Tag Archives: darkness
james baldwin – the artist’s struggle for integrity (1963)
An excerpt from a talk given at the Community Church in New York in 1963. You can listen to the whole speech here.
dolly parton – my blue tears (demo)
To me, this acoustic demo is one of the most beautiful things Dolly has ever recorded. It’s an outtake from her 1971 album, Coat of Many Colours.
on this day (2012)
leonard cohen – you want it darker (2016)
Released today, from his forthcoming new album of the same name, out on 21 October 2016. <3
siri karlsson – när mörkret faller (2015)
Off The Lost Colony, my favourite Swedish record picked up while living there last year.
jesca hoop – seed of wonder (acoustic version, 2008)
From Kismet Acoustic (Phantom Sound & Vision, 2008).
maya deren – the very eye of night (1958)
“The laws of macro- and microcosm are alike. Travel in the interior is as a voyage in outer space: we must in each case burst past the circumference of our surface – our here-space and now-time – and, cut loose from the anchorage of an absolute, fixed center, enter worlds where the relationship of parts is the sole gravity. When the sun sets, the stars become apparent; when our eyes close out the light to sleep, there rises in the night-eye the constellation by which sleep-walkers plot their incalculable accuracies. By day we move according to desire and decision; by night Noctambulo advances without moving, led by the twins Gemini (as the eyes are twins or as the I of night is twin to that of day). It is by the dark geometry of such celestial navigation that the day‘s erratic negotiations are corrected and reconciled into the total orbits of our lives.
The film is in the negative. The blackness of night erases all horizon and, released from the leveling pressure of this plane, the movements both of the dancers and of the camera become as four-dimensional and directional as those of birds in air or fish in water.”
– Maya Deren: Chamber Films, program notes for a presentation, 1960
#Title: The Very Eye of Night
#Director: Maya Deren
#Year of Production: 1958
#Duration: 00:15:00
#Choregraphy: Antony Tudor, Metropolitan Opera Ballet School
#Dancers / Actors: Philp Salem, Rosemary Williams, Richard Englund, Richard Sandifer, Don Freisinger, Patricia Ferrier, Barbara Levin, Bud Bready, Genaro Gomez
#Camera: Maya Deren
#Editing: Maya Deren
#Foley Assistance: Harrison Starr
#Sound: Louis and Bebe Barron
#Music: Teiji Ito
curtis mayfield – right on for the darkness
That outro…
From Back to the World (Curtom Records, 1973).
matthew 6: 22 – 34
The Lamp of the Body
22“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light. 23But if your eye is evil, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!
24“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You can’t serve both God and Mammon.
Do Not Worry
25Therefore, I tell you, don’t be anxious for your life: what you will eat, or what you will drink; nor yet for your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26See the birds of the sky, that they don’t sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns. Your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you of much more value than they?27“Which of you, by being anxious, can add one moment to his lifespan? 28Why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They don’t toil, neither do they spin, 29yet I tell you that even Solomon in all his glory was not dressed like one of these. 30But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today exists, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, won’t he much more clothe you, you of little faith? 31“Therefore don’t be anxious, saying, ‘What will we eat?’, ‘What will we drink?’ or, ‘With what will we be clothed?’ 32For the Gentiles seek after all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33But seek first God’s Kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things will be given to you as well.
34Therefore don’t be anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Each day’s own evil is sufficient.”
portishead – wandering star
Off Dummy (Go! Discs, 1994).
sade – slave song
From Lovers Rock (Epic, 2000).
tricky – hell is round the corner (1995)
From one of the most arresting albums of the twentieth century, Maxinquaye (Island Records, 1995). I bought this CD in my final year of high school, and spent hours and hours in its company over the next few years, lying prone, alone, on the floor, curtains drawn, drowning. The album’s fractured claustrophobia felt so exactly right for the time, particularly in South Africa… its heart of darkness festering quietly while the rainbow nationalist rhetoric raged outside.
“It was the most bizarre record I’ve ever worked on,” says Mark Saunders about Maxinquaye, the 1995 Tricky album that, with the exception of the previously released singles ‘Aftermath’ and ‘Ponderosa’, he co-produced with the artist, in addition to taking care of the engineering, programming and mixing. “It was a complete un-learning experience and it was also a total re-learning experience. Think of how to make a record, then forget everything you’ve learned and start completely backwards and upside down. I could write a book about Tricky. He’s such a great character.”
Read more about the highly unorthodox way in which Maxinquaye was made, HERE.
blind willie johnson – dark was the night, cold was the ground
“Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” is a gospel-blues song written and performed by Blind Willie Johnson, probably recorded in 1927. The song is primarily an instrumental, featuring Johnson’s self-taught bottleneck slide guitar and picking style accompanied by humming and moaning.
For more about this haunting record, check out the fascinating Wikipedia page.
capital children’s choir – shake it out
Capital Children’s Choir tribute to Florence And The Machine – “Shake it Out”
Orchestrated, arranged and directed by Rachel Santesso
Drum Coach: Nick Marangoni, Recorded and mixed by Andrew Dudman at Abbey Road Studios (2012)
julia holter – goddess eyes 1
“The first thing that came to mind was an image that gradually deteriorates with visual noise, echoing the sonic noise present in the song. We go from lightness to darkness, away from a structured, fabricated place and into raw territory.”
~ Jose Wolff – August, 2012
Music by Julia Holter
Directed by Jose Wolff
Photography by Robson Muzel and Jose Wolff
“Broken figure” portrayed by Bryan Dodds
Shot on site at The Wulf, Elysian Park, and the Angeles Angeles Natural Forest. Special thanks to Emily Jane Kuntz and Eric KM Clark and Michael Winter at The Wulf
©2012 RVNG Intl.
“one ventures from home on the thread of a tune”
A child in the dark, gripped with fear, comforts himself by singing under his breath. He walks and halts to his song. Lost, he takes shelter, or orients himself with his little song as best he can. The song is like a rough sketch of a calming and stabilizing, calm and stable, center in the heart of chaos. Perhaps the child skips as he sings, hastens or slows his pace. But the song itself is already a skip: it jumps from chaos to the beginnings of order in chaos and is in danger of breaking apart at any moment. There is always sonority in Ariadne’s thread. Or the song of Orpheus. … One launches forth, hazards an improvisation. But to improvise is to join with the World, or meld with it. One ventures from home on the thread of a tune.
~ Deleuze & Guattari, in “1837: Of the Refrain”, from A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: Continuum, 1987. pp. 343-4
in the cathedral
Kip (Naveen Andrews) and Hana (Juliette Binoche) in The English Patient (1996), directed by Anthony Minghella, based on the book by Michael Ondaatje.
madrugada
What makes you sing so sweetly in the dark, White-eyes, hours before dawn? I want to know. Is it your sureness of the imminent arrival of the light? Or is it to wake the sun, in case it’s forgotten its appointment with the day? I want to know, because right now things are cold and dark here, and your song is puncturing the silence with a conviction I do not share.
fleurmach 