[vimeo http://vimeo.com/39760586 w=700&h=390] By WeAreUs. Clever fellas.
Düsseldorf-based photographer Rüdiger Nehmzow takes beautiful technical photos, nice and clean, with a sexy take on symmetry and geometry. His cloud images are smashing - could perhaps do with a bit less "shadows & highlights" work in post, but they're rocking nonetheless. Good portfolio on his website.
[youtube=http://youtu.be/IixQox4rhEw&w=700]
[soundcloud url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/12914469" iframe="true" /]
Hip hop seems to be hell bent on making left hand turns. I think it is at its most comfortable when it goes in an unexpected direction. Sometimes it’s hard to believe in ’93 Doggystyle, 36 Chambers, Midnight Marauders, and Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space) were dropped. Why would 2012 be any different?
Months ago we talked about Nacho Picasso, the Seattle rapper with a penchant for comic books cartoons, and clever wordplay. His production crew, Blue Sky Black Death, has been dropping records of experimental hip-hop-strumentals for years with marked precision. The 2011 recordNoir was a vibrant, mood setting record of star-gazing abstraction and hip hop beats. ‘Sleeping Children Are Still Flying’ seems to encapulse this variety of sound. A chorus drenched bluesy guitar line plays over upbeat drums, synths pop and rumble away under the samples. The pops and snaps reveal the ambition of the modern producer, unafraid to stretch sound and time, just to make a great song. The record is filled with them.
Via TheFoxIsBlack
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/14832158 w=700&h=390] Saw this on It's Nice That:
If horse racing is indeed the sport of kings then ping-pong must be the sport of youth clubs, but maybe its reputation is set for an overdue rehabilitation. Ping Pong follows the fortunes of eight pensioners as they prepare for the World Table Tennis Championships in Mongolia. There’s Inge (89) who uses the sport to help battle her dementia, Australian centurion Dorothy, the oldest ever competitor, and a host of other elderly eccentrics just potty about ping-pong. But it’s also a film about growing old, about looking back and about making sense of things. Released in July, it promises to be an early antidote to the slick, coporatism likely to engulf much of this summer’s sport.
From Christian Schubart’s Ideen zu einer Aesthetik der Tonkunst (1806), which both Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms used as a resource.
This lists each musical key's personality. I'm gonna go home, get my piano and play some of these bad (and good) boys, see if he's right. I have a feeling he will be - even on Db Major.
…
...
C Major Completely Pure. Its character is: innocence, simplicity, navety, children’s talk.
C Minor Declaration of love and at the same time the lament of unhappy love. All languishing, longing, sighing of the love-sick soul lies in this key.
Db Major A leering key, degenerating into grief and rapture. It cannot laugh, but it can smile; it cannot howl, but it can at least grimace its crying.—Consequently only unusual characters and feelings can be brought out in this key.
C# Minor Penitential lamentation, intimate conversation with God, the friend and help-meet of life; sighs of disappointed friendship and love lie in its radius.
D Major The key of triumph, of Hallejuahs, of war-cries, of victory-rejoicing. Thus, the inviting symphonies, the marches, holiday songs and heaven-rejoicing choruses are set in this key.
D Minor Melancholy womanliness, the spleen and humours brood.
Eb Major The key of love, of devotion, of intimate conversation with God.
D# Minor Feelings of the anxiety of the soul’s deepest distress, of brooding despair, of blackest depresssion, of the most gloomy condition of the soul. Every fear, every hesitation of the shuddering heart, breathes out of horrible D# minor. If ghosts could speak, their speech would approximate this key.
E Major Noisy shouts of joy, laughing pleasure and not yet complete, full delight lies in E Major.
E minor Naive, womanly innocent declaration of love, lament without grumbling; sighs accompanied by few tears; this key speaks of the imminent hope of resolving in the pure happiness of C major.
F Major Complaisance and calm.
F Minor Deep depression, funereal lament, groans of misery and longing for the grave.
F# Major Triumph over difficulty, free sigh of relief utered when hurdles are surmounted; echo of a soul which has fiercely struggled and finally conquered lies in all uses of this key.
