Filed under: poetry
When you come, as you soon must, to the streets of our city,
Mad-eyed from stating the obvious,
Not proclaiming our fall but begging us
In God’s name to have self-pity,
Spare us all word of the weapons, their force and range,
The long numbers that rocket the mind;
Our slow, unreckoning hearts will be left behind,
Unable to fear what is too strange.
Nor shall you scare us with talk of the death of the race.
How should we dream of this place without us?–
The sun mere fire, the leaves untroubled about us,
A stone look on the stone’s face?
Speak of the world’s own change. Though we cannot conceive
Of an undreamt thing, we know to our cost
How the dreamt cloud crumbles, the vines are blackened by frost,
How the view alters. We could believe,
If you told us so, that the white-tailed deer will slip
Into perfect shade, grown perfectly shy,
The lark avoid the reaches of our eye,
The jack-pine lose its knuckled grip
On the cold ledge, and every torrent burn
As Xanthus once, its gliding trout
Stunned in a twinkling. What should we be without
The dolphin’s arc, the dove’s return,
These things in which we have seen ourselves and spoken?
Ask us, prophet, how we shall call
Our natures forth when that live tongue is all
Dispelled, that glass obscured or broken
In which we have said the rose of our love and the clean
Horse of our courage, in which beheld
The singing locust of the soul unshelled,
And all we mean or wish to mean.
Ask us, ask us whether with the worldless rose
Our hearts shall fail us; come demanding
Whether there shall be lofty or long standing
When the bronze annals of the oak-tree close.
Richard Wilbur : Advice to the Prophet, iBiblio.org
Filed under: music
Speaking of concert calendars, iTunes has a nifty new plug-in, iConcertCal, that looks through your music library and generates a list of shows in your surrounding area. It also tells you what other bands are playing at the show and can direct you to the venue’s homepage to purchase tickets. To narrow the list of bands the plug-in searches for, you can set it to only access a single playlist of your favorite artists. The search radius can also be increased/decreased. What’s more, now there is a Facebook extension, allowing you to share your calendar with your friends.
Download @ iConcertCal.com
Facebook extension
Filed under: music
Here is a list of some good upcoming music events in the American northeast. It is also in the menu on your left for your convenience.
July 4 – Sonic Youth, The Feelies – 3:30pm @ Battery Park, NYC
July 4 – Candy Ball @ Club Exit, Brooklyn, NY
July 5 – Shearwater @ Castle Clinton, NYC [Free]
July 8 – Fleet Foxes @ First Unitarian Church, Philadelphia, PA
July 10-13 – Orb Festival @ Echo Lake, NY
July 10 – No Age @ First Unitarian Church, Philadelphia, PA
July 10 – Boris @ Webster Hall, NYC
July 11 – God’s Basement Reopens in Philadelphia, PA
July 15 – Spoon @ Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY
July 17 – DJ Shadow, Cut Chemist @ McCarren Park Pool, Brooklyn, NY
July 18-20 – Pitchfork Music Festival @ Union Park, Chicago, IL
July 18 – Deerhoof w/Metropolis Ensemble @ Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY
July 18 – Matmos @ (le) Poisson Rouge, NYC
July 20 – Santogold, Diplo @ 3-7pm, Central Park Summerstage, NYC [Free]
July 21 – Yes @ Sasquehanna Bank Center, Camden, NJ
July 28 – Dresden Dolls @ The Totally Normal Event, Whippany, NJ
July 30 – Wolf Parade @ Electric Factory, Philadelphia, PA
July 31 – Wolf Parade @ Terminal 5, NYC
July 31 – O’Death, Flogging Molly @ Pier 54, Philadelphia, PA
Filed under: poetry
It is the Muses
who have caused me
to be honored: they
taught me their craft
Sappho
Filed under: painting
StellaImHultberg.com
In-Spite-of-All, LiveJournal.com (art-blog)
StellaLivesToEat, Blogspot.com (food-blog)
Filed under: people
Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time. - George Carlin
Shit, piss, fuck, tits, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker! George Carlin died of heart failure at Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica around 6pm PDT yesterday after being admitted for chest pains that afternoon. The Grammy-winning comedian, author, and counter-culture hero was well known and much loved for his dark humor that touched, grazed and pummeled on topics of politics, religion, psychology and the taboo. He was involved in a Supreme Court case in 1978 for his “Seven Dirty Words” routine (can you guess which 7?), which narrowly (5-4) affirmed the FCC’s right to censor the act on public airwaves. Carlin was also the first person to host Saturday Night Live. He is often considered one of the greatest American comics alongside Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce.
