(essay was an excerpt of his book)
The capital's slums also acquired a toxic reputation for being thieves' colonies. The most notorious of these during the early modern period was Whitefriars, the dangerously overcrowded area between Fleet Street and the Thames that, in a laconic reference to the territory fought over by France and Germany on the continent, was known as Alsatia.
The watchman was regularly guilty of malign or corrupt behaviour, or of acting from dubious motives, so he often collapses into his opposite. His nightwalking, his nightwatching, was often quite as nefarious as that of the itinerants and prostitutes he was supposed to apprehend. Required for official reasons to be suspicious of other people, the watch was also, in a more colloquial sense, suspicious - that is, suspect. Here is an early instance of that entanglement of the identities of detective and criminal that is characteristic of noir cinema and fiction in the mid twentieth century.
Wednesday, 13 July 2016
Darwin Among the Machines (to the editor of the Press, Christchurch, New Zealand, 13 june, 1863)
Amazing letter by Darwin regarding machines.
If we revert to the earliest primordial types of mechanical life, to the lever, the wedge, the inclined plane, the screw and the pulley, or (for analogy would lead us one step further) to that one primordial type from which all the mechanical kingdom has been developed, we mean to the lever itself, and if we then examine the machinery of the Great Eastern, we find ourselves almost awestruck at the vast development of the mechanical world, at the gigantic strides with which it has advanced in comparison with the slow progress of the animal and vegetable kingdom. We shall find it impossible to refrain from asking ourselves what the end of this mighty movement is to be. In what direction is it tending? What will be its upshot?
We have often heard this debated; but it appears to us that we are ourselves creating our own successors; we are daily adding to the beauty and delicacy of their physical oranisation; we are daily giving them greater power and supplying by all sorts of ingenious contrivances that self-regulating, self-acting power which will be to them what intellect has been to the human race.
If they die, for even these glorious animals will not be exempt from that necessary and universal consumption, they will immediately enter into a new phase of existence, for what machine dies entirely in every part at one and the same instant?
... man will have become to the machine what the horse and the dog are to man. He will continue to exist, nay even to improve, and will be probably better off in his state of domestication under the beneficent rule of the machines than he is in his present wild state.
... there is nothing which our infatuated race would desire more than to see a fertile union between two stea engines, it is true that machinery is even at this present time employed in begetting machinery, in becoming the parent of machines often after its own kind, but the days of flirtation, courtship, and matrimony appear to be very remote, and indeed can hardly be realized by our feeble and imperfect imagination.
... but the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants is what no person of a truly philosophic mind can for a moment question.
Our opinion is that war to the death should be instantly proclaimed against them.
If we revert to the earliest primordial types of mechanical life, to the lever, the wedge, the inclined plane, the screw and the pulley, or (for analogy would lead us one step further) to that one primordial type from which all the mechanical kingdom has been developed, we mean to the lever itself, and if we then examine the machinery of the Great Eastern, we find ourselves almost awestruck at the vast development of the mechanical world, at the gigantic strides with which it has advanced in comparison with the slow progress of the animal and vegetable kingdom. We shall find it impossible to refrain from asking ourselves what the end of this mighty movement is to be. In what direction is it tending? What will be its upshot?
We have often heard this debated; but it appears to us that we are ourselves creating our own successors; we are daily adding to the beauty and delicacy of their physical oranisation; we are daily giving them greater power and supplying by all sorts of ingenious contrivances that self-regulating, self-acting power which will be to them what intellect has been to the human race.
If they die, for even these glorious animals will not be exempt from that necessary and universal consumption, they will immediately enter into a new phase of existence, for what machine dies entirely in every part at one and the same instant?
... man will have become to the machine what the horse and the dog are to man. He will continue to exist, nay even to improve, and will be probably better off in his state of domestication under the beneficent rule of the machines than he is in his present wild state.
... there is nothing which our infatuated race would desire more than to see a fertile union between two stea engines, it is true that machinery is even at this present time employed in begetting machinery, in becoming the parent of machines often after its own kind, but the days of flirtation, courtship, and matrimony appear to be very remote, and indeed can hardly be realized by our feeble and imperfect imagination.
... but the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants is what no person of a truly philosophic mind can for a moment question.
Our opinion is that war to the death should be instantly proclaimed against them.
David Mitchell - "Slade House"
good read. Finished it in one day. Strange day. It harks back to the Bone Clocks, and where that book fell short, this one was just right. It's a delicate balance, I guess. Just the right amount of repetition. Also, a lot shorter? But his Cloud Atlas was long and that was amazing...
Still a favourite author of mine.
Still a favourite author of mine.
Friday, 8 July 2016
Thursday, 7 July 2016
Chinawoman - "Partygirl" (Lovers are strangers)
Evanescencent, ungraspable. Late night, whiskey, a cigarette. Streets flanked by sad houses.
Monday, 4 July 2016
David Mitchell - "Death of the Pugilist, or the Famous Battle of Jacob Burke and Blindman McGraw" and "The Ecstacy of Alfred Russel Wallace"
Two grand shorts by David Mitchell. Amazing how a simple story is given so much depth through the thorough description of its character(s).
Watching from the crowds, admidst the cheers and curses, there's not a soul that day at Dead Rabbit's Heath that knows what Jacob Burke knows, that the fight is already over. For Blindman's standing and Blindman's fists are still up, and if he's slack in the lip no one can see from what Muscular Jacob Burke has done to his face. They'll know, in breaths they'll know and for years they'll talk about it, but in this half-second between Muscular's knowing and the crowd's knowing, it's as if Muscular has been left alone with a knowledge and an omnipotence only God should have.
Indeed, they said he had the naiveté of a child: too trusting, too awed by others' greatness to know that he deserved greatness himself. There were hours when he thought: I know nothing. And there were other hours, chiefly at night, waking from dreams he didn't remember, that a different thought came: the idea, that beautiful burning idea, that recasting and refiguring and resculpting of the world, that idea burst forth from me, and me alone.
Watching from the crowds, admidst the cheers and curses, there's not a soul that day at Dead Rabbit's Heath that knows what Jacob Burke knows, that the fight is already over. For Blindman's standing and Blindman's fists are still up, and if he's slack in the lip no one can see from what Muscular Jacob Burke has done to his face. They'll know, in breaths they'll know and for years they'll talk about it, but in this half-second between Muscular's knowing and the crowd's knowing, it's as if Muscular has been left alone with a knowledge and an omnipotence only God should have.
Indeed, they said he had the naiveté of a child: too trusting, too awed by others' greatness to know that he deserved greatness himself. There were hours when he thought: I know nothing. And there were other hours, chiefly at night, waking from dreams he didn't remember, that a different thought came: the idea, that beautiful burning idea, that recasting and refiguring and resculpting of the world, that idea burst forth from me, and me alone.
Descender
Amazing comics. The story is interesting (slightly reminiscent of Battlestar Galactica) but particularly the drawings are sometimes breathtaking. Can't wait for volume 3.
Kelly Link - "Pretty Monsters"
Another collection of short stories by Kelly Link. Still as strange and sometimes unnerving as "Magic for Beginners" but either I have gotten used to it or her style has become slightly too repetitive for me. I'm reading a story every now and then now, which seems to work best.
But his mother and Talis are quiet in different ways. Jeremy's mother is the kind of person who seems to be keeping something hidden, something secret. Whereas Talis just is a secret, Jeremy's mother could easily turn out to be a secret agent. But Talis is the death ray or the key to immortality or whatever it is that secret agents have to keep secret. Hangin out with Talis is like hanging out with a teenaged black hole.
"I won't tell Karl," Elizabeth said. She leaned forward and kissed Jeremy and then she wasn't kissing him. It was all very fast and surprising, but they didn't fall off the roof. Nobody falls off the roof in this story. "Talis likes you," Elizabeth said. "That's what Amy says. Maybe you like her back. I don't know. But I thought I should go ahead and kiss you now. Just in case I don't get to kiss you again."
"You can kiss me again," Jeremy said. "Talis probably doesn't like me."
