The crisis in performance is, I believe, based on one simple fact

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The crisis in performance is, I believe, based on one simple fact. When it started, rock n roll was dance music. One day we stopped dancing to it and started listening to it and it’s been downhill ever since. We had a purpose, had a specific goal, an intention, a mandate, we made people dance or we did not work, we didn’t not get paid, we were fired, we were homeless. That requires a very different energy. To compel people to get out of their chairs and dance, it’s a working-class energy, not an artistic, intellectual, waiting-around-for-inspiration energy. It’s a get-up, go-to-work-and-kill energy. Rip it up, or die trying.

Little Steven (via austinkleon). There’s some good discussion of this in How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ‘n’ Roll. A while back I tumbled one of the good quotes about music critics versus those who dance.

Having Fun With Elvis On Stage (1974)

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austinkleon:

Having Fun With Elvis on Stage is considered by many critics to be the worst live album Elvis or anyone else has ever put out. This is because there were no song performances on it, only tape byplay recorded between songs - Elvis telling jokes, requesting a drink of water, and demonstrating eleven different ways to pronounce “Memphis.”

Gotta have it.

Having Fun With Elvis On Stage (1974)

Someone from R.E.M

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Someone from R.E.M. was saying to me the other night, ‘Get nervous when you realize you can do it. When you can go through a whole evening having talked to 50 people and not remember a fucking word of any of it. Then you really are in trouble.’

Thom Yorke on the perils of fame. Addicted to Noise interview, 1996.

Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years…

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Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.

Joan Didion, On Keeping a Notebook [pdf].

In Nicaragua

View from Iglesia La Merced I kept a regular journal on this recent vacation, as I did so diligently on previous long hikes and last year's trip to Iceland. This was a lazier trip than I'd ever done, so I wrote more than ever before. I may have have more to say about travel in general and and some Nicaraguan sites I saw in later posts, but here are some things that struck me...

  • Irish pubs seem to act as a sort of international safehouse for gringos/foreigners in general.
  • A lot of unions give away labeled promotional goods: caps, shirts, etc. One of my taxi drivers was a member of the local taxi union in León. His union gave its members long sleeves, but without the shirt part. The purpose? Well, it's usually hot, and a/c can be either non-existent or a waste, so you drive with the window open. You put the sleeve on your left arm so you don't get sunburn when you have it propped on the window. Brilliant.
  • I like how the environment, architecture, and community interrelate. Warm temperature year-round means that many homes feature some sort of open-air courtyard in the middle. And doors and windows often have some sort of iron fencework, so you can open your door for breezes but still keep folks from wandering in. In the afternoons, folks would throw the doors wide and pull out chairs and sit with neighbors. It reminded me of Southern front porch culture. On a similar note, lots of sunlight meant that interior lights were almost never on during the daytime. There was plenty of light coming in through the doors and reflected off tile floors, and you probably want something a bit dimmer after walking in the sun anyway.
  • Food service was slow almost everywhere. I got to be okay with this.
  • I've become less interested in trying to take "good" pictures of things. At home I take much more with my crappy cameraphone. A quick snap and move on. Whatever happens to be in the frame, no problem. For most travel landmarks I can usually google a better photo if I really need the aesthetic jolt. For "memories," I'm better served by taking some time to draw it, or just grabbing what's there in a snapshot. There's something to be said for good framing, lighting, and so on, but I think it can over-sanitize the moment in a way that doesn't really do justice to the experience. Amiright?

And a few other amusing events:

  • One of those quintessential juxtapositions of old and new: a woman who hawks flowers from a basket balanced on her head takes a break to chat on her cellphone. Cliché, yes. But sense of surprise and delight in seeing it probably says something about the assumptions I'd made.
  • Similar juxtaposition seen on a daily basis: carts being pulled by donkeys down 4-lane highways, narrow alleys, and everything in between.
  • Seeing lizards scaling the walls and ceiling of a restaurant. To be expected when you're seated next to an open courtyard.
  • Over dinner, hearing a Spanish version of Bryan Adams' "(Everything I Do) I Do It For You" playing on the radio, followed by Kansas' "Dust in the Wind".
  • And a Nicaraguan cover band tearing it up on a Friday night: Pink Floyd, CCR, The Beatles, etc. One of those moments you're really glad for mass culture.

Shifting Sentence Structure Alters Meaning

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To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning of the object photographed. …. The arrangement of the words matters, and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in your mind. …. The picture tells you how to arrange the words and the arrangement of the words tells you, or tells me, what’s going on in the picture.

Joan Didion (via bobulate)