Terrace Martin - Velvet Portraits (2016)

"Out of his many solo projects through 2016, Velvet Portraits is Terrace Martin's most concentrated work. As with the releases that preceded it, styles continually bump against one another and mingle -- freewheeling funk and gritty throwback soul are abundant -- but this one involves no rapping. Some of the ideas were cooked up while Martin was working on Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly, an album with which this shares a couple elements and some personnel. It plays out like it was conceived during relaxed daytime sessions on rare weekends when Martin and his associates were able to break away from professional and personal obligations. ..."
allmusic (Audio)
W - Velvet Portraits
YouTube: Velvet Portraits [Full Album] 1:10:08

A Short History of Ambient & Downtempo Music

"Sitting, listening, chilling. Music for background or foreground. Music for tripping, for relaxing, or for making us uneasy and challenging us with a new perspective. At the start of the third millennium, ambient music makes perfect sense. As the Western world becomes faster, more complex, more rife with nervous energy, the joy of listening to instrumental music that expresses both our external environment (both man-made and natural) and our inner spaces (both emotional and mental) is now more popular than at any other time in the history of recorded sound. Such music has many names: ambient, new age, contemporary instrumental, experimental, spacerock, chillout, ambient techno, ambient trance, mood music, world music, new acoustic music. The protests of some musicians and A&R people notwithstanding, I believe one of these names in particular - ambient - is a perfectly useful signpost for the phenomenon. ..."
ambientmusicguide (Video)
W - Ambient music

America Has a Long and Storied Socialist Tradition. DSA Is Reviving It.

"When a thousand socialists from across the United States gathered in Chicago over the weekend for the biennial convention of Democratic Socialists of America, DSA National Director Maria Svart declared, 'What we’re seeing today is historic: the largest gathering of democratic socialists in an era.' Since the 2016 election, Svart is delighted to report, 'tens of thousands of democratic socialists have come together to build a future for this country in which everyone has the right to a decent job, a good home, a free college education for their children, and health care for their family. For years, we’ve been sold hope and promised change by Wall Street politicians—now we’re taking matters into our own hands.' DSA got a big boost from the surge of interest in democratic socialism that grew from the Sanders campaign. ..."
The Nation

Letters To His Neighbor by Marcel Proust ; translated by Lydia Davis

"Recently discovered letters from Proust to a Paris neighbor show the author’s kindness even when he complained about the noise. One might wonder why a man as sensitive to noise as Proust chose to live in a Paris building where someone might set up a dental practice two floors above him. That’s what happened in the early 1900s, when a harp-playing artist named Madame Marie Williams and her husband, an American dentist named Charles, moved into Proust’s building at 102 Boulevard Haussmann. Despite the noise, Proust and the Williamses developed a close friendship, as is documented in these letters written between 1908 and 1916. Proust may have soundproofed his apartment with 'a marbleized, decorative cork,' as Davis writes in her translator’s note, but that wasn’t enough to keep out sounds of hammering or carpet beating. ..."
Kirkus Reviews
New Directions
amazon

Letter from Marcel Proust to Lionel Hauser, 2 August 1914 (excerpt 3)

2008 June: Marcel Proust, 2011 October: How Proust Can Change Your Life, 2012 April: Marcel Proust - À la recherche du temps perdu, 2013 February: Marcel Proust and Swann's Way: 100th Anniversary, 2013 May: A Century of Proust, 2013 August: Paintings in Proust - Eric Karpeles, 2013 October: On Reading Proust, 2015 September: "Paintings in Proust" - View of the Piazza del Popolo, Giovanni Battista Piranes, 2015 September: In Search of Lost Time: Swann's Way: A Graphic Novel, 2016 January: In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (1919), 2016 February: Chasing Lost Time: The Life of C.K. Scott Moncrieff: Soldier, Spy and Translator, 2016 May: The Guermantes Way (1920-21), 2016 August: Marcel Proust’s Search for Lost Time — Patrick Alexander, 2016 October: My Strange Friend Marcel Proust, 2017 March: Sodom and Gomorrah (1921-1922).

