The Mother Courage of Rock
She was skinny, quick-witted, disarmingly unprofessional, alternating between stand-up patter, bardic intonations, and the hypnotic emotional sway of a chanteuse, and she was sexy in an androgynous way I hadn’t encountered before. The elements cohered convincingly; she seemed both entirely new and somehow long-anticipated. For me at nineteen, the show was an epiphany.
Springtime 1976, I was living in the cinderblock building on the glorified median strip there where they split Highway 13, and one day I went over to this one girl’s apartment, she lived right by the guy who dealt me speed, and she said, “Hey, you know who you remind me of? You remind me of Patti Smith!”
Gave her a possum grin I’m still grinning.
I was feeling all hurt
and helpless and hopeless, then I heard this on the radio, and my heart rose up in spite of me.
quote out of context
But my exchange with the Tooth Fairy was delightful. Her tone was either flirtatious or something like a Disney character sounds moments before singing the movie’s second big number; it was difficult to discern.
All Hallows (I Saw Nick Drake)
Robyn Hitchcock. “I Saw Nick Drake.”
I saw him pass right through this place.
And we’re in bloom.
I do not fear death
I found Roger Ebert’s essay on mortality (excerpted from his new book) to be quite a lovely catalyst for reflection.
Wading birds
Pa’ Cindita, who grieves and delights in the sad and beautiful aspects of dead birds.
The Bradbury Building
Another thing Amanda did while I was in Los Angeles was give me a tour of the city that was both incredibly personal and instructive. The most amazing moment was how she handled taking me to The Bradbury Building. It almost feels unfair to describe it — so you can get a glimpse of what the experience was like — because that’s the opposite of how she handled it. She just said, I’m going to take you by The Bradbury, and we parked, and then we walked in.
quote out of context
For her performance Nobili, who says she uses dance as a form of prayer, lies spread-eagled in front of the altar clutching a crucifix or twists and turns as in pole-dancing routines.
Precession of the Equinoxes
The thing that caused everyone to freak out because their astrological signs had changed is one of the more fascinating stories in the history of intellectual evolution. That thing is called precession of the equinoxes, and precession is one of those phenomena that is simultaneously invisible and obvious, observable and hidden.
Let’s start with the technicalities and move to the history of it.
In astronomy, axial precession is a gravity-induced, slow and continuous change in the orientation of an astronomical body’s rotational axis. In particular, it refers to the gradual shift in the orientation of Earth’s axis of rotation, which, like a wobbling top, traces out a pair of cones joined at their apices in a cycle of approximately 26,000 years. The term “precession” typically refers only to this largest secular motion; other changes in the alignment of Earth’s axis — nutation and polar motion — are much smaller in magnitude.
So, precession is essentially the planetary equivalent of the wobble in a top as it spins.
If you carve the horizon into twelve roughly equivalent sections, each year, at the equinoxes, the sun will appear to rise in one and set in its opposite. Because of the wobble in the axis of the earth, the section of the sky the sun appears to rise and set in will shift very slowly over a period of roughly 2,160 years. This is the basis of astrology, as various civilizations applied meaning to the constellations they saw in each section. More interestingly, I think, our tracking of it appears to be the basis of astronomy.
To begin to notice that tracking takes time. To fully understand the cycle, and be able to project it forwards and backwards, to mark the passage of time in the relative movement of the stars, would take hundreds, if not thousands, of years — observation, measurement, notation. Once a culture had an awareness of that pattern, no matter on what scale, it could begin to find a place for itself, and make a story out of it, and because we are human, of course, that is what we did.
If you are interested in this subject, and are comfortable with an approach equal parts academic and poetic, you might enjoy Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechen’s Hamlet’s Mill. It shows glimpses of precession’s possible influence throughout the history of art, an astronomical code for our place in the universe embedded in language.
headline of the day
PG Lips: Chinese tea plantation seeks virgins to pick leaves with their MOUTHS
I don’t even know where to start.
quote out of context
…hurry up and be raptured already
Dear clusterflock
I keep discovering Asian packages of fruits, like spiced mango or salted lychee, which I immediately purchase and try to consume. And yet, not a single one of these delightfully marketed products is remotely edible . . . if you like fruit, or sugar, or pickles.
