Saturday, 3 November 2012
Urbs - "The Incident" (Toujours Le Meme Film)
instrumental, on station "Air", repetitive small loops of running-away tones
Arthur C. Clarke - The Colours of Infinity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gKOB6spCb8
(part 2)
Fun series about Mandelbrot and fractals.
First fractal by a Frenchman named Julia, in 1917. He never saw the Julia sets themselves.
(part 2)
Fun series about Mandelbrot and fractals.
First fractal by a Frenchman named Julia, in 1917. He never saw the Julia sets themselves.
Joanna Newson - "Svetlana" and other songs
Plays harp. Voice a bit like Björk, bit like Emiliana Torrini.
Ok song.
Supposedly her album "Easy" ("Ez" ?) is beautiful, produced by Jim O'Rourke and other famous guys... Oh wait, "Ys".
Ok song.
Supposedly her album "Easy" ("Ez" ?) is beautiful, produced by Jim O'Rourke and other famous guys... Oh wait, "Ys".
- "Monkey & Bear" - wait, I know this one! Came by on Pandora and confused the hell out of me.
Friday, 2 November 2012
Julee Cruise - "The Voice of Love"
Saw her on my 2listen list. This is the first album that she put out after Angelo Badalamenti discovered her.
Released about 3 years after Blue Velvet.
Very much as expected.
Released about 3 years after Blue Velvet.
Very much as expected.
- Kool Kat Walk - dark swingy. Nice.
- Questions in a World of Blue - very slow, definitely not good every day or night, but at times wonderful to drift off
Charlie Rose interviews David Foster Wallace
Intriguing. Makes you think about writing again, about more reading and endless writing.
Even though it costs so much time and energy.
Even though it costs so much time and energy.
Tritone - diabolus in musica
From Oliver Sacks' "Musicology"
The tritone - an augmented fourth (or, in jazz parlance, a flatted fifth)- is a difficult interval to sing and has often been regarded as having an ugly, uncanny, or even diabolical quality. Its use was forbidden in early ecclesiastical music, and early theorists called it diabolus in musica ("the devil in music"). But Tartini used it, for this very reason, in his Devil's Trill Sonata for violin.
Though the raw tritone sounds so harsh, it is easily filled out with another tritone to form a diminished seventh. And this, the Oxford Companion to Music notes, "has a luscious effect... The chord is indeed the most Protean in all harmony. In England the nickname has been given it of 'The Clapham Junction of Harmony' - from a railway station in London where so many lines join that once arrived there one can take a train for almost anywhere else."
The tritone - an augmented fourth (or, in jazz parlance, a flatted fifth)- is a difficult interval to sing and has often been regarded as having an ugly, uncanny, or even diabolical quality. Its use was forbidden in early ecclesiastical music, and early theorists called it diabolus in musica ("the devil in music"). But Tartini used it, for this very reason, in his Devil's Trill Sonata for violin.
Though the raw tritone sounds so harsh, it is easily filled out with another tritone to form a diminished seventh. And this, the Oxford Companion to Music notes, "has a luscious effect... The chord is indeed the most Protean in all harmony. In England the nickname has been given it of 'The Clapham Junction of Harmony' - from a railway station in London where so many lines join that once arrived there one can take a train for almost anywhere else."
Visualization of unusual words - Project Twin
Wonderful selection of strange words with visualization.
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/07/02/project-twins-unusual-words/
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/07/02/project-twins-unusual-words/
Classics
- Krang - "Kraaien"
- Thé Lau - "Rivier"
- Lange Frans & Baas B. - "Het Land Van"
- Tom Barman & Guy van Nueten - "Nothing Really Ends"
Thursday, 1 November 2012
Sir Thomas Urquhart - Wonderfully crazy words
http://sixdegreesofsirthomas.blogspot.co.uk/
It grew from a theory that every word in English is within six degrees of a word invented or used by Sir Thomas Urquhart, a logofascinated spirit if ever there was one.
love love love love love this.
It grew from a theory that every word in English is within six degrees of a word invented or used by Sir Thomas Urquhart, a logofascinated spirit if ever there was one.
love love love love love this.
Cut "Oz" scene - "Somewhere over the rainbow"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAI40Md7Wfk
in which Judy Garland breaks down and cries.
chilling.
in which Judy Garland breaks down and cries.
chilling.
