"Rhubarb Orc. 19.53 Rev" by Aphex Twin

There is an interesting story to this Aphex Twin (the nom de musique of electronic musician Richard James) track, "Rhubarb Orc. 19.53 Rev" which was recently released on the Aphex Twin retrospective album "Selected Ambient Works Vol. II (Expanded Edition)." It was originally performed live at the Barbican in London in 2012 as part of an experiment James called The Remote Orchestra: a 48-piece orchestra and a 24 person choir all wearing wireless headphones took sound and visual cues (colored bars displayed on a large monitor overhead) to sing or play certain notes and in certain styles or volumes from James working on a laptop computer backstage. In effect, he turned the orchestra and choir into a sort of electronic instrument he could play by clicking on his software.

The track has been reworked and is presented here in reverse, which recalls something Brian Eno might have done. The idea that ambient music is holistic, meaning one can take any small section and have it represent the whole, is apparent here. It does not matter if the track is heard as it was recorded or played backward. The cumulative sense is the same.

But what is truly touching are the liner notes from "Selected Ambient Works II (Expanded Edition)" about this track:

Rhubarb notes:
My mum gave me so much love, dedicated her life to me, filled me to the brim with confidence and somehow managed to be a nurse at the same time. That love she gave can now be felt by millions of people all over the world and beyond through this music.
Thanks for everything Lorna James!
I watched both my mum and dad die in front of me recently, was so very grateful to have been able to be with them then, as scary as it was to see. She was cracking jokes hours before she left, even though she was in a lot of pain, she told the awkward doctor on the last day, 'I should be shot, put down', she was very funny. I opened the lovely french doors to the room she was in on the last morning, it was sunny and she said, 'ah that beautiful Champagne air', will remember that til I die.
I still meet them in my dreams regularly and have relaxing normal chats about nothing in particular, I'm going to see if all three of us can listen to this track next time we meet up.
Richard D. James, June 2024

Considering I am between the anniversaries of my own parents' deaths, I am very moved by the story, his notes, and certainly the heavenly music.

https://aphextwin.warp.net/

I Miss My Dad

Take one if you miss your dad too.

Hunter's Moon

"Magnetic" by Tunde Adebimpe

I like TV On The Radio and therefore, Tunde Adebimpe. Especially his new song "Magnetic." And damn, he looks particularly sexy here...

https://www.instagram.com/tadebimpe

"Motto" by Bertolt Brecht

Motto

In the dark times,
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing.
About the dark times.

--Bertolt Brecht

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertolt_Brecht

Veteran's Day 2024

"Regardless of feelings on conflicts past or present or military action in general, it is best to understand that the men and women who are or have been in the Armed Forces do not choose their wars, but they do their work no matter what the cost."

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity."
--Dwight D. Eisenhower, Address before the Canadian Club, Ottawa, Canada, 1/10/46

I want to honor two of my own relatives, veterans of two world wars, who fought Fascism...one died in World War I and the other fought valiantly in World War II. I am sure my relatives are rolling in their graves, after fighting and dying to make sure that Fascism did not spread around the world and to the United States. That was a time when Republicans thought Fascism was a bad thing, unlike today when they--and the in-coming administration--support dangerous regimes in Russia and others around the world. I know both of my relatives (one of them an Italian immigrant), if they were alive now, would be appalled and outraged that Fascism is being institutionalized by the Republican party, and welcomed and encouraged by its supporters. My relatives died so the very thing that is happening now, wouldn't. And it makes me infinitely sad and frustrated that these men seemingly died for nothing...and that segments of the population of this country support the kind of nationalism, totalitarianism, disdain for facts and humanity, and suppression that are the hallmarks of Fascism.

Word Of The Day

https://www.instagram.com/susiedent

"Sonder: The Realization That Everyone Has A Story" by John Koenig

Last year I posted about the marvelous John Koenig, author of THE DICTIONARY OF OBSCURE SORROWS, a book of neologisms to express new terms for subtle emotions. One of his words in particular, was meaningful to me.

sonder - n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.

Koenig made a short video to illustrate the concept of this word and it is lovely and moving.

There are more video illustrations of his words at his Youtube channel.

