Tuesday, November 30, 2021

HUNTER S. THOMPSON
____________________

Human beings are the only creatures on Earth that claim a God and the only thing that behaves like it there isn't one.

MALIGNANT

James Wan
USA, 2021

Dmitri Shostakovich
THE JAZZ ALBUM

Riccardo Chailly
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

 

BERTRAND RUSSELL
The ABC of Relativity (1925)
____________________

We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think – in fact they do so.
Art Porn
____________________

Photographer unknown to me.

Dmitri Shostakovich
FROM JEWISH FOLK POETRY, OP. 79

Svetlana Sumatchova, Marianna Trassova, Konstantin Pluzhnikov, Fyodor Kuznetsov, Yuri Serov

1. Lament For A Dead Baby 
2. Caring For Mum And Auntie 
3. Lullaby 
4. Before A Long Separation 
5. Warning
6. Father Abandoned
7. Poverty Song
8. Winter
9. Good Life
10. A Girl’s Song
11. Happiness

 

No Shave November - Photographer unknown to me.

Monday, November 29, 2021

Punch Brothers
PUNCH

 

Arlene Dahl
1925-2021

 

STEPHEN JAY GOULD
____________________

I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.

The Mama Doni Band
THE ACOUSTIC JEWISH HOLIDAY COLLECTION


Oh Hanukkah
Come light the menorah
Let's have a party
We'll all dance the horah
Gather 'round the table
We'll give you a treat
Dreidels to play with
And latkes to eat

No Shave November - Photographer unknown to me.

Sunday, November 28, 2021

Maurice Sendak
Shirim Klezmer Orchestra
PINCUS AND THE PIG
A Klezmer Tale

BERTRAND RUSSELL
In Praise of Idleness
____________________

One of the commonest things to do with savings is to lend them to some Government. In view of the fact that the bulk of the public expenditure of most civilized Governments consists in payment for past wars or preparation for future wars, the man who lends his money to a Government is in the same position as the bad men in Shakespeare who hire murderers.

Herman's Hermits
RETROSPECTIVE

No Shave November - Photographer unknown to me.

Saturday, November 27, 2021

Various
THE ROUGH GUIDE TO PSYCHEDELIC CAMBODIA

 

BERTRAND RUSSELL
In Praise of Idleness
____________________

While I am as convinced a Socialist as the most ardent Marxian, I do not regard Socialism as a gospel of proletarian revenge, nor even, primarily, as a means of securing economic justice. I regard it primarily as an adjustment to machine production demanded by considerations of common sense, and calculated to increase the happiness, not only of proletarians, but of all except a tiny minority of the human race.

No Shave November - Photographer unknown to me.

Friday, November 26, 2021

BLOOD RED SKY

Peter Thorwarth
Germany, 2021

BERTRAND RUSSELL
In Praise of Idleness
____________________

A prominent citizen in a small city state, such as Athens or Florence, could without difficulty feel himself important. The earth was the center of the Universe, man was the purpose of creation, his own city showed man at his best, and he himself was among the best of his own city. In such circumstances Æschylus or Dante could take his own joys or sorrows seriously. He could feel that the emotions of the individual matter, and that tragic occurrences deserve to be celebrated in immortal verse. 

But the modern man, when misfortune assails him, is conscious of himself as a unit in a statistical total; the past and the future stretch before him in a dreary procession of trivial defeats. Man himself appears as a somewhat ridiculous strutting animal, shouting and fussing during a brief interlude between infinite silences.

Nina Simone
NINA SIMONE SINGS ELLINGTON

 

No Shave November - Photographer unknown to me.

