Mystical Symbolist Poetry and the Salon de la Rose+Croix

Fernand Khnopff, I Lock My Door Upon Myself, 1891
"Mystical Symbolism: The Salon de la Rose+Croix in Paris, 1892–1897 celebrates the series of six annual Salons organized by the writer, critic, and Rosicrucian Joséphin Péladan. In his Salons de la Rose+Croix, Péladan featured works by an international group of artists—part of the Symbolist movement, a late 19th-century trend that reacted against the literalness of Naturalism and Realism and rejected what they perceived as the ugliness of modern life. Symbolist poetry held great appeal for these artists, who sought to provoke allusive moods and visionary states of mind. Below, listen to poems by Charles Baudelaire, Christina Rossetti, and other writers who may have inspired the Rose+Croix artists, read by poet Tom Healy. ..."
Guggenheim (Soundcloud)
Brooklyn Rail
New Yorker: The Occult Roots of Modernism
NY Times: Mystical Symbolists in All Their Kitschy Glory
NY Times: What It’s Like to Hear the Same Piece of Music for 19 Hours (Video)
W - Salon de la Rose + Croix
VOICE: Explore the Weird World of the Symbolists at the Guggenheim
Soundcloud: Symbolist Poetry and the Salon de la Rose+Croix

The Usual - Photos by Emily Frances

Kellogg's Diner, Williamsburg
"To step into a diner is to step into a time warp, offering a glimpse inside a world of pay phones, grandma’s chocolate cake, and jukeboxes with 2001’s Billboard Top 40. You can buy the chance to grab a stuffed animal with a claw, or you can rely on the certainty of getting a rubber ball for twenty-five cents. You can order a Western omelette at 6 p.m. This standstill is part of their charm. There is something familiar about these establishments that draws us back to them. And something a little strange. Below, we present snapshots of four diners of Brooklyn." (August 21, 2014)
BYLYNR

Don Van Vliet - Works on Paper

"Objectively critiquing the visual art works of a famous musician (or actor, or novelist, etc.) is no small order. How do you not immediately view the work through the lens of the music that you already know well and potentially love and/or loathe? When the artist in question is none other than Captain Beefheart, aka Don Van Vliet, already iconic for his wildly unpredictable approach to blues and rock n’ roll, that subjectivity gets mired in even more layers of preexisting opinion, and in my case, a deep and long-standing love and appreciation. But in the case of Van Vliet’s paintings and sculptures, an understanding of the man’s music actually helps understand what he was trying to do with visual art. ..."
The Quietus - Look At My Beef Art: Works On Paper By Don Van Vliet
Michael Werner
artnet

2009 October: Captain Beefheart, 2010 December: Captain Beefheart, Art-Rock Visionary, Dead At 69, 2011 October: Interview with Captain Beefheart, 2013 August: This Is The Day (1974-Old Grey Whistle Test), 2014 July: Safe as Milk (1967), 2014 August: Some YoYo Stuff: An observation of the observations of Don Van Vliet by Anton Corbijn (1993), 2015 January: It Comes to You in a Plain Brown Wrapper, 2016 November: Doc at the Radar Station (1980).

Our 7 Favorite Literary Coffee Shops

La Closerie des Lilas, Paris
"Writers and coffee go together like espresso and steamed milk. Everywhere you look, there's a writer plugging away on their laptop in a cafe, usually with a steaming cup of joe by their side. Caffeine stimulates the brain and increases productivity—something I know because I drank three cups of coffee before writing this blog post—but that's not the only reason why writers huddle in coffeehouses. Cafes all over the world have long been hubs for writing communities, like the Beats or the Lost Generation, to discuss ideas, read poetry, and of course, write. Many of these historical sites are still around, serving coffee and tea to the next generation of young writers in Paris, New York, and Rome, who, like their bohemian forebears, are looking for a cheap place to hang out that's not their apartment. Here are seven of our favorite literary cafes from around the globe. ..."
The New York Public Library

2010 September: Espresso, April: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World, 2013 May: Coffeehouse, 2015 June: Barista, 2015 August: Coffee Connections at Peddler in SoHo, 2015 November: The Case for Bad Coffee, 2016 January: 101 Places to Find Great Coffee in New York (2014), 2017 June: How Cold Brew Changed the Coffee Business.