"Sonder" reminds me of the incredible, life-changing film "Wings of Desire" (previously here) by auteur Wim Wenders. When I first saw this film in 1987, I was literally awestruck and truly emotionally devastated by its scope of humanity and the clear presence of the "animus mundi" in the story. For the first nearly ten or fifteen minutes, we follow a pair of angels as they listen in on the voice of humanity itself, going from person to person, hearing thoughts of love, pettiness, despair, hope, regret, and forgiveness from men, women, young and old. I wept openly through that stunning and powerful opening sequence, overwhelmed by the force of so much existence, so much life, so much sorrow and so much joy (listening in, through an angel, to the thoughts of a dying motorcyclist who has just been in an auto accident is heart-rending). And by extension, not just now, but in the past and the time humanity has left.

https://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/

"Mad World" x 3

The original is absolutely sublime...

...but there have been some lovely covers.

https://tearsforfears.com/
https://www.garyjules.com/
https://linktr.ee/flosomusic

Time To Save The Country

"We can disagree and still love each other, unless..."

This seems like a good time to repost this:

Here We Are Again

Hello, readers. I have started to write this post several times already, approaching it from different angles each time: talking about resisting, talking about disappoinment, using humorous images to address looming dystopia, posting a list of rules on How To Survive An Authoritarian Regime, but none of it seemed right. None of it captured the entirety of the swirl of conflicting thoughts and emotions I am sure all of us are feeling. So I just want to say two things:

I still believe in everything I did before last night, with even more conviction. For whatever the next administration has in store for us, I intend to be a grain of sand in the eye of heaven, which will manifest itself against them in many ways.

Just like the last time we did this, living well is the best revenge. I re-dedicate myself to beauty in all its forms. The arts are a healing balm and they come to our aid in distressing times. I pledge to continue to live my life, and turn the volume up a bit. They don't get my liberal tears...they get my liberal self.

We are not going away.

VOTE HARRIS 2024!

http://kamalaharris.com

VOTE HARRIS-WALZ 2024!

https://kamalaharris.com/

VOTER PROTECTION HOTLINE NUMBERS!

Do not tolerate anyone intimidating or harassing you or anyone you know at a voting location. Phone one of these numbers immediately.

VOTE 2024!

"American history is a record of small groups of people who keep remaking this country over and over, and who reveal to us all that the perpetual remaking is the greatest statement of fidelity to our creed and our national purpose, which is not to be like Russia, white and stagnant and oligarchic, or like China, monoethnic and authoritarian and centralized, but to be more like America, hybrid and dynamic and democratic and free to be remade."
--Author and activist Eric Liu

And please, for the love of democracy and our country itself,
VOTE DEMOCRAT!

"If You're Out There..." VOTE TOMORROW 2024!

I want to believe that you're out there, I want to believe that the United States still believes in the principles of humanism, dignity, fairness, actual democracy, liberalism and its promise of progress toward a better future. If you're out there, please vote tomorrow (if you haven't already voted by mail or by early voting) and PLEASE vote Democrat to defeat the rise of Nationalism and Fascism.

If you hear this message, wherever you stand
I'm calling every woman, calling every man
We're the generation
We can't afford to wait
The future started yesterday and we're already late

We've been looking for a song to sing
Searched for a melody
Searched for someone to lead
We've been looking for the world to change
If you feel the same
Then go on and say

If you're out there
Sing along with me
If you're out there
I'm dying to believe that you're out there
Stand up and say it loud
If you're out there
Tomorrow's starting now
Now, now

No more broken promises
No more call to war
Unless it's love and peace that we're really fighting for
We can destroy hunger
We can conquer hate
Put down the arms and raise your voice
We're joining hands today

Oh I was looking for a song to sing
I searched for a leader
But the leader was me
We were looking for the world to change
We can be heroes
Just go on and say
If you're out there
Sing along with me
If you're out there
I'm dying to believe that you're out there
Stand up and say it loud
If you're out there
Tomorrow's starting now
Now, now

Oh now, now

If you're ready we can shake the world
Believe again
It starts within
We don't have to wait for destiny
We should be the change that we want to see