Am I alone in this willful impulsivity with exotic foods or do you find yourself chewing on bitter, pickled rot at regular intervals too? Where do you shock yourself into an awareness of some blind, reckless faith?
Jefferson’s Bible
The second of two Bibles Jefferson took a scalpel to will go on display at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.
To readers familiar with the New Testament, this Jefferson Bible, as it is popularly called, begins and ends abruptly. Rather than opening, as does the Gospel of John, in the beginning with the Word, Jefferson raises his curtain on a political and economic drama: Caesar’s decree that all the world should be taxed. His story concludes with this hybrid verse: “There laid they Jesus, and rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulcher, and departed.” Between these points, there are no angels, no wise men, and not a hint of the resurrection.
(thanks, Josh)
quote of the day
A woman sunbathing topless, lying face-down at the beach… is wearing the entire earth as a bra.
from the comments
Yes, donkeys have held our affection the longest. Because of donkey fuckers. But, you know, we mustn’t be forever tied to tradition. We need to make way for the new. I’m not sure that any of us even thought about honey badgers when we designated donkeys and goats as official clusterflock animals.
I’m gonna tell you up front, I don’t have the right tools to fix this one. And even if I had the right tools, I can’t promise you that I could fix a problem like this.
Love – Revelation Part 1 and 2
When the Olympics came to Vancouver in 2010, I was listening to this song a lot. I often turn my music player up to 11 when I hear this song regardless of where I am because I can’t stand not hearing every note. It’s that good.
It’s about 20 minutes long (with part 2) and also the best and sleeziest psychedelic jam any of us will likely ever come across. Unfortunately, I can only find the version on YouTube that is split into two parts and loses sound quality half way through part two. If you can find the original on iTunes or elsewhere, I highly recommend downloading it.
This song will always be my soundtrack to the 2010 Olympics.
Father Christmas fucked my pussy (Christmas pussy song)
(thanks, Aaron)
Electricity | Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band
Deron and I been going back and forth about Walt Whitman, and and now I am meditating on Whitman and my other main man, William Blake. Sometimes one or the other of them feels present to me in a way that is electrifying.
Plastic Jesus
It occurred to me, after making my Plastic Jesus reference in the comments, that most of you would have no idea what I was talking about.
Consider yourselves educated.
“Tearin’ me all apart”
Weird shit flying from all directions tonight. People I know from way different places posting Jimi Hendrix over at places I hang out. “Machine Gun” and “Star-Spangled Banner.”
Not linking ’cause first place you can find those two real easy and second place I want y’all mainly to watch and listen to this chunk of a Cavett interview with Jimi.
from the moderated comments
This issue merits modern science and perspective on genuine human spiritual history. Monks in the Himalayan Temples have carbon datable proof that Jesus of Nazareth was a Yogi teaching the Kriya of Babaji, and anyone who does serious inquiry, people raised Christian, such as myself, in good faith, take facts, yes…facts, and use them to apply to our spiritual understandings. This has created a HUGE movement of people who embrace BOTH Christianity and the pure spirituality of true YOGA.
It’s all about magnetics, science and anyone who wishes to move forward spiritually within truth, would do well to remove the prejudice blocks to understanding facts and truth.
; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
Pay attention to Ian Curtis from about 1:47 onward.
Patriotism
Whatever the reason, it seemed and still seems to me that our attitude towards life can be better expressed in terms of a kind of military loyalty than in terms of criticism and approval. My acceptance of the universe is not optimism, it is more like patriotism. It is a matter of primary loyalty. The world is not a lodging-house at Brighton, which we are to leave because it is miserable. It is the fortress of our family, with the flag flying on the turret, and the more miserable it is the less we should leave it. The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more. All optimistic thoughts about England and all pessimistic thoughts about her are alike reasons for the English patriot. Similarly, optimism and pessimism are alike arguments for the cosmic patriot.
- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
The Big Sister I Never Had in Real Time
Do the Wa-TU-si and learn how TO see.
A forgotten place beneath the stars
Joshua Tree Under the Milky Way from Henry Jun Wah Lee on Vimeo.
The wilds of Arkansas weren’t quite this starry, but it was a near thing.
What did I miss?