Charles Mingus - Blues & Roots (1960)

Wikipedia - "Blues & Roots is an album by Charles Mingus, recorded in 1959 and released in 1960. It has been reissued twice as a CD, first by Atlantic Records, and then again by Rhino Entertainment in 1998. Mingus explained the birth of this record in the album's liner notes: 'This record is unusual—it presents only one part of my musical world, the blues. A year ago, Nesuhi Ertegün suggested that I record an entire blues album in the style of Haitian Fight Song (in Atlantic LP 1260), because some people, particularly critics, were saying I didn't swing enough. He wanted to give them a barrage of soul music: churchy, blues, swinging, earthy. I thought it over. I was born swinging and clapped my hands in church as a little boy, but I've grown up and I like to do things other than just swing. But blues can do more than just swing. So I agreed.' ..."
Wikipedia
allmusic
amazon
YouTube: Blues & Roots (Full Album) 1:12:41

2015 August: "Meditations On Integration" - Filmed in Belgium on April 19 1964., 2016 February: XXL’s A Great Day in Hip Hop: 16 Years Later (2014), 2017 May: Mingus at the Bohemia (1955)

Dubcast Vol.05 (Mixed by Bent Back Sounds)

"For the fifth installment of our Dubcast series, we’ve collaborated with fellow Brooklynite and label head Bent Backs Sound. Passionate about the 80’s era of reggae, Bent Backs Sound has collected records for over 10 years before becoming a label in its own right. The first part of this dubcast pays tribute to some of the artists and labels who influenced the sound via a fine vinyl selection. The second part of the dubcast serves as a Bent Backs Records showcase, showing off some killer exclusive dubplates and leaking unreleased tracks freshly out of the dub factory."
Brooklyn Radio (Mixcloud)

Terry Riley On Tape Loops

"In this video, via castlelizard, composer and performer Terry Riley discusses his 1950-1960 experiments with reel to reel recorders and tape loops. Riley’s tape looping was an important aspect of his 1963 work Music For The Gift and later recordings, like his 1969 release, A Rainbow In Curved Air. The influence of Riley’s tape loop pieces can be seen in Brian Eno’s early ambient albums, Robert Fripp’s Frippertronics and directly and indirectly in the work of many other looping artists. The video is from Doug Aitken’s Station to Station project."
Synthtopia (Video)
The Birth of Loop - A Short History of Looping Music (Video)
Early tape loop experiments with Eno, Fripp, Terry Riley, and Pauline Oliveros (Video)

Tape Echo on 2 Machines, from: David Keane: Tape Music Composition, 1980

2010 Sepember: Sampling, 2011 Sepember: Frippertronics, 2012 January: Loop, 2012 May: Tape loops
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), 2017 August: “A Particular Glow” – On Loving Terry Riley.

View of the World from 9th Avenue - Saul Steinberg

Wikipedia - "View of the World from 9th Avenue (sometimes A Parochial New Yorker's View of the World, A New Yorker's View of the World or simply View of the World) is a 1976 illustration by Saul Steinberg that served as the cover of the March 29, 1976, edition of The New Yorker. The work presents the view from Manhattan of the rest of the world showing Manhattan as the center of the world. ... The work has been imitated and printed without authorization in a variety of ways. The Columbia parody led to a ruling by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in Steinberg v. Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. in favor of Steinberg because of copyright violations by Columbia Pictures. The work is regarded as one of the greatest magazine covers of recent generations and is studied by art students around the world. ..."
Wikipedia
W - Saul Steinberg

The Mind of John McPhee

"When you call John McPhee on the phone, he is instantly John McPhee. McPhee is now 86 years old, and each of those years seems to be filed away inside of him, loaded with information, ready to access. I was calling to arrange a visit to Princeton, N.J., where McPhee lives and teaches writing. He was going to give me driving directions. He asked where I was coming from. I told him the name of my town, about 100 miles away. ... McPhee has built a career on such small detonations of knowledge. His mind is pure curiosity: It aspires to flow into every last corner of the world, especially the places most of us overlook. Literature has always sought transcendence in purportedly trivial subjects — 'a world in a grain of sand,' as Blake put it — but few have ever pushed the impulse further than McPhee. ..."
NY Times
W - John McPhee
The Paris Review: John McPhee, The Art of Nonfiction No. 3

