"On Being" by Max Cooper & Felix Gerbelot

Micro to macro...but in between--
reaching out for that hand to hold--
reaching out for the star--

"On Being" by Max Cooper & Felix Gerbelot.

Max Cooper says:
"I asked the public "what do you want to express that you feel you can't in everyday life?".
I hadn't expected too much to come back, but when I had a look after some months I was floored by what people had been submitting.
This database of thoughts and feelings became the source of the "On Being" album, installations and website (onbeing.maxcooper.net). Most of the tracks on the album concern themselves with a single quote, but for one piece, I wanted to tackle the feeling of the whole collection. There's so many beautiful, scary, funny, sad, horrific, mundane and absurd expressions of our shared humanity in there, there's a very particular emotional impact of reading through the collection. It's very hard to put into words because of that range of emotions it contains, but somehow music is able to capture all of that in a way that language cannot. That's what the piece of music is about. It started from the sound of Felix Gerbelot's viola, and eventually became the title track of the album."

Video by:
Masanobu Hiraoka

https://onbeing.maxcooper.net/
https://www.instagram.com/masanobuhiraoka

"Au 8ème Jour"

This beautiful, profound short film from France, "Au 8ème Jour" ("On the eighth day" in English) is moving and offers no answers, because, well, we are not sure there are any.

And here is an interesting look at the CGI used to make this multi-award winning short film.

https://www.piktura.fr/projets/au-8eme-jour-79.htm

"Black Poppies" by Underworld

I have a little lump of trembling emotion in my throat as I listen to this new song, "Black Poppies" by the divine Underworld (Karl Hyde and Rick Smith). From their album "Strawberry Hotel" to be released on October 25th, 2024.

The melody...I...Hyde's voice...I just...it's just so...it's so...*sigh*

Who can handle who cares
And who never came, who cares
And keeps adopting, adapting and embracing change
And change you may feel a little strange at first
But keep changing

We got the best books and the best boys and the best buys
And the first the second will be last
And the dance floor is always full
To be it, to the rush
We got steps, well come in

You are, you are beautiful
You are, you are beautiful

Who can handle who cares
And who never came, who cares
And keeps adopting, adapting and embracing change
And change you may feel a little strange at first
But keep changing

You are, you are beautiful
You are, you are beautiful
You are, you are beautiful

"Cut a hole in the news
don’t make it complicated
we’re no longer alone
you may feel a little strange at first
Mr Mickey Marley
wild black and white
my eyes go crazy
keeps adopting, adapting
if nature is heaven
in her arms you live happy
glitter finger, numbering four weeks
studs like tiny stars
machines playing tunes to block out the life, block out the light
set fire to it if you want to see it go up in flames
follow the line to the rising sun
we are all of these things and more things"

Arranged for strings by Gus Nicholson

Violin 1- Will Clark
Violin 2 - Rocket Brooks and Sungeun Kang
Viola - Catherine McCardel
Cello - Maddie Johnston
Double Bass - Jonny Hayward

https://www.underworldlive.com/

"Time" by EELS

Well, this must be the season for profound songs...with Guster's lovely "Keep Going," and yesterday's new song "Boys" by Amen Dunes...here is "Time" by EELS. Oh, where do I start... where we come from, who we love, who we must leave behind, how we miss them, our own journey, the limitation of our presence...you'll need a tissue for this.

Time, it's all about time now
Tick-tock I rock, but then I look at the clock
Knock-knock, who's there?
Well, I don't dare...
Open the door

Time, there was nothing but time there
Click-clack riding down the tracks
Never worried about coming back
Anyplace looked good to me
Why not stop and see...
What's there?

Time, there isn't much time now
What's the fear, well, I like it here
With the ones I love so near
Maybe there's just somе way
Dear god...
I can stay

https://www.eelstheband.com/

BEAUTY: Painting--Kevin Specht

I am touched by artist Kevin Specht's narratives in his work. Are they landscapes populated with people, or are they portraits with a landscape background? I suspect they are both since the landscape and the people seem to be interdependent. But the thing that really moves me is how some people in these crowd scenes seem to be made of light, as though they are not physically there but more of an energetic presence, a memory. These spirits walk among and with us: one woman even walks arm in arm with one, a former partner still there to comfort and guide. These two realms exist at the same time for Specht and the idea of this kind of continuity makes me emotional.