"No," Elizabeth said. "I mean, let's not. I want to stay friends and it's hard enough to be friends, Germ. Look at you and Karl."
But his mother and Talis are quiet in different ways. Jeremy's mother is the kind of person who seems to be keeping something hidden, something secret. Whereas Talis just is a secret, Jeremy's mother could easily turn out to be a secret agent. But Talis is the death ray or the key to immortality or whatever it is that secret agents have to keep secret. Hangin out with Talis is like hanging out with a teenaged black hole.
"I won't tell Karl," Elizabeth said. She leaned forward and kissed Jeremy and then she wasn't kissing him. It was all very fast and surprising, but they didn't fall off the roof. Nobody falls off the roof in this story. "Talis likes you," Elizabeth said. "That's what Amy says. Maybe you like her back. I don't know. But I thought I should go ahead and kiss you now. Just in case I don't get to kiss you again."
"You can kiss me again," Jeremy said. "Talis probably doesn't like me."
"No," Elizabeth said. "I mean, let's not. I want to stay friends and it's hard enough to be friends, Germ. Look at you and Karl."
Friday, 24 June 2016
random 8track songs
http://8tracks.com/tekryon/road-to-nowhere
- Porter Robinson - "Goodbye to a world"
trip-hoppy, distorted voices, synths... should look into this
- Babbit - "Painting Greys"
not even sure I like it (vocoder... :| ) but still intrigued
- Jaymes Young - "Come Back For Me"
Bit Florence and the Machine, also she keeps singing "Don't Come Back for Me"
Saturday, 18 June 2016
Kelly Link - "magic for beginners"
Breathtakingly strange and unsetting, Kelly Link spins incredibly original stories. Can't believe I forgot to mention her.
Livia Llewellyn - "Furnace"
A gripping short story of a girl in a dying town, her grandfather showing her maps of the city, her mother chasing her...
Thought of Kelly Link's magic for beginners.
Thought of Kelly Link's magic for beginners.
Ernest Cline - "Ready Player One"
A thoroughly enjoyable book about a world fifty years in the future where everybody escapes into OASIS, a MMORG as well as... everything else. Creator, in his last will, tells about an easter egg. The one to find it, will inherit all the fortunes of Oasis. Wade, our young protagonist, is special...
It's dripping with 80s references, since the creator loved that period supposedly so much. Sometimes it's a bit much - he seemed to rave about anything - but all in all, although the plot is a bit shakey and predictable, a good fun read. Great escape. How ironic.
It's dripping with 80s references, since the creator loved that period supposedly so much. Sometimes it's a bit much - he seemed to rave about anything - but all in all, although the plot is a bit shakey and predictable, a good fun read. Great escape. How ironic.
Friday, 10 June 2016
those moments
- Dolly Parton - Jolene
- Jacques Brel - Dans le port d'Amsterdam
- R.E.M. - It's the end of the world as we know it
- Claude François - Comme d'habitude
- R.E.M. - "Leave" (alternative version)
- Krang - "Kraaien"
- Bende van Vier - "Drinklied"
Thursday, 9 June 2016
hebrew proverb - don't ask questions
אל תשאל שאלות
לא תשמע שקרים
Al Tishal she'elot Lo tishma shkarim
don't ask questions, you won't hear lies
(it's for a cheating husband situation imo but it works well for a lot of cases)
Al Tishal she'elot Lo tishma shkarim
don't ask questions, you won't hear lies
(it's for a cheating husband situation imo but it works well for a lot of cases)
Tuesday, 7 June 2016
nuclear reactors and rewrites
https://storify.com/jrauser/on-the-big-rewrite-and-bezos-as-a-technical-leader
http://ecolo.org/documents/documents_in_english/Rickover.pdf
http://ecolo.org/documents/documents_in_english/Rickover.pdf
Monday, 6 June 2016
Philip K. Dick - "The Man in the High Castle"
The Axes have won, the USA is separated in a Nazi occupied part and a Japanese occupied part. People read the "I Ching" to make choices. A forbidden book, "The Grasshopper lies heavy", details an alternate reality where the Axes have lost...
Japanese vs Western thinking. Tao. I Ching.
At the very end the book turns out to be "written by" the I Ching (as Philip K Dick used the I Ching to write this book). Why it was written? Inner truth... because it's the truth.
Nice read, but I wasn't blown away. I think I'm missing the deeper connections here, which is a shame. Maybe I should read more Leonard Cohen poetry, then try again.
Japanese vs Western thinking. Tao. I Ching.
At the very end the book turns out to be "written by" the I Ching (as Philip K Dick used the I Ching to write this book). Why it was written? Inner truth... because it's the truth.
Nice read, but I wasn't blown away. I think I'm missing the deeper connections here, which is a shame. Maybe I should read more Leonard Cohen poetry, then try again.
Wednesday, 1 June 2016
musicforprogramming.net
http://musicforprogramming.net/
* 03: Datassette is pretty nice. Around ~43m-45m it has an amazing buildup with piano that reminds me of Candyman/Philip Glass with its chords and everything. Dunno which song of the playlist it is, but intriguing. Should figure it out.
Got it! Christopher D. Lewis - "Metamorphosis 3"
adding some other stuff from similar Spotify playlist
https://open.spotify.com/station/user/redconfetti/playlist/03bKMoeCxREu1jKjPvCXwD
* 03: Datassette is pretty nice. Around ~43m-45m it has an amazing buildup with piano that reminds me of Candyman/Philip Glass with its chords and everything. Dunno which song of the playlist it is, but intriguing. Should figure it out.
Got it! Christopher D. Lewis - "Metamorphosis 3"
adding some other stuff from similar Spotify playlist
https://open.spotify.com/station/user/redconfetti/playlist/03bKMoeCxREu1jKjPvCXwD
- Trifonic - "Parks On Fire"
sometimes a bit more ephemeral, but good instrumental stuff
Tuesday, 31 May 2016
Marisha Pessl - "Night Film"
A hard boiled detective teams up with Nora, a young girl and Hopper, a random boy, searching for the reasons why Ashley took her own life and what role her father, the elusive film director Cordova, played in that and her life.
Had to get used to the constant use of italics. The moment I read it like a hard boiled detective voice in my head it became a bit better.
Okayish. Enjoyable but not in a special way. Read it super fast, half skipping over lines.
Had to get used to the constant use of italics. The moment I read it like a hard boiled detective voice in my head it became a bit better.
Okayish. Enjoyable but not in a special way. Read it super fast, half skipping over lines.
Wednesday, 25 May 2016
Lárus Sigurðsson - *
Thought it might be too dreamy sigur rossy, but actually quite nice. Might be good for coding.
Friday, 20 May 2016
Zero 7 - "Dimensions"
Slow, woman's voice. not something you might want to listen to all the time, but still nice.
Wednesday, 18 May 2016
Prinz Pi - "Donnerwetter! (Instrumentals)"
came here because I was looking for a band name Donnerwetter (I think). Nice though, bit of [tr|h]ip hop influences, but very laid back.
Tuesday, 17 May 2016
Wednesday, 11 May 2016
Dave Eggers - "The Circle"
Quite scary how reading this at this particular moment in life, seems to hinge on foreboding and angst.
Interesting book. Intriguing to imagine what I would have thought of it had I read it months or years ago.
Francis was staring at his plate. "Shit. Every time my brain parks the car neatly in the driveway, my mouth drives through the back of the garage. I'm sorry. I swear I'm working on this."
"The third screen is your social, Inner- and OuterCircle. But these messages aren't, like, superfluous. They're just as important as any other messages, but are prioritized third. And sometimes they're urgent. Keep an eye on the InnerCircle feed in particular, because that's where you'll hear about staff meetings, mandatory gatherings, and any breaking news. If there's a Circle notice that's really pressing, that'll be marked in orange. Something extremely urgent will prompt a message on your phone, too. You keep that in view?" Mae nodded at her phone, resting just below the screens on her desk. "Good," Gina said. "So those are the priorities, with your fourth priority your own uterCircle participation. Which is just as important as anything else, because we value your work-life balance, you know, the calibration between your online life here at the company and outside it. I hope that's clear. Is it?"