Mumbo Jumbo - Ishmael Reed (1972)

Wikipedia - "Mumbo Jumbo is a 1972 novel by African-American author Ishmael Reed. Literary critic Harold Bloom cited the novel as one of the 500 most important books in the Western canon. Mumbo Jumbo has remained in print for 45 years, since its first edition, and has been published in French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, and British editions, with a Chinese translation currently in production. Set in 1920s New York City, the novel depicts the elderly Harlem houngan PaPa LaBas and his companion Black Herman racing against the Wallflower Order, an international conspiracy dedicated to monotheism and control, as they attempt to root out the cause of and deal with the "Jes Grew" virus, a personification of ragtime, jazz, polytheism, and freedom. ... Historical, social, and political events mingle freely with fictional inventions. ..."
Wikipedia
Wormholes through History / Ishmael Reed and the Psychic Epidemic
Guardian - Mumbo Jumbo: a dazzling classic finally gets the recognition it deserves
fractious fiction
amazon

Scanner - The Great Crater (2017)

"Over the last twenty give years Robin Rimbaud – Scanner has traversed the experimental terrain between sound, space and image, connecting a bewilderingly diverse array of genres – a partial list would include sound design, film scores, computer music, avant garde, contemporary composition, large-scale multimedia performances, product design, architecture, fashion design, rock music and jazz.With a catalogue busy with commissions, soundtracks and studio releases it’s extremely rare to find a new studio recording, so The Great Crater stands out by measure of this. Invited by the label Glacial Movements to create a new album he focused on the tale of strange circles appearing in Antarctica. ..."
Glacial Movements (Audio)
Igloo Magazing (Video)
amazon, iTunes

Johnny Cash - Highway 61 Revisited & The Man Comes Around

"This is my edit of Johnny's reading of Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited and his own song The Man Comes Around. Both songs were in a 2003 movie The Hunted, starring Benicio Del Toro and Tommy Lee Jones."
YouTube: Highway 61 Revisited & The Man Comes Around

2012 November: Ain't No Grave, 2011 October: Hurt, 2013 May: 4 Classic Sun Records, 2014 April: Ridin' The Rails The Great American Train Story (1974)

Fred Herzog Modern Color

"Fred Herzog is known for his unusual use of colour in the fifties and sixties, a time when art photography was almost exclusively associated with black and white imagery. The Canadian photographer, who once said: 'I wanted to show the world the way it is', obsessively documented Vancouver, mainly focusing on working class people, and their connections to the city around them. He worked almost exclusively with Kodachrome slide film for over 50 years, and only in the past decade has technology allowed him to make archival pigment prints that match the exceptional colour and intensity of the Kodachrome slide. In this respect, his photographs can be seen as a pre-figuration of the New Colour photographers of the seventies. Now, highlights of his wonderful work can be enjoyed in a new book entitled Fred Herzog Modern Color, which brings together over 230 images, many never before reproduced, and featuring essays by acclaimed authors David Campany and Hans-Michael Koetzle. ..."
Pioneer Fred Herzog's delicious colour street photographs of 1950s & '60s Vancouver
Book review: Modern Color by Fred Herzog
amazon
vimeo: Fred Herzog Modern Color

An introduction to Conny Plank in 10 records

"Conny Plank was the producer who shaped Germany’s electronic music sound like no other, influencing the development of ambient, new wave, hip-hop, house and techno in the process. With a new documentary about his life and work out this month, we scratch the surface of Conny Plank’s prolific output, from Kraftwerk to Eno and beyond. Among the unreleased items in producer-engineer Conny Plank’s archive is a Marlene Dietrich big-band session which, legend has it, Plank engineered in Hamburg in the mid-1960s. Another is several hours of collaborative work he recorded with Karlheinz Stockhausen in Cologne a decade later, which Plank’s estate has said it is preparing for release. Of the two items, it is the Stockhausen that would seem to sit most comfortably among the main body of Plank’s output. Then again, it may be that Plank’s radical experimentalism is the reason the Dietrich has never seen the light of day. ..."
The Vinyl Factory (Video)
W - Conny Plank

