The London Riots
Word.
Via Alan Phelan, who wrote: 21.40 Matthew Moore, the Telegraph’s assistant news editor, filmed this extraordinary speech by a fearless West Indian woman in Hackney, East London. Contains obscene language.
Herzog and the cave
Video of the continuing adventures of Werner Herzog in pursuit of the transcendent is now available here.
Neil and his Dad | Paula Carino
Paula Carino, The couch dwellers
Paula Carino, The couch dwellers
Susan McKeown | Singing in the dark
Susan McKeown is one of Ireland’s best kept secrets, though she’s been living in New York for half her life and she’s won a Grammy so the secret’s spreading. She’s been recording her new album, Singing In The Dark, at Ross’ studio for the past few months and she’s releasing it at the end of this month.
I’ve heard some rough mixes of the record and it’s beautiful and ambitious and searingly passionate. Susan’s devastating, keening voice transforms poems written by a number of writers suffering from depression and mental ill health into searing flights of lyrical and melodic beauty, featuring some of New York’s finest musicians. It’s an extraordinary record. And she needs to finish it. She has, yes, a Kickstarter project to help her do this.
Susan is 3 days away from her funding deadline and she’s really close to making it. Take a minute to listen to what she says in the video and listen to some excerpts of the songs. She tells a compelling story about this album.
On The Stairs
The CD artwork was designed beautifully by India Amos, and the Lucy Foley logo was designed by Ross Bonadonna.
Garden Of Second Guesses
You sign your name, I take a breath
You tell a joke and no one laughs
You sweat, I shake
When our smiles don’t know which way to go
Can we watch them melt away?
That Pleasant Smile
I don’t want to play with you
I just want to see you cry
Cry that pleasant smile
From my sight
Mister Bogeyman
I am full to the brim with Mister Bogeyman
He’s running all around in me today
He’s cutting my life into shredded plans
to cook up for his morning brunch buffet
Making Circles
Like punchdrunk October flies in pointless rapture / Dancing one final dance before the capture / We are awkward and shakey as we move closer / We only want to fling ourselves down
From Copenhagen
Kiss You Free
Dreams that won’t leave the room.
Song a day: Lucy Foley, It’s A Tangle
My debut album, Copenhagen, is out this Friday, folks! So I’ve decided to feature a song from the album every day here, kind of like an NPR ‘First Listen’ but right here on Clusterflock, goddammit.
This is an album of very personal songs, most of which I began to write and record while living in Copenhagen between December 2003 and June 2007. Probably influenced by Hans Christian Anderson, whose grave I cycled past regularly, but also the Grimm brothers’ style of storytelling, many of these songs have a dark fairy tale mood. I call it ‘art pop’.
Copenhagen is drawn from a wide array of influences including Talking Heads, Astrud Gilberto, Kurt Weill, Ambitious Lovers, Motown, Blondie and klezmer. I recorded it in New York with the brilliantly talented Ross Bonadonna.
Today’s featured song is the opening song from the album. It’s called It’s A Tangle. And here it is.
Rain
Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him ……. A super calloused fragile … mystic hexed by halitosis.
Rain Chacon, March 5th, 1972–September 22nd, 2010. RIP.
Lucy Foley, Copenhagen
My debut album will be out on October 1st. It’s called Copenhagen. I’d love you all to come and listen to it here. It’s available now for pre-order, too.
The Tae man
Bit of a treat inspired by the recent conversation about accents. Eamon Kelly the incredible seanchaí, tells the story of the adventures of a tae man, the first bringers of tea to Ireland. Not many of these guys left now.
Via Stan Carey.
Ok, just in case anybody missed this
A boat made of recycled plastic bottles has just crossed the Pacific. Yeah.
Dirty, bad mannered, unhygienic
This, I believe, is an official notice put up by the Council. I took some photos in London on my most recent visit. They’re here.
God speed, Louise
May flocks of flying penises bring you gently to your rest, singing lullabyes to you as they do it.
This Is Where, part two: Milla
This Is Where is a photo movie project I began two years ago. The photos and narrative are by Lucy Foley. The music was composed and performed by Ross Bonadonna.
This Is Where is intended to be a multi-part exploration of the place where my practices of photography, performance, writing and collaboration meet. Parts one and two were first exhibited at Portora Royal School in Enniskillen during the Enniskillen Arts Festival, 2008. Portora is a 400 year old institution based in a magnificent old house high on the hill above Enniskillen town. It is where Samuel Beckett and Oscar Wilde were schooled.
This is part two of This Is Where. It is called Milla.
Against totalitarianism
When Joel Johnson wrote that Apple was trying to turn computers into appliances, like a dishwasher, he sounded like he was making sense. Nothing wrong with a dishwasher.
But the company that sells you your dishwasher doesn’t get to tell you which dishes you’re allowed to use. They don’t get to sue companies that make dishes that might possibly be loaded into the dishwasher. They don’t get to sue you for figuring out how to cook salmon in your dishwasher. They don’t get to sue O’Reilly if it publishes a recipe for dishwasher salmon.
Cory Doctorow responds to the idea that hey, we don’t need ‘permission’ to hack our iPads, we’re all individuals here. His original post is here.
Pen nerd that I am
It looks like he used a Cross. Politics.
Your cat hates your baby and wants to kill it
Not true!
There can’t be many people who still believe that cats deliberately suffocate babies by sucking the breath out of them, but in case you’re one of them, they don’t. That doesn’t mean a sleeping cat couldn’t accidentally suffocate a newborn baby (there are a few documented cases), so it makes sense to keep the cat out of the baby’s room for the first couple of months.
Pet myths, debunked. The rodent-type animals in this pet line-up are particularly soulful looking. I found this one the most disturbing:
Cats purr when they are happy: True, but they also purr when they’re in pain, and when they’re dying.
Ireland, a couple of weeks ago
I can report that it’s still here. I took a lot of photos of Connemara earlier this month, which are up on Flickr. I’m still building the set.
John Bulmer’s photographs of Northern England in the seventies
do for Manchester what Helen Leavitt did for New York.
Angels in America
Thirty one Antony Gormley sculptures have come to New York. Go check them out.