Interesting book. Intriguing to imagine what I would have thought of it had I read it months or years ago.
Francis was staring at his plate. "Shit. Every time my brain parks the car neatly in the driveway, my mouth drives through the back of the garage. I'm sorry. I swear I'm working on this."
"The third screen is your social, Inner- and OuterCircle. But these messages aren't, like, superfluous. They're just as important as any other messages, but are prioritized third. And sometimes they're urgent. Keep an eye on the InnerCircle feed in particular, because that's where you'll hear about staff meetings, mandatory gatherings, and any breaking news. If there's a Circle notice that's really pressing, that'll be marked in orange. Something extremely urgent will prompt a message on your phone, too. You keep that in view?" Mae nodded at her phone, resting just below the screens on her desk. "Good," Gina said. "So those are the priorities, with your fourth priority your own uterCircle participation. Which is just as important as anything else, because we value your work-life balance, you know, the calibration between your online life here at the company and outside it. I hope that's clear. Is it?"
Saturday, 7 May 2016
Sunday, 1 May 2016
The Green Room (2016)
Intense gripping and occassionally hardcore horror flic about an innocent punk band getting caught up in a kill-cover up at an extreme right wing cum heroin lab place. With Patrick Stewart.
Friday, 29 April 2016
Thursday, 14 April 2016
Sunday, 10 April 2016
Thursday, 7 April 2016
coding music
- King Kitch - "Puesta Del Sol"
instrumental, pan flute - Waldeck - "Slowly"
very Massive Attack-ish, would say it must be one their singers
Saturday, 2 April 2016
Saga
Comic - yeah yeah graphic novel - were a child is born from two species that fight each other all over the galaxy. Read the first book and enjoyed it. Strange, but intriguing enough.
Femke Halsema - "Pluche"
Erg leuk om te lezen, over een tijd die ik me herinner. Ik heb er geen quote van opgeschreven, geen anekdote raakte me diep. Leuk, makkelijk boek. Waarschijnlijk ontbeer ik politieke inslag.
the Rat Queens
Four girls, all sex and fights with trolls, assassins and whatnot. Got the first book, won't be buying the rest.
Tuesday, 29 March 2016
lehkat chel hayam - להקת חיל הים "חסקה"
https://youtu.be/c3sgHDIBCU0?t=21s
"about a guy asking a girl to join him on a Hasake (large surfboard)"
"about a guy asking a girl to join him on a Hasake (large surfboard)"
Monday, 28 March 2016
Cigarettes After Sex
Very much the smokey low key jazzy nightclub-on-a-dark-night variety. Perhaps repetitive after a while, but worthwhile.
Sunday, 27 March 2016
Boku dake ga Inai Machi ("Erased")
Cool one season (?) anime about a guy who unintentionally time travels to fix bad situations. Usually it is just a few minutes into the past, but this time he travels fifteen years into his past to save three children from being murdered.
Nice, fast moving series.
Nice, fast moving series.
Monday, 21 March 2016
Thursday, 17 March 2016
the Sore Losers - "Skydogs"
Very nice rock!
- White Whale - that one slow part, just a few seconds, is wonderful
Tuesday, 15 March 2016
ContraContra - "Wrakjuweel"
Een beetje zoals De Kift, qua teksten, qua muziek.
"Een hart vol gaten is een luchtig hart."
"Een hart vol gaten is een luchtig hart."
Monday, 14 March 2016
Haty Haty - "Tell Me Something" ("High As The Sun", 2016)
3voor12 mentions Blaudzun, not sure why. Should look into that. This song stands out. Haunting electonic strings, parlando female voice, electronic.
Wednesday, 2 March 2016
Joe Bonamassa & Beth Hart - "Strange Fruit"
Found while searching for the Siouxie and the Banshees song with the same title. Typical Joe & Beth song. Slow and melodic. Sometimes almost James Bondish. Cover of Nina Simone? Of Billie Holiday? Of all of them!?
Monday, 29 February 2016
Sunday, 28 February 2016
Mark Lanegan - "Prayer Ground"
Low, Americana, slow guitarish song.
Via 8track, first hit when searching for "george orwell"
Via 8track, first hit when searching for "george orwell"
William Gibson - "Distrust That Particular Flavor"
Compilation of essays. Not amazing, but a nice enough read.
If you wish to know an era, study its most lucid nightmares. In the mirrors of our darkest fears, much will be revealed. But don't mistake those mirrors for road maps to the future, or even to the present.
We've missed the train to Oceania, and live today with stranger problems.
In [H.G. Well's] preface to the 1941 edition, he could only add: 'Again I ask the reader to note the warnings I gave in that year, twenty years ago. Is there anything to add to that preface now? Nothing except my epitaph. That, when the time comes, will manifestly have to be: "I told you so. You damned fools." (The italics are mine.)'
The italics are indeed his: the terminally exasperated visionary, the technologically fluent Victorian who has watched the twentieth century arrive, with all of its astonishing baggage of change, and who has come to trust in the minds of the sort of men who ran British Rail. They are the italics of the perpetually impatient and somehow perpetually unworldly futurist, seeing his model going terminally wrong in the hands of the less clever, the less evolved. And they are with us today, those italics, though I've long since learned to run shy of science fiction that employs them.
And that, I would argue, is what the World Wide Web, the test pattern for whatever will become the dominant global medium, offers us. Today [1996], in its clumsy, larval, curiously innocent way, it offers us the opportunity to waste time, to wander aimlessly, to daydream about the countless other lives, the other people, on the far sides of however many monitors in that post geographical meta-country we increasingly call home. it will probably evolve into something considerably less random, and less fun - we seem to have a knack for that - but in the meantime, in its gloriously unsorted Global Ham Television Postcard Universes phase, surfing the Web is a procrastinator's dream. And people who see you doing it might even imagine you're working.
If you wish to know an era, study its most lucid nightmares. In the mirrors of our darkest fears, much will be revealed. But don't mistake those mirrors for road maps to the future, or even to the present.
We've missed the train to Oceania, and live today with stranger problems.
In [H.G. Well's] preface to the 1941 edition, he could only add: 'Again I ask the reader to note the warnings I gave in that year, twenty years ago. Is there anything to add to that preface now? Nothing except my epitaph. That, when the time comes, will manifestly have to be: "I told you so. You damned fools." (The italics are mine.)'
The italics are indeed his: the terminally exasperated visionary, the technologically fluent Victorian who has watched the twentieth century arrive, with all of its astonishing baggage of change, and who has come to trust in the minds of the sort of men who ran British Rail. They are the italics of the perpetually impatient and somehow perpetually unworldly futurist, seeing his model going terminally wrong in the hands of the less clever, the less evolved. And they are with us today, those italics, though I've long since learned to run shy of science fiction that employs them.
And that, I would argue, is what the World Wide Web, the test pattern for whatever will become the dominant global medium, offers us. Today [1996], in its clumsy, larval, curiously innocent way, it offers us the opportunity to waste time, to wander aimlessly, to daydream about the countless other lives, the other people, on the far sides of however many monitors in that post geographical meta-country we increasingly call home. it will probably evolve into something considerably less random, and less fun - we seem to have a knack for that - but in the meantime, in its gloriously unsorted Global Ham Television Postcard Universes phase, surfing the Web is a procrastinator's dream. And people who see you doing it might even imagine you're working.
John Milton - "Paradise Lost"
analysis
- http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/paradiselost
- http://www.enotes.com/topics/paradise-lost/critical-essays/paradise-lost-john-milton
- http://www.bachelorandmaster.com/britishandamericanpoetry/paradise-lost.html
Milton emphasizes the importance of reason. Man is noble by nature, but he has free will, and hence free to choose and capable of action, morally good or bad for which he alone is responsible. Milton does not believe in Calvinism according to which God has decided everything, and a man’s destiny has been fixed before his birth. Milton is a great humanist pinning his faith in the liberty and adventure of man.
