Maybe you're not susceptible to flash mobs.
If, however, you are a member of that portion of the population who occasionally enjoy life, you may wish to spend 5 minutes and 40 seconds viewing and listening to the following:
As far as I can tell, it is some kind of extended promo for a Catalan bank.
I don't think I care.
“To hold our tongues when everyone is gossiping, to smile without hostility at people and institutions, to compensate for the shortage of love in the world with more love in small, private matters; to be more faithful in our work, to show greater patience, to forgo the cheap revenge obtainable from mockery and criticism: all these are things we can do.”
—
Hermann Hesse
This video is disturbing as can be, as is a lot of what's going on in Turkey. A friend of Cory's in Istanbul also reminds us that there is a real opportunity for positive developments too. She writes:
"it is nuts but it is also so exciting. we have been so depressed thinking nothing could be done about the spiraling hell..and now! so in general we are happy. just hope it causes some real changes."
Maxwell's is closing. It's surreal. For all the changes that have happened in Hoboken, Maxwell's was one place I was sure would endure, would fight the good fight until the tolling of the final bell.
A lot is happening in this crazy world, but right now, it all takes a back seat to the moment of silence we need to respect for this imminent loss.
I get it. The people who make Maxwell's Maxwell's are moving on, going where the life is, where the ground is still fertile for the kind of creativity that once grew in the rotting wood of the waterfront. And it's true that the green spaces and some of the restaurants are nice, but the condos have taken more than they have given, and we'll be biting back tears for a while.
The list of acts I've seen perform at this temple, four blocks from my home, over the last I don't even want to say how many years, includes, among others:
Alex Chilton
Nels Cline
The Baseball Project
Bonnie Prince Billy
Brian Jonestown Massacre
Harvey Sid Fisher
Magnetic Fields
Mission of Burma
Roy Loney
New Pornographers
Kurt Vile
Doug Gillard
And, yes, The Feelies, Richard Barone, Spent, and of course Yo La Tengo.
We've lost other clubs, and theaters, and record stores and book stores and restaurants and coffee shops and somehow we go on. But it's driving me a little insane that the yuppies are driving out what a hurricane couldn't budge. Next month.
I feel like gravity has been revoked.
Say you had a busy weekend. Say you had a houseguest (a great one!), plus a more-than-usually satisfying audition you helped a friend with, and an art opening, followed by going to a show at Lincoln Center, and then Sunday you played tennis in Central Park and then gave the final performance of the show you were in, then met friends and went to another show from the same festival your show was a part of, then saw another out of town guest.
Of course, that's just one way to have a busy weekend. You probably have your own ways of doing it.
Then on Monday you might go back to the office or the shop or the salt mine or wherever you work. You're feeling ok, but you've been beating back a cold and maybe you didn't really get as much sleep as you'd have liked and you haven't had a chance to rest rest for a while, so you have a perfectly ok day and you get a lot done, but you don't really click into gear.
But on the way home you might stop by that fancy grocery on the corner which for some reason gives you a really good price on shiitake mushrooms. So before your girlfriend comes home, you mince up some garlic and onion and put it in a bowl with oil and a Malaysian spice blend (which may or may not have been created by the artist who made the show you went to on Saturday) of turmeric, cumin, cayenne, coriander, cinnamon, and some other herbs and goodies, plus a few dashes of that insanely spicy naga jolokia sauce you got when you were in the Keys, and you marinate the chicken breast you brought out of the freezer this morning in the mix. Then you decompress from the day for a while, which is nice. And the gal comes home and you let her do her own decompression while you go back in the kitchen and put on some good music and whip up some wild rice and chop those shiitakes into strips, sear and stir fry the chicken and then put in the mushroom strips, and you finish it off with a shot of liquid aminos and give one last stir, serve on a bed of greens and top with crumbled bleu cheese and dressing.
There’s nothing to be done but to go on restating the importance of this kind of courage, and to try to make sure that these oppressed individuals — Ai Weiwei, the members of Pussy Riot, Hamza Kashgari — are seen for what they are: men and women standing on the front line of liberty. How to do this? Sign the petitions against their treatment, join the protests. Speak up. Every little bit counts.
Home in Hoboken after a long week, and a good long night of moviegoing at the Tribeca Film Festival, listening to some Caroline Shaw and sinking into not-unpleasant exhaustion.
Saw a program of documentary shorts - fantastic, love this fest if for no other reason (and there are other reasons) than that I get a chance to see things like this instead of just making a stray comment while watching some awards show that "we ought to go see things like that."
