Rock the Casbah

Pursuing my study of media and social change in North Africa. Here's a video which points out Khomeinei, while in exile, distributed audio cassettes to raise support for his revolutionary ideas. Our generation recalls another revolutionary using video taped messages, as well as a network of websites, to disseminate his revolutionary (and hateful) ideas. Today - social media and other means of digital communication drive change - as argued in this article.

Listening, and being heard, are the two greatest callings in life. Now both blessedly easy to do - if you know how.

Dogeared

Saturday - cartoons, sunshine, guests and late nights

Dogeared

Kimura Custom Motorcycles - Zen and rpm

Marie Fleur Charnsworth - Fashion fotography for your daydreams

Young Madonna - damn (bless) modern marketing and it's idealization of youth

An Album based of the Garden of Earthly Delights* - Hieronymous Bosch? Sea chanty? Say no more!

painting via sylvia ji

*that's right 7793x4409

Judging by the ridiculous stop-motion ducks and their female drummer (!), I'm guessing Metronomy doesn't take themselves as seriously as this video might suggest. I'm a sucker for a bassline.

feeling fortunately

WABI SABI

WABI SABI

WABI SABI

I like to think of evanescence and transience. It seems to be where the action is - for good or ill.

Tsunami I can't even imagine what something like that would be. Listening to the Japanese people: they seem to have faith in their community, and themselves. So far they have displayed such courage, it makes me wonder if there is that much courage in America. I think so.

Rebuild. What will Japan become in the next 25 years? Will the singularity (if watching anime has taught me anything, it's that technology leads to giant robots destroying your city) emerge there? Akira (also possible)? Godzilla(which was a cautionary tale of technology and destruction)? Rebirth - I feel hope for Japan.

rum diaries

"There are times, however, and this is one of them, when even being right feels wrong. What do you say, for instance, about a generation that has been taught that rain is poison and sex is death? If making love might be fatal and if a cool spring breeze on any summer afternoon can turn a crystal blue lake into a puddle of black poison right in front of your eyes, there is not much left except TV and relentless masturbation. It's a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat shit and die." - Hunter S. Thompson, 1988

If you have to say it...

image via symbolic dimension

If you have to say you're not trying to be arrogant or provocative, you're probably arrogant and provocative. Still though - I agree with A.P.C. head designer Jean Touitou on most points, most especially Beckett's style, Bret Easton Ellis, and the importance of originality in art.

Jean Touitou, of A.P.C., Interview via wsj

"...only then was it time to disinter the archaic weapons of the tribe and sound the drums in the hills; or, more easily, to turn from the sunlit door and lie alone in the darkness, where the impotent painted deities paraded the walls in vain,, and cough his heart out among the rum bottles." - Evelyn Waugh

That far off feeling, an up close kind of ache - a widescreened reason to look the other way. So you're changing again, all your clothes, all your friends. A path that you paved over Indian graves and you wonder why your dreams are crazed. -Map of the World Monsters of Folk

How many more dramas seem to be happening. Oh - silent conversations; the multitude communes with the city. Overhead catenary wires are alive. The sky breathed springtime; time was flowing.

Green Tunnel

Green Tunnel from Kevin Gallagher on Vimeo.

For those without the perseverance and psychosis required to complete the Appalachian trek.

What you say and what you do.

beautiful photography by elizabeth brooke

art by thomas ehretsmann

beats by bot'ox

image via the guardian

Decay

Image via vandalog

Here we are; there we are going. My studies of development and culture have led me to the realization that no one has anything but a general idea of progress. There seems to be no far-reaching end goal; our handlers have a four year window in which to achieve measurable goals, after that, it is their successors responsibility. D'où Venons Nous / Que Sommes Nous / Où Allons Nous?

Perhaps we had the right idea thirty years ago, when we (Carl Sagan) just starting flinging our ideas into the 'cosmic ocean'. Is such far-reaching optimism wrong? Is it decay or folly? Well, as the Strokes say, you only live once, so might has well hurl yourself as far afield as your strength will allow.

Back from the dead are ghouls and flaming hearts - Downtown Music Festival and Blkmarket All nighter - fade to New York

A boy returns home not realizing how much he has changed -Ian Francis, at the Joshua Liner Gallery

Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.

-Borges

An epic weekend approaches and I find myself unprepared. The wind swells and I drift along; life and death lacking from my life.

-LO

I'm Not in Love - Crystal Castles ft. Robert Smith, via gvsb

“And suddenly it’s evening”
by Salvatore Quasimodo (1901-1968)
translated by Gian Lombardo

Everyone’s always alone on the earth’s breast
pierced by a ray of sunlight:
and suddenly it’s evening

Ed è subito sera

Ognuno sta solo cuor della terra
traffito da un raggio di sole:
ed è subito sera

Tintin in the New World - Ray Lichtenstein, 1993 (via art21blog)

Heaven's on Fire - The Radio Dept.