Archive - "Bullets" (Controlling Crowds)

via http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mef-OEmw9vI

Catchy.

Fluke - "Absurd" (Risotto)

Think of a mix between Underworld and Yello.

Hybrid - "Saladin [From Kingdom Of Heaven]" (Soundsystem 01)

Very filmish, orchestrated, on the Underworld channel.

Klaus Schulze - "Blowin' The Blues Away" (In Blue)

Maybe it's because I have not listened to him for some time, but this sounds pretty amazing. Am not familiar with this album.

T.S. Eliot - "The Hollow Men"

A penny for the Old Guy
        
            
                I
            

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

            
                II
            

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

            
                III
            

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

            
                IV
            

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

            
                V
            

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

                    For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow


                    Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

                    For Thine is the Kingdom


For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Siouxsie and the Banshees

• Strange Fruit (on "Through the Looking Glass") is way more jazzy and almost carnavalesque than anything I have ever heard by them

The Glove

wave, banshees guy & the cure's robert smith

Nothing I'm extremely excited about, but like it better than the Cure... and it's not bad.

Some stuff, like "Going To Hell" is a lot more modern and dance like.

Fugue (previously: psychogenic fugue)

A fugue state, formally dissociative fugue or psychogenic fugue (DSM-IV Dissociative Disorders 300.13^[1]), is a rare psychiatric disorder characterized by reversible amnesia for personal identity, including the memories, personality, and other identifying characteristics of individuality. The state is usually short-lived (ranging from hours to days), but can last months or longer. Dissociative fugue usually involves unplanned travel or wandering, and is sometimes accompanied by the establishment of a new identity.
After recovery from fugue, previous memories usually return intact, but there is typically amnesia for the fugue episode. Additionally, an episode of fugue is not characterized as attributable to a psychiatric disorder if it can be related to the ingestion of psychotropic substances, to physical trauma, to a general medical condition, or to psychiatric conditions such as delirium, dementia, bipolar disorder or depression. Fugues are usually precipitated by a stressful episode, and upon recovery there may be amnesia for the original stressor (dissociative amnesia).

"Are you living in a computer simulation?"

http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html#_ftnref12

Many works of science fiction as well as some forecasts by serious technologists and futurologists predict that enormous amounts of computing power will be available in the future. Let us suppose for a moment that these predictions are correct. One thing that later generations might do with their super-powerful computers is run detailed simulations of their forebears or of people like their forebears. Because their computers would be so powerful, they could run a great many such simulations. Suppose that these simulated people are conscious (as they would be if the simulations were sufficiently fine-grained and if a certain quite widely accepted position in the philosophy of mind is correct). Then it could be the case that the vast majority of minds like ours do not belong to the original race but rather to people simulated by the advanced descendants of an original race. It is then possible to argue that, if this were the case, we would be rational to think that we are likely among the simulated minds rather than among the original biological ones. Therefore, if we don’t think that we are currently living in a computer simulation, we are not entitled to believe that we will have descendants who will run lots of such simulations of their forebears. That is the basic idea. The rest of this paper will spell it out more carefully.

Patrick Park - "Lucky Ones" (Come What Will)

Nothing special, but a nice gentle singersongwriter song.

Linda Perhacs - "The Soul Of All Natural Things"

After 44 years a 2nd album??

Folk. Rhythmic

• The Soul Of All Natural Things: rhythmic, wandering voice

Paul Auster - "Winter Journal"

"You lay on the floor and howled, howled at the top of your lungs, howled because death was inside you and you didn't want to die."

The third in my autobiography triptych reading wave. Fast, punching you in the face with his lines that are hurled rhythmically at you. Perhaps it is the usage of 'you', constantly 'you, you you', without ever letting go that made reading this book such a ride.

I should study it more closely. See how he weaves normal occasions into a wonderful story.

Quoting Keats, something he scribbled in the margins; "the bitter outcry of a young man who knew he was headed for an early grave, darkly underscored by the word now in the first line" :

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calm'd - see here it is - 
I hold it towards you.

James Joyce in Paris in the 1920s, standing around at a party eighty-five years ago when a woman walked up to him and asked if she could shake the hand that wrote Ulysses. Instead of offering her his right hand, Joyce lifted it in the air, studied for a few moments, and said: "Let me remind you, madam, that this hand has done many other things as well."

"The dead are still there, and the Towers are there as well - pulsating in memory, still present as an empty hole in the sky."

Chelsea Wolfe - "we hit a wall"

Folk,doom,black metal,gothic,cold wave. Those were the descriptions in Gonzo Circus.