Top to bottom: Bike Path; Bocce Players; Crossroads; Flood; Rendezvous Problems; Sand; Through The Park; Two-Way Street

https://www.kevinspecht.com/

"To Speak" by Denise Levertov

In honor of National Poetry Month, I have shared exquisite poems by talented poets each Wednesday. And this achingly profound poem by Denise Levertov (1923 – 1997) concerns itself with the idea that talking about one's emotions, esepcially painful ones, brings relief and a sense of order to one's heart and mind. Bringing them out into the light instead of letting them stew in the dark recesses of our fears takes away the charge...

To Speak
by Denise Levertov

To speak of sorrow
works upon it
                moves it from its
crouched place barring
the way to and from the soul’s hall—
out in the light it
shows clear, whether
shrunken or known as
a giant wrath—
                discrete
at least, where before

its great shadow joined
the walls and roof and seemed
to uphold the hall like a beam.

Just watched...

...an extraordinary little film with a big subtext, "About Endlessness" from 2021 by Swedish director Roy Andersson.

Somehow the films of Andersson have passed me by until now. He is the auteur who created "the Living Trilogy" of films: "Songs from the Second Floor" (2000), "You, the Living" (2007), and "A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence" (2014). And now, at 78 years of age, he has created the distillation of his body of work, a film that, at a scant 76 minutes, manages to pack in the meaning of existence in this universe.

I have seen this film described as "plotless" but that is not accurate. It is true that the film consists of 31 different vignettes, none lasting longer than a few minutes, that feature different people in different situations in different locations but there is certainly an overarching idea to Andersson's collection of seemingly unrelated narratives. A few characters recur but for the most part, we hop not only between locations but between time periods as well. Contemporary scenes at, for example, a train station, a food market, a bar, or on a crowded bus flow around scenes of  WWII POWs marching through snow, an aerial view of an embracing couple floating over a bomb-ravaged Cologne (this vignette used for the poster, above, recalls Chagall's gorgeous 1913 painting Over the Town), even a brief view of Hitler's last moments in his bunker. The juxtaposition of daily--even banal--life (a father stops in the rain to tie his young daughter's shoe, a couple sit on a park bench and watch a formation of flying geese, a new grandmother snaps photos of her grandbaby) with the kind of horrors humankind is capable of creates a breathtaking kaleidoscopic perspective of life on this planet, a celebration of each moment big and small and a regard for the singular beauty embedded in our existence. But deftly and subtly intertwined with this profundity is a certain dark humor, a wry sense that finds absurdity in the banality and horror. The paradox of being alive. All in 76 minutes.

The closest the film comes to explaining itself is in a cute scene between two young college students, sitting in a nearly empty flat. While a young woman sits on a bed, a young man reads a text book and relates to her a startling fact he has just learned: that the first law of thermodynamics states all matter and energy can never be destroyed, only transformed. Therefore, he posits, none of us can ever end...all of our "energies" are never-ending. Endless.

The look of "About Endlessness" is a marvel too. A washed out color palette of neutrals, greys, and beiges provides an oppressive sense ("Oh, how daily life is..." Anton Chekov once remarked). His characters often sport white-powdered faces as though they are specters or ghosts in their own lives. But most astonishing is the fact that Andersson creates every single set on a soundstage, even the ones that seem to be outdoor locations like a soccer field. The labor-intensive process of creating these sets takes a month or more. Andersson himself says, "With 'About Endlessness' I want to continue to develop a cinematic language that is pared-down, simplified, refined, distilled, or however you choose to describe it. That’s what I mean by the expression abstraction. I strive to achieve that refinement, that simplification that is characteristic of our memories or our dreams. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to achieve this using a classic 'shooting on location' aesthetic. I have always preferred, and still prefer, to create and shoot all the scenes in a studio. It’s very costly and time consuming, but I feel that it’s worth it." I concur, as it gives "About Endlessness" its own controlled vernacular, almost as though we are watching one of Matthew Barney's art/sculptural films.

Recommend? Absolutely. And if such a film strikes you as "art house pretension," give it a go anyhow...with its short running time, it is enough time to dabble to see if the film resonates with you without investing hours.

https://www.royandersson.com/eng/endlessness/

"Circle 26" by Robert Koch & Foam and Sand

What a glorious piece of music this is: "Circle 26" by Foam and Sand, the ambient soundscape and visual project of award-winning composer and conceptual artist, Robot Koch. The background buzz, the swell of the song, the keening of the violins...it all makes me swoon. The BBC’s Bobby Friction noted of Koch’s music, "It sounds like artificial intelligence discovering religion."

"I started meditating 7 years ago. It’s interesting that meditation and medicine have the same root syllable. Meditating before working on my music resets my brain and helps me access ideas that are layers deeper than my conscious mind. Foam and Sand started as a self-soothing project which I now share with the intention of providing healing and inspiration to others."