"Playground Twist" - Siouxsie and the Banshees (1979)

Wikipedia - "'Playground Twist' is a song by English post-punk band Siouxsie and the Banshees. It was released in 1979 by record Polydor as the sole single from the band's second album, Join Hands (1979). ... NME's Roy Carr hailed the single and wrote: 'If Ingmar Bergman produced records, they might sound like this. The listener is immediately engulfed in a maelstrom of whirling sound punctuated by the ominous tolling of church bells, phased guitars, thundering percussion, a surreal alto sax and the wail of Siouxsie's voice. It demands to be played repeatedly at the threshold-of-pain volume to elicit its full nightmarish quality'. ..."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Playground Twist, The Staircase

2017 April: "Hong Kong Garden" / "Voices (On The Air)" (1978)

The Vietnam War Is Not Over

Marines marching in Danang, Vietnam, March 15, 1965
"'The Vietnam War' Ken Burns says in a recent interview, 'was the most important event in American history since World War II.' But, he explains, it’s also an event that tore the United States apart, a war whose wounds have not yet healed, a war we often try to forget. In the very first interview of this ten-part, eighteen-hour documentary, 'The Vietnam War,' author Karl Marlantes describes how 'coming home from the war was close to as traumatic as the war itself.' For years, he continues, no one really wanted to talk about what had happened. 'It’s like living in a family with an alcoholic father — shh, we don’t talk about that.' With their new documentary, Ken Burns and Lynn Novick suggest that we not only do need to talk about the war, especially the terrible divisions it left behind, but that together we can begin to overcome them. In addition to recounting the bloody history of the Vietnam War, their documentary seeks to facilitate a kind of collective therapy, where all sides, Americans and Vietnamese, the North and the South, GIs and antiwar activists, can finally begin to work towards closure. ..."
Jacobin
Washington Post: When Ike Was Asked to Nuke Vietnam
Jacobin: The Forgotten Interventions
America’s amnesia
amazon: Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam, Hell No: The Forgotten Power of the Vietnam Peace Movement by Tom Hayden
New Yorker: Ken Burns’s American Canon
New Republic: The Insidious Ideology of Ken Burns’s The Vietnam War
Guardian: Hell No review: celebration of Vietnam protests can inform resistance to Trump by Tom Hayden
Guardian - Ken Burns: How Vietnam War sowed the seeds of a divided America
New Yorker: The Vietnam War Is Still Killing People

2017 September: Give Peace a Chance

Street View of '80s NYC

"In the '80s, you could run scared through Times Square beneath a marquee for the movie 'Running Scared,' which stood right next to a store called 'Video Peeps.' You can now get a glimpse of Gotham's grittier days through an interactive map that collected hundreds of thousands of digitized archival photos organized by address. Map co-creator Jeremy Lechtzin told DNAinfo New York that he and geocode partner Brandon Liu came up with an algorithm to organize the more than 800,000 images and arrange them as seamlessly as possible for Google Street View-like effect. ..."
Stroll Through Gritty '80s NYC With This Interactive Map
80s.NYC

The Story Behind Devo’s Iconic Cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction”

In 1977, the band Devo—five misfits from Ohio with a love of performance art—took Mick Jagger’s classic “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and mutated it beyond recognition.
"One afternoon in 1978, Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale—the two prime architects of the band Devo—were fidgeting in Peter Rudge’s office, near the Warwick Hotel, in Manhattan, with Mick Jagger. Rudge was the Rolling Stones’ manager, and Devo had recorded an odd cover of the band’s hit '(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction' — so odd that their label said they needed Jagger’s blessing to release it. Mothersbaugh put the tape in a boom box and pressed Play. As the sounds of the cover filled the room, Jagger sat stone-faced. What he was hearing didn’t sound much like the 'Satisfaction' he’d written. Keith Richards’s iconic riff was gone, and the original melody was nowhere to be found. Was this a homage, Mick must have wondered, or were they mocking him? ... For thirty seconds or so, the men sat in silence, listening to the weird robo-funk coming from the boom box. Then something changed. ..."
New Yorker (Video)
W - “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”