F# Minor A gloomy key: it tugs at passion as a dog biting a dress. Resentment and discontent are its language.
G Major Everything rustic, idyllic and lyrical, every calm and satisfied passion, every tender gratitude for true friendship and faithful love,—in a word every gentle and peaceful emotion of the heart is correctly expressed by this key.
G Minor Discontent, uneasiness, worry about a failed scheme; bad-tempered gnashing of teeth; in short: resentment and dislike.
Ab Major Key of the grave. Death, grave, putrefaction, judgment, eternity lie in its radius.
Ab Minor Grumbler, heart squeezed until it suffocates; wailing lament, difficult struggle; in a word, the color of this key is everything struggling with difficulty.
A Major This key includes declarations of innocent love, satisfaction with one’s state of affairs; hope of seeing one’s beloved again when parting; youthful cheerfulness and trust in God.
A minor Pious womanliness and tenderness of character.
Bb Major Cheerful love, clear conscience, hope, aspiration for a better world.
Bb minor A quaint creature, often dressed in the garment of night. It is somewhat surly and very seldom takes on a pleasant countenance. Mocking God and the world; discontented with itself and with everything; preparation for suicide sounds in this key.
B Major Strongly coloured, announcing wild passions, composed from the most glaring coulors. Anger, rage, jealousy, fury, despair and every burden of the heart lies in its sphere.
B Minor This is as it were the key of patience, of calm awaiting ones’s fate and of submission to divine dispensation.
Translated by Rita Steblin in A History of Key Characteristics in the 18th and Early 19th Centuries. UMI Research Press (1983).
Edited from a piece by Natalie Angier in the NY Times. Click here to read the whole thing (I chopped out the intro for length, but read it if you can).
“If you’re supremely confident of your skills, and if you’re certain that what you’re doing is for the good of your patients,” says Dr. Robert A. Burton, “it can be very difficult to know on your own when you’re veering into dangerous territory.”
The author of “On Being Certain” and the coming “A Skeptic’s Guide to the Mind,” Dr. Burton is a contributor to a scholarly yet surprisingly sprightly volume called “Pathological Altruism,” to be published this fall by Oxford University Press.
As the new book makes clear, pathological altruism is not limited to showcase acts of self-sacrifice, like donating a kidney or a part of one’s liver to a total stranger. The book is the first comprehensive treatment of the idea that when ostensibly generous “how can I help you?” behaviour is taken to extremes, misapplied or stridently rhapsodised, it can become unhelpful, unproductive and even destructive.
Selflessness gone awry may play a role in a broad variety of disorders, including anorexia and animal hoarding, women who put up with abusive partners and men who abide alcoholic ones.
Because a certain degree of selfless behaviour is essential to the smooth performance of any human group, selflessness run amok can crop up in political contexts. It fosters the exhilarating sensation of righteous indignation, the belief in the purity of your team and your cause and the perfidiousness of all competing teams and causes.
David Brin, a physicist and science fiction writer, argues in one chapter that sanctimony can be as physically addictive as any recreational drug, and as destabilising. “A relentless addiction to indignation may be one of the chief drivers of obstinate dogmatism,” he writes. “It may be the ultimate propellant behind the current ‘culture war.’ ” Not to mention an epidemic of blogorrhea, newspaper-induced hypertension and the use of a hot, steeped beverage as one’s political mascot.
Barbara Oakley, an associate professor of engineering at Oakland University in Michigan and an editor of the new volume, said in an interview that when she first began talking about its theme at medical or social science conferences, “people looked at me as though I’d just grown goat horns. They said, ‘But altruism by definition can never be pathological.’ ”
To Dr. Oakley, the resistance was telling. “It epitomised the idea ‘I know how to do the right thing, and when I decide to do the right thing it can never be called pathological,’ ” she said.
Indeed, the study of altruism, generosity and other affiliative behaviours has lately been quite fashionable in academia, partly as a counterweight to the harsher, selfish-gene renderings of Darwinism, and partly on the financing bounty of organisations like the John Templeton Foundation. Many researchers point out that human beings are a spectacularly cooperative species, far surpassing other animals in the willingness to work closely and amicably with non-kin. Our altruistic impulse, they say, is no mere crown jewel of humanity; it is the bedrock on which we stand.