--Robot Koch

https://www.robotsdontsleep.com/

"Fade Into You" by American Football with Miya Folick

Wow, this one took me by surprise. The indie group American Football covers Mazzy Star's classic, haunting song "Fade Into You," and manages to make it at once more accessible and more haunting! It starts as a whisper but really builds to a profound crescendo.

And the video is a beautiful, heartbreaking meditation on what it is to be alive...we jump from person to person, in everyday places and seemingly mundane settings (although a few are anything but). Watch and take in each situation, person, and meaning as the world goes round and round...

I wanna hold the hand inside you
I wanna take the breath that's true
I look to you and I see nothing
I look to you to see the truth

You live your life, you go in shadows
You'll come apart and you'll go black
Some kind of night into your darkness
Colors your eyes with what's not there

Fade into you
Strange you never knew
Fade into you
I think it's strange you never knew

A stranger's light comes on slowly
A stranger's heart is out of home
You put your hands into your head
A million smiles cover your heart

Fade into you
Strange you never knew
Fade into you
I think it's strange you never knew

Fade into you
Strange you never knew
Fade into you
I think it's strange you never knew
I think it's strange you never knew

American Football, photo by Atiba Jefferson

http://www.americanfootballmusic.com/

"Music For Psychedelic Therapy (Excerpt)" by Jon Hopkins

Sublime, profound sounds: "Music For Psychedelic Therapy (Excerpt)" by Jon Hopkins, from his recent release of the same name.

https://jonhopkins.co.uk/

Wes Anderson: "Cinema's most misunderstood filmmaker"

I have been a fan of Wes Anderson and his films since his debut film "Bottle Rocket." And for those who think that Wes Anderson films are just all style and weird people for the sake of being stylish and weird, here is a wonderful article Mark Allison wrote for BBC Culture that explains how I feel about the work of this incredible director.

Cinema's most misunderstood filmmaker

By Mark Allison 20th October 2021 | BBC Culture

Is there anything more to Wes Anderson's films than twee whimsicality and aloof performances? Much more, argues Mark Allison: they tell us the truth about being human.

"The paths of glory lead but to the grave." So reads the headstone above the burial place of Eloise Fischer, mother of Jason Schwartzman's Max Fischer, in Wes Anderson's 1998 film Rushmore. An extract from Thomas Gray's 1751 poem Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, it might seem a more fitting epitaph for the tomb of a great military hero than this unremarkable grave. But Anderson's films don't exist within our dull reality – his worlds are fairy tales, and like all good fairy tales, they begin with death.

Everything Anderson dreams up is ultimately about life's first inevitability, and the craterous absence it leaves in the lives of the bereaved – even if they might not be prepared to admit it. Max's traumatic loss of his mother, for example, is mentioned just twice in Rushmore's script, and both times briefly. But her presence, or lack thereof, defines all that Max does – particularly his strange, Oedipal obsession with the widowed Mrs Cross (Olivia Williams). Rushmore is a film about lonely, damaged people seeking human connection, and this spectre of unresolved grief haunts the Texan director's output.

In The Royal Tenenbaums, Ben Stiller plays the cartoonish but traumatised Chas
(Credit: Alamy)

Despite this thematic absorption, death is unlikely to be the first thing that comes to mind when considering Anderson's oeuvre. His distinctively affected visual style has been subject to both criticism and parody. A 2013 Saturday Night Live sketch imagined an Andersonian horror film called The Midnight Coterie of Sinister Intruders; brimming with twee pretensions, dad-rock needle-drops and oddly detached performances. But this preoccupation with the offbeat surface of Anderson's work underestimates his deep understanding of the human condition and the gentle empathy which pervades his filmmaking.

From his debut feature Bottle Rocket (1996), the director's reliance on understatement has lent his work a unique profundity. When Luke Wilson's awkwardly inept crook Anthony Adams candidly remarks, "I'm usually so exhausted now at the end of the days that I don't have time to think about blown opportunities or wasted time," he betrays an immense and existential sadness that cuts disarmingly to the heart of his lot in life.

This peculiar aloofness is a distinctive trait in Anderson's characters, but it is only a varnish on deeply rooted experiences of tragedy and emotional trauma. Ben Stiller's Chas Tenenbaum in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) appears to be a cartoonish figure with his hypochondriac mania and bright red tracksuit, but at his core he is a man disturbed by the death of his wife and the weight of his continuing responsibility towards their children.