2009 December: Devo, 2011 September: We Are Devo!, 2015 February: Mark Mothersbaugh's Synth Collection

Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA

Detail from a mural by the Oaxacan artist collective Tlacolulokos at the main branch of the Los Angeles Public Library, from a show, “Visualizing Language: Oaxaca in L.A.”
"I guess there’s a God. During one of the meanest passages in American national politics within living memory, we’re getting a huge, historically corrective, morale-raising cultural event, one that lasts four months and hits on many of the major social topics of the day: racism, sexism, aggressive nationalism. True, the hugeness of the thing is a problem, and the contents are uneven. But it’s a gift, worth a trip to puzzle over and savor. And if the timing is right, that’s semi-accidental. The event, called 'Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA,' is the latest of three successive multi-venue extravaganzas in and around this city, spaced several years apart, and bankrolled by the Getty Foundation. The first was an overview of art in Southern California from 1945 to 1980; the second was devoted to architecture and design. ..."
NY Times: A Head-Spinning,Hope-Inspiring Showcase of Art
Economist - Pacific Standard Time LA/LA: 1,100 artists from 45 countries
LA Weekly - How to See All of PST: LA/LA in 14 Days (Part I) (Video)
LA Times - From Donald Duck to Donald Trump, an unprecedented look at Latin American art holds up a mirror to the U.S.
LACMC: Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA at LACMA (Video)

A secret alley behind a street in Hell’s Kitchen

Clinton Court
"Is there anything quite as enchanting as coming across a quiet hidden courtyard in the middle of a dense Manhattan neighborhood? It’s especially magical when the courtyard is just a quick walk from the hustle and bustle of Times Square. That was my reaction when I took a walk through tiny Clinton Court in Hell’s Kitchen. This secret space is about halfway down the busy tenement block between 9th and 10th Avenues. It’s accessible through a long slender walkway behind a heavy iron door, which you can find to the right of the residence at 422 West 46th Street. The door is locked, of course. But it’s worth the trip if you can catch a glimpse of the courtyard from the street through the door. ..."
Ephemeral New York

Rivers and Tides: Working With Time - Fred Frith (2001)

"Rivers and Tides: Working With Time is Fred Frith's score to a film by Thomas Riedelsheimer about the 'land art works' of Andy Goldsworthy. Goldsworthy is preoccupied with the natural processes of water, beaches, and tides, and these elements are used extensively in his art. After viewing the film, Frith not only took his cues from the sounds of nature (the actual sound of water recurs throughout), but composed music that uncannily echoes the processes involved as well. Anyone who has spent time at the shore will recognize these elements: the repetition of waves on the beach, the inexorability of the tides, and a sense of time that can be so slowed as to be almost static. All of that is reflected beautifully in Frith's score, principally through piano, violin, and soprano sax. As with any large body of water, the music is mostly serene but can have some discord at times as well, as heard in 'Part III.' with its martial drumbeat and generally noisier demeanor. Rivers and Tides demonstrates that Frith is not only a skewed pop genius and fearless improviser, but a remarkably empathetic soundtrack composer as well."
allmusic
W - Rivers and Tides (soundtrack)
amazon
YouTube: Rivers and Tides: Part I. —, Part VI (Rivers and Tides {Working with time, 2003), Part II. —, Part III. —, Part VII. —

2007 November: Andy Goldsworthy: Roof, 2012 March: Rivers and Tides, 2012 June: Andy Goldsworthy 1987 Grizedale

SEE IT: Chuck Close gives first video tour of his subway art

"Next stop, an underground Close encounter. Acclaimed artist Chuck Close gives his first personal, on-camera tour of his 12 subway mosaics on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with RealClear Life. On view since January, the ceramic 'Subway Portraits' at the 86th St. Q train station include composer Philip Glass, photographer Cindy Sherman and Close’s ex-wife Sienna Shields. ... The dozen mosaics, 10 of which tower over 9 feet tall, are the largest public art works Close has made. It’s the first time the artist has worked with tiles. There are two self-portraits, along with one of late musician Lou Reed. 'Let’s roll down and look at Lou,' says Close, who’s used a motorized wheelchair since a spinal artery collapse in 1988 left him severely paralyzed. ..."
NY Daily News
What Does Chuck Close Have Against Public Art?
Legendary Painter Chuck Close on Public Art, Diversity and His Ex-Wife (Video)