Thursday, November 25, 2021

THE WHOLE TRUTH

Wisit Sasanatieng
Thailand, 2021

 

Various Artists
THE COMPLETE STAX-VOLT SINGLES (1959-1968)

 

CHETNA'S HEALTHY INDIAN VEGETARIAN
Everyday Veg and Vegan Feasts Effortlessly Good for You
____________________

Chetna Makan

BERTRAND RUSSELL
In Praise of Idleness 
____________________

A habit of finding pleasure in thought rather than action is a safeguard against unwisdom and excessive love of power, a means of preserving serenity in misfortune and peace of mind among worries. A life confined to what is personal is likely, sooner or later, to become unbearably painful; it is only by windows into a larger and less fretful cosmos that the more tragic parts of life become endurable.
No Shave November - Photographer unknown to me.

Wednesday, November 24, 2021

IN PRAISE OF IDLENESS
The Timeless Essay
____________________

Bertrand Russel
l

 

No Shave November - Photographer unknown to me.

Tuesday, November 23, 2021

ANAÏS NIN
A Spy in the House of Love
____________________

We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations. 

No Shave November - Photographer unknown to me.

Monday, November 22, 2021

Torū Takemitsu
COMPLETE PIANO WORKS
____________________

Roger Woodward



- Rain Tree Sketch

- Les Yeux Clos

- For Away

- Litany

- Piano Distance

- Uninterrupted Rests, 3 Poems on a Text by Takiguchi Shuzo

- Corona and Crossing


ANAÏS NIN
A Spy in the House of Love
____________________

The enemy of a love is never outside, it’s not a man or a woman, it’s what we lack in ourselves.

No Shave November - Photographer unknown to me.

Sunday, November 21, 2021

HELLBOUND

Yeon Sang-ho
Korean, 202
1

 

A SPY IN THE HOUSE OF LOVE
____________________

Anaïs Nin

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE
Nausea
____________________

Thursday morning in the library:

A little while ago, going down the hotel stairs, I heard Lucie, who, for the hundredth time, was complaining to the landlady, while polishing the steps. The proprietress spoke with difficulty, using short sentences, because she had not put in her false teeth; she was almost naked, in a pink dressing-gown and Turkish slippers. Lucie was dirty, as usual; from time to time she stopped rubbing and straightened up on her knees to look at the proprietress. She spoke without pausing, reasonably:

“I’d like it a hundred times better if he went with other women,” she said, “it wouldn’t make the slightest difference to me, so long as it didn’t do him any harm.”

She was talking about her husband: at forty this swarthy little woman had offered herself and her savings to a handsome young man, a fitter in the Usines Lecointe. She has an unhappy home life. Her husband does not beat her, is not unfaithful to her, but he drinks, he comes home drunk every evening. He’s burning his candle at both ends; in three months I have seen him turn yellow and melt away. Lucie thinks it is drink. I believe he is tubercular.

“You have to take the upper hand,” Lucie said.

It gnaws at her, I’m sure of it, but slowly, patiently: she takes the upper hand, she is able neither to console herself nor abandon herself to her suffering. She thinks about it a little bit, a very little bit, now and again she passes it on. Especially when she is with people, because they console her and also because it comforts her a little to talk about it with poise, with an air of giving advice. When she is alone in the rooms I hear her humming to keep herself from thinking. But she is morose all day, suddenly weary and sullen.

“It’s there,” she says, touching her throat, “it won’t go down.”

She suffers as a miser. She must be miserly with her pleasures, as well. I wonder if sometimes she doesn’t wish she were free of this monotonous sorrow, of these mutterings which start as soon as she stops singing, if she doesn’t wish to suffer once and for all, to drown herself in despair. In any case, it would be impossible for her: she is bound.

Igor Stravinsky
SYMPHONY IN C

Sir Alexander Gibson
Royal Scottish National Symphony

 

No Shave November - Photographer unknown to me.

Saturday, November 20, 2021

THE DEEPER YOU DIG

John Adams and Toby Poser
USA, 2019

Rare that I comment here on the films I watch - generally assume I don't watch too much shit - but this is REALLY a good one. Husband, wife, daughter filmmaking team who have given us a current horror film that, if not 110 percent original, has a style AND ending that will blow you away. So refreshing.