Time (The Revelator) - Gillian Welch (2001)

"... Time (The Revelator) is a summertime record. I listen to it lounging around in what’s finally a semblance of heat, but I listen to it driving baked and cracked city roads, too, in those months when everything crawls to a halt. It’s not just a rural record, or a Nashville record. To my ears, this collection of songs transcends geographical place; it makes its own place as you listen. Recorded in April 2001 and released that July, and performed by Welch and her longtime collaborator guitarist/vocalist David Rawlings, Time (The Revelator) is about getting lost. It’s a hazy post-millennial American dream of disappointment and ambition that drifts along, disturbed, even shell-shocked, by what it sees and hears. At the same time, there’s a yearning on this album so vivid it can make you cry for joy. ..."
popmatters
W - Time (The Revelator)
allmusic
amazon
YouTube: Revelator, Dear Someone, Everything Is Free, Elvis Presley Blues, Sing That Rock 'n Roll, April The 14th (Part 1), Ruination Day, I Dream A Highway

2009 February: Gillian Welch, 2011 March: Gillian Welch & Dave Rawlings NPRP, 2012 July: Harrow Harvest, 2012 September: By The Mark (2004), 2014 February: BBC FOUR Sessions: Gillian Welch, 2016 December: Boots No. 1: The Official Revival Bootleg (2016).

This - Barrett Watten and Robert Grenier (1971-1982)

This 9 (Winter 1978–79). Cover and photographs by Barrett Watten.
"In his landmark critical history, The Marginalization of Poetry: Language Writing and Literary History, Bob Perelman stressed the importance of the creation of literary venues (magazines and small presses) for the nurturing of new writing, singling out This for particular attention, as 'the first self-conscious journal of what would become known as language writing. The name and character of the movement were uninvented at the time, nor were many of the future participants in touch yet, but the magazine was clearly motivated by a sense of literary progress.' In his discussion, Perelman places This and language writing in the context of literary history, providing for it a distinguished genealogy: 'At the time there were many writers, involved in different social formations and providing various formal models, from which language writing would arise. A short list would include figures associated with Black Mountain, the New York School, the San Francisco Renaissance: Charles Olson, Frank O’Hara, and Jack Spicer, each of whom had recently died but whose work was still appearing.' ..."
From a Secret Location

Great 78 Project

"The Great 78 Project is a community project for the preservation, research and discovery of 78rpm records. From about 1898 to the 1950s, an estimated 3 million sides (~3 minute recordings) have been made on 78rpm discs. While the commercially viable recordings will have been restored or remastered onto LP’s or CD, there is still research value in the artifacts and usage evidence in the often rare 78rpm discs and recordings. Already, over 20 collections have been selected by the Internet Archive for physical and digital preservation and access. Started by many volunteer collectors, these new collections have been selected, digitized and preserved by the Internet Archive, George Blood LP, and the Archive of Contemporary Music. ..."
Great 78 Project
78rpm Records Digitized by George Blood, L.P. (Audio)

Darker Than Blue: Soul From Jamdown 1973-1980

"Arriving months before this Blood & Fire compilation was a similar release from Soul Jazz Records. Studio One Soul was just that, a collection of 18 covers of American soul tunes by the famous Jamaican label's finest '60s and '70s artists. Darker Than Blue however, has a distinct advantage over its predecessor. As it is not tied to the output of any one particular label, it manages to come up with a selection that's broader in scope and more diverse in sound. Bassist Boris Gardiner's band, with the help of organ maestro Leslie Butler, gets the proceedings off to a superb start with 'Ghetto Funk,' one of two originals that bookend the set. A series of gems follow. ... Than Blue delivers another series of excellent reality themes. Among them are the Curtis Mayfield song that titles the set (performed by Lloyd Charmers) and Timmy Thomas' 'Why Can't We Live Together?,' presented in discomix form by Tinga Stewart and the Revolutionaries. The finest in Jamaican reggae meets the finest in American soul -- the combination is superb."
allmusic
W - Darker Than Blue: Soul From Jamdown 1973-1980
amazon
YouTube: Darker Than Blue: Soul From Jamdown 1973-1980 18 videos

Big Black Sun by W.S. Di Piero

Devastation and decay never looked so good. (John-Divola's Zuma Beach 1977–'78)
"I know people who say they’re from the ’60s as some people say they’re from Paris or New York. It’s not descriptive, it’s declarative, proudly (or smugly) so, and vaguely definitive of their politics. I don’t know anybody who says they’re from the ’70s. Even if they are, it’s not a city they want to be associated with. In the 1970s, in the nation, and especially in its sunny, sick patient, California, enough was too much already. Jim Jones takes his followers to Jonestown, the Hillside Strangler kills, Elvis dies, Prop. 13 passes, Dan White murders Willie Moscone and Harvey Milk, Patty Hearst becomes Tania, Nixon becomes a crook, Carter lectures on narcissistic malaise, then Reagan rules. While all that was happening, artists were courting their own extremities. Artistic practice, especially in California, blew itself out in more ways than anyone could then account for. Under the Big Black Sun, currently at the Geffen in Los Angeles, offers such an accounting. ..."
San Diego Reader
LAPL
LA Times: 'Under the Big Black Sun' at MOCA
YouTube: Under the Big Black Sun. Art in California 1974-1981