Men gain spiritual rebirth by controlling their passions. Is this akin to Sisyphus' acceptance of his fate, not succumbing to passions like rage and anger, he is spiritually reborn?
Tuesday, 16 February 2016
Monomyth
The Hague (?) based band. Found because Imagine mentions them as live performers of a new soundtrack to the restored "Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari"
Long soundscapes. (I assume, the first one is still playing.) Nice.
(I've heard of them already?)
Long soundscapes. (I assume, the first one is still playing.) Nice.
(I've heard of them already?)
Tindersticks
The Waiting Room (2016)
- We Are Dreamers!
Ypres (2014)
- Whispering Guns Part 1, 2 and 3 - very filmish.
Wednesday, 10 February 2016
He Thought of Cars
Nice playlists!
http://8tracks.com/bynar/he-thought-of-cars-part-1
http://8tracks.com/bynar/he-thought-of-cars-part-2
http://8tracks.com/bynar/he-thought-of-cars-part-1
http://8tracks.com/bynar/he-thought-of-cars-part-2
- Comsat Angels - "I Come from the Sun" - good guitar twangs
Same user, different playlist: http://8tracks.com/bynar/until-the-darkness-is-desolate
- IAMX - I Come with Knives - German and English lyrics, power
http://8tracks.com/gojyochan/a-tribute-to-the-tenth-doctor-doctor-who-mix
- Silversun Pickups - Growing Old Is Getting Old - very 90s rock feeling to it
Who knew that a search for "americana"+"electronic" would yield results?!
http://8tracks.com/the-gallery/the-gallery-presents-luis-royo
- Doctor Flake - "Fightclubbing" - nice, look into!
- LAKE R▲DIO - "Martin Hannett's Ghost" - very strange
- Diablo Swing Orchestra - "A Rancid Romance" - fun swing dance song. Good for Halloween?
Thursday, 4 February 2016
Chris Garneau - "Lucioles" (El Radio (2009))
A French and English female version of Drs P., judging by the way she sings (she sings way better, but music wise, it is somewhere between a music box and his kind of song)
Monday, 1 February 2016
Sunday, 31 January 2016
meretricious persiflage
(appearing in D.H. Lawrence's "Women in love"
meretricious persiflage: "apparently attractive but actually valueless small talk"
meretricious persiflage: "apparently attractive but actually valueless small talk"
Jonathan Franzen - "How to be alone" (essays)
Great reading, even though I must often reread every other sentence, and look up words I thought I knew (and often, still know, but its essence just a feeling, never a proper description in my mind.)
* * *
In Death and Life, Jacobs also quoted Paul Tillich, who believed that the city, by its very nature, "provides what otherwise could be given only by traveling; namely; the strange." Familiarity, whether of chain stores or of cookie-cutter subdivisions, erodes the autonomous intelligence and, in a weird way, undermines privacy. In the suburbs, I'm the stranger; I feel exposed. only in a crowded, diverse place like New York, surrounded by strangeness, do I come home to myself."
* * *
In Death and Life, Jacobs also quoted Paul Tillich, who believed that the city, by its very nature, "provides what otherwise could be given only by traveling; namely; the strange." Familiarity, whether of chain stores or of cookie-cutter subdivisions, erodes the autonomous intelligence and, in a weird way, undermines privacy. In the suburbs, I'm the stranger; I feel exposed. only in a crowded, diverse place like New York, surrounded by strangeness, do I come home to myself."
John Crowley - "Endless Things"
Amazing fourth and final book, and I have no clue on how to describe it. Wonderings, musings. Books and the world. His amazing diction and style. Not something to be spread out over months, but to be read, quickly, days and weeks.
* * *
(they are in bed, talking. at some point, a short flashback, then they continue talking.))
The first time they'd shared this bed - after a couple of drinks at the Sandbox, and well after they'd first begun to consort often - she had seemed unsettlingly cagey. She kept breaking off, or slipping away, to change the radio, or fool with the heat; and she kept talking - not about what was going on right there between them, but about other things, general remarks, questions about life, his life, his thoughts. So tell me. He wondered if it were some kind of test, see if he could keep up his concentration, or his attention to her. He was about to ask if maybe she'd rather just stop, and talk, but just then a sort of smothered fire within seemed to burst softly, and she pressed hard into him; she ceased to say words, only sounds, sounds that seemed, somehow, like further admissions, hard to make at first and then more willingly made.
((now))
She laughed a low laugh, her tummy rolling beneath his hand.
...
"That's what my book was about. How if you change the way ahead, the way behind changes too."
"Seems kind of obvious," she said.
It seemed so when she said it; it was obvious, or at least a commonplace. More than one history of the world; one for each of us. A bright moment arriving when you choose a new way into the future, which illuminates a new past, the backward way, at the same time. Everybody know. It had been true all along.
"Because, you know," she said, "You can't step in the same river twice. You ever hear that?"
"Nope," he said, pressing her now meaningfully downward to supine, enough talk. "News to me."
* * *
So he had had his own secrets and unsayable things, things out of which a double life is made, as his father's and his mother's lives were made of them. Sometimes laid deep like mines or bombs (he thought you'd have to explain this to young people nowadays, who didn't live such lives, probably) so that you had to proceed with care along your way, not come upon them unexpectedly or at the wrong time, at a juncture, and have them explode.
Homo, viator in bivio, the Latin Church declared, offering to help. man, voyager on forking paths. There's no provision, though, for going back, is there, back over the thrown Y switches of our lives, the ones that shout our little handcar off its straight way and onto the way we took instead, as in the silent comedies that Axel loved: no way to go back and fix the thing broken, or break the silence that later exploded. An infinite number of junctures lies between us and that crisis or crux, and passing back again across each one would generate by itself a further juncture, a double infinity, an infinitesimal calculus; you'd never get back to there, and if you could you'd never return again to here where you started from: and why would you need to go back in the first place except to learn how to go on from right here, to go on along the way you have to go?
* * *
A light wind, able to stir the yellow fog but not at first to disperse it. A wind young and inexperienced, learning its uses and its work, but so far aimless; a wind that had been borne along with the world's great slow-marching airs and atmospheres from west to east, from Albion to the Middle Sea and over the Bavarian mountains, wondering, wandering. As it blew more steadily over the White Mountain, the day grew clearer. ot the light of day: what the day was great clearer, though not at once to everyone, and to some not at all.
A little wind. The first wind bears in the time, an angel said to John Dee, and the second bears it away again.
The protestant soldiers on the heights felt it first, lifted their heads and noses to it, to see from which quarter it blew. The various unearthly powers ranked behind them felt it too, and turned from the battle, to see who or what was coming through from the rear. No zephyr they knew. They were astonished then to be picked up and swept away by it, one by one, as by a broom, right out of the to-be and back into the once-was forever. All in a moment those powers were gone, were nothing - for they had all along really been nothing, less than nothing, mere signs, mere phantasmata, and no help now to the human soldiers, left with only their human commanders, standing on an insignificant little hill outside a contested city in the middle of Europe at the start of another battle in another war. Their warm mammalian breath condensed on the damp cold air. They thought how short life is, and how little worth is the promise of Heaven. On the other side the same, as in a mirror. Then the first wave of Catholic pikemen, crying out as though for their mothers, advanced against the Protestant left.
...
That little wind went away from the ghastly battlefield, growing just a little less little as it went, though few still could feel it. Nothing hindered it, perhaps because of its small size - it was no more than a breeze, really, a breath, the puff of air that comes in at the thick small windows of desert dwellings to touch a cheek and say that the simoom might be coming, or might not; hardly wind enough to cover with sands the tombs and temples that its mother had before uncovered. Yet it blew "far and wide"; there wouldn't be anywhere it didn't enter in, rattling the windows of the present and scattering the dealt cards of the past, pushing closed the doors of opened books and scrambling the sense of their indexes and prolegomena. Finally its baby breath, propelled by those fat cheeks, separated the a from the e in every word where they were joined, or suppressed one and left only the other, like conjoined twins that can't survive together, encyclopedias of aerial etheric demons in Egypt. Nobody noticed. And then with a little laugh it blew itself out, bowling up its own nonexistent fundament and drawing all of itself in after.