Yet given her professional background, Dr. Oakley couldn’t help doubting altruism’s exalted reputation. “I’m not looking at altruism as a sacred thing from on high,” she said. “I’m looking at it as an engineer.”
And by the first rule of engineering, she said, “there is no such thing as a free lunch; there are always trade-offs.” If you increase order in one place, you must decrease it somewhere else.
Moreover, the laws of thermodynamics dictate that the transfer of energy will itself exact a tax, which means that the overall disorder churned up by the transaction will be slightly greater than the new orderliness created. None of which is to argue against good deeds, Dr. Oakley said, but rather to adopt a bit of an engineer’s mind-set, and be prepared for energy losses and your own limitations.
Train nurses to be highly empathetic and, yes, their patients will love them. But studies show that empathetic nurses burn out and leave the profession more quickly than do their peers who remain aloof. Give generously to Child A, and Child B will immediately howl foul, while quiet Child C will grow up and write nasty novels about you. “Pathologies of altruism,” as Dr. Oakley put it, “are bound to arise.”
Rachel Bachner-Melman, a clinical psychologist at Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem who specialises in eating disorders, has seen the impact of extreme selflessness on the anorexic young women who populate her ward.
“They are terribly sensitive to the needs of those around them,” she said in an interview. “They know who needs to be pushed in a wheelchair, who needs a word of encouragement, who needs to be fed.”
Yet the spectral empaths will express no desires of their own. “They try to hide their needs or deny their needs or pretend their needs don’t exist,” Dr. Bachner-Melman went on. “They barely feel they have the right to exist themselves.” They apologize for themselves, for the hated, hollow self, by giving, ceaselessly giving.
In therapy they are reminded that to give requires that first one must have. “It’s like in an airplane,” Dr. Bachner-Melman said. “The parents must put on the oxygen mask first, not because they’re more important, but if the parents can’t breathe, they can’t help the child.”
Denial and mental compartmentalisation also characterise people who stay in abusive relationships, who persuade themselves that with enough self-sacrifice and fluttering indulgence their beloved batterer or drunken spouse will reform. Extreme sensory denial defines the practice of animal hoarding, in which people keep far more pets than they can care for — dozens, scores, hundreds of cats, rodents, ferrets, turtles.
The hoarders may otherwise be high-functioning individuals, says Dr. Gary J. Patronek, a clinical assistant professor at the veterinary school of Tufts University and founder of the Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium. “We’ve seen teachers, nurses, public officials, even veterinarians,” he said in an interview. “They live a double life.”
At work, they behave responsibly and know the importance of good hygiene. They go home and enter another world, one of squalor and chaos, of overwhelming stench and undernourished animals, of pets that have died for lack of care.
Yet the hoarders notice none of this. “You walk in, you can’t breathe, there are dead and dying animals present, but the person is unable to see it,” Dr. Patronek said. Cat carcasses may alternate with food in the refrigerator, “but in the person’s mind it’s happy and wonderful, it’s a peaceable kingdom.”
Hoarders may think of themselves as animal saviours, rescuing pets from the jaws of the pound; yet they are not remotely capable of caring for the animal throngs, and they soon give up trying. “It’s a very focal, delusional behaviour,” Dr. Patronek said. And it can be all the more difficult to treat for wearing the trappings of selflessness and love.
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(the comments are all here)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08lVuhv_Va8&w=700] Tom Paxton wrote this in...1964? Widely covered. Beautiful track.
“I am one of the searchers. There are, I believe, millions of us. We are not unhappy, but neither are we really content. We continue to explore life, hoping to uncover its ultimate secret. We continue to explore ourselves, hoping to understand. We like to walk along the beach, we are drawn by the ocean, taken by its power, its unceasing motion, its mystery and unspeakable beauty. We like forests and mountains, deserts and hidden rivers, and the lonely cities as well. Our sadness is as much a part of our lives as is our laughter. To share our sadness with one we love is perhaps as great a joy as we can know - unless it be to share our laughter.