2016 March: W.S. Di Piero, 2016 December: Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland, 1861-2008, Josef Koudelka: Nationality Doubtful, 2017 March: March of time: 20th Century icons from an old art museum in Buffalo are at the Museum of Art, May 2017: In from the cold, 2017 July: Turner set free: Nature as roughhouse theater by W.S. Di Piero

Freedom, Rhythm & Sound Revolutionary Jazz Original Cover Art 1965–83

Archie Shepp - Coral Rock
"This is a unique collection of cover artwork of revolutionary jazz released in the USA in the 1970s, a time of great political and social importance for African-American artists. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and John Coltrane loom large as self-determination, economic power and musical freedom led to artists finding new paths—both musical and economic. Away from the mainstream, many of these musicians chose to take control of their economic worth by recording, releasing and distributing their own material. Thirty years later and these artefacts are a striking reflection of the time, pre–desktop publishing, pre-internet, these small-run (sometimes as low as 500 copies), self-made sleeves are as iconic and historically important as the revolution of DIY culture that sprang out of punk. ..."
artbook@
Dusted Magazine
amazon

Project Subway NYC

59th Street Columbus Circle
"Like most New Yorkers I am constantly amazed and annoyed by the city's subway system, and Project Subway NYC is a product of this love-hate relationship. It is a collection of sketches, photographs, and architectural drawings. There is a lot to love and to hate about the subway, but I am specifically interested in the STATIONS themselves - signs, stairs, turnstiles, tunnels, platforms, escalators, and the space... in other words, anything between the streets and the trains. Curiously, with the overwhelming amount of information available to us today, a three-dimensional representation of the stations does not exist. I first challenged myself to document the stations simply because I thought it is something the city can use, but as the project develops, what set out to be a straightforward, mechanical exercise of surveying and drawing gradually turned into a journey of observation, discovery, and amusement. I hope the drawings will make way-finding in this giant maze a little easier. On top of that, I hope this project as a whole will give you a new perspective, a new way of understanding, and perhaps a new found sentiment, for this mystifying world under one of the most dynamic cities in the world. ..."
Project Subway NYC - About
Project Subway NYC
CityLab: A Nerd’s-Eye View of New York’s Most Complex Subway Stations

42nd Street Times Square Project NYC-Subway Station Cross Section

Everything Scatter - Fela Kuti (1975)

"Everything Scatter is about the person and actions of Fela and the members of Kalakuta Republic, which for a long time has become cause for controversy among the Nigerian public. Singing the song in the manner of a story teller with some history behind it, Fela presents the Nigerian society like a moving public bus driving past Kalakuta Republic. A passenger in the bus representing the establishment view, makes a remark condemning Fela and members of Kalakuta as: ‘hooligans’, ‘hemp smokers’, ‘prostitutes’, and ‘political non-starters’. Another man who, like countless of Fela’s teaming admirers, sees him as: ‘Black President’, Chief Priest, Mystic man (Abami in Yoruba language), challenges the establishment man. Meanwhile, the debate spreads among all the passengers in the bus — those echoing government opinion of Fela and those against. The result is big commotion in the bus, like in all conflict. Everything Scatter. Successive military regimes in Nigeria, in their attempt to silence Fela’s bold criticisms of the establishment have labeled him a trouble maker. Fela however would not relent in his criticism of the corruption and colonial mentality of the establishment — the end result! Everything Scatter."
Fela Kuti (Audio)
allmusic
amazon
YouTube: Everything Scatter

Avedon’s America - Richard Avedon

John Cage, musician; Merce Cunningham, choreographer; and Robert Rauschenberg, artist, New York, May 2, 1960
"'We all perform,' the late Richard Avedon once wrote. 'It’s what we do for each other all the time, deliberately or unintentionally. It’s a way of telling about ourselves in the hope of being recognized as what we’d like to be.' ... That impulse informs much of 'Avedon’s America,' a new exhibition opening August 12 at Guild Hall Museum in East Hampton on Long Island. The show offers a career-spanning view of Avedon’s work that delves into the cultural, political, and sociological complexion of the United States in the postwar era, from a 1945 portrait of a young James Baldwin (with whom Avedon co-edited the Magpie, their high school literary journal in the Bronx) to 1960s studies of Jacqueline Kennedy, Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol, and Malcolm X to a 1971 image of a napalm victim in Vietnam. ..."
VOICE
The Richard Avedon Foundation
W - Richard Avedon
YouTube: THE BRILLIANT PHOTOS OF RICHARD AVEDON