Then hustled over to another theater and watched Adult World, which was fun and funny as hell (and I'm not one to give an automatic nod to the latest member of the Roberts Dynasty).
One of my homes. Not the one I live in today, but one where I lived for 6+ years, and which still holds a more-than-little piece of my heart.
Where Monday happened.
All my friends are ok, as far as I can tell, none of them were in the vicinity. Most were at work (while they're proud of Patriots' Day up there, they still don't usually give you the day off unless you managed to score Red Sox tickets), a few were at home. The physical therapist who helped me in the wake of surgery last year qualified for the Marathon, but opted not to run it this year.
Bostonians in general have been dealing with it amazingly, but not surprisingly. The news outlets have rightly referred to their heroism, generosity, fearlessness, and humanity.
And I'm not going to dwell on the typical media sensationalizing of tragedy (and I'm certainly not going to dignify crap like this with a response)
We actually have all the power here, and there's one thing we can do to render terrorism ineffective: Refuse to be terrorized.
It's hard to do, because terrorism is designed precisely to scare people -- far out of proportion to its actual danger. A huge amount of research on fear and the brain teaches us that we exaggerate threats that are rare, spectacular, immediate, random -- in this case involving an innocent child -- senseless, horrific and graphic. Terrorism pushes all of our fear buttons, really hard, and we overreact.But our brains are fooling us. Even though this will be in the news for weeks, we should recognize this for what it is: a rare event. That's the very definition of news: something that is unusual -- in this case, something that almost never happens
Trust me, we won’t be giving up any civil liberties to keep ourselves safe because of this. We won’t cancel next year’s marathon. We won’t drive to New Hampshire and stockpile weapons. When the authorities find the weak and terminally maladjusted culprit or culprits, we’ll roll our eyes at whatever backward ideology they embrace and move on with our lives.There’s been a lot of Boston love going on in the media, including some standouts in the sphere of late night comedy, and even the Yankees got in on it, much to their credit (and – you know this – I do not like to give the Yankees credit for anything, but damn, they deserve it for that.)
Memories of English lefties adapting Maggie's Farm as a response to/indictment of Margaret Thatcher sent me down the Dylan rabbit hole once again.
More on Baroness Thatcher later, but for now, shifting from one quicksilver song to another, I now pose the following query:
Was Dylan writing about someone in particular in the song Queen Jane Approximately? I got pulled into the song (again) when listening to "Hwy 61 Revisited" the other day. There's certainly no need to associate it with any particular person in the flesh & blood universe, but I wonder...
I've never held much truck with the notion that it was about Joan Baez.
Great paintings shouldn't be in museums. Have you ever been in a museum? Museums are cemetaries. Paintings should be on the walls of restaurants, in dime stores, in gas stations, in men's rooms. Great paintings should be where people hang out. The only thing where it's happening is on radio and records, that's where people hang out. You can't see great paintings. You pay half a million and hang one in your house and one guest sees it. That's not art. That's a shame, a crime. Music is the only thing that's in tune with what's happening. It's not in book form, it's not on the stage. All this art they've been talking about is nonexistent. It just remains on the shelf. It doesn't make anyone happier. Just think how many people would really feel great if they could see a Picasso in their daily diner. It's not the bomb that has to go, man, it's the museums.SO - is it possible that this is an offer/invitation to the artist of plastic (inevitable) repetition who ran the Factory where his kinda sorta girlfriend spent a lot of her time?
When your mother sends back all your invitations
And your father to your sister he explains
That you're tired of yourself and all of your creations
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?
Now when all of the flower ladies want back what they have lent you
And the smell of their roses does not remain
And all of your children start to resent you
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?
Now when all the clowns that you have commissioned
Have died in battle or in vain
And you're sick of all this repetition
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?
Oh when all of your advisers heave their plastic
At your feet to convince you of your pain
Trying to prove that your conclusions should be more drastic
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?
Now when all of the bandits that you turn your other cheek to
All lay down their bandanas and complain
And you want somebody you don't have to speak to
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?
Ah, Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?
Which included Cory's birthday, and the birth of this little one.
"Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign."
-Paul Valery, 1931
Instant access to everything: all the music ever recorded, all the words ever written, all the pictures ever drawn, photos of every sculpture molded, carved, or cast. Footage, accounts, and descriptions of any event you care to witness or recall. The history of people and of nations. A 3-D rendering of any item that could be imagined. Economic information and mathematical formulations. Erotic fantasies, comedic interludes, pithy remarks, athletic exhibition, action and suspense, diversion without end.
And then what?
"It is the story that saves our progeny from blundering like blind beggars into the spikes of the cactus fence. The story is our escort; without it, we are blind."
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