Comedian George Carlin dies in LA at 71, Reuters.com
Filed under: painting
Audrey Kawasaki, who has a 12-feature in the July issue of Juxtapoz, makes beautiful paintings on wood panels. A mixture of manga and art nouveau, her work is both innocent and erotic, dreamy and intoxicated. The natural grain of the surface gives the paintings a living warmth, infused with a chimeric subject matter that often borders on psychedelic.
a u d r e y * k a w a s a k i
okonomide. LiveJournal.com
Filed under: music
The three-day Popped! Festival kicks off tomorrow at the Trocadero Theatre, Philadelphia, with Slick Rick, Steven Bloodbath, and White T’s & White Belts. However, the all-day all-ages outdoor music bash Saturday on the Drexel campus (33 and Market St.) is the day to go. Here’s the schedule:
1:00 The Ting Tings
1:50 Hoots & Hellmouth
2:40 Mr. Lif
3:30 Dan Deacon
4:10 Gogol Bordello
5:40 Crystal Castles
6:45 Mates of State
8:00 Vampire Weekend
There is also the Red Bull DJ stage, which will run all day and feature Mike Z, Rock Tits, and Immediate vs. Turnaround. Sunday, the festival moves to both floors of The World Café, headlined by Daniel Johnston, also including O’Death, The Capitol Years, Project Jenny/Project Jan and many more. A one-day pass for Saturday is $32.50, a three-day pass $60.
Filed under: anime
For our first anime review, I would like to tell you about one of my all time favorite series, Kino’s Journey (Kino no Tabi). An unusually deep show, it follows a young girl Kino (from the Greek kinesis for “motion”) and her talking motorcycle Hermes (Greek messenger god of magic and intelligence). For a while it is ambiguous if Kino is male or female, as she wakes up before dawn every morning to practice quick draw with her .44 revolver and Colt Woodsman. Also, it is unclear whether Hermes actually talks, or that Kino’s just crazy. Their rule is never to stay in the same place for more than three days, because if you settle down you stop being a traveler. Thus, each episode takes place in a different country, characterized by a particular scientific, political or religious trait. For example, the first country is the Land of Visible Pain, a place of advanced technology where robots perform all the necessary tasks for human survival. But there are few people around. When Kino finds a resident, he tells her that years back they developed nanomachines that allowed them to read the thoughts of others who also ingested the invention. Because no one wanted to be left out of the telepathic circle, all the residents drank the machines together. But soon they found that every little negative sentiment about another was also communicated, and while you could try to prevent bad thoughts from being broadcast by thinking happy ones, the act of you doing so was still communicated, making interpersonal relationships strenuous and leading the country’s citizens to live alone, outside each other’s mindreading radii. Other episodes deal with topics of hermeneutics, apocalyptic prophecy, tyranny (of monarchs, as well as democracy), human slavery (to slavers, to capitalism), the relationship between faith/reason, and what it means to grow up. One episode retells the reported interaction between Diogenes the Cynic and Alexander the Great, where the conqueror-king was impressed by the wisdom of the ascetic philosopher and offered him anything he wanted, to which Diogenes replied: “Could you move? You’re blocking my sun”. In addition to the 13 episode series there are two movies In Order To Do Something –Life Goes On- and Country of Illness –For You-, as well as a short prequel The Tower Country –Freelance-. So cue it up on your NetFlix, or whatever it is you do to get your media.
Filed under: plays
So the 62nd Tony Awards aired on Sunday, few noticed, as it was the lowest-rated Tony Award show ever, with only 6.19 million viewers. But Tracy Letts won Best Play for August: Osage Country, which received 4 other awards. This is not a huge surprise, as the play took a Pulitzer earlier this year. The darkly comedic play centers around a family reunion that takes place after the mysterious death and alleged suicide of the father of the Weston family. The reasons behind his death bring out the family’s many secrets, touching on themes of alcoholism, drug abuse, sexual harassment, incest, and infidelity. You may know Letts from the 2006 movie Bug with Ashley Judd, who adapted the screenplay from his play of the same name, about an abused woman who falls in love with an escaped mental patient and embraces his paranoid delusion (?) of tiny bugs infesting their apartment and subsequently their bodies. “Guess I’d rather talk to you about bugs than nothing with nobody”. Here’s the complete list of winners:
MUSICAL – In the Heights
PLAY – August: Osage County
REVIVAL OF A MUSICAL - South Pacific
REVIVAL OF A PLAY – Boeing-Boeing
DIRECTION OF A MUSICAL – Bartlett Sher, South Pacific
DIRECTION OF A PLAY – Anna D. Shapiro, August: Osage County
PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTOR IN A MUSICAL – Paulo Szot, South Pacific
PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL – Patti LuPone, Gypsy
PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTOR IN A PLAY – Mark Rylance, Boeing-Boeing
PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTRESS IN A PLAY – Deanna Dunagan, August: Osage County
PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTOR IN A MUSICAL – Boyd Gaines, Gypsy
PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL – Laura Benanti, Gypsy
PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTOR IN A PLAY – Jim Norton, The Seafarer
PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTRESS IN A PLAY – Rondi Reed, August: Osage County
ORIGINAL SCORE - In the Heights, Music & Lyrics: Lin-Manuel Miranda
ORCHESTRATIONS – Alex Lacamoire & Bill Sherman, In the Heights
CHOREOGRAPHY – Andy Blankenbuehler, In the Heights
BOOK OF A MUSICAL – Stew, Passing Strange
COSTUME DESIGN OF A MUSICAL – Catherine Zuber, South Pacific
COSTUME DESIGN OF A PLAY – Katrina Lindsay, Les Liaisons Dangereuses
SCENIC DESIGN OF A MUSICAL – Michael Yeargan, South Pacific
SCENIC DESIGN OF A PLAY – Todd Rosenthal, August: Osage County
SOUND DESIGN OF A MUSICAL – Scott Lehrer, South Pacific
SOUND DESIGN OF A PLAY – Mic Pool, The 39 Steps
LIGHTING DESIGN OF A MUSICAL – Donald Holder, South Pacific
LIGHTING DESIGN OF A PLAY – Kevin Adams, The 39 Steps
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT – Stephen Sondheim
REGIONAL THEATER AWARD – Chicago Shakespeare Theatre
SPECIAL TONY AWARD – Robert Russell Bennett (1894-1981), in recognition of his historic contribution to American musical theatre in the field of orchestrations, as represented on Broadway this season by South Pacific
Filed under: music
The music news site Stereogum has a delicious free album available called Enjoyed: A Tribute to Bjork’s Post. This is the third tribute album released by Stereogum, following Drive XV, for REM’s Automatic for the People 15-year anniversary (featuring Rogue Wave, Meat Puppets, Dr. Dog, etc), and OKX, for Radiohead’s OK Computer’s 10-year (with Vampire Weekend, Cold War Kids, Twilight Sad). By far, the Post album is the most star-studded for Stereogum, with some of the biggest names in indie-rock today. It opens with the Liars doing a slower, harder, more distorted version of Army of Me, which transitions well into the Dirty Projectors’ folky experimental cover of Hyperballad. Later, the psychedelic rock-band Evangelicals bring a driven version of You’ve Been Flirting Again, which fades into Xiu Xiu’s minimalistic take on Isobel, only to pick up pace again with a faithful portrayal of Possibly Maybe by Final Fantasy (Owen from Arcade Fire) and Ed Droste. No Age closes off the album with a rather loud version of It’s Oh So Quiet. Like all mp3s and music videos on Stereogum, this album is free and legal, fregal, enjoy!
Enjoyed: A Tribute to Bjork’s Post, Sterogum.com
Filed under: tv
In the finale to season 4 of TV show Lost, we get several hints as to what gives the island its strange properties (warning, some spoilers ahead), specifically, the presence of negatively-charged exotic matter in the Orchid Station. According to recent experimental estimates, the universe is composed of 75% dark energy, 20% dark matter, and 5% matter/antimatter. Under the standard laws of physics, for every normal matter particle there exists a corresponding antiparticle. Exotic matter can be created by combining a particle with its antiparticle. This has been done in the case of electrons and positrons, which when combined create a short-lived, hydrogen-like atom positronium. Exotic matter is theorized to possess qualities like negative mass or anti-gravity. Moreover, in current quantum models of wormholes in space-time, exotic matter may be used to stabilize a wormhole, as well as expand or contract it, by creating an exotic matter ball in the hole’s mouth. Expanded sufficiently, it could be used to move an island through space-time, like the numbered rabbits seemed to have been moved in an earlier Orchid Station video. The white rabbits/wormholes also seem to serve as a parallel to Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, as Alice’s adventures start by going down the rabbit hole, where she falls for an unusually long period of time, and instead of suffering the fatal effects of gravity, emerges in a different world. Other curious white rabbit parallels include how one of the helicopter pilots returning the Oceanic 6 has a lucky rabbit’s foot, just like the one on the keychain to the car Hurley’s father gives his son in the same episode (4×12), stranger still is the fact that the keychain for the van on the island (3×10) also had a rabbit’s foot. Further, there is a picture of the White Rabbit from the Alice books on the wall of Aaron’s room when Kate sees Claire. Wormholes can go a long way to explaining how certain characters can see and hear dead people, know the future, and not age over decades.
White holes and wormholes, Colorado.edu
Exotic matter-antimatter molecule created, Wired.com
Filed under: poetry
In winter, when the fields are white,
I sing this song for your delight:
In spring, when woods are getting green,
I’ll try and tell you what I mean:
In summer, when the days are long,
Perhaps you’ll understand the song:
In autumn, when the leaves are brown,
Take pen and ink, and write it down.
Humpty Dumpty, Through the Looking Glass
