“Fortunately, some are born with spiritual immune systems that sooner or later give rejection to the illusory worldview grafted upon them from birth through social conditioning. They begin sensing that something is amiss, and start looking for answers. Inner knowledge and anomalous outer experiences show them a side of reality others are oblivious to, and so begins their journey of awakening. Each step of the journey is made by following the heart instead of following the crowd and by choosing knowledge over the veils of ignorance.”
Monthly Archives: November 2013
for y’all celebrating thanksgiving
Uncanny scene from the film Beetlejuice (1989), in which a frightfully posh dinner is ruptured when the table is re-possessed by the voices of exploited plantation labourers, specifically via Harry Belafonte’s “Day-O”. One of Tim Burton’s most politically subversive moments.
angel olsen – the sky opened up
From her last album Half Way Home, this live performance was recorded at Paradox/Incubate, on 10 September 2012.
Angel said of Half Way Home, “I think no matter how stable I am I will always be searching, I guess that’s what this album is about. The endless searching, the fruitless waiting, the idea of a home that is inside yourself.”
Her new album, Burn Your Fire For No Witness, is due for release in February 2014.
john lennon on keeping it real
tom waits – a little rain (live)
“A Little Rain” (from the 1992 album Bone Machine), performed live in Austin on 20 March1999.
slim whitman – indian love call
tori amos – if 6 was 9
A Jimi Hendrix cover, released on the limited edition UK CD single of “Cornflake Girl” in 1994. To date it is one of the few Amos recordings that has not been re-released in a collection or boxed set, or made available digitally — which is a shame, because it’s one of my favourite things she’s done.
purple haze
a blanket for juliette
My sister Heather started crocheting this beautiful blanket at the age of 16 while pregnant with Juliette, spending hours of time in difficult reflection as her friends carried on being carefree teenagers. Heather has finally finished the blanket and handed it to Juliette, now 16 herself, who has also been going through an incredibly hard and painful time lately. Today Heather posted a couple of photographs on Facebook with the following caption:
“Labour of love for my big girl-child. Every stitch was done with you in mind. Tears and love and prayers are woven into the threads, my precious gift from God.”
My heart is swollen.
nouvelle vague – fade to grey
Floating, atmospheric cover of Visage’s ’80s hit, from Bande Apart, the second album released by the Nouvelle Vague collective.
the match girl’s song of hope
It’s true
The heart beats lighter in a vacuum
I dreamed someday I’d burn, burn, burn
A flaming Me fanned by a You
That blue glow gutters, fades to grey
Ashen time ticks faintly on
Sex, a lonely bomb in my bag
Forgotten on the platform
My pulse racing
The last plane out of here
Please don’t leave yet
Gran, please hold on
I’m coming now
I’m coming
I’ll be there too,
Take it on with you
I’m coming now
I’m coming through
Cos one thing I’ve learned being burned is that
Love’s not about how we feel
It’s about how we deal with situations
When shit gets real
It’s way beyond desire
Real love works to heal
It doesn’t steal a kiss, delirious
Then turn, turn, turn, as you’re on fire,
To another
Hid behind the curtain (how, Lover?)
Sweep out the cinders (blown away)
and go (already far away)
It’s true
Real love spans worlds
Real love spans galaxies
Real love is greater than all that ties us to Earth from birth to death
But please don’t leave yet, Papa
Please hold on
I’m coming now
I’m coming
I’ll be there with you
Take it on too
I’m coming now
I’m coming
I’m coming now
I’m coming through
I’m close to you
With every heartbeat
Closer
on dreams and the reality of sadness
Sometime ideas, like men, jump up and say ‘hello’. They introduce themselves, these ideas, with words. Are they words? These ideas speak so strangely. All that we see in this world is based on someone’s ideas. Some ideas are destructive, some are constructive. Some ideas can arrive in the form of a dream. I can say it again: some ideas arrive in the form of a dream…
… There is a sadness in this world, for we are ignorant of many things. Yes, we are ignorant of many beautiful things — things like the truth. So sadness, in our ignorance, is very real. The tears are real. What is this thing called a tear? There are even tiny ducts — tear ducts — to produce these tears should the sadness occur. Then the day when the sadness comes — then we ask: “Will this sadness which makes me cry — will this sadness that makes me cry my heart out — will it ever end?” The answer, of course, is yes. One day the sadness will end.
