A book needn’t be an author’s life work; a squib of novel insight with supporting evidence is sufficient. If you are going to have something be your life’s work, let it be a book of your life’s wisdom. Some people have 300 page books devoted to trivial topics and blog posts devoted to their life’s wisdom; that seems ironic to me.
Category: uncategorized
Jeanne-Claude, Christo’s Collaborator on Environmental Canvas, Is Dead at 74 – Obituary – NYTimes.com
This is a real downer. (via kottke)
Doc Watson, age 16.
We have to start the concert at 8:00 and we have to stop sometime because the halls are rented for a certain time but the music goes on in your mind before and after you play. It’s really just an agreement you make to stop at a certain time. On record, it goes for 40 minutes because an album has these dimensions. It’s just an agreement. But really the music goes on.
Interview with Kraftwerk. Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider talking with Synapse Magazine. September, 1976. On a side note, Ralf und Florian is a fantastic album.
John Adams Re-Imagines the Hymn : NPR
I’m not particularly religious, but Christian Zeal and Activity has become one of my favorite bits of classical music. See also the Lego version that focuses on the preacher segments.
I ended up in the Southwest because I knew that nobody had ever written about it. Besides Coca-Cola, the other thing that is universally known is cowboys and Indians. You can go to a mountain village in Mongolia and they’ll know about cowboys. But nobody had taken it seriously, not in 200 years. I thought, here’s a good subject. And it was.
A Fistful of Dollars
A Fistful of Dollars. Apparently it’s heavily influenced by / a remake of Yojimbo, which I’ve yet to see. It’s shorter and more amusing than the prequel, but I enjoyed The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly much more. It needed a good villain.
new Beach House MP3, “norway”
so excited for this album.
Easily my favorite song when I saw them in concert a few weeks ago.
Overcoming Bias : Key Disputed Values. I’m tempted to look at extremes (would I rather be in the Zimbabwe corner or the Sweden corner?) but I’m even more curious about life near the moderate middle: Spain, Croatia, Uruguay, Israel.
Our Hospitality
Our Hospitality. Starts pretty slow, but it has good moments. The waterfall scene near the end [9 minutes into the clip] is genuinely amazing. At the core is a family fued: Canfields vs. McKays. McKay falls in love with the Canfield daughter. Daughter invites him over for supper. Southern code of honor means Canfields can’t kill him inside the house. Comedy ensues.
Sherlock, Jr.
The Wu-Note Project, as if the Wu-Tang Clan had appeared on Blue Note Records.
It’s the lyric that makes a song a hit, although the tune, of course, is what makes it last.
Irving Berlin. This applies to many things besides songwriting.
Refined?, an art quilt by Linda Gass. (via artscriticATL)
https://www.tumblr.com/audio_file/mlarson/240363827/tumblr_ksc535NlEg1qz4ax2?plead=please-dont-download-this-or-our-lawyers-wont-let-us-host-audio
http://mlarson.tumblr.com/post/240363827/audio_player_iframe/mlarson/tumblr_ksc535NlEg1qz4ax2?audio_file=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tumblr.com%2Faudio_file%2Fmlarson%2F240363827%2Ftumblr_ksc535NlEg1qz4ax2
Yeasayer – Ambling Alp
New single released today, available at amblingalp.com
Niiiice. Can’t believe I missed this. Got an ‘80s vibe in this one.
In Search of Eustace. Great photos from a father-daughter road trip in the American West. (via)
Childhood is a branch of cartography.
from Michael Chabon’s The Wilderness of Childhood in Manhood for Amateurs.
I am frankly embarrassed that most of my musical life has been spent in the search for new materials. The significance of new materials is that they represent, I believe, the incessant desire in our culture to explore the unknown. Before we know the unknown, it inflames our hearts. When we know it, the flame dies down, only to burst forth again at the thought of a new unknown. This desire has found expression in our culture in new materials, because our culture has its faith not in the peaceful center of the spirit but in an ever-hopeful projection onto things of our own desire for completion.
John Cage. What silence taught John Cage: The story of 4’33" by James Pritchett. (via)
Mark Larson 