Steve Zissou (Bill Murray) in The Life Aquatic is a protagonist whose journey is defined by grief
(Credit: Alamy)

Likewise, Bill Murray's title character in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) is a transparently absurd personality from the moment he first dons his crimson beanie and holstered Glock, but the brutal death of his best friend, for which he vows revenge, is no less ghastly as a result. Anderson's protagonists bury their trauma beneath a facade of caricature, and their journeys are defined by how they deal with their grief.

Loss continues to hang over Anderson's latest film, The French Dispatch (2021), which is perhaps his most nakedly sentimental work. Opening with the death of a long-serving magazine editor, the film is structured as an episodic obituary for a man, a publication, and an entire industry facing gradual extinction. The name of the fictional French city in which the film is set, Ennui-sur-Blasé, unsubtly signposts this atmosphere of melancholic nostalgia. The colourful characters we've come to expect from Anderson are still present, but their eccentricities contribute to a tableau of mid-century journalism as an exciting and noble arena, since lost to time.

Death had an even more explicit presence in an earlier version of the film. The writer and filmmaker Matt Zoller Seitz tells BBC Culture, "The prologue to The French Dispatch originally ended with Owen Wilson in a graveyard having a picnic near the grave of a young woman, presumably his wife". It seems there is so much mourning in Anderson's worlds that he can afford to cut some of it for pacing.

HUMAN CONNECTION

While Anderson is deft in walking the line between farce and tragedy, he occasionally suspends his broadly comedic sensibility for moments of unadulterated horror. When Richie Tenenbaum attempts suicide, the frankness with which it is depicted is sudden and distressing. Equally, the death of Steve Zissou's son Ned, or the fatal accident during the river crossing in The Darjeeling Limited (2007), deliver an unexpectedly brutal gut punch. These moments of catastrophe enforce a sense of real and terrifying consequence into Anderson's fantastical worlds.

Anderson's films – including The Grand Budapest Hotel – frequently address the theme of death
(Credit: Alamy)

"Death is the biggest thing that we can't control. We can't even know what lies beyond it," Seitz tells BBC Culture. "Accepting this constitutes a harsh lesson for Wes Anderson protagonists, who are often obsessed with controlling everything."

Anderson is not shy in crediting his influences, from filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger to the writer Stefan Zweig, but the director's own experiences also provide a major source of inspiration. His films are littered with autobiographical details; Rushmore, for example, was filmed in the director's own alma mater, St John's School in Houston, Texas, while the family conflict at the heart of The Royal Tenenbaums was inspired by his own parents' divorce.

The most sobering moment in The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) comes as Zero Moustafa reveals to M Gustave that his entire family was killed in an earlier war. Speaking to Seitz for his 2015 book on The Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson elaborates that Zero's harrowing story was inspired by his partner, Juman Malouf, and the experiences of her family in Lebanon.

Perhaps it's because there's so much of Anderson in his own work that it never feels crass when he mixes sensitive themes with absurdist humour. As producer James L Brooks writes in his introduction to Anderson and Owen Wilson's Rushmore screenplay, "They have pulled off the hardest trick in all of contemporary American film: they have won the freedom to use movies as a form of self-expression."

During the director's commentary on the Criterion edition of The Royal Tenenbaums, Anderson explains the dual impulses of visual invention and emotional authenticity that motivate him. "This is a movie where there's a lot of artifice… and it's fun for me to work on those things," he says, "but ultimately the movie didn't mean anything to me until the characters started to become connected to things that I had been through."

In The Darjeeling Limited, three brothers travel to India in search of enlightenment but find instead a new respect for each other
(Credit: Alamy)

So powerful is Anderson's empathy for his characters and their emotional distress that there is rarely room for outright villains in his stories – the farmers in Fantastic Mr Fox (2009) and the fascist ZigZag movement in Grand Budapest being exceptions. As director Martin Scorsese reflected for Esquire in March 2000, "[Bottle Rocket] was a movie without a trace of cynicism, that obviously grew out of its director's affection for his characters in particular and for people in general. A rarity."

A common thread across Anderson's work is the healing power of simple human connection. When Chas Tenenbaum confides to his father, Gene Hackman's Royal, "I've had a rough year, Dad", the response is simply, "I know you have, Chassie''. Both understand all that he's going through, and simply vocalising it is the first step in a deeper reconciliation.

Similarly, when Steve Zissou finally faces the Jaguar Shark that killed his best friend, having lost his own son in pursuit of revenge, all he can say is, "I wonder if it remembers me?" It's a phrase loaded with the meaning of a thousand monologues. How many of us have wasted time in search of things we didn't really want, and neglected what we do in the process?