— David Lynch’s Log Lady, in Twin Peaks
how could you go ahead of me? (1586)
Excavating an ancient tomb in South Korea, archaeologists found the 4-centuries-old mummy of Eung-Tae Lee, who had died at the age of 30. Lying on his chest was this letter, written by his pregnant widow and addressed to the father of their unborn child:
Source: Letters of Note
Transcript
To Won’s Father
June 1, 1586You always said, “Dear, let’s live together until our hair turns grey and die on the same day.” How could you pass away without me? Who should I and our little boy listen to and how should we live? How could you go ahead of me?
How did you bring your heart to me and how did I bring my heart to you? Whenever we lay down together you always told me, “Dear, do other people cherish and love each other like we do? Are they really like us?” How could you leave all that behind and go ahead of me?
I just cannot live without you. I just want to go to you. Please take me to where you are. My feelings toward you I cannot forget in this world and my sorrow knows no limit. Where would I put my heart in now and how can I live with the child missing you?
Please look at this letter and tell me in detail in my dreams. Because I want to listen to your saying in detail in my dreams I write this letter and put it in. Look closely and talk to me.
When I give birth to the child in me, who should it call father? Can anyone fathom how I feel? There is no tragedy like this under the sky.
You are just in another place, and not in such a deep grief as I am. There is no limit and end to my sorrows that I write roughly. Please look closely at this letter and come to me in my dreams and show yourself in detail and tell me. I believe I can see you in my dreams. Come to me secretly and show yourself. There is no limit to what I want to say and I stop here.
Source: Letters of Note
on marching to a different tune
“They are really always saying the same thing. They don’t change; everybody else changes. They are accused of the most incompatible crimes, of egoism and a mania for power, indifference to the fate of their cause, fanaticism, triviality, lack of humour, buffoonery and irreverence. But they sound a certain note. Hence the great practical power of persistent radicals. To all appearance, nobody follows them, yet everyone believes them. They hold a tuning-fork and sound A, and everybody knows it really is A, though the time-honoured pitch is G flat.”
Isn’t this a good description of the effect of Pussy Riot performances? In spite of all accusations, you sound a certain note. It may appear that people do not follow you, but secretly, they believe you, they know you are telling the truth, or, even more, you are standing for truth.
— Slavoj Žižek, quoting political essayist John Jay Chapman (who was writing in 1900) in a recent letter to imprisoned Pussy Riot member, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova. Read more from their correspondence HERE.
Eve Warren – “A Punk Prayer”. Find out more about this work HERE.
agnes obel – dorian
Agnes Obel performs the new single “Dorian” from her 2013 album Aventine, live at Heimathafen Neukölln, Berlin. Order the album HERE.
cranes – loved (full album)
Dedicated Records,1994.
Bass, Vocals – Alison Shaw
Drums, Piano, Guitar – Jim Shaw
Guitar – Mark Francombe, Matt Cope
Producer – Cranes
on self-protection
When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder.
Everything moved me.
A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much.
A calendar that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it.
I did.
Where the smoke from the chimney ended.
How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table.
I spent my life learning to feel less.
Every day I felt less.
Is that growing old? Or is it something worse?
You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.
— Jonathan Safran Foer, from Everything is Illuminated
Thanks to Lex for sharing this.
epic rap battles of history
Well, that escalated quickly. Ridiculously big egos, all up in each other’s faces! I’m hooked.
pixies – there goes my gun
From Doolittle (4AD, 1989).
jaime sabines – i’m out to find a man
i’m out to find a man who looks like me
to give him my name and my wife and my son,
my books and my debts.
i’m going looking for someone to give him my soul,
my fate, my death.
with what pleasure i’d do it,
with what tenderness i’d leave myself in his hands!
annie oakley in a thomas edison film (1894)
Created and published by the Edison Manufacturing Co., 1894
Performer: Annie Oakley.