Wednesday, 31 October 2012
Kory Stamper - English is a little bit like a child
via: http://korystamper.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/no-logic-in-etymological-a-response-i-actually-sent/
Kory Stamper
English is a little bit like a child. We love and nurture it into being, and once it gains gross motor skills, it starts going exactly where we don’t want it to go: it heads right for the goddamned light sockets. We put it in nice clothes and tell it to make friends, and it comes home covered in mud, with its underwear on its head and someone else’s socks on its feet. We ask it to clean up or to take out the garbage, and instead it hollers at us that we don’t run its life, man. Then it stomps off to its room to listen to The Smiths in the dark.
Everything we’ve done to and for English is for its own good, we tell it (angrily, as it slouches in its chair and writes “irregardless” all over itself in ballpoint pen). This is to help you grow into a language people will respect! Are you listening to me? Why aren’t you listening to me??
Like well-adjusted children eventually do, English lives its own life. We can tell it to clean itself up and act more like one of the Classical languages (I bet Latin doesn’t sneak German in through its bedroom window, does it?). We can threaten, cajole, wheedle, beg, yell, throw tantrums, and start learning French instead. But no matter what we do, we will never really be the boss of it. And that, frankly, is what makes it so beautiful.
Kory Stamper
English is a little bit like a child. We love and nurture it into being, and once it gains gross motor skills, it starts going exactly where we don’t want it to go: it heads right for the goddamned light sockets. We put it in nice clothes and tell it to make friends, and it comes home covered in mud, with its underwear on its head and someone else’s socks on its feet. We ask it to clean up or to take out the garbage, and instead it hollers at us that we don’t run its life, man. Then it stomps off to its room to listen to The Smiths in the dark.
Everything we’ve done to and for English is for its own good, we tell it (angrily, as it slouches in its chair and writes “irregardless” all over itself in ballpoint pen). This is to help you grow into a language people will respect! Are you listening to me? Why aren’t you listening to me??
Like well-adjusted children eventually do, English lives its own life. We can tell it to clean itself up and act more like one of the Classical languages (I bet Latin doesn’t sneak German in through its bedroom window, does it?). We can threaten, cajole, wheedle, beg, yell, throw tantrums, and start learning French instead. But no matter what we do, we will never really be the boss of it. And that, frankly, is what makes it so beautiful.
trying to define English as a pure language
via http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002579.html
source: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!msg/rec.arts.sf-lovers/5tQFnNbvN80/1pfKcGbEYckJ
James Nicoll
The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
source: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!msg/rec.arts.sf-lovers/5tQFnNbvN80/1pfKcGbEYckJ
James Nicoll
The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
Sylvia Plath - "Birthday Present"
A Birthday Present
What is this, behind this veil, is it ugly, is it beautiful?
It is shimmering, has it breasts, has it edges?
I am sure it is unique, I am sure it is what I want.
When I am quiet at my cooking I feel it looking, I feel it thinking
‘Is this the one I am too appear for,
Is this the elect one, the one with black eye-pits and a scar?
Measuring the flour, cutting off the surplus,
Adhering to rules, to rules, to rules.
Is this the one for the annunciation?
My god, what a laugh!’
But it shimmers, it does not stop, and I think it wants me.
I would not mind if it were bones, or a pearl button.
I do not want much of a present, anyway, this year.
After all I am alive only by accident.
I would have killed myself gladly that time any possible way.
Now there are these veils, shimmering like curtains,
The diaphanous satins of a January window
White as babies’ bedding and glittering with dead breath. O ivory!
It must be a tusk there, a ghost column.
Can you not see I do not mind what it is.
Can you not give it to me?
Do not be ashamed–I do not mind if it is small.
Do not be mean, I am ready for enormity.
Let us sit down to it, one on either side, admiring the gleam,
The glaze, the mirrory variety of it.
Let us eat our last supper at it, like a hospital plate.
I know why you will not give it to me,
You are terrified
The world will go up in a shriek, and your head with it,
Bossed, brazen, an antique shield,
A marvel to your great-grandchildren.
Do not be afraid, it is not so.
I will only take it and go aside quietly.
You will not even hear me opening it, no paper crackle,
No falling ribbons, no scream at the end.
I do not think you credit me with this discretion.
If you only knew how the veils were killing my days.
To you they are only transparencies, clear air.
But my god, the clouds are like cotton.
Armies of them. They are carbon monoxide.
Sweetly, sweetly I breathe in,
Filling my veins with invisibles, with the million
Probable motes that tick the years off my life.
You are silver-suited for the occasion. O adding machine—–
Is it impossible for you to let something go and have it go whole?
Must you stamp each piece purple,
Must you kill what you can?
There is one thing I want today, and only you can give it to me.
It stands at my window, big as the sky.