For the Whitman brothers in The Darjeeling Limited, their journey to India may not have brought the intended spiritual enlightenment or reconciliation with their estranged mother, but they nevertheless find their love and respect for one another renewed. In the film's closing moments, as they toss aside the hideously printed leather luggage they inherited from their father, they cleanse themselves of the emotional baggage that had pushed them apart.

The French Dispatch is a portrayal of mid-century journalism – and loss is a theme throughout the film
(Credit: Alamy)

Not all of Anderson's characters are able to come to terms with their grief so cleanly. The scale of Zero's loss in The Grand Budapest Hotel is such that he is unable to recover. Concluding his life story to Jude Law's author, he glosses over the execution of M Gustave and tragically premature death of his wife and child. As the playwright Anne Washburn writes in her introduction to Seitz's book, "In the character of Zero Mustafa, we see a man who has adapted to his losses but has never rebuilt his life, choosing instead to enshrine his past; he is a testament, rather than a true survivor".

Being a survivor comes with its own responsibilities to continue the memory of those who have passed, a burden that Anderson is keen to bear. The end credits of The French Dispatch duly feature a dedication to a number of 20th-Century writers and journalists, all of whom have long since filed their final dispatch. The lasting impression is the same sentiment of fading glory and inevitable decay that decorated Elouise Fischer's grave in Rushmore, and has since reached across Wes Anderson's career.

Link to original article:
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20211015-cinemas-most-misunderstood-filmmaker

"Visions" by José González

José González (previously here) has treated us to another beautiful, profound song. Watch the earth fly by, but watch out for the spanner in this video for "Visions" from his forthcoming album "Local Valley," due out September 17, 2021.

Visions
Trying to make sense of the now
Trying to make sense of the past
To show us how

Visions
Imagining the worlds that could be
Shaping a mosaic of fates
For all sentient beings

Visions
Cycles of growth and decay
Cascading chains of events
With no one to praise or blame

Visions
Avoidable suffering and pain
We are patiently inching our way
Toward unreachable utopias

Visions
Enslaved by the forces of nature
Elevated by mindless replicators
Challenged to steer our collective destiny

Visions
Look at the magic of reality
While accepting with all honesty
That we can't know for sure what's next

No we can't know for sure what's next

But that we're in this together
We are here together

https://jose-gonzalez.com/

"Convocations - Meditations" by Sufjan Stevens

My god. I am nearly speechless. The angel Sufjan Stevens (previously here) has released a collection of ambient tracks that are some of the most profound sounds I have heard in a long while.

It may be tempting to reduce Convocations into a longform ambient anomaly within Sufjan Stevens’ vast catalogue. It is, however, neither an anomaly nor entirely ambient. This is not a side project. From his numerous dance scores for New York City Ballet to instrumental albums such as Enjoy Your Rabbit, Aporia, and The BQE, Stevens spends at least half his working life making largely instrumental music, as he has for decades. And though the first ten pieces, dubbed “Meditations,” unfurl as gorgeous states of reflective new-age grace, this is by no means an ambient enterprise. Stevens invokes the lessons of Morton Subotnick, Maryanne Amacher, Christian Fennesz, Brian Eno, and Wolfgang Voigt here. As musically erudite as it is emotionally experienced, Convocations can be dissonant, vertiginous, rhythmic, repetitive, urgent, or calm—that is, all the things we undergo when we inevitably live through loss, isolation, and anxiety.

Indeed, Convocations moves like a two-and-a-half-hour requiem mass for our present times of difficulty, its 49 tracks allowing for all these feelings to be felt. The album is divided into five sonic cycles, each replicating a different stage of mourning. Convocations occasionally soothes and sometimes hurts; when it’s done, you’re left with a renewed sense of wonder for being here at all.

In fact, Stevens made Convocations in response to (and as an homage to) the life and death of his biological father, who died in September last year, two days following the release of The Ascension. It is, then, ultimately an album about loss, and an album that reflects a year in which we have all lost so much. One could easily compare this project to Stevens’ album Carrie & Lowell, which he wrote following his mother’s death. But this is something entirely different. A new time, a new season, a new life lost, a new reckoning, a new kind of isolation, grief, despair, frustration, confusion, and the search for happiness and hope for the future. This is not a personal record, but a universal one. Convocations is built on a shared experience that seeks to be honest about how complicated grief can be in these difficult times—the pain, the anxiety, the unknown, the absolute joy of memory. This is also an album made in lockdown, when we were all cloistered in whatever space we had. So long as the science and statistics hold, Convocations arrives just as we begin to emerge from a year whose losses we will calculate for a lifetime. It is, then, right on time, as we begin to process our grief and try to carry on with it. 

