Artwork of the Day: Duane Keisler paints his tangerine and peels it too.
[neatorama.]
(Source: thedailywhat)
Billy Collins’ poem, “Forgetfulness” animated
Devendra Banhart - Don’t Look Back in Anger (Oasis cover)
Cooooool music video!
Listening to a piece by Hauschka can be deceiving: What sounds like an ensemble of musicians and instruments is just one man, performing at one piano. His real name is Volker Bertelmann, and he hails from Dusseldorf, Germany, where he works with his “prepared piano.” He wrests disruptive sounds from the instrument’s 88 keys by outfitting the strings or mallets with objects such as ping-pong balls, aluminum foil and leather. His new album is titled Foreign Landscapes, and he recently visited NPR’s studios to demonstrate his craft. (via NPR)
Also, in this video he talks about his work.
First of all, this is so beautiful. There is something so commanding in the voices of meek men trying their best to voice their inner passion, (as opposed to the voices of those for whom voicing passion comes easily.) Secondly, in watching this I made the sudden realization that Mr. Rogers and Willy Wonka have the same sounding voice, though they do speak differently, almost in the way I just described… no?
(Source: psql)
Anis Mojgani (two-time National Poetry Slam Champion and winner of the International World Cup Poetry Slam) performs his spoken word poem “Milos” at Brown University October 2008
Let us take a sack of spray paint and spray paint over the paintings.
Let dance through Paris;
kiss in the shadow of the Louvre,
crawl inside its windows,
scroll manifestos over its canvases,
write Morse code on the sculptures,
roll a sleeping bag on the floors to sleep inside of, tell one another a story by flashlight,
unearth everything from before,
bury each other inside the other,
feed grapes to the ants,
light fireworks in the fists of sleeping kings; kill a monarch.
Break back outside and find a world to do all these same things to;
up and upon against break the bricks, climb over them,
and when the sirens scream,
laugh aloud, hold my hand and run fast.
Run through the streets with me with a bunch of bottles,
a bucket of gasoline,
a mouthful of matches,
a pocketful of paintings and fresh-faced batch of policemen to chase the fires we are lighting,
laugh on a shoulder of gold.
And I thought that the museums where cemeteries where the dead paid the walls to hold what we had so that we could walk through what we once were,
And children take their skulls to turn into gardens,
to pluck for forefathers and farther stars
that on some nights resemble an armless mother praying for her arms to return.
Every tooth that we tear from our jaw to fling at the black gloved riot soldiers as another shadow that we are trying to lose.
Let every giggle be filled with lust; let us laugh this night away and I will fuck you like you were a prayer
that could save me by having my mouth around you,
and I will hold you afterwards like you were the pulpit and I was the sky,
and this love that danced between that hardness was a telephone line of holiness that those two things spoke through.
Take me into your heart like I was a saint,
and you were a face of forgiveness blooming in a valley destined to sink further.
Be a river with me;
Be the storm;
the bend in the path;
the front porch; the heat in the south;
be a boot full of banjo strings;
a fistful of written songs;
a mouthful of chocolate dust.
When they come to take us,
stab them between the eyes.
Do not take your hand from around mine.
Make a fist with the other, and punch spines like guilds, spit, sweat, kiss them like a grandmother. Howl open-mouthed terror love filled.
And when they come to cut out hair and ask to hear penance come from inside us,
say with me loud and trembling,
but loud and clear that:
“I have already emptied myself. I kissed regret goodbye, took the hands of another backwards angel, and rode backwards into the rain.”
When the hangman of ‘morrow comes to hang the sun in its daily execution say this with me: “Sarah we are apples, our love is an apple; I’m unbuttoning my shirt; painting a circle over my heart, please, just shoot straight.”
How To Be Alone: | by Tanya Davis
(film by Andrea Dorfman)
If you are at first lonely, be patient. If you’ve not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren’t okay with it, then just wait. You’ll find it’s fine to be alone once you’re embracing it.
We could start with the acceptable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library. Where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there. Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books. You’re not supposed to talk much anyway so it’s safe there.
There’s also the gym. If you’re shy you could hang out with yourself in mirrors, you could put headphones in (guitar stroke).
And there’s public transportation, because we all gotta go places.
And there’s prayer and meditation. No one will think less if you’re hanging with your breath seeking peace and salvation.
Start simple. Things you may have previously (electric guitar plucking) based on your avoid being alone principals.
The lunch counter. Where you will be surrounded by chow-downers. Employees who only have an hour and their spouses work across town and so they — like you — will be alone.
Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.
When you are comfortable with eat lunch and run, take yourself out for dinner. A restaurant with linen and silverware. You’re no less intriguing a person when you’re eating solo dessert to cleaning the whipped cream from the dish with your finger. In fact some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.
Go to the movies. Where it is dark and soothing. Alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community.
And then, take yourself out dancing to a club where no one knows you. Stand on the outside of the floor till the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no one’s watching…because, they’re probably not. And, if they are, assume it is with best of human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats is, after all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you’re sweating, and beads of perspiration remind you of life’s best things, down your back like a brook of blessings.
Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you.
Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets, there’re always statues to talk to and benches made for sitting give strangers a shared existence if only for a minute and these moments can be so uplifting and the conversations you get in by sitting alone on benches might’ve never happened had you not been there by yourself
Society is afraid of alonedom, like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements, like people must have problems if, after a while, nobody is dating them. but lonely is a freedom that breaths easy and weightless and lonely is healing if you make it.
You could stand, swathed by groups and mobs or hold hands with your partner, look both further and farther for the endless quest for company. But no one’s in your head and by the time you translate your thoughts, some essence of them may be lost or perhaps it is just kept.
Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those sappy slogans from preschool over to high school’s groaning were tokens for holding the lonely at bay. Cuz if you’re happy in your head than solitude is blessed and alone is okay.
It’s okay if no one believes like you. All experience is unique, no one has the same synapses, can’t think like you, for this be releived, keeps things interesting lifes magic things in reach.
And it doesn’t mean you’re not connected, that communitie’s not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it. take silence and respect it. if you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it. if your family doesn’t get you, or religious sect is not meant for you, don’t obsess about it.
you could be in an instant surrounded if you needed it
If your heart is bleeding make the best of it
There is heat in freezing, be a testament.
This appearance by Jack Kerouac on The Steve Allen Show in 1959 is remarkable. It’s a clip that I’m determined not to spoil through repetition, or by writing some overly purple paragraphs about it - so here’s why I love it, as succinctly as I can manage:
- He’s a terrible interviewee! The worst! Sullen, terse, and seemingly baffled by Allen’s attempts at banter…
- …but when he starts reading, it’s just hypnotising. Incredible. His rhythm and intonation fit perfectly with the accompaniment, to the point where I wish this is how I had first experienced On The Road in its entirety.
- ‘C’mon boy, go thou across the ground!’. Like a punch in the gut.
- So many peculiar, awkward little gestures sprinkled throughout, but I particularly love the one at 4:58.
- The one loosening of his strictly furrowed brow: ‘Don’t you know that God is Pooh Bear?’ (4:50).
If you like this, you might be as delighted as I was to find ‘Poetry for the Beat Generation’ - a whole record of Kerouac accompanied by Steve Allen, with band. You can find it on Spotify right here, along with another, ‘Blues and Haikus’, here.
(Source: jez-burrows)
Using animation, projections and her own moving shadow, Miwa Matreyek performs a gorgeous, meditative piece about inner and outer discovery. Take a quiet 10 minutes and dive in. With music from Anna Oxygen, Mirah, Caroline Lufkin and Mileece.
(Source: ted.com)
