kecak-a chak-a chak

“I have a story for you. It’s full of advantages… 

The first is that at the end of the story

it doesn’t finish, it falls into a hole. 

And the story starts again
in the middle. 

The other advantage, and the biggest,

is that you can change course along the way, 
if you let me. If you give me time.” [Lorenzo]

hushed

the girl in the car

GYWO

the kids are allright

After the iranian election I watched the media coverage breathlessly for days, stayed up late watching twitter feeds, we changed our avatars to green and set our time zones to tehran time to overwhelm their cyberspying capabilities. A crisis, is, i think always a heady time, as long as your not the one being shot.

Lately, I haven't paid a lot of attention to it.  But it occurs to me how very inspiring to see young people willing to sacrifice everything for that elusive thing called freedom.

ISTANBUL, Turkey — As simmering unrest continues to sweep Iran, the country’s opposition is casting about for possible endgames to the ongoing crisis. Frustrated presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi proposed a five-point reconciliation plan last week but the government appears unyielding.

In the struggle currently gripping the streets of the Islamic Republic, an upcoming anniversary could prove significant.

Jan. 16 marks 31 years since the Shah of Iran fled his country, effectively handing victory to the revolution led by Ayatollah Roohollah Khomeini. Green movement activists are hoping the date could once again be the tipping point, this time for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

And as the anniversary approaches, Tehran isn't the only city to watch. Historical precedent suggests that revolutions can start in provincial cities not thought to be hotbeds rebellious activity.

On Dec. 15, 1989, a disturbance in a small Romanian team led to a massacre that became the long-awaited catalyst for the overthrow of the Ceausescu dynasty, the last Communist regime in Eastern Europe...(continue)

"slowness"

from the book with the same name by Milan Kundera:

"The way contemporary history is told is like a huge concert where they present all of Beethoven's one hundred thirty-eight opuses one after the other, but actually play just the first eight bars of each. If the same concert were given again in ten years, only the first note of each piece would be played, thus one hundred thirty-eight notes for the whole concert, presented as one continuous melody. And in twenty years, the whole of Beethoven's music would be summed up in a single very long buzzing tone, like the endless sound he heard the first day of his deafness.

sorry.......haters

"I Feel Beautiful" is a Robin Hitchcok song featured in a 2005 movie I loved called 'Sorry, Haters'

It stars Robin Wright, Sandra O, and an actor from Tunisia with the most amazingly musical name: Abdel-Latif Kechich.

It got alot of bad reviews... mostly about how parts of the plot strain credulity. For me, the ways in which the film goes too far plot-wise are so disturbingly visceral that I thought it worked.

*its in digital video as you will notice

Incidentally, the guy who plays the marimba, Jon Brion, scored films such as Magnolia, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and, I Heart Huckabees. And the guy who sings harmony likes to gently (and somewhat auto-erotically) play his torso... silently.

Mount Obama

" ST JOHN'S, Antigua – Antigua's highest mountain officially became "Mount Obama" on Tuesday as the small Caribbean nation celebrated the American president on his birthday and saluted him as a symbol of black achievement.

Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer presided over the re-christening ceremony at the base of the mountain, unveiling a stone sculpture and plaque honoring the president as an inspiration in the twin-island nation of Antigua and Barbuda and throughout the Caribbean." (more...)

More of a hill really...

The proud P.M. Baldwin Spencer (left in yellow) and some other guy...

where in the world is Antigua?

...that doesn't really help

....

Reza Aslan posts on Twitter: Ahmadinejad barely escapes mob chanting "Liar!" and "Ahmadi-Bye Bye" at Sharif U. (follow his tweets)

He links to this video showing the melee:

(the relevant part is about half way in)




...

Her voice is rhythm

They say:

"In a past life that came to a close sometime around 1996, Buenos Aires' Juana Molina was a well-known comedienne and television host, something akin to Argentina's Tracey Ullman, or say, Carol Burnett. It was a role she dutifully fulfilled for almost seven years before succumbing to a twerk of conscience and retreating to Los Angeles in the hopes of starting again, this time as a musician."

&&&&

"The subtle prettiness of Juana Molina's music tends to engender an undermining passivity in listeners...Her music may have slipped into the background, even for some fans, but Molina is onto something interesting. Her twin obsessions with the folk music spanning Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil and the shading possibilities of electronics have pushed her work into an unusual place. The guitar is central, but Molina uses the instrument as a line instead of a shape. Chord changes are deployed sparingly, allowing her songs to build horizontally, gradually adding and subtracting sounds to create an endless music that could theoretically go on forever. "more...

She says:

"When I started to write the songs for this record 'Son', a new element that may have been hidden for a long time appeared; the randomness of the combination of sounds in nature. Each bird has a particular singing; nevertheless this singing is always different. It is not a pattern; it's a drawing, a sound and a mode, only a few elements that each bird combines in a new way each time.

In the same way, sometimes I chose to sing a melodic drawing I develop for the song. Verses are alike, but never the same (rios seco, no seas antipática) other times I chose to sing a repetitive melody. What changes here and moves randomly is, for example, a keyboard. It is like overlapping two different loops, with no synchronicity at all. One very rhythmic and the other one more lose. When you play both, at the same time, the loose loop will provoke a changing harmony, because their beats will never be in the same place. This causes a moving harmony."

Entertainment

an amateur video for Juana Molina's

song 'Que Dificil'

made by Casa Gesine Maren

playing for change

...basically musicians around the world, some famous, some not, some live, some dead,
collaborate on some feel good music.

They are using proceeds to open schools around the world

Bono kind of messes it up...

full roster of musicians here

The Resonance of past Horror

SHELBY STEELE:

If the Henry Louis Gates imbroglio makes anything clear it is that, in 2009, the mere implication of racial profiling in the arrest of a black professor on the nothing charge of disorderly conduct is sufficient to trigger a national (if not international) furor involving even the president of the United States. This incident shows us an America so chastened by its racist past—and so determined to overcome that past—that, at least for a moment, the national politics (health care, Iran, recession) stopped as the country combed over a six-minute encounter between a black academic and a white policeman.

I remember when another racial incident riveted the nation. It was the mid-1950s. I was just old enough to be sent to the barbershop on my own, and there one afternoon I noticed the men passing around a magazine. There were hushed whispers. “Don’t let him see it.” And then a booming voice, “Go ahead. He needs to see it!” continue ...