If you're out there
If you're out there
And you're ready now
Say it loud
Scream it out
If you're out there
Sing along with me
If you're out there
I'm dying to believe that you're out there
Stand up and say it loud
If you're out there
Tomorrow's starting now
If you're out there
If you're out there
If you're out there

If you hear this message, wherever you stand
I'm calling every woman, calling every man
We're the generation
We can't afford to wait
The future started yesterday and we're already late

https://democrats.org/
https://www.johnlegend.com

Why Your Vote Matters: "Against Nihilism: The Power of Government Policies" by David Leonhardt

Your vote matters. Because our government matters. And it can accomplish wonderful things. Yes, the personal is political and vice versa. This wonderful article from The New York Times' The Morning newsletter by David Leonhardt shows that leaders with a To Do List can actually make a difference in the lives of United States citizens.

"The Power of Government Policies: Against nihilism"

The New York Times
The Morning
October 17, 2024
By David Leonhardt

We live in a time of cynicism about what government can accomplish. Most Americans say they don’t have much trust in Washington, regardless of which party is in charge. Even when the federal government sets out to do something that Americans support, many wonder whether it can succeed.

In today’s newsletter, I want to connect four news stories from the past few years and argue that this cynicism has gone too far — that government can indeed accomplish what it promises. I recognize some readers will support the policies I describe, while others will oppose them. But that’s OK. I’m not trying to persuade you that these policies are good or bad.

The point instead is that the U.S. federal government remains a powerful force that can alter the course of American life. The country has the capacity to address its biggest problems. Whether it does is a different matter.

1. The Covid vaccine
The pandemic was so miserable and divisive that it can be easy to overlook the triumph of the federal government’s vaccine development. Before Covid, the creation of any new vaccine took years. But Operation Warp Speed — a public-private partnership that received $18 billion in federal funding — led to the discovery of a Covid vaccine within months. That speed likely saved millions of lives worldwide.

Yes, the pandemic was also a case study of government failure. Republican politicians (including Donald Trump, who deserves some credit for Warp Speed) refused to embrace the vaccines, leading to hesitancy that cost lives. And many Democratic-run school districts shut down for a year or longer, causing lasting damage to children.

All of this, though, was a reminder of the power of government, for good and ill.

2. Immigration
In the debate over immigration, you sometimes hear the suggestion that the U.S. is powerless to change migration flows. “Border Enforcement Won’t Solve the U.S. Migrant Crisis,” as a typical op-ed argued in 2022. One way or another, according to this argument, people will find ways to enter the U.S.

But that argument is mostly wrong, as the past four years show.

President Biden took office promising a more welcoming approach to immigration than any president in decades. Sure enough, immigration surged. During the first three years of Biden’s administration, annual net immigration (the number of people arriving, regardless of legal status, minus the number of immigrants leaving) averaged 2.4 million, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That’s about three times as high as during Trump’s presidency. It’s more than twice as high as under Barack Obama.

Late last year, Biden changed course. The administration first worked with Mexico to reduce migration flows and then tightened border policies, as my colleague Hamed Aleaziz has explained. Almost as quickly as immigration spiked in 2021, it has fallen in 2024:

A restrictive approach to border security won’t keep out everybody, but it makes a huge difference. Many experts believe that the ideal immigration system would involve both a more secure border and more legal pathways to entry. That combination is well within Congress’s power.

3. Economic policy
Biden’s economic record is obviously mixed. But he made a set of specific promises about using the federal government to rebuild infrastructure, reduce medical costs, promote clean energy and expand certain kinds of manufacturing. In each of these cases, it’s happening.

New semiconductor factories are being built in Arizona, Missouri, Texas and elsewhere. Roads and bridges are being rebuilt. The cost of insulin has plunged for many people. Clean energy production has increased.

Biden’s industrial policy has been a reminder of the vital role that the federal government has historically played in creating industries like aviation, biotechnology, fracking and the internet.

4. Taxes
As with immigration, you sometimes hear the claim that federal laws don’t much matter — and particularly that the wealthy can find ways to avoid any tax increases. That’s not correct.

After Obama raised taxes on wealthy Americans, they paid more in taxes. After Bill Clinton raised income taxes at the start of his presidency, the same thing happened. And after Clinton later cut capital-gains taxes, tax payments fell.