Adventures In Sound And Music hosted by Meg Woof

"The Wire's weekly show on Resonance FM, this time following a downtempo theme. The show was first broadcast on 20 July and featured music from Bark Psychosis, Ben Vince, DSR Lines, Popol Vuh, Pan Sonic and more."
The Wire (Audio)
mixcloud (Audio)

Frank O'Rourke - The Heavenly World Series (2002)

"With freshness and empathy during the 1940s and 1950s, Frank O’Rourke created a world of baseball fiction as evocative as a dusty rural diamond or Wrigley Field’s ivied walls. In this richly enjoyable collection of O’Rourke’s work --- the first in nearly 50 years and including six stories never before in book form --- his heroes compete alongside such real baseball greats as Roy Campanella, Joe DiMaggio, and Willie Mays, while confronting the all-too-human limitations of injury, age, and envy. In 'The Catcher,' the longtime star of the St. Louis Blues returns for a game facing his old team and the heartless owner who traded him away. 'One Ounce of Common Sense' portrays a dramatic pennant race in which a veteran shortstop counsels a young teammate at odds with the team owner during contract negotiations, only to be benched for this so-called insubordination. And in 'Nothing New,' a player modeled on the young Jackie Robinson strides across the color line and makes history with an unforgettable dash around the bases. O’Rourke captures the essence of baseball in elegiac, unsentimentalized fiction that will endure as long as fans of the national pastime love the game."
The Book Report
Guide to Baseball Fiction: Frank O'Rourke
W - Frank O'Rourke
amazon: The Heavenly World Series

FirstLook: Galata Bridge, circa 1890

"'Constantinople: Kara-Keui et vue de Péra' reads the caption in the lower left-hand corner of this skillfully colorized view of late-Ottoman Istanbul, a city connecting East and West and driven by global commerce and trade, at a time when the advances of the Industrial Revolution in fields including photographic processes were connecting people as never before. The view looks north, across the city’s most famous bridge, to the neighborhoods of Karaköy and Pera, topped by the Galata Tower. To the left of the bridge, the Golden Horn waters teem with sundry watercraft; to the right, smoke rises from the stacks of oceangoing steam-ships. Other details of daily life can be seen, too: horse-drawn carriages; numbered buses; a gas streetlight; a pole for telegraph wires; an open-air shop; decorative roofs. ..."
AramcoWorld

“A Particular Glow” – On Loving Terry Riley

"How appropriate that a composer and performer whose work is shot through with cosmic love vibrations should stimulate a total love-fest. We’d been a bit concerned the canvassing opinions on Terry Riley might get people nerding out, getting a bit dry and academic – but no. Just like us in the office when we found out we’d be broadcasting a Riley show from Amsterdam, everyone we asked was frankly a bit overcome with enthusiasm. From techno heroes to folktronicists, ambient explorers to sampladelic pranksters, everyone we asked had a deep, deep appreciation of Riley’s music, and a sense that he gives just a little bit more than the average composer to his listeners. From a medical recommendation to a sartorial one, from a sense of 'maximal heart' to one of 'breathtaking elegance', the range and depth of the love is palpable. And please, please read right to the end, if only to see what is without question the greatest photograph the Boiler Room has ever published. ..."
Boiler Room (Video)

December 2007: Terry Riley, March 2010: In C, December 2010: Terry Riley & Gyan Riley, April 2011: Terry Riley - Shri Camel: Morning Corona, Terry Riley rare footage, live in the 70s, 2014 March: Kronos Quartet Plays Terry Riley: Salome Dances for Peace (1989), 2014 June: Solo piano works, Moscow Conservatory. April 18th, 2000, A Rainbow in Curved Air (1969).