* * *
According to Dr. Pons, though, it was actually just the opposite. To him, physical matter had no real existence at all; it wasn't different from human, or divine, ignorance. It was an illusion, in fact a hoax. The slightest and smallest human emotion felt by the inward incarcerated soul is more real than any aspect of materiality. And more real in turn than all those emotions, all tears and laughter and love and hate, are the conceptions of the mind - Beauty, Truth, Order, Wisdom - which give to materiality whatever form and worth it has. Most real of all is the world beyond nature and even Mind: the real Without, utterly out of reach, the real of the Fullness and God.
What Kraft had learned, in those first joyous labors of imagination long ago, was that, different as Dr. Pons's inverted universe might be from what is in fact the case, it is necessarily very much like the world inside a work of fiction.
All the myriad material things that we, in our universe, touch and use and love and hate and depend on - our food, our flesh, our breath; cities and towns, roads and houses - in a book these things have no true reality at all. They're just nouns. But emotions are quite real; there are tears of things, and they are really shed, and real laughs laughed. Of course. And in a book intellectual order is the most real of all, the governing, sustaining reality - the Logos, the tale issuing from its absent, its hidden Author.
They, those pretend people in their factitious world, they owe their embodiment, their circumstance of being caught in unreal souls and bodies, to an upheaval that happened before the beginning of space and time (their space and time): a dissatisfaction, a troubling of a single soul's primal economy, a soul startled into awareness by a girlish or a boyish question: if things were different from the way they are, what would they be like?
More, even more: the most precious and only truly real thing within each of the conscious beings who had been made to inhabit Kraft's little world (well, not the hylic mob, the mere names, the spear carriers and extras) was their share of the original undivided consciousness from which they sprang - that is, his own. Into which, when their work is done, they are gathered again at last: when their false world is closed up, and shelved.
...
In subsequent years and subsequent books he had sometimes wondered if he might somehow send them a message, one of them or some of them; awaken them to their own condition, to this peculiar reversal of what we out here, most of us anyway, call reality most of the time. To speak into the ears of one soul at least the commandment, the suggestion, the hope of waking.
* * *
(they are in bed, talking. at some point, a short flashback, then they continue talking.))
The first time they'd shared this bed - after a couple of drinks at the Sandbox, and well after they'd first begun to consort often - she had seemed unsettlingly cagey. She kept breaking off, or slipping away, to change the radio, or fool with the heat; and she kept talking - not about what was going on right there between them, but about other things, general remarks, questions about life, his life, his thoughts. So tell me. He wondered if it were some kind of test, see if he could keep up his concentration, or his attention to her. He was about to ask if maybe she'd rather just stop, and talk, but just then a sort of smothered fire within seemed to burst softly, and she pressed hard into him; she ceased to say words, only sounds, sounds that seemed, somehow, like further admissions, hard to make at first and then more willingly made.
((now))
She laughed a low laugh, her tummy rolling beneath his hand.
...
"That's what my book was about. How if you change the way ahead, the way behind changes too."
"Seems kind of obvious," she said.
It seemed so when she said it; it was obvious, or at least a commonplace. More than one history of the world; one for each of us. A bright moment arriving when you choose a new way into the future, which illuminates a new past, the backward way, at the same time. Everybody know. It had been true all along.
"Because, you know," she said, "You can't step in the same river twice. You ever hear that?"
"Nope," he said, pressing her now meaningfully downward to supine, enough talk. "News to me."
* * *
So he had had his own secrets and unsayable things, things out of which a double life is made, as his father's and his mother's lives were made of them. Sometimes laid deep like mines or bombs (he thought you'd have to explain this to young people nowadays, who didn't live such lives, probably) so that you had to proceed with care along your way, not come upon them unexpectedly or at the wrong time, at a juncture, and have them explode.
Homo, viator in bivio, the Latin Church declared, offering to help. man, voyager on forking paths. There's no provision, though, for going back, is there, back over the thrown Y switches of our lives, the ones that shout our little handcar off its straight way and onto the way we took instead, as in the silent comedies that Axel loved: no way to go back and fix the thing broken, or break the silence that later exploded. An infinite number of junctures lies between us and that crisis or crux, and passing back again across each one would generate by itself a further juncture, a double infinity, an infinitesimal calculus; you'd never get back to there, and if you could you'd never return again to here where you started from: and why would you need to go back in the first place except to learn how to go on from right here, to go on along the way you have to go?
* * *
A light wind, able to stir the yellow fog but not at first to disperse it. A wind young and inexperienced, learning its uses and its work, but so far aimless; a wind that had been borne along with the world's great slow-marching airs and atmospheres from west to east, from Albion to the Middle Sea and over the Bavarian mountains, wondering, wandering. As it blew more steadily over the White Mountain, the day grew clearer. ot the light of day: what the day was great clearer, though not at once to everyone, and to some not at all.
A little wind. The first wind bears in the time, an angel said to John Dee, and the second bears it away again.
The protestant soldiers on the heights felt it first, lifted their heads and noses to it, to see from which quarter it blew. The various unearthly powers ranked behind them felt it too, and turned from the battle, to see who or what was coming through from the rear. No zephyr they knew. They were astonished then to be picked up and swept away by it, one by one, as by a broom, right out of the to-be and back into the once-was forever. All in a moment those powers were gone, were nothing - for they had all along really been nothing, less than nothing, mere signs, mere phantasmata, and no help now to the human soldiers, left with only their human commanders, standing on an insignificant little hill outside a contested city in the middle of Europe at the start of another battle in another war. Their warm mammalian breath condensed on the damp cold air. They thought how short life is, and how little worth is the promise of Heaven. On the other side the same, as in a mirror. Then the first wave of Catholic pikemen, crying out as though for their mothers, advanced against the Protestant left.
...
That little wind went away from the ghastly battlefield, growing just a little less little as it went, though few still could feel it. Nothing hindered it, perhaps because of its small size - it was no more than a breeze, really, a breath, the puff of air that comes in at the thick small windows of desert dwellings to touch a cheek and say that the simoom might be coming, or might not; hardly wind enough to cover with sands the tombs and temples that its mother had before uncovered. Yet it blew "far and wide"; there wouldn't be anywhere it didn't enter in, rattling the windows of the present and scattering the dealt cards of the past, pushing closed the doors of opened books and scrambling the sense of their indexes and prolegomena. Finally its baby breath, propelled by those fat cheeks, separated the a from the e in every word where they were joined, or suppressed one and left only the other, like conjoined twins that can't survive together, encyclopedias of aerial etheric demons in Egypt. Nobody noticed. And then with a little laugh it blew itself out, bowling up its own nonexistent fundament and drawing all of itself in after.
* * *
According to Dr. Pons, though, it was actually just the opposite. To him, physical matter had no real existence at all; it wasn't different from human, or divine, ignorance. It was an illusion, in fact a hoax. The slightest and smallest human emotion felt by the inward incarcerated soul is more real than any aspect of materiality. And more real in turn than all those emotions, all tears and laughter and love and hate, are the conceptions of the mind - Beauty, Truth, Order, Wisdom - which give to materiality whatever form and worth it has. Most real of all is the world beyond nature and even Mind: the real Without, utterly out of reach, the real of the Fullness and God.
What Kraft had learned, in those first joyous labors of imagination long ago, was that, different as Dr. Pons's inverted universe might be from what is in fact the case, it is necessarily very much like the world inside a work of fiction.
All the myriad material things that we, in our universe, touch and use and love and hate and depend on - our food, our flesh, our breath; cities and towns, roads and houses - in a book these things have no true reality at all. They're just nouns. But emotions are quite real; there are tears of things, and they are really shed, and real laughs laughed. Of course. And in a book intellectual order is the most real of all, the governing, sustaining reality - the Logos, the tale issuing from its absent, its hidden Author.
They, those pretend people in their factitious world, they owe their embodiment, their circumstance of being caught in unreal souls and bodies, to an upheaval that happened before the beginning of space and time (their space and time): a dissatisfaction, a troubling of a single soul's primal economy, a soul startled into awareness by a girlish or a boyish question: if things were different from the way they are, what would they be like?