2008 August: Chuck Close, 2015 September: Chuck Close: Red Yellow Blue, 2016 July: The Mysterious Metamorphosis of Chuck Close

Fellini Satyricon - Federico Fellini (1969)

Wikipedia - "Fellini Satyricon, or simply Satyricon, is a 1969 Italian fantasy drama film written and directed by Federico Fellini and loosely based on Petronius's work Satyricon, written during the reign of the emperor Nero and set in imperial Rome. The film is divided into nine episodes, following the scholar Encolpius and his friend Ascyltus as they try to win the heart of the young boy Gitón, whom they both love, within the film's depiction of a surreal and dreamlike Roman landscape and culture. ... Petronius's original text survives only in fragments. While recuperating from a debilitating illness in 1967, Fellini reread Petronius and was fascinated by the missing parts, the large gaps between one episode and the next. The text's fragmentary nature encouraged him to go beyond the traditional approach of recreating the past in film: the key to a visionary cinematic adaptation lay in narrative techniques of the dream state that exploited the dream's imminent qualities of mystery, enigma, immorality, outlandishness, and contradiction. ..."
Wikipedia
NY Times: Fellini Satyricon By Vincent Canby (March 1970)
Guardian - From the archive, 10 September 1970: Fellini and a half
Roger Ebert
YouTube: Satyricon Official Trailer #1, Three Reasons: Fellini Satyricon

2017 March: Roma (1972)

City Lights Journal

"The very image of the counterculture, the City Lights Bookstore opened its doors on Columbus Avenue in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood in 1953. At first, under the name of the Pocket Bookshop, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter Martin sold only paperbacks and magazines; the name was changed in 1955 when the famous Pocket Poets Series began with Ferlinghetti’s own Pictures of the Gone World. The series and the bookshop flourish to this day. In 1956, a few months after the famous Six Gallery reading, Ferlinghetti published Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems, causing a firestorm of controversy when he was arrested and tried for the sale of obscene material in 1957. Ferlinghetti was acquitted, and the powerful little book of poems has since sold over a million copies. The poem itself was a watershed work for the New American Poetry, and is still contemporary in its angry protest. ..."
From a Secret Location

Explore Parts Unknown

"Explore Parts Unknown is a mobile-first immersive guide featuring original stories and video, premium photography, and engaging interactives. Inspired by the Emmy-winning CNN Original Series Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, we’re recreating Bourdain’s journeys and diving deeper into the places, people, and stories he’s encountered. Explore Parts Unknown is an editorial partnership between CNN and Roads & Kingdoms—an independent media company focused on food, politics, and travel based in New York and Barcelona. Together, we have built a digital universe for the Bourdain super-fan to learn what he knows, go where he went, eat what he ate, and see what he saw. Born from Bourdain’s contagious passion for culture, food, travel, and adventure, Explore Parts Unknown highlights our shared obsessions: authentic food, culture, people, travel."
Explore Parts Unknown - Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown (Video)

2013 August: Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown

Robert Fripp & Brian Eno - The Essential Fripp & Eno (1994)

"This compilation of the recorded collaborations between guitarist Robert Fripp and producer/conceptualist/musician Brian Eno is taken from two album-length recordings made for the Island subsidiary Antilles in 1974 and 1975, No Pussyfooting and Evening Star, with an unreleased 1979 session added on. 'The Heavenly Music Corporation' and 'Swastika Girls,' totaling 39 minutes, make up the whole of No Pussyfooting. Both of these pieces are slowly evolving reel-to-reel tape experiences that are hypnotic and remain revelatory decades later. 'Wind on Water"'and 'Evening Star' account for half of the latter album's first side; they are easily the two most beautiful and 'melodic' cuts issued by the pair. The remaining 22 minutes are the previously unissued, four-part 'Healthy Colours.' These cuts are radically different from their predecessors -- they're more rhythmic, employing digital drum loops, a plethora of dynamic samples, and a wider array of sound effects and treatments. ..."
Jazz Rock Fusion Guitar
allmusic (Audio)
Discogs
amazon
DailyMotion: Evening Star
YouTube: Wind On Water, 1. Healthy Colours I 2. Healthy Colours II 3. Healthy Colours III 4. Healthy Colours IV