If Democrats control both the White House and Congress next year, they really will be able to increase taxes on the rich. And if Republicans sweep into power, they will cut taxes on the rich.

The bottom line: The fact that governments remain powerful forces even in a globalized, digitized economy doesn’t answer many of the hard questions about what policymakers should do, of course. But it at least offers an antidote to the nihilism that sometimes dominates political debates.

Link to original article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/17/briefing/taxes-immigration-economy.html

THIS HORRIFYING FUTURE CAN BE STOPPED

This possibility is making me sick to my stomach. PLEASE VOTE.
AND PLEASE VOTE FOR HARRIS/WALZ TO STOP WHAT YOU SEE IN THE VIDEO ABOVE, TO STOP PROJECT 2025 FROM HAPPENING.

THIS IS NOT A RUN-OF-THE-MILL ELECTION, THIS IS AN EMERGENCY.

VOTE 2024!

Daniel Pelavin bases his VOTE art on popular logos, to catch your eye. Please vote.

PLEASE VOTE BLUE DOWN THE TICKET!

https://www.instagram.com/dpelavin/

Feliz Día de los Muertos 2024!

Today is Día de los Muertos, a joyous, upbeat holiday originating in Mexico but now widely celebrated here in the United States. It is a day to celebrate and remember ancestors and departed loved ones. Altars are created in homes that feature pictures of dead loved ones along with favorite objects and food they liked when they were alive (called ofrenda or offerings), decorated sugar skulls, imagery of skeletons and calacas (a figure of a skull or a skeleton), colorful paper cut-outs, candles, and copious amounts of marigolds.

Families go to cemeteries to tend to family plots, gravesides and tombs. There is a carnival-like atmosphere in Mexico as huge crowds descend upon cemeteries to hold all night vigils and cook food not only for themselves but also for the spirits of the departed who can visit this earthly realm one night a year. Old women sit in chairs by the graves while children run and play tag, musicians play and sing, and people sit and talk with family members.

In the United States, the largest Día de los Muertos celebration is held in San Francisco. A street parade with drumming and dancing attracts thousands of people who dress up in traditional skull face paint and costumes. Nearby Garfield Park is home to many altars honoring the lives of friends and family members. Some altars invite people to participate by adding photos of lost loved ones. The video below, by KQED Arts is a wonderful introduction to the festival and its deeper meaning.

For more information or if you would like to attend the festival, visit:
https://dayofthedeadsf.org

Bonne Fête de La Toussaint 2024!

Aujourd'hui est le jour de La Toussaint en France.

La Toussaint by Emile Friant (1863-1932)

Today is La Toussaint in France, a national holiday. Toussaint is a combination of the word tous ("all" in French) and saint, meaning "All Saint's Day." The festival is closely related, in intent and spirit, to the Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebration in Latin cultures (previously here). It is a day to remember, celebrate, and honor departed loved ones and ancestors.

In France, the general population are not very religious, so this once-Catholic celebration has become a secular national holiday. People visit cemeteries to have picnics and to tend to the graves of family members and decorate them with chrysanthemums, a flower symbolizing death (a symbol shared with Day of the Dead); generally, the French do not use this flower for any other purpose.

Happy Halloween 2024!

Happy Halloween!

The night is still
And the frost, it bites my face
I wear my silence like a mask
And murmur like a ghost

"Trick or treat"
"Trick or treat"
The bitter and the sweet

The carefree days are distant now
I wear my memories like a shroud
I try to speak, but words collapse
Echoing, echoing

"Trick or treat"
"Trick or treat"
The bitter and the sweet

I wander through your sadness
Gazing at you with scorpion eyes
Halloween... Halloween

A sweet reminder in the ice-blue nursery
Of a childish murder, of hidden lustre
And she cries

"Trick or treat"
"Trick or treat"
The bitter and the sweet

I wander through your sadness
Gazing at you with scorpion eyes
Halloween... Halloween

http://siouxsieandthebanshees.co.uk/

LGBT History Month: Friday of the Purple Hand, 1969

Tomorrow marks the 55th anniversary of a landmark event in the history of gay rights: Friday of the Purple Hand. I am always humbled and filled with gratitude and awe when I read stories of the bravery of my gay brothers and sisters from long ago. The article below from KQED in 2019 offers a fantastic recounting.


