Thursday 15 December 2016

A day in the life: Jackson Pollock, #2


Live to paint, paint to live, by Lee Siegel, The Atlantic 
Pollock knitted painting into the fabric of daily existence. Samuel Butler once said that life is like learning how to play the violin and having to give concerts at the same time. That is how Pollock painted, as if living and painting were identical. 


Friday 9 December 2016

Sepultura's Roots: a politicized, electrified and polyrhythmic counterethnography

Idelber Avelar, 2003, Heavy Metal Music in Postdictatorial Brazil: Sepultura and the Coding of Nationality in SoundJournal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 12:3, p. 343 
[I]t is to Sepultura’s credit that their journey into their nation’s sounds was never phrased in the tired vocabulary of authenticity. After the collaboration with the Xavante tribe on Roots, Igor Cavalera stated that ‘we did not do a world music record’. His insistence that ‘everything is mixed and distorted’ was not only an attempt to highlight the album’s heaviness but most importantly to set their collaboration with the Xavante tribe in terms irreducible to the Paul Simon or Peter Gabriel style ‘recoveries’ of indigenous musics, marked by an exoticizing that in practice denies those musics any coevalness with the artist doing the gathering. Stressing upfront the work of mixing, Igor removes the discussion from the terrain of preservation, authenticity, recovery, that is to say he removes it from the language of world music. Implicitly asked to become ‘boys’ of a ‘jungle’ they had never known, Sepultura indeed goes Amazonian but brings back not an ‘anthropological document’ but a politicized, electrified and polyrhythmic counterethnography.


Friday 2 December 2016

Standing up against prejudice: James Joyce


  But it's no use, says he. Force, hatred, history, all that. That's not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it's the very opposite of that that is really life. 
  What? says Alf. 
  Love, says Bloom. I mean the opposite of hatred.

In a crucial scene in Ulysses, when he’s assaulted by a rabidly anti-Semitic Dubliner, Bloom does retort, “Your God was a jew. Christ was a jew like me.” But later in the day, when he recounts this incident, Bloom admits that he was pretending to be Jewish—pretending to be what the nameless Dubliner assumed him to be—in order to stand up personally against the forces of prejudice: “So I without deviating from plain facts in the least told him his God, I mean Christ, was a jew too and all his family like me though in reality I’m not.” 
Joyce spreads the evidence regarding Bloom’s relationship to Judaism far and wide, making it difficult to synthesize and allowing his readers to misread Bloom’s identity, just as the citizens of Dublin do. But Joyce is not playing games; Joyce is never merely playing games. He didn’t simply write a book about prejudice; he wrote a book that embodies in its language the ways in which prejudice is perpetuated, carried aloft by language, regardless of the facts. Language alters reality in Ulysses, conferring an identity on Bloom, an identity that in a moment of selfless nobility Bloom embraces as his own.

Monday 21 November 2016

Leonard Cohen: the music and the light






Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in





Tuesday 1 November 2016

The dream that drives us to a forward momentum




We're worried about echoes
And why we're being held back
Bound at the speed of light

This is the time of no regret
In a forward momentum race
We leave in our wake
What is broken, forgotten and gone

I squint my eyes
As if to make 
My sight extend a little further

This is the time of no regret
In a forward momentum race
We leave in our wake
What is broken and forgotten

The dream is nothing
Yet it drives us to the end
These words unforce our hand

Hold on

Hold on

In fear of true deception
Our lives are being brought back
Brought back down

This is the time of no regret
In a forward momentum race
We leave in our wake
What is broken and forgotten

Thursday 27 October 2016

Rage against the dying of the light




                                            Do not go gentle into that good night,
                                            Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
                                            Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

                                            Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

                                            Because their words had forked no lightning they
                                            Do not go gentle into that good night.

                                            Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

                                            Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
                                            Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

                                            Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

                                            And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
                                            Do not go gentle into that good night.

                                            Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

                                            Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
                                            Rage, rage against the dying of the light.


Saturday 15 October 2016

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner



Running's always been a big thing in our family, especially running away from the police. It's hard to understand. All I know is that you've got to run, run without knowing why, through fields and woods, and the winning post's no end, even though barmy crowds might be cheering theirsens daft. That's what the loneliness of the long-distance runner feels like.


Saturday 1 October 2016

Question the process: Mother of Millions





"Name me truth you name me hope"
I'm not in use
A threat that I behold
If only I'd make the waves

"Name me guide you name me order"
Turn around
You mock my trust
Each time I judge the life to come

Why do I keep falling for this
I am like an open book thrown in the fireplace

Why do people settle for this
Controlling with a dice and living in disgrace

Why
Do I keep falling for this
I am like an open book thrown in the fireplace

Why
Do people settle for this
Controlling with a dice and living in disgrace



Thursday 29 September 2016

Tuesday 6 September 2016

A prison of measured time


From Agitate! Educate! Organize!: American Labor Posters 
by Lincoln Cushing and Timothy W. Drescher

Monday 22 August 2016

Film quotes, #7: The Motorcycle Diaries



       SILVIA: You are wasting your time.  
       ERNESTO: Why? 
       SILVIA: This life is hell. 
       ERNESTO: Yes, it is really fucked up, but we have to fight for every                  breath and tell Death to fuck off.


Friday 12 August 2016

Living innocently in a doom town: Wipers


Can one win by living innocently, as in no pretentious stunts and supposedly cunning managers, and no top-ten hits either? Wipersarchetypical punk ethos set the terms of reference because it never required such gimmicks; and, furthermore, because their musically adventurous path defied classification and broke away from convention, rather than cashed in on it. It may be the case that one can never win by living innocently, not least of all in a doom town, but perhaps this is the very reason it is so worth it; Greg Sage's combination of stellar musicianship and uncompromising integrity certainly is.


Sunday 7 August 2016

A day in the life: Jackson Pollock



Important art by Jackson Pollock, Full Fathom Five | The Art Story 
Its surface is clotted with an assortment of detritus, from cigarette butts to coins and a key. While the top-most layers were created by pouring lines of black and shiny silver house paint, a large part of the paint's crust was applied by brush and palette knife, creating an angular counterpoint to the weaving lines. 
Jackson Pollock, Full Fathom Five | MoMA 
The title, suggested by Pollock's neighbor, quotes from Shakespeare's The Tempest, wherein Ariel describes a death by shipwreck: "Full fathom five thy father lies / Of his bones are coral made / Those are pearls that were his eyes."


Sunday 24 July 2016

Monday 11 July 2016

Never become a monster





All you need, all you need
All you need is all is now

All you give, all you give
All you give is not what you're getting

All you live, all you give
All you live fits in a teardrop

If you come closer
I'll show you how it feels

All you need, all you need
All you need, is all is now

All you live, all you give
All you live fits in a teardrop

Give what's worth remembering
Give what's worth dying
Give it all, back for more
You just give it all, back for more

If you come closer
I'll show you how it feels

High is high
Low is low
Love is gone



Saturday 2 July 2016

Thank you, Patti



Yesterday in Hyde Park, London. Commanding in her brilliance, transcendent in her aggressiveness, joyous and holy, holy, holy, holy... And what could then be more fitting than for her to leave us with a song which, as she emphasised, is not about death, but about life. As all life is holy...



See also:

Tuesday 28 June 2016

You are not what you own: Fugazi


When we have nothing left to give
There will be no reason for us to live
But when we have nothing left to lose
You will have nothing left to use
We owe you nothing
You have no control

Merchandise keeps us in line
Common sense says it's by design
What could a businessman ever want more
Than to have us sucking in his store
We owe you nothing
You have no control

You are not what you own