Fair enough, and perhaps her older work - this is her latest album - is darker, but it all sounds a bit the same.

the ambiguous meaning of ambiguity

From http://academicearth.org/courses/the-unanswered-question-1973--leonard-bernsteins-masterful-lectures-on-music/

"ambi" has two meanings:

• "bothness", on both sides at once, implying duality, such as used in ambidextrous, ambivalence
• "aroundness", such as used in ambience, ambit, all referring to the general surround

Tom Lanoye - "Sprakeloos"

Verbijsterend mooie zinnen. Tranen van woorden, juichels van zinnen.

"Ik kan me zulke gebeurtenissen niet alleen voor de geest halen, ik kan ze ook beschrijven. Ik kan ze opdissen aan feesttafels. Ik kan ze neertikken in woorden zoals deze, en deze, en deze ook. En u, lezer, kunt ze lezen. Zoals ze ooit op mijn scherm verschenen, hier en nu, zo leest u ze op deze pagina, op dit moment, uw 'nu'. Vlotjes en vanzelf, ogenschijnlijk volautomatisch. Toch is er maar één bloedklonter nodig, kleiner dan een luis, die via uw bloedbaan naar uw hersenen schiet en daar uw spraakcentrum blokkeert en af doet sterven - een paar minuten volstaan - en u raakt de draad voor altijd kwijt. Eén minuscuul kloddertje, en deze woorden veranderen vóór uw ogen in een beledigend spijkerschrift, een slagveld van onontcijferbare krassen. En één kloddertje bij mij, en ik weet niet meer waarvoor het klavier dient dat rust onder mijn vingers. Dat scherm daar? Ik zou ernaar staren en me afvragen wie die tekst geschreven heeft, en waarom het zo nodig moest in cyrillisch aandoende schrammen.
Hanepoten. Runenkerven.
Elk één kloddertje, en we zijn voorgoed vervreemd.
Van alles afgesloten wat te maken heeft met taal."

Adembenemend. De tweede in wat mijn lezen van trilogie van autobiografieën lijkt te worden. Een woordenschat en rijkdom aan taal, je wordt er stil van.

"In de boedel van haar lichaam, dat het mijne heeft gevormd, primeerden de kuch en de kwakkel."

Ninja Scroll (1993)

Fun enough film. For its time, it probably was quite advanced, but 19 years later, the fingerprints of its days are clear: crowds and swarms loop in their movements, and the story itself is... superficial?

Both story and visuals spoke of their time. The latter was rather like reading a manga at times. The former was simple. This isn't a problem per se if the mood or intensity lifts it up, but with this film it rather failed.

Quite enjoyable, nothing special. Good after 1 glass of red, 2 triple, and another triple.

Beth Hart And Joe Bonamassa - "Your Heart Is As Black As Night" (Don't Explain)

Amazing sad sensual jazz song. Must definitely look into both of them.

Great solo.

Also on the same album: "Don't Explain," a sad song, with unfortunately a tinge of a major-key chorus, but still pretty awesome.


Way more swinging: "If I Tell You I Love You" from Seesaw. Very Vaya Con Dios like.

Leo Vroman (1915-2014)

Dat moet kunnen

Ik zal straks moeilijk wennen
mij aan mijn zo volmaakt
verdwenen menselijk naakt
te doen herkennen.

Dus wikkel mij, lieve Ruimtetijd,
in lagen rond mijn strak gewaad,
desnoods met bloemetjes, maar laat
een gaatje voor de Eeuwigheid.

Gedachten zoals deze
stromen dan bij mij binnen
en klateren luid

in mijn luchtledig wezen
dat ze in zachte zinnen
vol inhoud uit.


1 januari 2012



Waarom altijd weer

Waarom is het altijd
zo donker in mijn dromen
en moet ik de weg weer kwijt
hoe uit een lab of uit een kamp
naar huis te komen
en de grootste ramp
is de werkelijkheid,
altijd, altijd
als ik toch nog mag ontwaken
om je warm en helemaal en
levend aan te kunnen raken?

Is het om telkens weer en
weer de wrede les te leren
hoe ik alleen de dood in dwaal en
terug kan keren?


14 april 2012



Leo Vroman (1915-2014)
uit: Die vleugels (2013)

word: ukiyo (Japanese)

Pronounced as “oo-ki-yo”, this means the “floating world”; a place of fleeting beauty and living in the moment, detached from the bothers of life.

word: fanaa

Pronounced as “fa-naa”, it means to destroy the ego or the self while being physically alive, thereby achieving enlightenment.