Monday, March 18, 2024

Nothing to see here ...

Just Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick on the farm serenading the animals with "Texas Hold 'Em" and a mandolin on a random Monday morning.

Are you living your best life, too?

[Original Video Here]







Currently Playing

Michael Spyres
CONTRA-TENOR

Francesco Corti
Il Pomo D'Oro


ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
From the Foreword to UNDERWOODS

Of all my verse, like not a single line;
But like my title, for it is not mine.
That title from a better man I stole;
Ah, how much better, had I stol’n the whole!




Daily Painting

Sandra Pratt
PALE REFLECTION (ND)

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Currently Watching

MAESTRO
Josell Ramos
USA, 2003

Currently Playing

Michael Torke
COLOR MUSIC

David Zinman
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra

Kent Nagano
London Sinfonietta


ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
"The Vagabond"

Give to me the life I love,
Let the lave go by me,
Give the jolly heaven above
And the byway nigh me.
Bed in the bush with stars to see,
Bread I dip in the river—
There’s the life for a man like me,
There’s the life for ever.



Daily Painting

Gustav Moreau
OEDIPUS AND THE SPHYNX (1864)

Saturday, March 16, 2024

Currently Watching

THERE THERE
Andrew Bujalski
USA, 2022


Currently Playing

The Mike Flowers Pops
A GROOVY PLACE


Currently Playing

The Mike Flowers Pops
"Wonderwall" (1996)


ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
"I will make you brooches and toys for your delight"

I will make you brooches and toys for your delight
Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night.
I will make a palace fit for you and me
Of green days in forests and blue days at sea.

I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room,
Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom,
And you shall wash your linen and keep your body white
In rainfall at morning and dewfall at night.

And this shall be for music when no one else is near,
The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear!
That only I remember, that only you admire,
Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire.



Daily Painting

Dariusz Zawadzki
LEGION 4 (2016)

Friday, March 15, 2024

Currently Watching

THE SILENT SEA
[고요의 바다]

Korea, 2021

Director
Choi Hang-Yong

Writer
Park Eun-kyo

Rory.

Seven-year adoption anniversary.



Currently Playing

Helen Forrest
THE COMPLETE HELEN FORREST AND BENNY GOODMAN


ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
The New Arabian Nights

I regard you with an indifference closely bordering on aversion.



Daily Painting

Chantel Joffe
WOMAN WALKING (2004)

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Currently Watching

THE SILENT SEA
[고요의 바다]

Korea, 2021

Director
Choi Hang-Yong

Writer
Park Eun-kyo

Currently Playing

THE ROUGH GUIDE TO MALI BLUES

Samba Touré, Tartit, Ali Baba Cissé, Sabu Doriente, Anansy Cissé, Modiba Diabaté, Alkibar Jr, Alba Griot Enemble, Souleymane Arby, Abba Gala, Djambé Kambé, Bally Du Dezer, Moussa Sarré, Espoir De Niafunké, Tahaninte


RAINER MARIA RILKE
“Archaic Torso of Apollo”

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.


Translated by Stephen Mitchell

Daily Painting

Nathan Oliveira
WILD DOG SEEKING ITS SHADOW (1996)

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Currently Watching

POOR THINGS
Yorgos Lanthimos
Ireland/UK/USA, 2023


Currently Playing

Outkast
SPEAKERBOXXX/THE LOVE BELOW


SYLVIA PLATH
"The Applicant"

First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,

Stitches to show something’s missing? No, no? Then
How can we give you a thing?
Stop crying.
Open your hand.
Empty? Empty. Here is a hand

To fill it and willing
To bring teacups and roll away headaches
And do whatever you tell it.
Will you marry it?
It is guaranteed

To thumb shut your eyes at the end
And dissolve of sorrow.
We make new stock from the salt.
I notice you are stark naked.
How about this suit——

Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.
Will you marry it?
It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof
Against fire and bombs through the roof.
Believe me, they'll bury you in it.

Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
I have the ticket for that.
Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
Well, what do you think of that?
Naked as paper to start

But in twenty-five years she'll be silver,
In fifty, gold.
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk, talk.

It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
You have a hole, it’s a poultice.
You have an eye, it’s an image.
My boy, it’s your last resort.
Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.