The Unvanquished - William Faulkner (1938)

Wikipedia - "The Unvanquished is a 1938 novel by the American author William Faulkner, set in Yoknapatawpha County. It tells the story of the Sartoris family, who first appeared in the novel Sartoris (or Flags in the Dust). The Unvanquished takes place before that story, and is set during the American Civil War. Principal characters are Bayard Sartoris, John Sartoris (Marse John, Father), Granny, Ringo (Morengo), Ab Snopes, Cousin Drusilla, Aunt Jenny, Louvinia, and the lieutenant (a Yankee soldier). Although The Unvanquished was first published as a whole in 1938, it consists of seven short stories which were originally published separately in The Saturday Evening Post, except where noted. ... The Unvanquished is told in seven episodes—sometimes immediately following one another, other times separated by months or years—spanning the years 1862 to 1873. The book begins with Bayard Sartoris and his slave friend Ringo playing in the dirt on the Sartoris plantation. ..."
Wikipedia
Gogol's Overcoat - Faulkner Friday: The Unvanquished (1938)
Google - A Reader's Guide to William Faulkner: The Novels
amazon

2011 September: Southern Gothic, 2014 February: William Faulkner, 2015 October: William Faulkner Draws Maps of Yoknapatawpha County, the Fictional Home of His Great Novels, 2015 November: Interviews William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12, 2016 April: Absalom, Absalom!! (1936), 2016 May: The Sound and the Fury (1929), 2016 October: The Snopes Trilogy (1940, 1957, 1959), 2016 December: Light in August (1932), 2017 February: As I Lay Dying (1930), 2017 June: The Wild Palms (1939), 2017 August: Sanctuary (1931)

Access denied: wheelchair metro maps versus everyone else's

Just nine out of 303 metro stations in Paris are fully accessible.
"The metro can be the quickest way to get around many big cities. Unless you’re in a wheelchair. Although it has invested recently in improving accessibility, the London Underground – the world’s oldest metro, opened in 1863 – still only has 71 out 270 tube stations accessible by wheelchair or mobility scooter from street to platform. Given that 21 of those require ramps and staff assistance to board trains, the number of fully accessible stations – which people in wheelchairs can use independently – is just 50. ..."
Guardian
Guardian - Accessing cities with a disability: what have your experiences been?

Mithkal Alzghair

Displacement
"When we see a Syrian body today, it’s usually emerging from rubble, bloodied and stripped, or worse, already dead. If Syrians are not represented as victims of war, they appear as refugees in foreign lands, awkwardly juxtaposed with locals or aid workers. Beyond the tragic photograph, what do we ever learn about their bodies, or their lives? And why do we get a front seat to their agony? As if they haven’t lost enough, in a flash, they perpetually lose control over their own image. In Displacement, a double-bill dance performance staged at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London this July, choreographer and dancer Mithkal Alzghair put the audience face to face with a moving Syrian body, and gave it the space to speak for itself. The moving, and at times unsettling, performance was part of London’s Shubbak Festival—a multidisciplinary, biannual arts festival that emerged in the expectant Arab Spring moment of 2011 with a vision to bring the most exciting Arab artwork to an international audience. ..."
Guernica - Mithkal Alzghair: Dancing Displacement
Learning How to Live with Exile (Video)
Writing about dance
vimeo: Mithkal Alzghair 8 Videos
YouTube: Déplacement

Artists on Political Art

Carrie Mae Weems
"To coincide with the November issue of Artforum on art and politics, artforum.com presents artists Carrie Mae Weems, Matthew Weinstein, Marilyn Minter, Hans Haacke, Nadia Ayari, Nancy Chunn, and Vitaly Komar as they discuss political art."
ARTFORUM (Video)