—Grayson Haver Currin

The first of the five volumes, "Meditations," was released on April 8, 2021 and all ten tracks are posted below. "Meditation I" makes me weep.

The other four volumes, "Lamentations," "Revelations," "Celebrations," and "Incantations," are scheduled to be released by May 6, 2021.

https://sufjan.com/

"Abecedarian 'G'” by Daniel Schonning

For National Poetry Month 2021, I have presented special poems by special poets each Wednesday. And for our final installation of poets for this year, let's meditate on this incredibly atmospheric, profound poem by the talented Daniel Schonning. He has miraculously managed to examine all the "big" life issues in a small space--life, death, religion, love, and the existential question of being. 

Abecedarian “G”

by Daniel Schonning

God says to the meek one, “On Sunday mornings, have them say ‘Yes’—say ‘Yes,’ brightly.

Have them nestle dollar bills in the knots of elm trees; use three times the zest in their lemon curds.

If it’s snowing, open the flue and start up the fire. Tell them there’s a double-dutch

jumprope with their name on it. Paint the windows violet, paint the lattice pink. Tell them every

knock-kneed great blue heron is just like me: long legs, quick eyes, and chock-full of

longing. Tell them I’ve got a real doozy of a crossword clue that I just can’t get—eight letters, ends with an x.” So the

meek one says, “All right”—goes to the window, sets his yellow workgloves on the sill. He could

not be more tired. His fingers have that tingling feeling, like they’re boiling—it must be below zero

    outside, he thinks, too cold for walking. But it’s plenty warm in here. If he’s honest, the meek one’s had

one hell of a day. His mother’s dying—can only eat bananas, milk, and bits of uncooked dough. He just can’t

put it out of his mind. Her voice is thinning out a little more each morning: when she wakes up crying, it sounds like a kestrel

    singing from far off. Sounds like she’s got a

question stuck in her throat. What that means to the meek one, he doesn’t know—for now, he’s waiting for the snow to fall a little

    softer, for the

room to darken, so he can set out—keep x-ing the boxes on his to-do list. At least it’s warm here, he thinks. God says to the

    meek one, “On

Sunday evenings, have them bundle their children in blankets made of pansies—yellow over blue—then hunker down for the

    night. And if they have to leave, remind them

to zip up their coats—it’s cold, ice cold, out there. In the crawl space

under that double-wide, there’s a nest of jaybirds—tell them not to look, or the birds are prone to

vanish. Ask if, sometimes, everyone would just keep quiet.

When a foghorn lows at night, pours itself out on the salt reeds and beaches, rattles the pier’s

x-shaped pilons and sets the gulls flying, ask if they’ll just listen.” So the meek one says, “All right”—keeps looking through the

    window. There’s a grove of

young aspen trees—“daughters,” they’re called—laid bare by the cold. The meek one is not sure they’ll make it. As a gray

    snowbird

zips from one naked branch to the next, the meek one thinks

about his mother. She’ll be getting hungry soon. She mostly stays in bed, but yesterday the meek one found her crumpled on the

bathroom floor. Her long hair—always in a neat, high bun—was spread wide on the slate, bright as zinc. One summer, when the

    roads were dirt and the roof was tin, a thunderhead

crawled through town like a freight train—no rain, no hail, just hot wind and lightning. At the time, the meek one’s mother said

    the storm could take the house right off its feet; would

draw the meek one clear up to heaven if he didn’t just stay put in that bathroom, hold tight to the hot water valve, and hope—said

    she’d be right back. But the meek one couldn’t help it. When the storm shook the house, he ran to the main room and peered

    out the window.

Even in the half-light, the meek one saw his mother at once. She was lying on the knoll outside,

    holding quick to two fistfuls of grass—watching the black cloud fill and empty with long threads

    of light. She was speaking into the wind. The warm air surged against her upturned face, must

    have filled her lungs—drew skyward a havoc of her black hair. At the time, the meek one

    thought she might have been saying, “Please.”

From the other room, the meek one hears his mother wake, try to rise. The light dims. He slips his

    gloves into his back pocket, takes up his list and marks one box with an x. Turning from the

    window, the meek one says, “All right.”