Camera: William Heise.
Filmed November 1, 1894, in Thomas Edison’s Black Maria studio.
From Archive.org:
Annie Oakley was probably the most famous marksman/woman in the world when this short clip was produced in Edison’s Black Maria studio in West Orange, New Jersey. Barely five feet tall, Annie was always associated with the wild west, although she was born in 1860 as Phoebe Ann Oakley Mozee (or Moses) in Darke County, Ohio. Nevertheless, she was a staple in the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show and similar wild west companies. Because of her diminutive stature, she was billed as “Little Sure Shot.”
The man assisting her is this appearance is probably her husband, Frank E. Butler. Annie had outshot Butler (a famous dead-eye marksman himself) in a shooting contest in the 1880s. Instead of nursing his bruised ego because he had been throughly outgunned by a woman, Butler fell in love, married Little Sure Shot, and became her manager.
Theirs was a solid and happy marriage that lasted 44 years, and when Annie died on November 3, 1926, at age 66, a heartbroken Butler followed her to the grave 18 days later.
m.d.c. – john wayne was a nazi
baby huey – hard times
Baby Huey (born James Ramey, August 17, 1944 – October 28, 1970) was an American rock and soul singer, born in Richmond, Indiana. He was the frontman for the band Baby Huey & The Babysitters, whose single LP for Curtom Records in 1971 was influential in the development of hip hop music. Unfortunately, a fatal heart attack prevented him from seeing the release of the disc.
This is my favourite off the album:
lydia lunch – cesspool called history
Montage from film footage: Fingered and The Right Side of my Brain, attributed to Richard Kern, starring Lydia Lunch.
Music: “Cesspool Called History” (Lydia’s reciting over a version of the jazz standard, “Harlem Nocturne”), from the Lydia Lunch album, Hangover Hotel (self-released in 2001).
i’m heavy
I been to war,
It don’t get more hardcore
If you knew what I’ve seen
If you been where I been
I been hit by a car
And it threw me fuckin far
I pranged on Houghton Drive
And walked out still alive
I’m heavy
So don’t push your luck
And don’t give me kak
Cos I’m heavy, man
I’m heavy
I stood by the bed
Of my dad till he dead
I told him my life story
Didn’t spare him no the gory
I smoked heroin and crack
And managed to come back
I mainlined ketamine
And saw worlds I shouldn’t seen
I’m heavy
So don’t push your luck
And don’t give me kak
Cos I’m heavy, man
I’m heavy
I been stabbed I been burned
Tied up and spurned
Bitten and gored
Winded and floored
I was there when my boys they came into this world
On the other side of earth circumstance has them hurled
I known love known loss known many good connection
No way I can just pray for instant soul redemption
I’m heavy
So don’t push your luck
And don’t give me kak
Cos I’m heavy, man
I’m heavy
funtime
Diary. Nov 2013: Facebook..
95 years since the end of world war 1 today
This version of the traditional song originally penned by J H McNaughton during the American Civil War was recorded by Jolie Holland for her Escondida album in 2004:
Here is the first known recorded version, by Buell Kazee, in 1928:
Today marks 95 years since the end of World War 1.
robert rental & thomas leer – day breaks, night heals
From the 1979 album The Bridge.
“Recording Info: This album was recorded at home on 8 track equipment, provided for us by Industrial Records. It was produced in two weeks dating 18th June to 2nd July. All blips, clicks & unseemly noises were generated by refrigerators & other domestic appliances & are intrinsic to the music. Special Thanks to Throbbing Gristle for their help & encouragement throughout.”
scatter
Dan-Ah Kim – Scatter (2013)
Check out more of Dan-Ah Kim’s surreal work HERE.
joni mitchell – both sides now (2000 version)
Happy birthday, Joni. An orchestral live performance in 2000 of her song that was first released in 1969.
(Thanks to Debbie Pryor for sharing this today.)
fleurmach 