Armed with Ink, 1960s Activists 'Struck Back' Against Homophobic Media
by Sarah Hotchkiss fro KQED
Jun 13, 2019

The day that came to be known as “Friday of the Purple Hand” ended in 15 arrests, a broken rib, one set of knocked-out teeth and purple handprints scattered across the San Francisco Examiner’s exterior walls.

Four months after the infamous Stonewall riots in New York City, the Bay Area’s more radical LGBTQ+ organizations of 1969 refused to passively accept negative depictions of their community in the local news. So on Oct. 25, when the Examiner published an article by reporter Robert Patterson under the headline “The Dreary Revels of S.F. ‘Gay’ Clubs,” the newspaper unknowingly issued a powerful call to arms—to the very people it had derided.

The events of that day show that the battleground for the burgeoning gay liberation movement wasn’t just on the streets or in the bars—where LGBTQ+ people demanded the right to live openly and unmolested by police—but within the pages of America’s newspapers and magazines. There, mainstream media’s dismissive adjectives, ironic scare quotes and defamatory headlines had the power to shape public opinion of an increasingly vocal and visible minority group.

And they definitely weren’t expecting a coalition of gay liberation groups to strike back.

The headline of Robert Patterson's Oct. 25, 1969 article about gay breakfast clubs
in the 'San Francisco Examiner.' (Courtesy of the SF Examiner)

A community mobilizes
By today’s standards, Patterson’s article, ostensibly about after-hours “‘gay’ breakfast clubs” (note the scare quotes around the word “gay”), reads like a hit piece.

He described the clientele of these so-called “deviate establishments” in as many grossly homophobic ways as possible, all well beyond the pale: “semi-males with flexible wrists and hips,” “the pseudo fair sex,” and “women who aren’t exactly women.” (In a testament to Patterson’s ‘credibility,’ he was fired by the Examiner in 1972 for a series of stories he wrote about visiting China; the paper concluded he had not actually visited the country.)

The community he described was outraged. “The San Francisco Examiner has surpassed its traditional standard of tastelessness and its predictable appeal for redneck hysteria,” the newly formed gay liberation group, the Committee for Homosexual Freedom (CHF) wrote in a Berkeley Barb response piece. “The entire gay community and all those actively working for true liberation must mobilize to confront the brutal suppression of freedom that the Examiner consistently exemplifies and encourages.”

A date was set after several attempts to engage with the paper’s editor and Patterson directly: a large-scale protest would take place on Oct. 31, starting at 12pm on the sidewalk outside the Examiner’s Fifth Street building.

The “melee,” as the Examiner described it the next day, started when two unknown persons (widely thought to be newspaper employees) dropped bags of purple printer’s ink from the building rooftop onto the peaceful picketers below. “Indignation turned to anger,” one of the protesters later wrote in The San Francisco Free Press. “Feet stepped in the ink. It appeared all around the sidewalks. One or two hands dipped into the ink and a new symbol was born.”

Stevens McClave raises his purple fist in protest

The police initially apprehended just one demonstrator, the first one to put his inky hand on the building walls, but as others protested his arrest, the “Tac Squad” (sardonically described as “close by and ever on the ready”) moved in, raising their batons and declaring the picket line an illegal assembly.

In the ensuing “fracas” (another great 1969 word), a dozen protesters were arrested for disorderly conduct and thrown in the paddy wagon—several on felony charges that were eventually dropped (except for one instance of allegedly biting a police officer). Other protesters took the issue to City Hall, where an additional three were arrested for trespassing, unlawful assembly and remaining at the site of a riot (essentially, staying in the building past closing time).

Unsurprisingly, the SFPD’s heavy-handed response—and the ensuing cases against the arrested protesters—galvanized not just the members of more radical LGBTQ+ groups, but the old guard they initially sought to distance themselves from, creating a network of support that would propel the Bay Area’s gay liberation movement in the years to come.

Marc Robert Stein, professor of history at San Francisco State University and editor of The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History, thinks the timing of Patterson’s article wasn’t coincidental, and reflected the era’s homophobic attitudes to burgeoning gay organizing. “October was the month when mainstream magazines first covered Stonewall,” he says. “The movement is really growing. And it’s at that moment that there’s this incredibly hostile story.”