"3:45" by Alisha Liu

CalArts animation student Alisha Liu created a gentle, optimistic short film called "3:45." I will say that I do what the young character in this film does, but instead of seeing one side or the other, I usually see both...at the same time...macro and micro...welcome to my head...

https://alishaliu.com/

Life by Dagsson

Blink of an eye...

https://dagsson.com/

"One day you're seventeen and planning for someday, and then quietly, without you ever really noticing, someday is today, and that someday is yesterday and this is your life."
--Mark Schwahn, "One Tree Hill"

This Solstice, Solace for the Darkness by Dennis Overbye

This Solstice, Solace for the Darkness

A rare conjunction of planets serves as a reminder that there is more to the universe than just ourselves.

by Dennis Overbye for The New York Times
Dec. 18, 2020

We have now arrived at the longest, darkest night of the longest, darkest year. And yet rarely have the heavens so proclaimed their glory.

In blithe disregard for the activities of the Electoral College and everything else that humans were engaged in, the sun and the moon last week lined up in a perfect cue-ball shot to produce a total solar eclipse. The moon’s shadow slid across Argentina and Chile, and the majestic but shy mandala known as the solar corona revealed itself to crowds who had braved rain and fog in anticipation of the sight.

Meanwhile, the Geminid meteor shower graced the Northern Hemisphere with celestial brush strokes of fire. And as always there is the brilliance of the winter Milky Way, starring Orion.

Now comes one of the grandest events of the sky: a planetary conjunction.

For the past year, Jupiter and Saturn have been dancing ever closer in the night sky. On the evening of Dec. 21, the very nadir of winter, they will be so close — one-tenth of one angular degree — that if your eyes are as bad as mine, they will appear as one blurry, bright planet. With a little optical aid you should be able to discern them as separate orbs, almost kissing, although Jupiter will be 450 million miles in front of the ringed Saturn.

Go out and look southwest in the hour after sunset. According to astronomers, the two planets have not appeared this close to each other in the sky since 1623 — but the sun’s glare then would have rendered them invisible. To find a conjunction that humans could see, you must skip all the way back to 1226, or ahead to March 15, 2080. You might wonder who will be around to witness that event.

Every 20 years, Jupiter and Saturn come into conjunction — appearing within a couple of degrees from each other, about the width of three full moons.

Such conjunctions of planets are fraught with psychic meaning to astrologers. And some astronomers have speculated that a conjunction involving Jupiter, Venus and the star Regulus in the years 2-3 B.C. might have inspired the stories of the star of Bethlehem

The universe is big enough that you can find almost any omen you want there. Yesterday more than 3,500 Americans died of Covid-19. As many may die today, and again tomorrow. And tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

Two of the titles on The New York Times Book Review’s list of notable books in 2020 concerned the long-term fate of life and the cosmos: “Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe,” by Brian Greene, and “The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking),” by Katie Mack. Both paint the same basic picture, which is either dreary or inspiring, depending on your point of view and psychology.

In the grand scheme of things, the universe is young. It was born in an eruption of energy 13.8 billion years ago. Its future, as far as we know, is endless, but everything interesting that will ever happen is happening now. This is the era of light, stars and galaxies; of creatures crawling around on dust motes, constructing telescopes and other intellectual pyramids, driven at least in part by wonder at the surroundings.

But in a few billion years the sun will engulf and destroy us. If the universe doesn’t collapse in a Big Crunch and disappear, dark energy could blow what remains permanently beyond the event horizon. The universe will become too cold and dead even for thought, let alone life. None of us will be remembered.

Should we curse our fate, or be grateful we were here for the party?

Lately a barred owl has come to live in my Manhattan neighborhood. Nicknamed Barnard after the college a block away, it has become a local celebrity. I saw it most recently in an old knotted elm on the edge of Riverside Park, surrounded by admiring humans with smartphones and telephoto lenses. A flock of crows kept trying to chase it away. For me, Barnard has become an omen, a harbinger of the essential generosity of nature in the low, slanting light of winter, a reminder that there is more going on in this world than just us. Even if the crows or the worsening weather causes Barnard to depart, I will feel blessed to have seen it.

On Dec. 3 astronomers from the European Gaia spacecraft, which has been mapping and measuring more than a billion stars in the Milky Way, released a video showing the projected motions of some 40,000 stars over the next 400,000 years. They looked like bugs swimming in a petri dish, twigs circling in the eddy of a stream, dust motes in a sunbeam.

Wherever those cosmic dust motes are headed, they will go regardless of whether we are here to watch, measure, map or wonder about them. Jupiter and Saturn will continue their dance; the sun and moon will play tag with each other’s shadows.

Odds are, whoever or whatever lives out there will never know that we were here at all, nor will we know them. But we know who we are. We know that we are alive now. We know whom we loved and whom we lost. Maybe that’s enough to ask of any universe. 