More, even more: the most precious and only truly real thing within each of the conscious beings who had been made to inhabit Kraft's little world (well, not the hylic mob, the mere names, the spear carriers and extras) was their share of the original undivided consciousness from which they sprang - that is, his own. Into which, when their work is done, they are gathered again at last: when their false world is closed up, and shelved.
...
In subsequent years and subsequent books he had sometimes wondered if he might somehow send them a message, one of them or some of them; awaken them to their own condition, to this peculiar reversal of what we out here, most of us anyway, call reality most of the time. To speak into the ears of one soul at least the commandment, the suggestion, the hope of waking.
David Mitchell - "The Bone Clocks"
Very nice read about the life of Holly Sykes, the people around her, and the raging war of Atemporals vs Carnivores, the first century old souls reincarnating, the latter evil Anchorites who siphon off some life'soul stuff from mere mortals to stay alive.
I did enjoy it, and the end was properly bleak - though a deus ex machina tacked on -, but was I truly gripped by the big meta fight? No. The human characters meant more than those Horlogists and Anchorites. Which a book club might reveal to be exactly the point, perhaps.
I did enjoy it, and the end was properly bleak - though a deus ex machina tacked on -, but was I truly gripped by the big meta fight? No. The human characters meant more than those Horlogists and Anchorites. Which a book club might reveal to be exactly the point, perhaps.
Friday, 29 January 2016
Thursday, 28 January 2016
Eivor - "Gryt Ei"
Soft and sad, and could just as easily be called cheesy perhaps. But it hit the right nerve and I like it.
Saturday, 23 January 2016
Alessandro Baricco - "De Jonge Bruid" (La Sposa giovane)
Vreemd boek. Rare stijl, soms irritant, soms ok. Wisselend van perspectief zonder waarschuwing, soms midden in een zin. Ik kan niet zeggen dat ik echt begaan was met de hoofdpersonen, maar toch was het intrigerend om te lezen.
"Na die eerste kus waren de zaken exponentieel voortgeraasd, eerst stiekem, vervolgens onverholen, tot ze uitmondden in dat soort van trage huwelijk dat in feite het onderwerp is van het verhaal dat ik hier aan het vertellen ben, en waarover een oude vriend me gisteren nog ronduit vroeg of dat iets te maken had met de wederwaardigheden waar ik kapot aan ga de afgelopen maanden, oftewel in dezelfde periode dat ik dit verhaal nu aan het vertellen ben, het verhaal dat, zo meende die oude vriend, best weleens te maken zou kunnen hebben met het verhaal van datgene waar ik kapot aan ga. Het juiste antwoord - nee - was niet moeilijk te geven, maar toch bleef ik zwijgen en antwoordde ik niets, en wel omdat ik anders had moeten uitleggen hoe alles wat we schrijven uiteraard te maken heeft met wat we zijn, of zijn geweest, maar persoonlijk heb ik nooit gedacht dat het schrijversvak kan worden afgedaan door je eigen issues op literaire wijze te verpakken, met het zielige trucje om dan de namen en soms de volgorde van de gebeurtenissen te veranderen; ik heb juist altijd het idee gehad dat het oprechter zou zijn om tussen ons eigen leven en dat wat we schrijven een geweldige afstand te scheppen die ons, eerst geschapen door onze fantasie en vervolgens opgevuld door ons vakmanschap en onze toewijding, naar een elders voert waar werelden blijken te zijn die voorheen niet bestonden, en waarin datgene wat er aan intiem persoonlijks, onzegbaar persoonlijks is weer gaat bestaan, maar voor onszelf vrijwel onbekend, en geraakt door de gratie van uiterst broze vormen, zoals die van fossielen of vlinders."
"Na die eerste kus waren de zaken exponentieel voortgeraasd, eerst stiekem, vervolgens onverholen, tot ze uitmondden in dat soort van trage huwelijk dat in feite het onderwerp is van het verhaal dat ik hier aan het vertellen ben, en waarover een oude vriend me gisteren nog ronduit vroeg of dat iets te maken had met de wederwaardigheden waar ik kapot aan ga de afgelopen maanden, oftewel in dezelfde periode dat ik dit verhaal nu aan het vertellen ben, het verhaal dat, zo meende die oude vriend, best weleens te maken zou kunnen hebben met het verhaal van datgene waar ik kapot aan ga. Het juiste antwoord - nee - was niet moeilijk te geven, maar toch bleef ik zwijgen en antwoordde ik niets, en wel omdat ik anders had moeten uitleggen hoe alles wat we schrijven uiteraard te maken heeft met wat we zijn, of zijn geweest, maar persoonlijk heb ik nooit gedacht dat het schrijversvak kan worden afgedaan door je eigen issues op literaire wijze te verpakken, met het zielige trucje om dan de namen en soms de volgorde van de gebeurtenissen te veranderen; ik heb juist altijd het idee gehad dat het oprechter zou zijn om tussen ons eigen leven en dat wat we schrijven een geweldige afstand te scheppen die ons, eerst geschapen door onze fantasie en vervolgens opgevuld door ons vakmanschap en onze toewijding, naar een elders voert waar werelden blijken te zijn die voorheen niet bestonden, en waarin datgene wat er aan intiem persoonlijks, onzegbaar persoonlijks is weer gaat bestaan, maar voor onszelf vrijwel onbekend, en geraakt door de gratie van uiterst broze vormen, zoals die van fossielen of vlinders."
Andy Weir - "The Martian"
Loved it. Great read, easily written. Sometimes he is a bit too nerd-jokey, but that's ok. Once or twice I felt a problem being set up too obviously. Perhaps first let the accident happen, just a few sentences describing what happens, then give the background info?
Wednesday, 13 January 2016
on Grunnsonic sampler
- Kin - "Knee Jerk", dubstep with haunting vocals
- Anthony's Putsch - "Hair" - very Mika like
- De Kat - "What Time do We Meet"
- the Blind Roofers - "Lost in Wander" - very Sixteen Horsepower, though the accent is off
Tuesday, 12 January 2016
Nils Frahm & Jon Hopkins improvisation
Amazing stuff.
https://www.facebook.com/jonhopkinsmusic/videos/1218318841517650/
https://www.facebook.com/jonhopkinsmusic/videos/1218318841517650/
Tuesday, 29 December 2015
Dana Spiotta - "Jelly and Jack"
A woman uses the telephone to call semi strangers (friends of her friends) and, slowly connecting more and more to them, or rather, making them connect more and more to her, feels herself beautiful while on the phone, forgets her middle aged, overweight body, feels loved and wanted without every really lying (too much).
Amazing story telling. The mix of her thoughts, her wishes and desires, and the actual conversations, is amazing.
Amazing story telling. The mix of her thoughts, her wishes and desires, and the actual conversations, is amazing.