Capital in the Nineteenth Century: Edgar Degas’s Portraits at the Stock Exchange in 1879

Edgar Degas, Portraits at the Stock Exchange, 1879
"In the spring of 1879, the catalogue of the fourth Impressionist exhibit listed Portraits at the Stock Exchange among the twenty-five works grouped under the name Edgar Degas (fig. 1). When, if ever, the painting actually appeared in public that year remains, however, an open question. Gustave Caillebotte, for instance, reported that only eight of Degas’s works had been hung on April 10 when the galleries opened on the avenue de l’Opéra. Over the next month of the show almost none of the numerous critics reviewing the exhibition came to acknowledge the existence of the picture. The one exception was Louis Leroy who, in typical comic mode, noted in passing a 'man’s hat, under which, after the most conscientious researches, I found it impossible to find a head.' Although Degas’s picture was also listed again in the catalogue for the next Impressionist exhibition, Leroy’s cryptic aside constitutes the entirety of its critical reception in the circumstances of its historical beholding. ..."
nonsite.org

90 Lines For John Ashbery's 90th Birthday

"To celebrate the beloved American poet John Ashbery turning 90 today, we invited 90 of his dearest friends, collaborators, and admirers to pick a favorite line from his vast published corpus (the second volume of his Collected Poems, 1991-2000, will be published this October with Library of America) and write about it in 90 words or fewer. Ashbery’s poetic career now spans over six decades and includes more than 20 books of original poetry, the most recent being Commotion of the Birds (Ecco, 2016). His work has profoundly shaped, influenced, irritated, vexed, puzzled and/or pleased its world of readers ever since little JA began writing. His very first poem was penned in 1935, when he was eight years old: 'The tall haystacks are great sugar mounds / These are the fairies’ camping grounds.' Below, we invite you to read line selections and contributions from some of his most devoted fans, readers that include preeminent artists, critics, editors, educators, filmmakers, scholars, translators, poets, and publishers. ..."
LitHub
Locus Solus: The New York School of Poets - Happy 90th Birthday to John Ashbery!
Guardian - Poem of the week: Life is a Dream by John Ashbery

NYC Basic Tips and Etiquette - Nathan W. Pyle

"... Pyle noticed that New Yorkers are constantly thinking about 10,000 things as they navigate their daily lives. He wanted to create a guidebook of easy tips, covering everything from how to tell the difference between the East and West villages to the acceptable food to eat on the subway. And, most important, where to never, ever stop on the sidewalk. ... His 136-tip book, NYC Basic Tips and Etiquette, came out this week. It's the result of just over a year of work. It's available as a real book, e-book, or animated e-book (with all the fabulous GIFs you see below, and more). ..."
Slate: How to Survive New York and Stay Polite in GIFs
NYC Basic Tips and Etiquette by Nathan W. Pyle
Do We Need To Be Touching? (And 36 Other NYC Etiquette Lessons)
amazon
YouTube: NYC Basic Tips and Etiquette

The Sentimental Education - Gustave Flaubert (1869)

"I once spent a year in the manuscript room of the old French National Library on the Rue de Richelieu. Toward the end of my stay, the curator offered to give me a going-away present: a day at my carrel with any manuscript in her archives. I had nearly all of French literature to choose from, but there was no contest. I asked for Flaubert's 'The Sentimental Education.' This greatest Bildungsroman, one of the first modern novels, tells the mock-epic, tragicomic story of Frédéric Moreau, a provincial dilettante who fritters away an inheritance on the wrong women, friends, pleasures, investments, and causes, and whose ambitions are thwarted as methodically as his illusions are demolished. The book was published in 1869, thirteen years after 'Madame Bovary,' to excoriating reviews. Writers of an ironic temperament revere it for the qualities that have alienated the larger reading public: its arduous purity of style; its uncompromising pessimism, free of cant; and its refusal to ennoble human nature. ..."
New Yorker: An Unsimple Heart
W - Sentimental Education
NYBooks: Flaubert and the Sentimental Education (April 1971)
Washington Post: ‘Flaubert in the Ruins of Paris,’ by Peter Brooks
amazon: Sentimental Education, Flaubert in the Ruins of Paris: The Story of a Friendship, a Novel, and a Terrible Year

2012 August: On Cataloguing Flaubert, 2013 March: Sentimental Education - 1(1869), 2016 December: Three Tales (1877)

The Whispering Leaves of the Hiroshima Ginkgo Trees

"On Aug. 6, 1945, a 14-year-old schoolboy named Akihiro Takahashi was knocked unconscious by a deafening roar and a flash of blinding light. When he awoke, he found that he had been thrown many yards by the detonation of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima. He had survived because his school was about a mile from the epicenter of the blast. Dazed and burned, Akihiro headed to the river to cool himself. Along the way, he witnessed a scene of apocalypse: corpses strewn like rocks, a baby crying in the arms of its charred mother, scalded men peppered with shards of glass, their clothes melted, wandering like ghosts through the wasteland, the unbreathable darkened air, the raging conflagrations. In an instant, some 80,000 men, women and children had perished. In the days and months that followed, tens of thousands more succumbed to their injuries and the effects of radiation. ..."
NY Times
W - Ginkgo biloba