An Ode to Acts of Kindness on the New York City Subway

"For many New Yorkers, their subway line is a second home. They see their neighbors on the same route; they know which car will be closest to their exit; and they have favorite spots for the ride. Andre Wagner, who has been taking photographs in the subway since 2013 and whose book,'Here for the Ride,' will be published this week, likes to stand in front of the doors. 'I can see everything in the car that way,' he said. With a background in social work, he was interested in capturing acts of kindness, among other things, in the confined spaces. I wanted to witness those acts of humanity happening in this very public space,' he said. 'People giving up their seats to a mother and child or helping hold the door for someone running to catch the train.' ...”
NY Times

2017 August: Capturing Love, the Brooklyn Way

Soul Exorcism Redux - James Chance & The Contortions (2007)

"Recorded in June of 1980, Soul Exorcism proves that jazz, funk, experimental, and new wave make quite an intoxicating mix when perfected. James Chance sums up the proceedings perfectly in the liner notes, where he states that the music perfectly reveals the essence and soul of New York City (even though it was recorded in Rotterdam). Backed up by a stellar backing band, which Chance himself calls one of the most volatile units he's worked with, the Contortions simply shine. Like most other Contortions recordings, cacophony rears its head from time to time, but that's what the band uses to paint different moods and textures: it's not used haphazardly. ... [In 2007 the Roir label reissued the album as Soul Exorcism Redux. Three tracks from a 1987 demo session were added to the end of the track list along with new art work.]"
allmusic
popmatters
amazon, iTubes
YouTube: Soul Exorcism Redux 

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), 2017 August: Live Aux Bains Douches - Paris 1980.

Give Peace a Chance

College students in Boston march against the Vietnam war, October 16, 1965.
"Say what you will about the Vietnam War, it had a great soundtrack. Feature and documentary filmmakers have, of course, long appreciated this—cue 'The End' by the Doors for the unforgettable opening sequence of 1979’s Apocalypse Now, and, about a decade later, Bob Dylan’s 'A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall' for a long, wet, and ominous combat patrol sequence in HBO’s documentary, Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam (1987). Ken Burns’s twenty-ninth historical documentary, The Vietnam War (2017), co-directed with longtime associate Lynn Novick, falls within this tradition of depicting the war. ... If Burns tends to gravitate toward lighter topics, the Vietnam War is decidedly not one of them. So it was with some trepidation that I sat down to binge-watch the eighteen hours of The Vietnam War. Despite an occasional and, to my ears, strained suggestion that the war was in some ways the product of good intentions gone awry, this series is Burns at his bleakest. Unfortunately, this perspective is applied somewhat indiscriminately, to include antiwar protesters as well as policymakers. ..."
Dissent

The Best Health Care System in the World: Which One Would You Pick?

"To better understand one of the most heated U.S. policy debates, we created a tournament to judge which of these nations has the best health system: Canada, Britain, Singapore, Germany, Switzerland, France, Australia and the U.S.. 'Medicare for all,' or 'single-payer,' is becoming a rallying cry for Democrats. This is often accompanied by calls to match the health care coverage of 'the rest of the world.' But this overlooks a crucial fact: The 'rest of the world' is not all alike. The commonality is universal coverage, but wealthy nations have taken varying approaches to it, some relying heavily on the government (as with single-payer); some relying more on private insurers; others in between. Experts don’t agree on which is best; a lot depends on perspective. But we thought it would be fun to stage a small tournament. We selected eight countries, representing a range of health care systems, and established a bracket by randomly assigning seeds. ..."
NY Times

Parcel of Rogues - Steeleye Span (1973)

"Parcel of Rogues is the group's first real rock album, featuring a sound clearly rooted in modern sensibilities, with the guitars turned up very loud for the first time. The singing is still modeled on traditional patterns, and is quite beautiful (especially 'One Misty Moisty Morning' and 'Allison Gross'), but the resonances and undertones of electric guitars are everywhere -- the result is a record that, in some ways, recalls Fairport Convention's Liege & Lief (the record that led indirectly to the spawning of Steeleye Span in the first place), with some very flashy playing by Bob Johnson on some of the breaks. ... A lot of the time it works -- the ominous and dazzling 'Cam Ye O'er Frae France' would not have succeeded half as well without amplification, and every fan of the group should hear this track at least once. ..."
allmusic
W - Parcel of Rogues
amazon, iTunes, Spotify
YouTube: Parcel of Rogues 39:12