Wednesday, 16 December 2015
GRUB2 0-day attack explained
Great explanation with full details on the assembly code and things like IVT
http://hmarco.org/bugs/CVE-2015-8370-Grub2-authentication-bypass.html
http://hmarco.org/bugs/CVE-2015-8370-Grub2-authentication-bypass.html
Friday, 11 December 2015
skeuomorphism
Skeuomorphism is a concept in technological design that describes our tendency to retain tactile aspects of the physical world as we move more of our lives onto screens. At Apple, for example, skeuomorphic design was thought to ease the transition from the real to the virtual. Turning a page on your Mac or iPhone would closely resemble turning a page in a real notebook, paper sounds included. If you can recreate the physical aspects of a very familiar, tactile world in the flat, virtual reality of an operating system, designers have long believed, maybe more people will feel comfortable using the product.
http://fusion.net/story/164975/sex-toy-vibrator-shape-design-no-penis/?mod=e2this
http://fusion.net/story/164975/sex-toy-vibrator-shape-design-no-penis/?mod=e2this
Tuesday, 8 December 2015
the Comsat Angels - "I Come from the Sun"
Another interesting song from a J.G. Ballard inspired playlist.
http://8tracks.com/bynar/he-thought-of-cars-part-2
http://8tracks.com/bynar/he-thought-of-cars-part-2
Monday, 7 December 2015
the National - "Conversation 16"
Good enough, although not as industrial as the rest of the playlist.
http://8tracks.com/sowegotbusiness/tamer-animals-a-high-rise-playlist
http://8tracks.com/sowegotbusiness/tamer-animals-a-high-rise-playlist
Pocket Knife Army - "This Time I'll Come Out Unharmed"
Beginning of "Grow Up" has strong Portishead "P3" overtones (that "terminator song")
Friday, 4 December 2015
Sneaker Pimps
- "Half Life" - ok song
- "Strike me down" - a very Rob Zombie "Clubbed to Death" remix-y song
Wednesday, 2 December 2015
clocksources and all things ticking
Though very Intel specific, a good and fairly in-depth read on Linux kernel and clocksources. Woei!
https://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2013/06/20/eliminate-the-dreaded-clocksource-is-unstable-message-switch-to-tsc-for-a-stable
https://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2013/06/20/eliminate-the-dreaded-clocksource-is-unstable-message-switch-to-tsc-for-a-stable
Tuesday, 1 December 2015
Go March - "Go March" (2015)
Kraut, elektro, Belgian, debut. Instrumental. Quite good.
- "Slow Horse" - bit of a Spanish guitar influence
Friday, 27 November 2015
tty magic, intricacies, and amazing details
http://www.linusakesson.net/programming/tty/index.php
Basically I just want to copy the whole article. It is an amazing read.
Basically I just want to copy the whole article. It is an amazing read.
Tears, or MY EYES BLEED CHEMICALS
Crying is a more complicated process than you'd think. First of all, there are really three different types of tears. Basal tears keep our eyes lubricated constantly. Reflex tears are produced when our eyes get irritated, like with onions or when something gets into our eyes. The third kind of tear is produced when the body reacts emotionally to something. Each type of tear contains different amounts of chemical proteins and hormones. Scientists have discovered that the emotional tears contain higher levels of manganese and the hormone prolactin, and this contributes in a reduction of both of these in the body; thus helping to keep depression away. Many people have found that crying actually calms them after being upset, and this is in part due to the chemicals and hormones that are released in the tears.
Wednesday, 25 November 2015
Daft Punk - "Technologic"
The music itself isn't the best, but the quiet parlando part at the beginning, with the empty revved electrolized voice just listing words, would be an awesome start of a film or clip. Imagine, just a black screen, cinema in darkness, those words, for thirty seconds or more, then either very slowly or very fast images of people consumed by technology.
(perhaps I'm describing the clip?)
(perhaps I'm describing the clip?)
Friday, 20 November 2015
Siouxie and the Banshees - "Strange Fruit" (Through the Looking Glass)
Almost carnavalesque song, slowing down, waltzing...
Thursday, 19 November 2015
Gloomy Synthesizer Sundays - part 2.
So... post-punk came from punk, borrowed its DIY attitude, its love for modern art (symbolism, Dadaïsm), applied that to rock music, to look beyond the usual rock music boundaries (using dubstep, synths, etc), but not necessarily limiting itself to the sonic resonances of punk...
And from there came, end of the 70's, crashing into the 80's, among others, cold wave. Primarily French music style, though it was Kraftwerk and Siouxie and the Banshees who first provoked that description.
http://8tracks.com/aboynamedpalle/gloomy-synthesizer-sundays-part-2
Nancy Nova - "no no no" : funny song
And from there came, end of the 70's, crashing into the 80's, among others, cold wave. Primarily French music style, though it was Kraftwerk and Siouxie and the Banshees who first provoked that description.
http://8tracks.com/aboynamedpalle/gloomy-synthesizer-sundays-part-2
Nancy Nova - "no no no" : funny song
Monday, 16 November 2015
NTD - Start Over
Drieluik waarin vooral de eerste twee delen fantastisch absurd en surreëel waren.
Deel drie, "puur dans", was minder makkelijk te volgen (minder gevoel voor een verhaal?) maar nog steeds indrukwekkend. Muziek deed sterk denken aan Clint Mansell maar was van Max Richter.
Deel drie, "puur dans", was minder makkelijk te volgen (minder gevoel voor een verhaal?) maar nog steeds indrukwekkend. Muziek deed sterk denken aan Clint Mansell maar was van Max Richter.
Tuesday, 10 November 2015
Calexico - Edge of the Sun (2015)
Not the whole album is great but:
- Coyoacán - pretty nice
- Roll Tango (bonus track) - nice
- Volviendo (bonus track) - great Spanish parlando song. I don't know what he says and I do not care, it sounds amazing.
Orange Blossom / Hend Ahmed - "Mexico" (Under the shade of violets)
Great mexican-guitar song with female French vocals.
Interesting album as well... powerful, nearly gothic with its untranslatable female voice and power rock riffs.
Interesting album as well... powerful, nearly gothic with its untranslatable female voice and power rock riffs.
Monday, 9 November 2015
Fuzz - "II" (2015)
Curious rock album full of old 70's scree rock sounds, yet also a curious violin or something on "Silent Sits The Dust Bowl", while "Say Hello" has a distinct The Doors feeling to it.
Thursday, 5 November 2015
Delta Rae - "I Will Never Die"
Powerful female singer song. Hints of rhythm & blues.
Found via nice 8tracks: http://8tracks.com/missfit2/payday
Found via nice 8tracks: http://8tracks.com/missfit2/payday
short stories
Writers and readers: If you could give someone who has never read a short story one short story to start with, with the aim of getting her to fall in love with the form, what would you give her?
http://www.rachellyon.work/blog/
http://www.rachellyon.work/blog/
Wednesday, 4 November 2015
Arbeid Adelt! - "Slik"
Belgische electropop? "electrobelpopensemble" blaft 3voor12 zelfs. Bizarre teksten. Intrigerend.
"Wat het zoal doet / dat weet ik niet / wat het nu weer doet / dat deert me niet"
"Wat het zoal doet / dat weet ik niet / wat het nu weer doet / dat deert me niet"
Meteor Musik - "Asteriu"
Belgium, it says, but Russian voices... real ones?
Nice enough synth scapes, woooeeeeeewyyyy 80s sounds, instrumental.
Nice enough synth scapes, woooeeeeeewyyyy 80s sounds, instrumental.
Tuesday, 3 November 2015
Michael Sandel - Justice - What is the right thing to do
http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_sandel_what_s_the_right_thing_to_do
Great talk (only watched 15 min or so) about justice and the moral / right thing to do.
Consequential morality: locates morality in the consequences of an act
Categorical morality: locates morality in certain duties and rights
"Philosophy teaches us, and unsettles us, by confronting us with what we already know."
"Philosophy estranges us from the familiar, not by supplying new information, but by inviting and provoking a new way of seeing. ... Once familiar things estrange, nothing will ever be the same again."
Part 2
John Stuart Mill, utilitarianism, says there is a distinction between higher and lower pleasures (important when attaching a value to them) : "Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, then that is the more desirable pleasure."
Another one by Mill: "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied. Better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool or the pig are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their side of the question."
Great talk (only watched 15 min or so) about justice and the moral / right thing to do.
Consequential morality: locates morality in the consequences of an act
Categorical morality: locates morality in certain duties and rights
"Philosophy teaches us, and unsettles us, by confronting us with what we already know."
"Philosophy estranges us from the familiar, not by supplying new information, but by inviting and provoking a new way of seeing. ... Once familiar things estrange, nothing will ever be the same again."
Part 2
John Stuart Mill, utilitarianism, says there is a distinction between higher and lower pleasures (important when attaching a value to them) : "Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, then that is the more desirable pleasure."
Another one by Mill: "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied. Better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool or the pig are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their side of the question."
Flying Horseman - "Night is Long" (2015)
Particularly the long, last, eponymous song is beautiful and haunting.
This reminds me of both Dead Can Dance as well as Japan's "Nightporter".