James Chance & The Contortions - Live Aux Bains Douches - Paris 1980

"A recording of a live performance on May 13, 1980, Live Aux Bain Douches is the single best James Chance live album available, eclipsing ROIR's White Cannibal and Soul Exorcism releases. The recording is far superior to any of the other live material I've heard, and the band seem to be fully engaged with the material, delivering an energetic set to a wildly appreciate audience. Opening with a unexpectedly searing version of Michael Jackson's 'Don't Stop Till You Get Enough,' Chance and the band expertly tear through a set comprised equally of raucous funk, sophisticated hard bop and adrenaline-pumped dance music. ... Live Aux Bain Douches clearly manifests a confident ensemble, fully in control of their talent, delivering a blazing set unparalleled in the annals of post-punk. My only complaint is that I wasn't there to witness the performance firsthand."
Brainwashed
allmusic
amazon, iTunes
YouTube: Live Aux Bains Douches - Paris 1980 41:34

2009 December: James Chance, 2011 December: No New York, 2014 July: No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York. 1976-1980, 2014 July: Bush Tetras, 2015 January: Buy - James Chance and the Contortions (1979), 2015 July: James White And The Blacks - Off White (1979), 2015 October: Pat Place, 2016 January: Lost Chance (1981), 2017 January: Twist Your Soul: The Definitive Collection (2010), 2017 April: Contort Yourself / (Tropical) Heatwave full 12” (1979), 2017 May: Filmed by Libin+Cameron: James White & The Blacks (1980 Live Performance Hurrah NightClub).

Bob Soul / King Tubby / Billy Hutch

"At long last, in proper quality and officially licensed, we present a pair of records long worked at, historically important, largely unheard, and most of all, musically brilliant. Above all, the dub mixes on these records are known among connoisseurs as being among a handful which can not only be considered a definitive King Tubby's style statement, but also among the most radical, transformative and forward thinking mixes ever committed to tape by the King himself. This is proper King Tubby's music; Tubby the man, not just Tubby's the studio. These two 12"s represent most of the known cuts of this brilliant rhythm, played by the Wailers' Barrett brothers, alongside Earl Chinna Smith, Augustus Pablo and Gladdy Anderson, all together truly a rhythmic force to be reckoned with. 'Message from the Congo' and 'God Is Love' are two vocals cuts produced via the mid 1970's partnership of Milton 'Billy Hutch' Hutchinson and the late Linton 'Bob Soul' Williamson. ..."
DKR Brooklyn
YouTube: Message From The Congo / King Tubby - Congo Dread Chapter 1, King Tubby and Sampson - Drums Of Love

The Majestic Marble Quarries of Northern Italy

The serpentine road of Torano's "marble valley."
"The story of Italian marble is the story of difficult motion: violent, geological, haunted by failure and ruin and lost fortunes, marred by severed fingers, crushed dreams, crushed men. Rarely has a material so inclined to stay put been wrenched so insistently out of place and carried so far from its source; every centimeter of its movement has had to be earned. 'There is no avoiding the tyranny of weight,' the art historian William E. Wallace once put it. He was discussing the challenge, in Renaissance Italy, of installing Michelangelo’s roughly 17,000-pound statue of the biblical David. This was the final stage of an epic saga that, from mountain to piazza, actually began before Michelangelo’s birth and involved primitive and custom-engineered machinery and, above all, great sweating armies of groaning, straining men. But the tyranny of weight was in effect long before that, and long after, and it remains in effect today. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: The Most Dazzling Private Collection of Marble (Video)
The Atlantic: The Marble of Michelangelo's Dreams
Michelangelo's Unrealized Marble Dream Comes True in Italian Quarry
YouTube: "ll Capo” (The Chief): a striking look at marble quarrying in the Italian Alps, Carving Marble with Traditional Tools, Quarrying and carving marble, Frilli Gallery The carving of a marble block Putto Cecioni

Workers known as "Tecchiaioli" examine marble at the Cervaiole quarry on Monte Altissimo in the Apuan Alps, Tuscany, Italy, July 18, 2017.

Kamasi Washington – What's in my Bag?