Saturn and Jupiter have been inching closer to each other all year and on December 21st, 2020,
will be close enough to appear as one. Photo: Ted S. Warren/Associated Press

Link to original article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/science/christmas-star-jupiter-saturn-conjunction.html

“Singularity (after Stephen Hawking)” by Marie Howe

http://www.mariehowe.com/
https://www.brainpickings.org/2020/04/23/singularity-marie-howe-animated

"Home" by Icarus feat. Aurora - Lane 8 Remix

I am hooked on this song "Home" by Icarus with Aurora on vocals, remixed by Lane 8.

And I go home again, it's time
And I go home again, it's time
And I go home again, it's time
I'm going home again, it's time

Such simple lyrics, seemingly without meaning. But in actuality, I find the concept incredibly profound. In poetry, we are always looking for compact ways to express large thoughts. Poetry is emotional shorthand. It is a signifier, a sign post for something too big for our hearts or minds to hold at once. A lot of art plays this role for us, including film, painting, sculpture, and dance. Literature does this to an extent but the structure of literature allows for the luxury of explaining large concepts at length and does not really need to be a signifier as it can end up being the signified. But the brevity of poetry--good poetry--allows for the processing of enormous concepts. And for this song, Icarus and Aurora are singing about going home. Indeed it is the only line in this repetitive song. But why would anyone sing about a subject so mundane and ordinary as "going home?" Unless of course the simple act of going home carries more weight than just getting in your car or on the subway to go back to where you live, where you "have your stuff." Going home here possibly signifies a return to comfort, to care, to love, where we all experienced a feeling of nurturing...and if you did not have that experience, firstly, I am sorry, but secondly, this signifies a place in your heart where it is still possible to be nurtured in that primal, unconditional way. A way that you still long for and need, whether you know and admit it or not. But there is of course another level of meaning. And it is to this one that I respond the strongest. Despite the electronic dance beat of this song, the sense is absolutely laden with emotion, in a minor key, with a dramatic, serious bass line. The mournful tune and Aurora's otherworldy harmonized vocal treatment back up this epic idea...the sound is grand, transcendent...going home...a return and all that entails, a rest and all that entails...a final rest. Going home as a return to a point of origin, coming full circle, making a full cycle from start to finish. It's time. What do you think this could be referring to? When is it time? Use your imagination. Listen to this song with that idea in mind. Listen to Aurora plaintively singing these words.

https://www.facebook.com/thisisicarus
https://www.aurora-music.com/

Find A Way Through, Around, Or Over

These are the lyrics to a live version of the song "Simultaneous" by Puscifer.

Seems timely.

Please read:

We in the modern age operate under the dangerous misconception regarding our heritage. If one should ask the average citizen whether or not they believe humans are more evolved than our ancient ancestors they will more often than not express the belief that we are indeed far, far superior.

Surely we are more sophisticated and more capable of reason than the hunter gatherers of 13,000 BC. More civilized than the marauding Vikings of 1,000 years ago. We imagine these peoples as ignorant, primitive, barbaric. We are not those peoples.

In fact Homo sapiens--modern humans--share an inherited gene pool with the earliest hominids like Australopithecus who lived 2.5 million years ago. We possess no significant physiological differences than Cro-Magnon or the Neanderthals. Nor does evidence suggest our tendencies toward the barbaric have lessened over time.

On the contrary, present day humans are capable of the same self destructive behavior, the same crimes against humanity, the same violent power struggles as our ancestors. We appear to be doomed by our DNA to repeat the same destructive behaviors our forebearers have repeated for millennia. If anything, our problem solving skills have actually diminished with the advent of technology and our ubiquitous modern conveniences.

And yet, despite our predisposition toward fear-driven hostility, toward what we anachronistically term 'primitive' behavior another instinct is just as firmly encoded in our makeup. We are capable--as our ancestors were--of incredible, breathtaking acts of kindness.

Every hour of every day a man risks his life at a moment's notice to save another. Forget for a moment the belligerent, benevolent billionaires who grant the unfortunate a crumb of cost-free cake.

I speak of pure acts of selflessness. The mother who rushes into the street to save a child from a speeding vehicle. The person who runs into a burning building to reach a family trapped on an upper story. The man who can barely swim who dives into a lake to rescue a drowning stranger.

Such actions, such moments, such unconscious selfless decisions define what it is to be human.

Should the oceans rise,
Should the sky come falling down,
Should the islands tremble beneath us,
See our better nature blossom.

Should the sun rain fire,
Should Hell on Earth freeze over,
And our inner beast wake hungry,
See our better nature feed them.

Should the sun rain fire,
Should Hell on Earth freeze over,
And our inner beast wait hungry,
See our better nature feed and calm them.

Find a way through, around, or over.

https://puscifer.com/