"We searchers are ambitious only for life itself, for everything beautiful it can provide. Most of all we love and want to be loved. We want to live in a relationship that will not impede our wandering, nor prevent our search, nor lock us in prison walls; that will take us for what little we have to give. We do not want to prove ourselves to another or compete for love.
"For wanderers, dreamers, and lovers, for lonely men and women who dare to ask of life everything good and beautiful. It is for those who are too gentle to live among wolves.”
James Kavanaugh on his first book of poems There Are Men Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves. An ex-priest, he wrote it in the early Seventies when he was living in a tiny flat in New York, surviving off peanut butter and processed cheese. He died in 2009 at the ripe age of 81.
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Here are three from it:
Where are you hiding my love? Each day without you will never come again. Even today you missed a sunset on the ocean, A silver shadow on yellow rocks I saved for you, A squirrel that ran across the road, A duck diving for dinner. My God! There may be nothing left to show you Save wounds and weariness And hopes grown dead, And wilted flowers I picked for you a lifetime ago, Or feeble steps that cannot run to hold you, Arms too tired to offer you to a roaring wind, A face too wrinkled to feel the ocean's spray.
and
I saw my face today And it looked older, Without the warmth of wisdom Or the softness Born of pain and waiting. The dreams were gone from my eyes, Hope lost in hollowness On my cheeks, A finger of death Pulling at my jaws.
So I did my push-ups And wondered if I'd ever find you, To see my face With friendlier eyes than mine.
plus of course
There are men too gentle to live among wolves Who prey upon them with IBM eyes And sell their hearts and guts for martinis at noon. There are men too gentle for a savage world Who dream instead of snow and children and Halloween And wonder if the leaves will change their color soon.
There are men too gentle to live among wolves Who anoint them for burial with greedy claws And murder them for a merchant's profit and gain. There are men too gentle for a corporate world Who dream instead of Easter eggs and fragrant grass And pause to hear the distant whistle of a train.
There are men too gentle to live among wolves Who devour them with appetite and search For other men to prey upon and suck their childhood dry. There are men too gentle for an accountant's world Who dream instead of Easter eggs and fragrant grass And search for beauty in the mystery of the sky. There are men too gentle to live among wolves
There are men too gentle to live among wolves Who toss them like a lost and wounded dove Such gentle men are lonely in a merchant's world Unless they have a gentle one to love.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Pfjo66PTy4&w=700] Dr John's new album, Locked Down, is produced by (and features) Dan Auerbach, guitarist and singer of The Black Keys. You can really hear him in this song - though all the tracks are brilliant. It's rocking. A very complete album. Buy it. Listen to it all the way through. Repeat. You won't be disappointed.
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And in case you didn't know... Malcolm John "Mac" Rebennack, Jr. (born November 21, 1940), better known by the stage name Dr. John (also Dr. John Creaux), is an American singer-songwriter, pianist and guitarist, whose music combines blues, pop, jazz as well as zydeco, boogie woogie and rock and roll.
Active as a session musician since the late 1950s, he came to wider prominence in the early 1970s with a wildly theatrical stage show inspired by medicine shows, Mardi Gras costumes and voodoo ceremonies. Rebennack has recorded over 20 albums and in 1973 scored a top-20 hit with the jaunty funk-flavored "Right Place Wrong Time", still perhaps his best-known song.
Here he is with Etta James, one of my favourite performances:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFsrDlhHidE&w=700]
Song at Sunset, by Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
Splendor of ended day floating and filling me, Hour prophetic, hour resuming the past, Inflating my throat, you divine average, You earth and life till the last ray gleams I sing.
Open mouth of my soul uttering gladness, Eyes of my soul seeing perfection, Natural life of me faithfully praising things, Corroborating forever the triumph of things.
Illustrious every one! Illustrious what we name space, sphere of unnumber'd spirits, Illustrious the mystery of motion in all beings, even the tiniest insect, Illustrious the attribute of speech, the senses, the body, Illustrious the passing light--illustrious the pale reflection on the new moon in the western sky, Illustrious whatever I see or hear or touch, to the last.
Good in all, In the satisfaction and aplomb of animals, In the annual return of the seasons, In the hilarity of youth, In the strength and flush of manhood, In the grandeur and exquisiteness of old age, In the superb vistas of death.