"Kamasi Washington is a Los Angeles-born jazz saxophonist, bandleader and composer. He studied Ethnomusicology at UCLA, where he played music with faculty members such as Billy Higgins, Kenny Burrell and Gerald Wilson. Throughout his career, he has played alongside artists such as Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Lauryn Hill, Snoop Dogg, Nas, George Duke, Chaka Khan, Flying Lotus and Raphael Saadiq. In 2015, Washington garnered critical acclaim when he worked on Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly and released his debut full-length, a 3-LP album aptly entitled The Epic. He will be touring North America in early 2016."
Amoeba (Video)

2015 December: The Epic - Kamasi Washington (2015), 2016 December: Throttle Elevator Music featuring Kamasi Washington (2016), 2017 April: Harmony of Difference (EP - 2017), 2017 June: "The Rhythm Changes"

The Atlas for the End of the World

"Coming almost 450 years after the world's first Atlas, this Atlas for the End of the World audits the status of land use and urbanization in the most critically endangered bioregions on Earth. It does so, firstly, by measuring the quantity of protected area across the world's 36 biodiversity hotspots in comparison to United Nation's 2020 targets; and secondly, by identifying where future urban growth in these territories is on a collision course with endangered species. By bringing urbanization and conservation together in the same study, the essays, maps, data, and artwork in this Atlas lay essential groundwork for the future planning and design of hotspot cities and regions as interdependent ecological and economic systems. ..."
The Atlas for the End of the World
[PDF] The Atlas for the End of the World - Penn Institute for Urban Research

Postscript: Jeanne Moreau, a Grande Dame of the French New Wave

Moreau was a new kind of heroine, whose glamour had no gloss, whose elegance had no airs, who seemed to burst fussy constraints with every word she spoke, every glance she shot, every step she took.
"The idea of Jeanne Moreau is as great as the onscreen presence of Jeanne Moreau because, in her performances, she embodied ideas in motion, and, for that matter, one big idea: Moreau, who died on Monday at the age of eighty-nine, was a grande dame without haughtiness or prejudice. Her grandeur didn’t erect walls around her; it widened her vistas, increased her curiosity, enabled her adventures, overcame narrow boundaries. She was a queen of intellect—but an intellect that was no cloistered bookishness but an idea and an ideal of culture that enriched experience, envisioned progress, looked ardently at the times. ..."
New Yorker - Richard Brody
W - Jeanne Moreau
Guardian - Jeanne Moreau: a life in pictures
NY Times - Jeanne Moreau, Femme Fatale of French New Wave, Is Dead at 89
Jeanne Moreau: 10 essential films
New Wave Film

Bay of Angels, 1963

Yusef Lateef - Eastern Sounds (1961)

"One of multi-instrumentalist and composer Yusef Lateef's most enduring recordings, Eastern Sounds was one of the last recordings made by the band that Lateef shared with pianist Barry Harris after the band moved to New York from Detroit, where the jazz scene was already dying. Lateef had long been interested in Eastern music, long before John Coltrane had ever shown any public interest anyway, so this Moodsville session (which meant it was supposed to be a laid-back ballad-like record), recorded in 1961, was drenched in Lateef's current explorations of Eastern mode and interval, as well as tonal and polytonal improvisation. ... However, the themes set up the deep blues and wondrous ballad extrapolations Lateef was working on, like 'Don't Blame Me' and 'Purple Flower,' which add such depth and dimension to the Eastern-flavored music that it is hard to imagine them coming from the same band. Awesome."
allmusic
Yusef Lateef: Eastern Sounds Turns 50
W - Eastern Sounds
amazon
LondonJazzCollector (Audio)
YouTube: Eastern Sounds

What Should Socialists Do?

"The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has 25,000 members. Its growth over the past year has been massive — tripling in size — and no doubt a product of the increasing rejection of a bipartisan neoliberal consensus that has visited severe economic insecurity on the vast majority, particularly among young workers. No socialist organization has been this large in decades. The possibilities for transforming American politics are exhilarating. In considering how to make such a transformation happen, we might be tempted to usher those ranks of new socialists into existing vehicles for social change: community organizations, trade unions, or electoral campaigns — organizations more likely to win immediate victories for the workers that are at the center of our vision. Why not put our energy and hone our skills where they seem to be needed the most? Workers’ needs are incredibly urgent; shouldn’t we drop everything and join in these existing struggles right now? ..."
Jacobin

From Lagos to the Bronx, Photographer Osaretin Ugiagbe Documents the In-Between

South Bronx, New York, 2017
"Fifteen years ago, Osaretin Ugiagbe left the sprawling metropolis of Lagos, Nigeria, for the South Bronx in New York City. Unbeknownst to the immigrant teenager, his new home was infamous for high levels of poverty and unemployment. But the neighborhood intrigued young Ugiagbe—particularly the working elevator that led to his father’s studio apartment where he, his four siblings and his mum lived for a year. In a bid to fit in at school and claim his new home, he asked friends and classmates to call him by his middle name, Charles, but that didn’t stop him from having to constantly explain himself. His accent often betrayed his otherness. 'A lot of people would ask me where are you from?’ Ugiagbe found solace from this displacement through art, painting and photography. ..."
okayafrica
NY Times: Of the Bronx and of Nigeria
Osaretin Ugiagbe
lensculture
YouTube: Reflection, Studio

