancing goes on in the kitchen until dawn
to my favorite song that has no end

Saturday, February 14, 2009

random thoughts for valentine's day, 2004

"no one can do me any good by loving me; i have more love than i need or could do any good with; but people do me good by making me love them--which isn't easy." /john ruskin
--

here is the original script for eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, written by charlie kaufman.

CLEMENTINE
Have you ever read any Anna Akhmatova?

JOEL
I love her.

CLEMENTINE
Really? Me, too! I don't meet people who even know who she is and I work in a book store.

JOEL
I think she's great.

CLEMENTINE
Me too. There's this poem --

JOEL
Did this conversation come before or after we saw the house?

CLEMENTINE
I think, before.

JOEL
Seems too coincidental that way.

CLEMENTINE
Yeah, maybe.

Joel and Clementine wander near some beach houses closed for the winter.

CLEMENTINE (CONT'D)
Do you know her poem that starts "Seaside gusts of wind,/And a house in which we don't live...

JOEL
Yeah, yeah. It goes "Perhaps there is someone in this world to whom I could send all these lines"?

CLEMENTINE
Yes! I love that poem. It breaks my heart. I'm so excited you know it. (pointing to houses) Look, houses in which we don't live.

Joel chuckles appreciatively.
--

--
the times explores the art institute of chicago's edvard munch exhibit:

Most of Munch’s figures are not mad, but paralyzed by oceanic feelings of grief, jealousy, desire or despair that many people found shocking either for their eroticism, crude style or intimations of mental instability. We see his subjects alone, in couples or small groups in settings whose opulent colors and odd forms, whether indoors or out, are always removed from reality, located in some artificial, stripped down place where color, feeling and form resonate in visual echo chambers.
--
for centuries, flowers have carried coded messages. a dark rose, for instance, symbolized bashful shame; a foxglove, deceit. but the rules of love have shifted, and our floriography needs modernizing as well. jason logan illustrates some updated meanings for the flowers you'll be sending (or receiving) on valentine's day.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

i see you better when the lights are out

"the fool looks at a finger that points at the sky." /the little boy advising nino in "amélie"

--
here is the area around which i plan to live come this fall:

there's a body of water called grizzly bay! should i frequent it often, i could be a grizzly bayer! that is tops.

the grizz recording:

grizzly bear - two weeks (live on letterman)
grizzly bear - cheerleader (live)
daniel rossen - graceland (paul simon cover)

for old time's/good video's/good music's sake,
central and remote:

stereogum prematurely reviewed junior boys' newest album, "begone dull care." i had it on repeat for a number of hours before i actually committed my full attention to it, and at that point the listening experience transformed from something like hearing the pleasant, background white noise of a busy city at night to listening for individual nuances of sound and lyrics that the junior boys are so good at layering and arranging. "begone dull care" certainly isn't a departure from any of their previous catalogue; rather, it's the latest effort from a couple guys who keep getting better at making the music they make, and from that, it follows that this album would be their best to date. i'm not a fan of "last exit," no matter how many times i listen to it. "so this is goodbye" is worlds better (and worlds away), in my opinion. it's just a different kind of music from one to the next, but "begone dull care" is more of an extension of their previous album. early favorites include "what it's for," a fluid, futuristic gondola ride kind of song complete with about a minute and a half of droning at the end; "parallel lines," in which a sardonic, unrequited lover bemoans, "it's alright to say it just as long as you don't really think so;" "bits & pieces," a fully danceable, synthy loop of cymbals and dub beats circling around the premise of banging at the end of the night ("i see you move / i see you better when the lights are out"); and "dull to pause," which reminds me a lot of elliott smith's "in the lost and found" in that the lyrics are actually quite morose and wistful, but juxtaposed with a jolly, jaunty melody suitable for biking around on a spring day. i love that a lot of the junior boys' catalogue is like that--bummer lyrics about last goodbyes and lost girls set against the finest electronic beats this side of diplo.