 

CPE Bach
8 SYMPHONIES
Wq 182

Christopher Hogwood
The Academy of Ancient Musi
c

 


Art Porn
____________________

Photographer unknown to me.
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE
Nausea
____________________

This is odd: I have just filled up ten pages and I haven’t told the truth—at least, not the whole truth. I was writing “Nothing new” with a bad conscience: as a matter of fact I boggled at bringing out a quite harmless little incident. “Nothing new.” I admire the way we can lie, putting reason on our side. Evidently, nothing new has happened, if you care to put it that way: this morning at eight-fifteen, just as I was leaving the Hotel Printania to go to the library, I wanted to and could not pick up a paper lying on the ground. This is all and it is not even an event. Yes —but, to tell the whole truth, I was deeply impressed by it: I felt I was no longer free. I tried unsuccessfully to get rid of this idea at the library. I wanted to escape from it at. I hoped it would disappear in the bright light. But it stayed there, like a dead weight inside me. It is responsible for the preceding pages.

 

Willie Nelson
PHASES AND STAGES

No Shave November - Photographer unknown to me.

Friday, November 19, 2021

Rick Stromoski from 2004.

SATOR

Jordan Graham
USA, 201
9

 

Isaac Albéniz
IBERIA
with SUITE ESPAÑOLA

Alicia de Larroch
a


 

CHUANG TZU / THOMAS MERTON
The Way of Chuang Tzu

"The Breath of Nature"
____________________

When great Nature sighs, we hear the winds 
Which, noiseless in themselves,
Awaken voices from other beings,
Blowing on them.
From every opening
Loud voices sound. Have you not heard 
This rush of tones?

There stands the overhanging wood 
On the steep mountain:
Old trees with holes and cracks 
Like snouts, maws, and ears,
Like beam-sockets, like goblets,
Grooves in the wood, hollows full of water:
You hear mooing and roaring, whistling,
Shouts of command, grumblings,
Deep drones, sad flutes.
One call awakens another in dialogue.
Gentle winds sing timidly,
Strong ones blast on without restraint.
Then the wind dies down. The openings
Empty out their last sound.
Have you not observed how all then trembles and subsides?

Yu replied: I understand:
The music of earth sings through a thousand holes. 
The music of man is made on flutes and instruments. 
What makes the music of heaven?

Master Ki said:
Something is blowing on a thousand different holes.
Some power stands behind all this and makes the sounds die
down.
What is this power?

Christoph Willibald Gluck
ORFEO ED EURIDICE

Laurence Equilbey

Franco Fagioli, Malin Hartelius, Emmanuelle de Negri 

Accentus, Insula Orchestra

 

No Shave November - Duy Thong Vu by Daniel Wamba 

Thursday, November 18, 2021

MIDNIGHT MASS

Mike Flanagan
USA, 2021

MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
____________________

Conceal a flaw and the world will think the worst.

Marianne Faithfull
20th CENTURY BLUES

 

No-shave November

@bellylad_insta

"Looking out"

Wednesday, November 17, 2021

MIDNIGHT MASS

Mike Flanagan
USA, 202
1

 

Poor liddle shaman.

No more avocado toast for you, Terrorist Jake.
 

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK
____________________

With Lenin it was always a substantial commitment. I always have a certain admiration for people who are aware that somebody has to do the job. What I hate about these liberal, pseudo-left, beautiful-soul academics is that they are doing what they are doing fully aware that somebody else will do the job for them.

Original Printed Frontpiece for
George Frideric Händel's AGRIPPINA (1710)

George Frideric Händel
AGRIPPINA
HWV 006 (1710)

Maxim Emelyanychev

Joyce DiDonato, Luca Pisaroni, Franco Fagioli, Elsa Benoit, Jakub Józef Orliński

Il Pomo d'Oro

No Shave November - Photographer unknown to me.

Tuesday, November 16, 2021

HARD PAINT
(TINTA BRUTO)

Filipe Matzembacher and Marcio Reolon
Brazil, 2018