It breathes from my sheets, the cold dead center
Where split lives congeal and stiffen to history.
Let it not come by the mail, finger by finger.
Let it not come by word of mouth, I should be sixty
By the time the whole of it was delivered, and to numb to use it.
Only let down the veil, the veil, the veil.
If it were death
I would admire the deep gravity of it, its timeless eyes.
I would know you were serious.
There would be a nobility then, there would be a birthday.
And the knife not carve, but enter
Pure and clean as the cry of a baby,
And the universe slide from my side.
(here you might find an audio recording: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/10/29/sylvia-plath-reads-a-birthday-present-1962 )
What is this, behind this veil, is it ugly, is it beautiful?
It is shimmering, has it breasts, has it edges?
I am sure it is unique, I am sure it is what I want.
When I am quiet at my cooking I feel it looking, I feel it thinking
‘Is this the one I am too appear for,
Is this the elect one, the one with black eye-pits and a scar?
Measuring the flour, cutting off the surplus,
Adhering to rules, to rules, to rules.
Is this the one for the annunciation?
My god, what a laugh!’
But it shimmers, it does not stop, and I think it wants me.
I would not mind if it were bones, or a pearl button.
I do not want much of a present, anyway, this year.
After all I am alive only by accident.
I would have killed myself gladly that time any possible way.
Now there are these veils, shimmering like curtains,
The diaphanous satins of a January window
White as babies’ bedding and glittering with dead breath. O ivory!
It must be a tusk there, a ghost column.
Can you not see I do not mind what it is.
Can you not give it to me?
Do not be ashamed–I do not mind if it is small.
Do not be mean, I am ready for enormity.
Let us sit down to it, one on either side, admiring the gleam,
The glaze, the mirrory variety of it.
Let us eat our last supper at it, like a hospital plate.
I know why you will not give it to me,
You are terrified
The world will go up in a shriek, and your head with it,
Bossed, brazen, an antique shield,
A marvel to your great-grandchildren.
Do not be afraid, it is not so.
I will only take it and go aside quietly.
You will not even hear me opening it, no paper crackle,
No falling ribbons, no scream at the end.
I do not think you credit me with this discretion.
If you only knew how the veils were killing my days.
To you they are only transparencies, clear air.
But my god, the clouds are like cotton.
Armies of them. They are carbon monoxide.
Sweetly, sweetly I breathe in,
Filling my veins with invisibles, with the million
Probable motes that tick the years off my life.
You are silver-suited for the occasion. O adding machine—–
Is it impossible for you to let something go and have it go whole?
Must you stamp each piece purple,
Must you kill what you can?
There is one thing I want today, and only you can give it to me.
It stands at my window, big as the sky.
It breathes from my sheets, the cold dead center
Where split lives congeal and stiffen to history.
Let it not come by the mail, finger by finger.
Let it not come by word of mouth, I should be sixty
By the time the whole of it was delivered, and to numb to use it.
Only let down the veil, the veil, the veil.
If it were death
I would admire the deep gravity of it, its timeless eyes.
I would know you were serious.
There would be a nobility then, there would be a birthday.
And the knife not carve, but enter
Pure and clean as the cry of a baby,
And the universe slide from my side.
(here you might find an audio recording: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/10/29/sylvia-plath-reads-a-birthday-present-1962 )
Tin Cup Prophette - "Going Numb" (Liar and the Thief)
Catchy, tinkle-tonk, somehow singer-song writer, yet not. It's on Pandora's DAAU channel.
Monday, 29 October 2012
Flaming Lips - "Funeral In My Head" (Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots)
But if I go mad
No one will know it.
[...]
But if I go mad
No one will know it.
[...]
But if I go mad
No one will know it.
Because I don't want you to be sad for me
Listening to the album in preparation of the musical at La Jolla Playhouse. It's gripping.
No one will know it.
[...]
But if I go mad
No one will know it.
[...]
But if I go mad
No one will know it.
Because I don't want you to be sad for me
Listening to the album in preparation of the musical at La Jolla Playhouse. It's gripping.
Sunday, 28 October 2012
Anvil! The story of Anvil
Nice documentary on Anvil, the metal group who never made it, but is still cited by the big ones (Mötorhead, Metallica, Slash) as having an incredible impact.
Particularly "Lips" is just this amazingly friendly guy.
Particularly "Lips" is just this amazingly friendly guy.
Searching for Sugar Man
Wonderful documentary on how to find "Sixto Rodriguez", a singer-songwriter from Detroit who got no notice in the USA but became incredibly big in South Africa.
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