Wonderful to depart! Wonderful to be here! The heart, to jet the all-alike and innocent blood! To breathe the air, how delicious! To speak--to walk--to seize something by the hand! To prepare for sleep, for bed, to look on my rose-color'd flesh! To be conscious of my body, so satisfied, so large! To be this incredible God I am! To have gone forth among other Gods, these men and women I love.
Wonderful how I celebrate you and myself How my thoughts play subtly at the spectacles around! How the clouds pass silently overhead! How the earth darts on and on! and how the sun, moon, stars, dart on and on! How the water sports and sings! (surely it is alive!) How the trees rise and stand up, with strong trunks, with branches and leaves! (Surely there is something more in each of the trees, some living soul.)
O amazement of things--even the least particle! O spirituality of things! O strain musical flowing through ages and continents, now reaching me and America! I take your strong chords, intersperse them, and cheerfully pass them forward.
I too carol the sun, usher'd or at noon, or as now, setting, I too throb to the brain and beauty of the earth and of all the growths of the earth, I too have felt the resistless call of myself.
As I steam'd down the Mississippi, As I wander'd over the prairies, As I have lived, as I have look'd through my windows my eyes, As I went forth in the morning, as I beheld the light breaking in the east, As I bathed on the beach of the Eastern Sea, and again on the beach of the Western Sea, As I roam'd the streets of inland Chicago, whatever streets I have roam'd, Or cities or silent woods, or even amid the sights of war, Wherever I have been I have charged myself with contentment and triumph.
I sing to the last the equalities modern or old, I sing the endless finales of things, I say Nature continues, glory continues, I praise with electric voice, For I do not see one imperfection in the universe, And I do not see one cause or result lamentable at last in the universe.
O setting sun! though the time has come, I still warble under you, if none else does, unmitigated adoration.
(via)
New favourite tumblr - texts from Hillary Clinton.
[youtube=http://youtu.be/NKDXuCE7LeQ&w=700]
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My sisters sent this to each other on their Facebook walls. It's lovely. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nnjs194Gu4&w=700]
When I recall just how it felt When I went walking down by the lake My soul was free, my heart awake When I walked down into the town
The mountain air was fresh and clear The sun was up behind the hill It felt so good to be alive On that morning in spring
I want to sing this song for you I want to lift your spirits high And in my soul I want to feel The beauty of the days gone by
The beauty of the days gone by It brings a longing to my soul To contemplate my own true self And keep me young as I grow old
The beauty of the days gone by The music that we used to play So lift your glass and raise it high To the beauty of the days gone by
I'll sing it from the mountain top Down to the valley down below Because my cup doth overflow With the beauty of the days gone by
The mountain glen Where we used to roam The gardens there By the railroad track Oh my memory it does not lack Of the beauty of the days gone by
The beauty of the days gone by It brings a longing to my soul To contemplate my own true self And keep me young as I grow old
And keep me young as I grow old And keep me young as I grow old And keep me young as I grow old
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Gz7mGISJ5M&w=700] Written by Randy Newman and covered by AT LEAST 60 major artists, from Nina Simone, Neil Diamond and Dusty Springfield to Peter Gabriel, Katy Melua and even Val Kilmer(?)
I like Norah's version, but you're spoilt for choice, so have a play and find your own favourite (Nina's version is Jamie Cullum's Desert Island disc - it's the song his missus, Sophie Dahl, sang him the first time they met).
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSYgoC_Dgw4&w=700]
Broken windows and empty hallways A pale dead moon in the sky streaked with gray Human kindness is overflowing And I think it's going to rain today
Scarecrows dressed in the latest styles With frozen smiles to chase love away Human kindness is overflowing And I think it's going to rain today
Lonely, lonely Tin can at my feet Think I'll kick it down the street That's the way to treat a friend
Bright before me the signs implore me To help the needy and show them the way Human kindness is overflowing And I think it's going to rain today --- "I Think It's Going to Rain Today" as written by Randy Newman Lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyqww0RScMs&w=700]
Wearing a Chelsea kit, roller skating, whipping AND holding a gun. She could well be the perfect woman. [gallery]