Join the gay revolution
Before the events of the Purple Hand and before the creation of the CHF, the largest gay organization in San Francisco was the Society for Individual Rights (S.I.R.), a homophile society (to use the language of the time) founded in 1964.

As the women’s rights, anti-war and Black power movements swept the country, some younger members of the LGBTQ+ community considered S.I.R. to be too conservative. In an April 1969 editorial, Leo Laurence, editor of Vector, S.I.R.’s monthly magazine, broke ranks with the mostly white, middle-class and nonconfrontational members of S.I.R., calling them “timid, uptight, conservative, and afraid to act for the good of the whole homosexual community.”

The time had come, Laurence argued, for everyone to come out to their friends, family and employers, and to be proud of their sexuality. They should be joining forces with other social causes, like the Black Panthers and local unions, and standing up for everyone’s rights.

To illustrate his idea of LGBTQ+ freedom in a subsequent Berkeley Barb interview, Laurence supplied the alt weekly with a picture of two men smiling: Laurence with his arms around his friend Gale Whittington. In no short order, S.I.R. asked Laurence to resign, and Whittington was fired from his job at the States Steamship Company.

The CHF, co-founded by Laurence, Whittington and a few others, was a direct reaction to this double rejection from both “straight” society and the existing gay establishment. And with this effort, they would be all about coalition-building.

The Purple Hand events were co-organized by at least three like-minded groups, including Gay Guerrilla Theater and the Gay Liberation Front. But despite the fracture between Laurence and S.I.R. that precipitated the creation of the CHF months earlier, the old-guard emerged as surprising supporters of the younger demonstrators as well.

In a Nov. 7 Berkeley Tribe piece reflecting on the demonstration and its aftermath, Laurence writes, “I was scared and felt alone in jail, until I learned of the help mobilized ‘outside.’” The Red Mountain Tribe gathered bail money, S.I.R.’s president saved Laurence’s camera film before he was thrown in the paddy wagon, Del Martin (co-founder in 1955 of the lesbian group Daughters of Bilitis) helped CHF find lawyers, writing several sympathetic articles for Vector in the months to come.

“When Gale Whittington and I founded the CHF last spring, we dreamed of a nationwide movement,” Laurence writes in the Tribe. “It’s no longer a fantasy.”

After the Purple Hand
Protests against mainstream media’s depictions of the LGBTQ+ community would continue for years to come. The Purple Hand events, Stein says, are just one example of protests across the country against newspapers and magazines in ’69 and ’70, along with a second wave of protests against television stations and individual shows in ’73.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca, who joined the Gay Liberation Front in Philadelphia when he was a 19-year-old student at Temple University, remembers those times well. “Back in the ’70s especially pretty much any time they did a feature on the community it would be very negative,” he remembers. The GLF would picket or actually enter the newspaper offices, confronting editors and writers of the specific stories.

Through a combination of direct action, face-to-face conversations and larger shifts in society, Mecca says, things gradually changed, fulfilling in many ways Laurence’s early 1969 call-to-arms.

“I think one of the greatest things we did as a community was to come out of the closet,” Mecca says. “By being visible, we broke all the stereotypes. We forced people to engage with us, we forced our families to deal with us, we forced people to see we were just like them.”

https://www.kqed.org/arts/13859570/friday-purple-hand-gay-liberation-1969

BEAUTY: Art--Misc. Skull And Skeleton Art For Halloween 2024

Top to bottom: Bloom by Simón Prades; Memento Mori by Max Slevogt; Death At The Ball by Felicien Rops; The Reaper by Tyra Kleen;  Dancing Skeletons by Kawanabe Kyosai; 

BEAUTY: AI Digital Art for Halloween--Robert Mealing (Spiritus Loci)

Artist Robert Mealing uses the AI tool Midjourney to create some gorgeous, spooky imagery, and his ongoing October Misremembered series is perfect for this time of year. I posted his creations last year here, and he has updated the project with new images for 2024, seen below. This new crop reminds me of Victorian Ghost Photography, seen here.

https://spiritusloci.tumblr.com/