This reminds me of both Dead Can Dance as well as Japan's "Nightporter".
Monday, 2 November 2015
Albert Camus - "The Rebel" (an essay on the man in revolt)
"Once crime was as solitary as a cry of protest; now it is as universal as science. Yesterday it was put on trial; today it determines the law."
p4. "But slave camps under the flag of freedom, massacres justified by philanthropy or by a taste for the superhuman, in one sense cripple judgment. On the day when crime dons the apparel of innocence - through a curious transposition peculiar to our times - it is innocence that is called upon to justify itself."
p5. "Each day at dawn, assassins in judges' robes slip into some cell: murder is the problem today."
p6. "The final conclusion of absurdist reasoning is, in fact, the repudiation of suicide and the acceptance of the desperate encounter between human inquiry and the silence of the universe."
p10. "The first and only evidence that is supplied me, within the terms of the absurdist experience, is rebellion. Deprived of all knowledge, incited to murder or to consent to murder, all I have at my disposal is this single piece of evidence, which is only reaffirmed by the anguish I suffer. Rebellion is born of the spectacle of irrationality, confronted with an unjust and incomprehensible condition. [...] Rebellion engenders exactly the actions it is asked to legitimate. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that rebellion finds its reasons within itself, since it cannot find them elsewhere."
p15. "The part of himself that he wanted to be respected he proceeds to place above everything else and proclaims it preferable to everything, even to life itself. It becomes for him the supreme good. Having up to now been willing to compromise, the slave suddenly adopts ("because this is how it must be . . .") an attitude of All or Nothing. With rebellion, awareness is born."
p17. "... the rebel's aim is to defined what he is. He does not merely claim some good that he does not possess or of which he was deprived. His aim is to claim recognition for something which he has and which has already been recognized by him, in almost every case, as more important than anything of which he could be envious."
p18. "The rebel, [...] refuses to allow anyone to touch what he is. He is fighting for the integrity of one part of his being. He does not try, primarily, to conquer, but simply to impose."
p19. "We insist that the part of man which cannot be reduced to mere ideas should be taken into consideration - the passionate side of his nature that serves no other purpose than to be part of the act of living."
p20. "...the spirit of rebellion finds few means of expression in societies where inequalities are very great (the Hindu caste system) or, again, in those where there is absolute equality (certain primitive societies). The spirit of rebellion can exist only in a society where a theoretical equality conceals great factual inequalities."
p4. "But slave camps under the flag of freedom, massacres justified by philanthropy or by a taste for the superhuman, in one sense cripple judgment. On the day when crime dons the apparel of innocence - through a curious transposition peculiar to our times - it is innocence that is called upon to justify itself."
p5. "Each day at dawn, assassins in judges' robes slip into some cell: murder is the problem today."
p6. "The final conclusion of absurdist reasoning is, in fact, the repudiation of suicide and the acceptance of the desperate encounter between human inquiry and the silence of the universe."
p10. "The first and only evidence that is supplied me, within the terms of the absurdist experience, is rebellion. Deprived of all knowledge, incited to murder or to consent to murder, all I have at my disposal is this single piece of evidence, which is only reaffirmed by the anguish I suffer. Rebellion is born of the spectacle of irrationality, confronted with an unjust and incomprehensible condition. [...] Rebellion engenders exactly the actions it is asked to legitimate. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that rebellion finds its reasons within itself, since it cannot find them elsewhere."
p15. "The part of himself that he wanted to be respected he proceeds to place above everything else and proclaims it preferable to everything, even to life itself. It becomes for him the supreme good. Having up to now been willing to compromise, the slave suddenly adopts ("because this is how it must be . . .") an attitude of All or Nothing. With rebellion, awareness is born."
p17. "... the rebel's aim is to defined what he is. He does not merely claim some good that he does not possess or of which he was deprived. His aim is to claim recognition for something which he has and which has already been recognized by him, in almost every case, as more important than anything of which he could be envious."
p18. "The rebel, [...] refuses to allow anyone to touch what he is. He is fighting for the integrity of one part of his being. He does not try, primarily, to conquer, but simply to impose."
p19. "We insist that the part of man which cannot be reduced to mere ideas should be taken into consideration - the passionate side of his nature that serves no other purpose than to be part of the act of living."
p20. "...the spirit of rebellion finds few means of expression in societies where inequalities are very great (the Hindu caste system) or, again, in those where there is absolute equality (certain primitive societies). The spirit of rebellion can exist only in a society where a theoretical equality conceals great factual inequalities."
Albert Camus - "The Fall"
- choice of words: Dutch are "primates"
- hearing a Frenchman describe my country
- how talking about de Zuiderzee puts it in a very specific period for me
p27. "To achieve notoriety it is enough, after all to kill one's concierge. Unhappily, this is usually an ephemeral reputation, so many concierges are there who deserve and receive the knife."
p31. "Friendship is less simple. It is long and hard to obtain, but when one has it there's no getting rid of it; one simply has to cope with it."
p33. "A woman who used to chase after me, and in vain, had the good sense to die young. What room in my heart at once! And when, in addition, it's a suicide! Lord, what a delightful commotion! One's telephone rings, one's heart overflows, and the intentionally short sentences yet heavy with implications, one's restrained suffering and even, yes, a bit of self-accusation!"
p48. "I could never talk without boasting, especially if I did so with that shattering discretion that was my specialty."
p50. "This I progressed on the surface of life, in the realm of words as it were, never in reality."
p55. "What does it matter, after all, if by humiliating one's mind one succeeds in dominating everyone? I discovered in myself sweet dreams of oppression."
p57. "My relationship with women was natural, free, easy, as the saying goes. No guile in it except that obvious guile which they look upon as a homage. I loved them, according to the hallowed expression, which amounts to saying that I never loved any of them. I always considered misogyny vulgar and stupid, and almost all the women I have known seemed to me better than I. Nevertheless, setting them so high, I made use of them more often than I served them. How can one make it out?"
p63. "Believe me, for certain men at least, not taking what one doesn't desire is the hardest thing in the world."
p66. "I couldn't deceive myself as to the truth of my nature. No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures - have I read that or did I think it myself, mon cher compatriote?"
p67. "Be it said, moreover, that as soon as I had rewon that affection I became aware of its weight. In my moments of irritation I told myself that the ideal solution would have been the death of the person I was interested in. Her death would, on the one hand, have definitely fixed our relationship and, on the other, removed its compulsion. But one cannot long for the death of everyone or, in the extreme, depopulate the planet in order to enjoy a freedom that cannot be imagined otherwise. My sensibility was opposed to this, and my love of mankind."
p72. "We are reaching the dike. We'll have to follow it to get as far as possible from these too charming houses. Please, let's sit down. Well, what do you think of it? Isn't it the most beautiful negative landscape? Just see on the left that pile of ashes they call a dune here, the gray dike on the right, the livid beach at our feet, and in front of us, the sea the color of a weak lye-solution with the vast sky reflecting the colorless waters. A soggy hell, indeed! Everything horizontal, no relief; space is colorless, and life dead."
p76. "Martyrs, cher ami, must choose between being forgottne, mocked, or made use of. As for being understood - never!"
p83. "A liking for truth at any cost is a passion that spares nothing and that nothing resists. It's a vice, at times a comfort, or a selfishness. Therefore, if you are in that situation, don't hesitate: promise to tell the truth and then lie as best you can. You will satisfy their hidden desire and doubly prove your affection."
p120. "I have ceased to like anything but confessions, and authors of confessions write especially to avoid confessing, to tell nothing of what they know. When they claim to get to the painful admissions, you have to watch out, for they are about to dress the corpse."
Tuesday, 20 October 2015
Friday, 16 October 2015
Swans - "Mona Lisa, Mother Earth"
Voice-heavy 80s sounding song. Intriguing. Second in playlist
http://8tracks.com/silent-alarmm/indie-classics
http://8tracks.com/silent-alarmm/indie-classics
Wednesday, 7 October 2015
Marbert Rocel - "With Your Love" (In The Beginning, 2015)
Sounds very familiar but isn't. Nice enough.
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