Four Seasons in Havana

"... The detective hero of this noir thriller is a guy named Mario Conde. His boss laments 'I don’t want an officer with an existential problem who would rather write books.' But when Conde leaves, his boss smiles fondly. The man is the sort depicted by Richard Burton, Robert Mitchum, and Branagh as Wallander. He’s a walking wreck, but his intelligence makes us love him. Jorge Perugorria, the actor, is unknown to us; we don’t know what he will do and neither does the character. The real protagonist of this series is Havana itself, which also has an existential problem but almost constitutes a bedrock novel by its very nature. One could happily watch this show with the sound off, to better appreciate the fabulous views, the top down overhead shots of the buildings that reveal courtyards, atria, and even rooftop swimming pools. Buildings range from Soviet brutalist insectoid concrete housing to disintegrating Baroque splendour festooned with parasitic tropical vegetation. All is pale except for rectangles of sienna and turquoise. ..."
prairiemary
Foreign Affairs
Havana go at colourful noir
Netflix: Four Seasons in Havana (Video)

Sam Shepard (November 5, 1943 – July 27, 2017)

Wikipedia - "Samuel Shepard Rogers III (November 5, 1943 – July 27, 2017), known professionally as Sam Shepard, was an American playwright, actor, author, screenwriter, and director. His body of work spanned over half a century. He was the author of 44 plays as well as several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs. Shepard received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of pilot Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff (1983). Shepard received the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award as a master American dramatist in 2009. New York magazine described him as 'the greatest American playwright of his generation.' Shepard's plays are chiefly known for their bleak, poetic, often surrealist elements, black humor, and rootless characters living on the outskirts of American society. His style evolved over the years, from the absurdism of his early Off-Off-Broadway work to the realism of Buried Child and Curse of the Starving Class (both 1978). ..."
Wikipedia
W - Sam Shepard filmography
Sam Shepard
Guardian - Sam Shepard: 'America is on its way out as a culture' (Sep. 2014 - Video)
New Yorker: The Pathfinder (Feb. 8, 2010)
Interview

Liana Finck

"Ask Liana Finck how she got started as an artist and she’ll offer you a hilariously frank answer: 'I started drawing when I was a baby and I’ve been drawing since then.' The response embodies what’s so compelling about Finck’s cartoons. Both acid and innocent, Finck’s words and drawings are unflinchingly honest. 'Whenever something really bothers me, I’ll try to really think about it and get at its essence and turn it into a cartoon,' Finck told the Daily Dot. Finck, who is a frequent contributor to the New Yorker, has been posting her sketches and cartoons to Instagram for over a year. More than 40,000 followers are drawn to her unique brand of introspective wit. Finck said she started sharing her drawings on Instagram when she was seeking something we all crave: the attention of someone who wasn’t giving her enough attention. ..."
Welcome to the gently savage cartoon world of Liana Finck
New Yorker: All Work
When We Were Whole: A Comic About Us
Interview with Liana Finck
twitter

2014 April: Liana Finck - 1

The Sure Fire Soul Ensemble - Jeannie's Get Down / A Message From The Meters (2016)

"... Colemine Records is increasingly becoming one of the leading Funk & Soul music labels because of their multiple, exciting new releases, like Out On The Coast by Sure Fire Soul Ensemble. More & more often, whenever I hear about a new Funk or Soul band I get excited about — they’re on Colemine. In addition, they license music from more well known bands on the Funk & Soul music scene to put out vinyl 45s and other special editions like Orgone’s gorgeous Beyond The Sun vinyl package. I sat down with Terry Cole on a sublime, warm day in October at Plaid Room Records in Loveland. It’s a lovely little town outside Cincinnati, along the scenic, Little Miami River. A beautiful bike path runs through it along the river & through the woods. Several restaurants & bars were packed with people on a sunny Saturday afternoon. ..."
Givin’ Up Food For Funk — Colemine Records Spreading Love Of Funk & Soul Music
West Coast Cool — Out On The Coast With Sure Fire Soul Ensemble (Audio)
iTunes
YouTube: Jeannie's Get Down / A Message From The Meters