Daily Painting(s)

Tintoretto
SELF-PORTRAIT (1546)

Tintoretto
SELF-PORTRAIT (1588)


Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Currently Watching

COME BACK TO THE 5 & DIME, JIMMY DEAN, JIMMY DEAN
Robert Altman
USA, 1982

Currently Watching

THAT COLD DAY IN THE PARK
Robert Altman
Canada, 1969

Currently Playing

George Frederic Händel
THEODORA, HWV 068

Maxim Emelyanychev

Massimo Lombardi, Joyce Didonato, John Chest, Paul Antoine Bénos Djian, Lisette Oropesa, Michael Spyres

Il Pomo D'Oro


YUVAL NOAH HARARI
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Nothing captures the biological argument better than the famous New Age slogan ‘Happiness begins within.’ Money, social status, plastic surgery, beautiful houses, powerful positions – none of these will bring you happiness. Lasting happiness comes only from serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin.



Daily Painting

Henrietta Berk
VACAVILLE
(1965-67)

Monday, March 11, 2024

Currently Watching

UP THE DOWN STAIRCASE
Robert Mulligan
USA, 1967




Currently Playing

Idlewild
THE REMOTE PART

Daily Painting

Gwyther Irwin
THE DAY THE SKY FELL THROUGH
(1959)

Sunday, March 10, 2024

Sheep and goats. You know the story.

Currently Playing

Everything But the Girl
FUSE






SAMUEL BECKETT
The Unnamable

Not to be able to open my mouth without proclaiming them, and our fellowship, that’s what they imagine they’ll have me reduced to. It’s a poor trick that consists in ramming a set of words down your gullet on the principle that you can’t bring them up without being branded as belonging to their breed. But I’ll fix their gibberish for them. I never understood a word of it in any case, not a word of the stories it spews, like gobbets in a vomit. My inability to absorb, my genius for forgetting, are more than they reckoned with. Dear incomprehension, it’s thanks to you I’ll be myself, in the end. Nothing will remain of all the lies they have gutted me with. And I’ll be myself at last, as a starveling belches his odourless wind, before the bliss of coma.


Daily Painting

Giorgio de Chirico
SCHOOL OF GLADIATORS
 (1953)

Saturday, March 9, 2024

Currently Watching

SEOBOK: PROJECT CLONE
Lee Yong-ju
Korea, 2020



Currently Playing

Giuseppe Verdi
LA FORZA DEL DESTINO

Yannick Nézet-Séguin

Lise Davidsen, Brian Jagde, Igor Golovatenko, Soloman Howard, Judit Kutasi, Patrick Carfizzi

Live on 98.9 All Classical at 9:00 AM


CZESŁAW MIŁOSZ
“Theodicy”

No, it won’t do, my sweet theologians.
Desire will not save the morality of God.
If he created beings able to choose between good and evil,
And they chose, and the world lies in iniquity,
Nevertheless, there is pain, and the undeserved torture of creatures,
Which would find its explanation only by assuming
The existence of an archetypal Paradise
And a pre-human downfall so grave
That the world of matter received its shape from diabolic power.



Daily Painting

Jean Dubuffet
ROAD WITH MEN (1944)

Friday, March 8, 2024

Currently Watching

BASHKIN
Can Evrenol
Turkey, 2015

Currently Watching

VISITORS FROM THE ARKANA GALAXY
[GOSTI IZ GALAKSIJE]

Dušan Vukotić
Yugoslavia, 1971

Currently Playing

Analog Africa No. 37
ECUATORIANA
El Universo Paralelo De Polibio Mayorga 1969​ - ​1981

Junior y Su Equipo, Eduardo Morales y Su Requinto, Polibio Mayorga, Olmedo Torres, Alcibiades y Su Banda, Orti Mayorga y Chiriboga, Conjunto La Jorga, Polibio Mayorga y Su Conjunto


YUVAL NOAH HARARI
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

How can we distinguish what is biologically determined from what people merely try to justify through biological myths? A good rule of thumb is ‘Biology enables, Culture forbids.’

Biology is willing to tolerate a very wide spectrum of possibilities. It’s culture that obliges people to realize some possibilities while forbidding others. Biology enables women to have children – some cultures oblige women to realize this possibility. Biology enables men to enjoy sex with one another – some cultures forbid them to realize this possibility.

Culture tends to argue that it forbids only that which is unnatural. But from a biological perspective, nothing is unnatural. Whatever is possible is by definition also natural. A truly unnatural behavior, one that goes against the laws of nature, simply cannot exist.



Daily Painting

Amanda Ba
BOY AT THE PARTY (2017)

Thursday, March 7, 2024

Currently Watching

DAYS OF BEING WILD
阿飛正傳

[Literal translation: The True Story of a Hoodlum]
Wong Kar Wai
Hong Kong, 1990



Currently Reading

Sarah L. Sanderson
THE PLACE WE MAKE